Strictly Come Farcing
Gordon Pepper
Before I go on a tirade, let me says that I did like
Dancing with the Stars. I have a major beef, however,
with the way the show manipulated us in the last hour.
As you will see, we were pulled into a final competition
that not only reeked of a set up, but a complete waste
of time as I accuse ABC of giving us a final judging
round that was drama-packed, but completely irrelevant
to the outcome of the event. In addition, I also accuse
ABC of setting us up so that we'd be happy with the
eventual winner - something that ABC knew was going to
win a full week in advance.
I am sure that you are asking if I am accusing ABC of
purposely fixing the event so that Kelly and Alec would
win. The answer is no. I believe that ABC didn't fix the
outcome so that Alec and Kelly would win. That outcome
was
already determined well before the airing of
Wednesday's show, when the audience voting was, as Lisa
Canning put it time and again, "counted and verified".
If you have seen the show, you all know how the scoring
works - the judges are 50 percent of the score and the
audience is the other 50 percent. What you also know is
that the teams are ranked in terms of points, so, for
arguments sake, let's say we have four teams...
|
Judges |
Audience |
Total |
Team 1 |
2 |
4 |
6 |
Team 2 |
4 |
1 |
5 |
Team 3 |
1 |
3 |
4 |
Team 4 |
3 |
2 |
5 |
As you can see, the judging is very important. Team
#3 would have been eliminated, as they had the lowest composite score. But
let's say we had a tie...
|
Judges |
Audience |
Total |
Team 1 |
2 |
2 |
4 |
Team 2 |
3 |
1 |
4 |
Team 3 |
1 |
4 |
5 |
Team 4 |
4 |
3 |
7 |
Now Team #1 and Team #2 are
tied for the worst composite score. What happens?
According to the rules on ABC's website, the team with
the best audience score advances. Therefore, Team #1
survives and Team #2 is eliminated.
With that knowledge in mind,
let's move on to the finals. As you will see, if the
tiebreaker is on the audience vote, then winning the
judge's vote is completely inconsequential. As we see,
let's say that John and Charlotte rebounded and won the
audience's vote...
|
Judges |
Audience |
Total |
John/Charlotte |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Kelly/Alec |
2 |
1 |
3 |
Even though John and
Charlotte lost the judges' vote, it wouldn't matter,
because if they win the audience's vote, they have both
the tie AND the tie-breaker, making them the champs. So
what did the judges' vote mean on the last night of
competition?
Absolutely nothing.
This means that Kelly and Alec HAD to have won the
audience vote. What it also means is that by knowing
that Kelly and Alec won the audience vote, ABC also knew
that they won the competition - and they had a really
good idea that Alec and Kelly won at midnight on
Thursday night last week. Sure, the online voting
continued until Tuesday, but as the bulk of the votes
would have come in within 24 hours of the show's airing,
ABC would pretty much know who won. That gives them
nearly a full week, fairly sure of who wins, to set up a
great storyline that would make the show end with a
bang.
Hence - 'The underdog of Kelly Monaco beating the
judges' favorite of John O'Hurley' was the tag line, and
they followed it all the way through, from the teasing
of the advertisements through the beginning of the show
through the theme of the show through Tom Bergeron's
closing line of 'America loves the underdog'. They
pounded that 'Underdog' theme all week long - and they
did that because they knew that the Underdog was going
to win the competition.
So this big brouhaha about the 2 dances and the
all-importance of the judging? Not important at all,
which made me wonder why the judges had to go out! of
their way to crown Kelly and Alec the champs. In one of
the more sickening judging moves that I have seen this
side of the Torville & Dean winter ice skating Olympics
controversy, the judges set us all up to see a Kelly
victory.
After the first round, John/Charlotte was up by 2, and
then scored a 27 in the third dance. That means that the
only way that they lose is if Kelly/Alec get all 10's
from the judges, which seemed incredibly unlikely
because no 10 has been awarded throughout the
competition. When I saw Kelly's routine, I thought it
was good, but it wasn't better than John/Charlotte and
it shouldn't have garnered 10's from all three judges.
However, when the judges gave them all 10's, I had one
of those pits in my stomach - the type of pit that you
knew you were getting when you knew something was going
to happen that you didn't like.
After that, we got the results from the audience, and we
get the news that Alec and Kelly won. The voting didn't
come from these performances - it came from LAST week. I
think that it was dopey that the judges potentially
pandered the scores so that it look like Kelly had this
come from behind win, but of course, their scores didn't
matter, so I can't accuse the judges of fixing the
competition, since the competition was decided long
before that happened. So I don't know whether to be
angry or just bemused. I'll think about it during the
weekend and decide then - or maybe I'll just give myself
a 10 for the heck of it.
It should be noted that the extent of Gordon Pepper's
dancing skills are limited to the occasional DDR fix. E-mail him at gordon@gameshownewsnet.com |