The problem with Ricky and Natalie (and Ali & Brian) is that they were on a different level to the rest right from the beginning.

They achieved high marks from the judges (quite rightly so) because they were the best dancers in most of the shows - but because they were marked so higly from the outset they have nowhere left to go in terms of clearly visible improvement. Those high marks were also a problem because they stayed high - even when they made very noticeable mistakes which should have cost them some points. In many cases - the criticism they do receive from the judges which shows that their errors WERE noticed by the judges, isn't carried over into the marks given.
That puts voters' backs up!

Again - the judges will give similar sort of criticism/ comments to another couple and then they will get a much lower set of marks.
That also puts voters' backs up!

The GBP on the whole doesn't really like to see competitiveness/ will to win - and particularly so in entertainment shows. Natalie (and to a much lesser extent Brian - he seems to have the sense not to be caught saying he wants to win/ wants 10s too much on the VTs) has made the fatal mistake of saying very publicly she's in it to win it and did them no favours by wanting 10s in the early weeks. She also has made quite a few foot in mouth statements on ITT and the VTs which haven't endeared her to the public. She needs to take lessons in how to deal with British voters from Brendan Erin & Brian - all of whom have similar attitude but have still managed to get the GBP on their side.

Finally though - Ricky and Natalie were established too early as the judges pets, and I think Claudia hit the nail on the head on ITT a couple of weeks ago when she asked Craig & Bruno something about there being a judging strategy (This couple can do 9/ 10 dances - but that one can only do 7/ 8) and that blinkers them to what actually happens on the night. We have seen in past series a middle ranked couple outdance the judges pet in the same dance but the favourite got bad comments and high marks while the other got good comments and mediocre marks. (It happened with Carol Smillie and Emma Bunton doing the cha cha or samba, and Louisa outdancing Emma in the rumba but getting lower marks, and Gabby getting low marks for a fabulous quickstep).

The main problem though is that this is a light entertainment show pretending to be a dancing competition and the results show several things

1. The voters don't like obvious favouritism from the panel (Emma/ Lisa)
2. They don't like highly competitive participants - either pro or celeb (Gabby/ Natalie L)
3. They like a "story" or a "journey" which always gets votes. This year its Chris & Ola (yes check my posts - I predicted they would be the first out way back in September....) who have caught the public imagination. In the past that couple have been Chris Parker and Hannah, Aled and Lilia, Darren and Lilia, and last series Tom and Camilla.

Over all the series - I think Jill Halfpenny is the only winner who managed to be popular with both the judges AND the voters all the way through, as well as being one of the 2 fantastic dancers on her series

I think the judges or producers or whoever are to blame for that as much as anything with the contant need to have this 'the best series evvahhh with the best celebs evvaahh' when instead we really haven't.

We have a final 3 who took first, second and 4th slot on the leaderboard in the first round of dances.

No one has progressed, no one has made the leap from good to fab or OK to good.

Over marking and over praising and the whole 'we'll not mention the missed steps/arms/footwork' thing doesn't help anyone or anything in the long run.

So, so many of those rules apply to women and not to men though.

Come out of the gate obviously in the top 2? Fine for Austin and Mark

Get told you made mistakes but have no points deducted and even given 10s? Fine for Gethin and Tom

Be really nakedly competitive? Fine for Darren Gough

Even the celebs you listed as having a journey are all male, and some of them I'd debate. What's Tom's journey? What's Chris' journey? Shit to shitter?

Even now, when Ricky is one of the few(if not the only) talented male hunk to be unpopular, whose fault does everyone seem to agree it is? Why the little woman's of course.

Just to raise a couple of issues:

Re: Natalie laughing etc when she was saved in dance off
what do people want her to do - of course she was pleased as for saying she was not sorry for the couple going not so when Natalie and Vincent went she went over and cuddled both of them. I think people see what they want to see I have always seen Natalie joining in the cuddling when celebs leave etc. In fact when Ricky G went Natalie L and Natalie C were standing at the end with their arms around each other!!

One of the other things I have taken into account is the quite way of Natalie's teaching Ricky. There has been no shouting at all. Last year I could hardly bear Karen, Lilia and Ola all shrieking at their partners - Ola has still shouted a bit this time but not so much I would agree.

I like both Ricky and Natalie and if people are honest they never gave them a chance from when they first appeared.

You can't make people vote for people they cant take to or indeed, like. Seemples.

I can only speak from my own viewpoint of course, as none of us can really speak for 1000s of anonymous voters. But I think the lack of interesting VT has played a big part. They just seem very flat and one dimensional. Actually if I was to think about it, I don't dislike Ricky. There's nothing to dislike. He's just bland and there's no spark of performance or public interaction while dancing and EVERY winner has had that. Also Natalie has a serious sense of humour bypass. I think SHE puts me off more than Ricky does. And I haven't found their routines very interesting or memorable, nothing there to make me want to pad over to the phone. Those are my reasons for what they're worth, for not caring about them.

I think it's very interesting that some people seem to have taken a dislike to Ricky because they see him as the "judges pet" who got high marks at the beginning.

Maybe the judges favour him because they genuinely think he is the best and therefore mark accordingly? After all, most of the pros seem to think so, why should the judges be any different?

I also think that lots of voters don't give enough credit for the difficulty of dances attempted. I think the judges do take into account how well a celeb performs given the difficulty of the choreography attempted, so a difficult dance performed well may score higher than a simple dance performed just as well. That may explain some of the "overmarking" some people seem to see.

I'm not saying you're wrong at all BUT if that is how they are marking the dances then it should be made clear.

There's no point the celebs standing with Tess waiting for the scores with the implication that a 10 is on the table for every routine if it is not so.

A routine with the potential to top score 8 being given a 7 is good ... however, the same routine being assumed to have a top score of 10 being given a 7 could be seen as poor.

As I said on another thread the only way to have an even playing field on the scoring is for all the contestants to do the same dance with the same cheography and the judges score them after everyone has danced

I actually prefer Ricky's Dad to Ricky. He's such a gentleman and so cute.

I was typing my reply quickly and it just so happens that the first names who came to mind were the ones who irritated me most - the fact they were female is by the way - Matt d'Angelo was almost as irritating and I loathed Goughie's neverending "I'm just a fat bloke from Yorkshire!" spoutings

Tom was a "story" winner rather than a "journey" one - did you know he did SCD while he was filming his Casualty exit and getting married last year??? . Chris. as somone else pointed out started off good went backwards and has picked up again... added to the hilariious VTs and his partnership with Ola (who I had previously written off as just a pretty face) - they have been the partnership of the show for me this year.

Ricky does nothing for me in a pin up way - he is just "meh!" to me (but my 13 yr old daughter thinks hes fab - she 's a Hollyoaks fan though!) - and Gethin was pretty much the same - I really didn't get his appeal or his supposed great breakthrough. Austin - I did think was robbed of a place in the semi/ final by Lisa though....

Ricky is a great dancer - but his personality is boring and bland and he is totally overshadowed by Natalie (apart in the last couple of interviews). I'd like to see how he would have fared with someone like Erin.. competitive but not TOO in yer face with it - I think that would have given a totally different dynamic.

The main gist of my post is that Ricky has suffered from the "judges pet" syndrome shared by Claire Sweeney/ Denise Lewis/ Zoe Ball/ Emma Bunton/ Lisa Snowdon from previous series and in fact Ricky is the first male celeb who has been in this position. Mark was undeservedly overshadowed by Emma B in his series and only really got to the front once she went. Ricky went to the front too early and stayed there and his mistakes haven't been penalised in the marks as much as others' have been.

But Gough & Matt DA (to a much lesser extent) were both popular with the general public. The women you listed as annoying never were. That's really my point - not about your opinion but those of the general public. How many women can you name from the last 5 series who were popular and talented? How many men can you name who were the same? It's been absolutely carnage.

Did people really connect with Tom's wedding, or the Casualty exit? Even his fans seemed to be annoyed by both of them. I really don't think his was a story or a journey win - he won because he was a talented male dancer and people enjoyed his dancing. And the Chris I was referring to in my post was of the Parker variety. There was no journey, no story, he came in crap, he stayed crap, he got votes for being a man being crap, all the way to the final. (Even amongst the "comedy contestants" the men have the advantage. No comedy woman's ever made it past halfway, and yet - Parker, Clary, Sergeant, Logan)

Re : Ramps, in the 11 weeks up until Emma's elimination, he topped the judges leaderboard 5 times. She topped it 4. In terms of coverage I agree she got more play and more air-time and more gushing on the spin-off shows, but then, every single other couple has had the same advantage over Ricky this year.

This I think is the real reason why Ricky has failed - no airtime, very few proper interviews (his last one just got sacrificed in favour of promoting James Jordan nascent presenting career), no gushing on It Takes Two, constant comments from the judges from dance 1 telling him he's going to fail, dull leading questions like "how does it feel to lose your spot at the top of the leaderboard" to which the answers are only ever going to look arrogant, no proper crisis management at all for that phony baloney assault charge. He was cut off at the knees from day 1.

The thurst has clearly been for a woman to win this year - Ali with her showmance, Laila with her whole "Anton's last chance" vibe, Jade with her "journey". Unfortunately, thanks to circumstances beyond their control, all of those have fallen apart (except possibly Ali) and now Team Cola is going to rampage the last few weeks like Godzilla over Tokyo and they're going to have to accept it (which they have, to the extent of facilitating it this week)

Next series is going to be as unbearable a "PLEASE LET A WOMAN WIN!" fest as Series 5 was, and even then the public completely ignored it and clearly wanted to gift Gethin the win.

Perhaps there is a chance, admittedly very slim, that people who haven't voted previously will vote in a semi-final.
I think people do change the way they vote as a series goes on. I know I have this time. Initially I was occasionally voting for people who I 'wanted to save' even though they weren't the best dancer. On Saturday I will vote for Ricky for the first time because I feel he is clearly the most talented dancer and most deserving of a place in the final.
Possibly there are other viewers who will think in the same way and Ricky's share of the vote will rise. You never know!

We've been here before though. Lisa and Brendan in last year's final ... 40 points for both dances, but they end up third.

And a totally undeserved 80 points that was - Rachel's foxtrot was equally as good if not marginally better and Tom's was on the same level (and harder because he had to lead it) - but that cha cha was definitely not a 40 pointer.... the main reason she wasn't voted for. The judges wanted Tom out in the semi - and wanted the girls to fight it out for the title so he was 3rd again.

Lisa was NEVER going to win - her appearance in dance off after dance off despite undeserved high marks should have told the pea brained judges that. Once Tom was in the actual final the result was 100% predictable - he clearly had the public behind him whereas Lisa did not.

Its just a shame that the record for the highest score in a final is held by Lisa who was outdanced in the final by both of the other competitors

what ? well then you've missed some of the best dances of the series

Monkseal - we must agree to differ on some things but we aren't that far apart on most.

Yes I agree that the PTB have been pushing a for a female winner both last year and this - but the public have voted for their favourites (and that is what we are repeatedly invited to do by Bruce and Tess every single week).

The fact that the vast majority of those who actually pick up their phone to vote wouldn't know a heel lead from a shimmy is neither here nor there. They vote for the couple they like the most - and that is based on a number of things.

Did they deliver an entertaining performance?
Did they suffer a disaster in their performance?
Did they have a crisis during the week which affected their training?
Do they seem to be enjoying themselves?
Were the judges nice to them?

If someone delivers a technically perfect but boring to watch (to the uneducated eye) routine which the judges love and score highly - is anyone really surprised when the less technical but highly entertaining couple marked lower go through on a higher public vote?

I do happen to agree that the women have a far far harder job to do to get far in the competition - Alesha had a much harder job convincing the voters than Gethin or Matt did, the fact that she was far and away the best dancer of the series showed through - as well as her sheer enjoyment of just being there (something shared with Chris and Natalie C). The "comedy" males have been far more entertaining than their supposed female counterparts.

Clary, Sergeant and Logan were in a far different league to Chris P who got through week after week on the "underdog who was slaughtered by the panel each week" vote.
John was actually quite good at the ballroom dances, and Julian and Kenny both improved dramatically over the series, None of the "comedy" females were ever as entertaining as their male counterparts (IMHO), although Kate Garraway came close (albeit unintentionally).

I do think that Ricky would have been more popular had he been put with one of the other girls ( looking at Aliona's pro choreography makes me wonder how it would have been had Ricky been put with her?) Natalie's uber competitiveness and plain speaking combined with the modest Ricky's very obvious talent put them in the firing line from week 1

Quote:
“Lisa was NEVER going to win - her appearance in dance off after dance off despite undeserved high marks should have told the pea brained judges that. Once Tom was in the actual final the result was 100% predictable - he clearly had the public behind him whereas Lisa did not.”

However this year you could just substitute Ricky for Lisa and Chris for Tom. I dont think Lisa was in the dance off more than twice but I wouldnt argue about it because I am not sure. Lisa and Rachel were both great dancers (particularly Rachel) but they lost out to the more popular celebe....you cant argue with the maths all of us knew they were not going to make it, Tom was the only one not to have been in the dance off once.

You're absolutely right of course and I'm sure it isn't done anything like as consciously as assigning a top score to a particular choreographic routine. It does seem though that when the pros start to discuss the choreography on ITT, some of the apparent scoring discrepancies become clearer. For instance tonight they talked about the lack of Samba content in Chris and Ola's dance this week when compared to Ali and Brian's routine. I would imagine the judges were equally aware of that as they were marking and whether deliberately or not it influenced their scores.

I think being a 'comedy' contestant is actually quite hard work and has to be embraced which to some degree is easier for a man to do than a woman. For some reason women are expected to be able to and want to dance whereas men not so much.

Most of the bad dancing women celebs haven't seen the funny side at all and have just got grumpier and grumpier culminating in the total non-comedy of Jan (all the comedy of her exit was purely non-intentional ). Kate really was the only one who just rolled with it and made it to over half way.

Lisa was in the dance off 3 times. Loosing out to her were Cherie, Jodie and Austin, I think.

*twitches with the memory of each of those dance-offs*

If people had just voted her off week 1 like I said they should...

Sorry to disagree I loved lisa last year