After the fuss of an earlier thread this week, I was pleased there was so little of it to give the detractors cause to complain. Lisa isn't my 'winner' but she always put a smile on my face when she performs and she is much better than this thread gives her credit for.

Good post Linda.

This, couldn't agree more.

Not fussed if she is big or small or middling , I dont enjoy her dance because I am bored of the same moves .I dont enjoy the OTT faces or the gimmiky moves .Thats it plain and simple .I dont enjoy Lisas dancing .
I tune in to see improvement and variation , LIsa had done neither .

I really like Lisa and Robin but I see no improvement now.

specifc question re heel lead


I was very interested in the VT on ITT showing Lisa learning to do heel leads, as after all these years of SCD I have heard Len get excited or rubbishing a dance because of the presence or absence of heel leads and never knew what they were.

So when Lisa did the relevant dance she was praised by Len as he said he had seen one heel lead. I do remember in training she was supposed to do 2.

Go back a few weeks to Denise's dance and Len having a right go at her about the lack of heel leads.

These tiny little thing that takes 2 seconds in a dance and are almost never seen on the television as the ladies dresses appear to cover their feet when doing them and of course we never see their feet , can surely not be what the judges are seeing when praising her technical content.

I see a clumpy dance that was out of time with awful samba rolls and a VERY badly landed split. Surely the overall impression of the dance has to be what is being judged not tiny little technical things that polish a performance and enhance the overall impression.

Regardless of her weight she has to be held to the same standard as others in the competition, I was really fed up last year as Anita was being judged as dancing really well for her age, it appears now Lisa is being judged as dancing really well for her weight.

It makes for a very unfair competition when people are judged to different standards.

As I remember when JR Martinez won DWTS he had a lot of physical limitation caused by his war wounds but he was never judged differently than the others.

She annoys me because of her gurning and other things that she does that really grate on ME, I can see others may like her persona but even they surely have to agree she should be judged to the same standard as everyone else

For my part, she has not improved since week 1s Cha cha cha and even that was lacking in basic steps. It was only a 'revelation' because:
a) the public expected her to be the 'fat comedy contestant' and - shock horror - she could actually move! Fast!
b) she lifted Robin at the end. Woo!

She's just gurning and waving her way through and keeps getting away with it which is going to start to rub the public up the wrong way. Its not fair on the others. Denise wouldn't get away with it, Louis wouldn't. She only got away with her Samba being so shocking because she finished with the splits! Tsk.

Glad it's not just me. Her last 3 dances have been mediocre. On Saturday she must have gone wrong 3 times in that dance and she hardly moves her legs. Her energy and fun are undeniably there, but at this stage it must also be technique.

As someone else said, I think they are being overly generous due to her size.

Mediocre? You're being too generous

Funnily enough, I failed rocket science at school but it seems I didn't need to pass it to realise that you are an ickle bit of a Victoria fan...or Victoria HERSELF!

While that's all well and good, I am not slating Victoria. I'm just saying what I have seen. She cried when she got her gold at the Olympics and she cried in her first competitive Strictly appearance. When she's not actually crying, she's very much on the verge of with her sad doe eyes and her "please don't be mean to me" demeanor. As someone else mentioned, she has even talked about her own easy ability to cry. So what's the problem? Oh yes, you are a Victoria fan so I am supposed to declare her the best dancer that ever was on Strictly and state that she may as well just grab the Glitterball right now.

As for "The Truth", there is gently letting someone down and then there's being mercelissly bitchy & nasty. Victoria falls into the former category, whereas Nicky & Richard fall into the latter. Why does Victoria deserve the special "softly, softly" approach over other competitors? Perhaps its because she is oh-so-fragile and to throw her to the nasty sniping judges could be likened to throwing a cute kitten to a pack of wolves.

Having said all that, I couldn't think of anyone who, outwardly, is further away from being a "bitch" - hence why I did not label her one...

Denise did no heel leads, Lisa tried 2 heel turns.

To be fair, I only worked out that it was different halfway through writing my recap and had to go back and rewrite half of it...

so the spread sheets haven't helped on that point

well that has rendered my whole post confused and irrelevant

thank you

Any time.

Have to say, I agree with a lot of that.

I think reducing Lisa to 'gurning and waving' makes her sound like Russell Grant, whose routines really did have bog-all actual dance content to differentiate one from the other.

She has actually managed recognisable steps in just about all of her routines - OK, with varying degrees of success (the jive and Charleston spring particularly to mind) but always looking like she was trying to do the dance rather than just out on a sort of 'wave-and-smile' PA.

I wouldn't want to pretend she's executed every dance's steps amazingly, but neither do I want people to denigrate the very real ability she has to learn and deliver steps in time and with a modicum of flair, just because they're not fans of her personal over-the-top style.

I agree, I've just watched her samba back (without sound it's easier to concentrate on steps then) and it was full of samba moves most of which she executed well. Her size is a big factor, it hinders her from being able to achieve some of the finesse and sharpness (the samba rolls for instance - they were never going to look good) but it had party atmosphere, she moved with rhythm and, for the most part, balance and I saw lots of stuff that I associate with samba.
For me she's not necessarily a front runner, or not at this stage anyway, but she brings joy and life to the dancefloor and that's infectious.

This is a girl who only lost her mother a few weeks before starting, it makes me happy to see her enjoying herself so much and she's easily as good, at this stage, as Chris Hollins ever was and probably better.

Each week the panel provides critical feedback and Lisa and Robin attempt to take it on board for the following week's dance. Because she's a BBW, she's like a force of nature of the dance floor and this can sometimes distract from just how much she is trying to achieve technically - it's this attempt to learn and become a better dancer that SCD is all about for me and Lisa is constantly trying to improve within her abilities.

I don't know what dance you watched because I do not think you can say Lisa executed her steps well

her timing was out a lot of the time, she clearly missed steps she was supposed to do and was so out time at one point Robin stood on her.

Regardless of issues of her size which you can understand for the poor Samba rolls timing has previously been a strong point for her.

She danced that last dance badly it was heavy footed, she had poor timing , her samba rolls were dreadful and that last splits looked painful and inelegant like an accident rather than a deliberate dance move.

and it got 8

People are fully entitled to like who they like and defend who they like .I like Victoria , I am not Victoria and in fact know nothing about her Olympic career .But I prefer to see her than Lisa or Richard . To each his own .,

I couldn't disagree more - we love her in our house. she lights up the show with a brilliant personality and would so much rather watch Lisa than the likes of Denise who bore me to tears.

Lisa to win!!!

Then you should also believe that people are entitled to dislike who they dislike, but you don't.

You are fully entitled to love them all for all I care or indeed hate them all . Feel free to defend who you wish . What is your problem .?

Lisa looks absolutely ridiculous when she dances....she reminds me of the little one in the Roly poly's group.

I know it is bad form to quote you own points but just now Craig said the same and then he STILL gave her a fecking 8

It was energetic daaahling

I could not agree more, I LOVE Lisa, and I don't care whether she gets all the steps right. She always gives 100%, and never fails to put a big smile on my face every week!