Gavin is definitely taking the competiton seriously and putting in a lot of hard work each week and maybe the judges should acknowledge this as well as critiqueing.
(Except I love seeing his little hurt boy look when he gets those bad comments )

He went in to win it so as he's still there why shouldn't he maintain his goal???

Nah, on saturday he looked more like Rupert the bear

To be fair, the judges have been acknowledging this ever since Gavin's Paso. They've been nothing but encouraging.

But he can't expect to be mollycoddled. If he puts in a bad performance, as he did with the Jive, then it's the judge's job to tell him so. There's no point giving him false praise or he won't continue to improve. He'll become complacent.

Have to agree with this. Whilst Ann of course should go before him, in my mind the gap between him & the top 4 is so big that it would be almost as much a travesty if he made the final as it would Ann.

Have to disagree Sid - as Katya pointed out Craig was making notes whilst Gavin performed, so how could he possibly critiques the whole routine; there were some decent bits, guess Craig was busy scribbling.

Len's "You hated it, I hated, we all hated it," wasn't what I'd define as encouraging unless someone's rewritten the OED.


I'll smack your hand and give you a smooth.

xxx

Katya is trying to build up his confidence and tells him he's great even if he's not. Also the whole 'I hate jive' thing backfired. When judges did not like something they thought he could not be arsed to do better. Craig observing and writing at the same time, he's been always doing that. He can still see what's going on. And anyway if it takes just a blink away and he misses all the good in the dance, it wasn't as good in the first place, IMO.

They weren't very encouraging after the Jive, but I meant they had been in the past (overly enthusiastic at times I reckon!).

As for Katya, if she was busy dancing and interacting with Gavin and the audience, I'm not sure she would have been able to keep an eye on what Craig was doing through their whole routine. I expect he happened to be making notes at the point she happened to glance at him. Craig is known for pointing out very specific faults (e.g. Matt's thumbs and Kara's dodgy index finger!) and he wouldn't be able to do that if he didn't watch the dances closely.

Smack away, you know I love it

x x x

Unless he writes shorthand at around 120 wpm he'd need more than a blink to make a fair assessment.

I didn't think the jive was good. In fact but I would have Craig's critique more credible had he watched it through. That's the very least he owes the contestants - anything else is unprofessional.

For the record at least 90% of the time I think Craig is the only credible judge.

The thing is, for Gavin he probably did think he did the dance OK compared to what he was doing earlier in the week.

He said on ITT last night that at the beginning of the week he didn't like it, but as the week went on he got on with it better. However, for whatever reason the VT focused on the beginning of the week and didn't show anything at all of the middle when Katya was ill and Gavin had to train with Kurt at all, or even the end when he was enjoying it more.

They'd decided that it was Gavin's week to go. Simple as that. They needn't have watched the routine at all and one of them didn't.
I found it interesting that at one point in the results show, the judges were pretending to do a bit of the start of, that jive. Katya, had choreographed it and on ITT, Karen had said that Gavin's timing was spot on, for that part. So who were the judges mocking, at that point - Katya ?

Hardly a conspiracy. He was bad, not counting Ann who can't be arsed to try, he was the worst IMO.

Not for me. Not counting Ann; I mentally switched off during Patsy's and I was laughing at Scott being swung round by his neck.
Kara was out of time and Matt looked like he was treading grapes. I did giggle.
Pamela's face just scares me, so Gavin was a delight to me. I grinned thoughout He brings fun and a little bit of hope to the dancefloor and I like it.

Yeah, Scott was pretty awful and awfully overmarked. WTF was that, that was not cutting him some slack for the sake of the history. I must have blocked him out. But I think the rest was better than Gavin. I also judge it by how uncomfortable the dance makes me feel (subjective, I know) and Gavin made me feel very uncomfortable.

just a point, but Craig could have been writing and watching the routine at the same time. Dance examiners frequently seem to do this - in competitions they seem to not look directly at you, whilst still managing to write down your number, whilst in medal tests the examiner spends time writing down notes about the performance and doesn't apear to be looking but actually is.

Gavin is a character I can't make out though. To me, I don't see a dry sense of humour and a tongue stuck firmly in his cheek. I just see vain, arrogant and a little bit deluded. However in this case Katya also seems a bit deluded as to how bad that jive was. I don't think it warranted more marks.

After re watching the routine, Craig must have eyes where no one else has them. He can see out of the top of his head, for lengthy periods of time...not just seconds.
I am not surprised that Craig has special bodily knacks, as he is remarkably adept at speaking out of his ar@e.

See, I veer between the two. He is hard to work out. I initially just thought he was arrogant, but now I am starting to think he just has a very dry sense of humour and is painfully shy. Plus, the Rugby circle is notoriously harsh so he has to stick up for himself.

He knows he is the weakest left. The week he beat Scott he was saying things like "Atleast I beat Scott" etc but I don't think he is delusional enough to think one bad week for Scott meant he was as good or better than him. I bet they all tease each other!

I don't think Ann was delusional either, she knew she was bad and just joked around.