Originally Posted by
Servalan:
“I'm a Team Cola supporter and I fully agree with what your assessment in this instance - as long as it refers to the Charlestons (NOT the VW group dance
).
However, I think the concern is that the judges are in general dismissive of public opinion and automatically judge Chris differently to the way they judge Ali or Ricky.
Witness Bruno saying that Ricky ending up in the dance-off was 'a scare': it implies that he should be somehow protected because he's technically good. 
And when there is a scenario where the producers/judges (who will know how the public vote) can influence the choice of finalists and get rid of the public's favourite - as Chris appears to be at the moment - that is a legitimate concern.”
I'm not so sure how much I agree with this. Granted, I'm not a Team Cola supporter (nor am I a supporter of anyone who's left - though if pushed I'd prefer Ali to win on the basis of her having done the least to irritate me over the series).
The judges are meant to mark on a different criteria to the audience, so I hardly think it's surprising that the ones they believe to be technically better will attract a higher scores to the ones who are crowd-pleasing but technically lacking. I don't think they mark Ali/Ricky
differently to Chris (or Laila) because they're dismissive of public opinion, but because they're better dancers. Should they give Chris higher marks because he's more entertaining, even if he's not dancing as well as others? (I do agree that a 10 was too high for Ali's charleston, and that it wouldn't have killed them to knock a couple more marks from Ricky - but then I also think that Chris had too high a mark and Laila too low. The only one who got an appropriate score in my opinion was Natalie.)
As for Ricky's dance off being a "scare" - I honestly think that all that was meant was that, with a few blips, Ricky's consistently been good - and unlike Ali, consistently been safe. This week he wasn't so good, and he ended in the dance off, and I suppose that would be surprising for the judges who have just seen a good dancer have an off day.
I think the whole problem we're having where a popular contestant can't reach the final is more to do with the producers not coming up with a contingency plan after Jade's withdrawal than favouritism.