Game Show NewsNet - State of Play

Second Dance - March 3

So now that the season on Dancing With the Stars has ended, we can see that the right team that included celebrity Drew Lachey won, beating uber-beauty Stacy Kiebler and uber-underdog Jerry Rice. There is no new controversy and everything is right with the world. Let's all go out and celebrate with some egg nog and cinnamon raisin cookies.

Not so fast.

Not only is there controversy again, but the new format of having three people in the finals and with the judges having the final say makes it even easier to not only cause controversy, but to determine who the champion is going to be without causing controversy over it.

Confused? Don't be. Let's break it down.

As we all know, the points are determined by the order of finish. 50% is based on the judges and the other 50% by the audience. Should there be a tie, then the audience determines the tie-breaker. Simple, right?

Now keep in mind that we get one half of the judging, then the audience vote comes in, then the judges get their final say so. Technically, this means that ABC knows who wins the audience vote before they know who wins the judging part. That also technically means that should the judges also know who wins the audience part, that also may influence them on how to judge that final segment and to give us a winner that we will all be happy about.

Before we continue, you may accuse me of being a Haterade. Of course I am - that's my job =). That being said, There is a reason for this, as I believe that this format could have procured Drew the win.

Let's go back to Friday night, and the scores after that point -

Drew - 60
Stacy - 56
Jerry - 53

Drew was in first at that point. And as the competition continues, although he does not win the last dance, he does JUST enough to edge Stacy out by 1 point. That would make the scores the following -

Drew - 3
Stacy - 2
Jerry - 1

He winds up winning the judges segment and the competition. Case closed, right? Well, should he have won the audience vote, then it really doesn't matter how the judging goes on the last dance.

But lets just say that he didn't win the public vote. Now we all know that Stacy finished in third place, so she must have gotten the lowest votes in the audience segment. That means that Jerry would have at least finished in second in the audience vote, and that gives him the tie-breaker edge over Stacy. That would put the point total like this -

Drew - 3 + ? = ?
Stacy - 2 + 1 = 3
Jerry - 1 + 2 = 3

Now what happens if Jerry won the audience vote? That's very possible, as Jerry Rice not only has a strong contingency, but on at least one occasion earlier on in the season, he had to have placed first the audience part of the competition to have stuck around - which he did. That would place Drew in second and Stacy in third. Again, not much controversy, as Drew still wins the event, like this -

Drew - 3 + 2 = 5
Jerry - 1 + 3 = 4
Stacy - 2 + 1 = 3

However...let's NOW say that Stacy gets that extra one point and edges out Drew in the judging part of the competition. Let's see what the scoring would be
-

Jerry - 1 + 3 = 4
Drew - 2 + 2 = 4
Stacy - 3 + 1 = 4

We now have a 3 way tie. What happens in a 3 way tie? The audience determines the winner. Who has the most audience vote? Jerry Rice. So what does this mean?

It means that if Stacy had won the judging competition, then Jerry Rice wins Dancing With the Stars. In addition, ABC certainly would have known it and should they have decided to give the judges that information, the judges would have known that should they give Drew low enough scores for Stacy to edge him out, then neither of the favorites win Dancing With the Stars and we have a whole new level of controversy. Hence the 27 that Drew got to JUST beat Stacy,
because anything less than that would have generated some serious problems for the future of the show.

Of course, since we have no clue who the audience voted for, this is all speculation at best. And of course, since this is for bragging rights off of the celebrities, the network can pander it any way that they want to, and no one's really going to object too much. It is interesting speculation though, don't you think?

Gordon Pepper speculates more about this show than anyone should. E-mail Gordon at gordon@gameshownewsnet.com.