Or is Danielle a shoe in ? ( no pun intended!)

I know it's not the girls fault but I do so hate being manipulated.

Well, it does seem ALW has chosen "his" Dorothy already..

But, it does boil down to how the final vote goes, so other voters out there do have a chance of upsetting his lordships wishes........

Saying that though, Danielle would be a good Dorothy, just not my choice.

I hope that people aren't so petty as to not vote for someone simply because the producer of the show likes her. That's stupid. They should vote for whoever they think is the best, whether she's the "favorite" or not.

If your reputation was affected by whether your leading lady was going to be able do the show justice, then you too would know who you would like to be Dorothy. I think though he knows a thing or two about who could manage a demanding role and thinks that probably 3 out of the remaining girls could manage it. Personally I think thats Danielle, Lauren and Steph. Although the others are all talented I don't think they are ready for such a role.

Sorry to disappoint you but people are that petty

It's a good question. Other contestants' supporters are disappointed and nobody likes to feel that they are being manipulated. There may, indeed, be a slight backlash against Danielle, who is perceived in certain quarters to be The Chosen One.

However, I think we need to keep a sense of perspective and, to help me do this, I apply the hairdressers' test. Whenever I visit my local hairdressers, we all chat about what's on the telly and invariably discuss who is going to win the latest reality show, whether that's BGT, the X Factor, Strictly - you name it. Not one of those ladies (they are all women) visits forums like DS; they simply watch the programme and most of them pick up the phone and cast a vote or two.

The simple truth is that they vote for their favourite act. Period. There is no conspiracy talk (not even when John Sargeant left Strictly) and they do not dissect every nuance of the programme and song choice. The Hairdressers' Test is, in effect, a take on Occam's Razor (if two hypotheses have equal validity, pick the simple one).

So my theory, for what it's worth, is that there will be no backlash in the public vote as long as Danielle continues to deliver performances like Mambo Italiano.

I don't like to see blatant manipulation and it would serve The Lord right if this blew up in his face. I wonder what face he would pull then! I do think that Danielle is right for the role but somehow I can't believe that Stephanie was in the bottom two and the word "fix" springs to mind. Over the Rainbow should be entitled "Andrew has fixed it".

I cant vote from here in Ireland so maybe see it from a distance .
I dont know who I would vote for , maybe Danielle this week as I thought her Hey Mambo was great .
But I see the manipulation from over here and it would bother me to think I was being led and it just might make me vote for Lauren .

I don't mind ( and expect ) ALW to have his favourites and his own ideas as to could manage the role, but I don't want to be manipulated into agreeing with him and I don't want it rammed down my throat. If you use a show like this to cast a role then you have to be prepared to give everyone an equal shot at the role and to not be disappointed if your favourites aren't the public's favourites.

I admire Danielle but I don't warm to her, if she's the public's choice fair and square then fair enough, but if it starts to look like the public are being manipulated then I kind of hope that it does go against ALW if only to show that the public can't be manipulated.

Having said that, I do agree with Peeve. Here on DS we are all a bit (!) obsessed and analyse every tiny detail ... yet we are only a very small percentage of the viewing population. I agree that most people watch and enjoy the show, vote for their favourite and the idea of conspiracy theories would never enter their heads ....

Very well put. Spot on.

It is annoying to see ALW having blatant favourites especially if you don't agree but I don't see where there has been a manipulation of people.

Me too. I don't like being manipulated. And I really could not see what all the gushing was about with her earlier performances....

Hear! Hear!

Exactly! I judge contestants on their performance skills. I really couldn't care less if they're ALW's 'chosen one' or not. If I like their singing/acting and think they're a good fit for the role they're aiming to win, then I'll support them.

What it boils down to is who I'd be willing to pay WE ticket prices to see, and thus far, the only ones I'd be willing to do that for are Danielle, Lauren and Steph. All the others still have a long, long way to go to get anywhere near WE standard.

Here's my problem: if the top 10(/11) girls, the ones who make it to the live shows were genuinely the ten best, most suited girls for the role of Dorothy who had auditioned, then right now we'd have six girls all of an extremely high standard who were basically all capable of playing Dorothy in the West End. But due to various reasons - the need to make good TV, to ensure as far as possible that ALW gets what he wants etc etc - the final 6 only contains a couple who could perform well in a full West End production. Danielle personally does nothing for me, but she's technically flawless, and Steph and Lauren are the only other two who are turning in consistently high quality performances. (I was a big fan of Stephanie but that's a moot point now!)

So the problem becomes that within the top 10 that ends up on the live shows, there are only ever going to be a small number of them that ALW wants to progress far in the competition - the ones he would trust with the role. (And the show becomes a constant effort to subtly shift out the ones he doesn't care for.) Obviously that wasn't Stephanie, so she was torpedoed before her fanbase could solidify. All his weight is behind Danielle right now, with Lauren as the back-up. (Look at his face at the very end of Stephanie's goodbye song - the calculated triumph of a mafia boss!)


The thing is, as we saw last year, ALW can play as manipulative a game as he likes, but in the end, the public will pick who they want. If Jessica ends up this year's Jodie, then I'll laugh, even though I'm not a fan of hers, because it will again show the dangers of banking on being able to control the public, and neglecting putting through a larger amount of girls that he would be happy with. Because the talent IS out there, and it DID audition - just a lot of amazing people are turned away for lack of a sob story, or because "we've already got a ginger/black/Scottish/trained one"...

Anyway, sorry for rambling...feeling all funny about this show at the moment!

ALW seems to go ultimately for who he can trust to be safe as a default setting - the exception was IDA where the safe options seemed to be removed for the young girls - but even there you do wonder what was going on. Along the way, the stated job spec gets lost because safe tends to rule out anything that some of the audience will find, odd, different or challenging. He ends up going for the most mature, most experienced and most easy sell and even in IDA thats what he gets.

This seems pretty common and there's a lot of reliable stars around as well as a few inspired bits of casting. It causes problems though because what he really wants is in most series the opposite of what he says he wants, and, in a more creative moment, thought about getting. The calculation who is safe has also proved one thats either proved impossible pr premature or he has just got wrong. Past history shows umpteen people who went out for being unsafe in some way who proved to be perfectly safe somewhere else within the timescale for his new show. One other Maria, one Nancy and umpteen Josephs all end up playing the role perfectly well. Connie and Jodie are actually the only two girls who couldn't handle 8 shows a week, the inconsistent proved consistent and the weaker voices and weaker actors nearly all ended up belting it out and acting even more difficult roles.

I agree that makes things a bit of a nonsense. He's deciding on whats often dud grounds and he's not letting us see the real competition which would involve putting all the options in front of us and letting us choose. He's just eliminated the choice between the two who look most like the conventional version - so its Danielle or nothing if you want that now. He's keeping the even safer if inappropriate experienced people around in case Danielle fails and he's trying to get rid of Jessica and Jenny who are actually the nearest of whats left to a modern fun Dorothy.

Its going to be tricky though for him. Jenny, as Charlotte implied, has jumped over holes laid for her and escaped dead slots in the running order. Jessica I suspect is doing well in the vote. He has to get both of them out of the top 2 to stop one of them getting to the final. If one makes it, he then has to hope that the new vote in the final goes to the traditional Dorothy and an inspired song choice. It could go very wrong, and he could actually get what he said he wants. Ironically he may end up in the reverse situation to IDA this time - when he actually wants someone who also fits the public stereotype he may at last get something different.

In this week's and last week's show, the two girls in the sing-off went into harmony for part of the song. How could they have rehearsed this beforehand? Also, in the final song last night, those still standing had to sing in turn. Lauren started off. Who would have sung it, if she had lost out in the sing off? It's all too slick, and well done, not to have been rehearsed. I don't know if ALW is involved in any sort of fix. It's a very entertaining show but there must be something going on behind the scenes to make this possible (in my opinion).

I htink the main "fixing" is inthe song choices. Though it didn't pay off this week when the Chosen One didn't pull off what should have been a hit solo

People including me I refuse to vote for the ice-queen, partly because ALW wants her so so much. I was voting for Jenny, but in her absence I suspect my vote will transfer to his next least fave Sophie!

Exactly.

I won't be voting FOR anyone.

I will just instead be voting against blatant manipulation.

:yawn:

Although, in fairness, given the expected finalists, I will probably have fallen into a deep coma inside ten minutes.

The 1st person to sing in the sing off is the 1st to have performed on the night, so most of the girls will have to learn both parts except for whoever goes on 1st and last. If that makes sense!!!.

Last night also went in the order they sung on the show. Danielle went 1st not Lauren she was last to sing.

Sigh

It makes me a little bit sad that people just don't vote for who they want to see as Dorothy.

I never let myself me manipulated into voting for or against any contestant - I stick to who I believe is best for the part.

As it happens, the person everyone thinks is ALW's favourite is my least favourite of those remaining, but even if she wasn't, I wouldn't let people on here or on the judging panel manipulate me into voting anyway other than for the girl I would most like to see in the role.

Erm, what exactly are they supposed to do if they don't rate most of the finalists?

It's like saying, do you want ..

(a) broccoli

(b) sprouts

(c) strawberry trifle (but sorry we ran out of strawberries)

You kind of react by going, "okay, well it's not ideal but I will definitely take the pudding and just shove extra cream on to compensate."