Cynicism is justified. But as Hayley and Bonnie are also female there would be three girls and one male - unless they deem Gareth to be worse than Bonnie.

How could they justify those pairings? It makes it inevitable that Suzanne loses her pair - unless they get a routine with a move she can do but Ray can't - which they wouldn't ask him to do if its a lift and would be dangerous. Thats after the judges put Hayley second last week, and Suzanne came fifth in the last two sets of marks. They are either saying their marks were wrong, or she just had dud routines, or she is better than Hayley and Beth, or they are going back to the first performance because it suits them, or they are going with the average score because that suits them. They previously went with the previous week's marks for duel pairings if I recall past series?

That leaves the judges with a simple choice - risk having Suzanne v Kyran as the skate off, and put Gareth into the vote and hope his vote fades. Or dump Bonnie into the skate off, so she can go out to whatever winner is there.

Its horribly open to being rigged. They decide the pairings, plus the content and who the routine favours, plus who did best in the pairing , and then who to save in the skate off. They can decide any one they fancy did better using meaningless or subjective criteria - like being more confident, or looking the part more. Robin's bias for male skaters may be in play as head judge. It just shows who the judges want as 3 of the last 4, and it may show which contender they don't want contending.

He's a bit better at basic skating,when he's not on the verge of falling over, but his acting is non existant, and he can't do really difficult lifts. Bonnie and Andrei can do lifts that only the Suzanne and Beth pairings could put up. She''s also the most successful actress and dancer there. That may be how the judging will come down. The performance judges may again point out Gareth's woodenness, and that he doesn't perform, and he will go through because the skating judges think he can move from A to B, doing nothing much, faster. Its also entirely possible to write a routine that favours one or the other of them , and actually very difficult to write one that allows each team to show off its strengths. Do Andrei and Bonnie not get anything spectacular - because Gareth can't do anything spectacular? And if he gets to skate, while she gets difficult lifts, won't Robin's comment be that Gareth skated more?

Not happy if those are the couples. They should be coupled with the person that they were next to on the leaderboard from last week, which is what happened in previous years.

I swear they just make up the rules half the time. IIRC Didn't they change things last year for the team challenge so that Matt could be one of the team captains?

Based on skates so far, they are coupled exactly like that.

Avg score from top to bottom is:

Ray
Suzanne
Beth
Hayley
Sam
Kyran
Bonnie
Gareth

I meant coupled on where they were on the leaderboard for the previous live show, not the average scores from the series.

But surely averages makes more sense then picking the one single week, which may see one couple arbitrary high or low on the leaderboard, say due to a fall or whatever.

Last year the format was completely different anyway so can't be compared: The duel was in Week 3 after half and half had skated in Week 1 and 2, so the pairings were straight forwardly the Top scorer of show 1 v top scorer of show 2, etc.

What would make a much more interesting twist would be a male celeb partnering a female celeb! They've all had previous experience so - in theory at least - they should all be able to do it!

Two of the four favourites automatically in the bottom four. It's too stupid even to be annoyed about.

Looks like its correct for Suzanne anyway...

Suzanne Shaw ‏@SuzanneShaw 4h
Yes it's true @TheMattEvers and i are duelling with @therealRayQuinn and @mariafilippov

I hope the public save her I have always liked her

Two favourites picked to be in the bottom 4 with another winner and only one of the weakest two.

Suzanne's only hope to evade the vote is that they decide that Ray is looking even more like an inevitable winner than she was in week 2, and decide to put her into contention, and make things not look like a foregone conclusion. Even if the routine really allows both to do what they do best, the skating judges will otherwise always support Ray, because he is a faster.

Where its close, its going to be entirely down to who gets what to do, or which the judges want to invent some reason for. Hayley V Beth is entirely dependant on whether acting , dance or big moves feature, and how you mark them against one another. Sam v Kyran also depends on the routine, and how you mark Sam's acting and Kyran's technique.

The problem isn't only who might go. Its who gets into the skate off, and has to use a top routine. That may be very important later. Suzanne's Music is a far more difficult routine than Hayley's Jai Ho, but if Music has gone, Hayley still has her best routine for a skate off, and Suzanne doesn't.

That's very true, actually. I didn't think of that.

They can alter their routines though as we've seen. Pretty much all skate offs have had something added so far. Jai Ho you probably wouldn't want to mess with as it may not be as technically difficult as some but it's more striking and there's no guarantee the other girls could pull it off as good.

If Hayley and Suzanne have to use their top routines early on they can always adjust others to make them better. Endless Love was an amazing one for Hayley.

I think it won't matter and we'll safely see a lesser person in the skate off as historically it has worked. Personally I imagine Suzanne is doing very well in the vote as her name is always called early. They say its in no order but they usually get the big ones out the way first apart from one or two and curiously Hayley has so far been called near the end. Of course it could mean nothing.

I'm going with my instincts and say Suzanne will survive the vote and have a great routine, that Beth probably will too if Hayley beats her and that we'll see a Gareth vs Sam skate off. Which is ideal. Worst case scenario is if Beth beats Hayley, it'll be Hayley vs Sam. I don't imagine any worse than that but generally I'm convinced Gareth will be in that skate off.

I think the order they're called out isn't random as such but designed to increase the tension. So if a weaker skater is safe they are usually called out early, like Gareth last week & Bonnie the week before. Equally when there are 2 good ones in the skate off they'll leave another one to be called out last - Sam was the obvious choice last week having already been in a skate off.

I agree though that this week is when Gareth's support will probably run out & he'll be bottom 2 with whoever loses the Sam/Kyran duel. I think all the girls have enough support to avoid the skate off tomorrow.

No particular order has often been "some" order on these shows. The problem though is that that you can mix the order in different ways and go with the combined placing or the vote order. One order is to have the next lowest at the beginning or end or the two lowest at the ends - as in 71234568. the problem is you can also perm the order inbetween - as in 73214568. It looks like there is some order as the same names have appeared close to each other, and, as you say, Hayley is detached - we just don't know what the order is, and if being detached means you are doing very well , or not.

They first have to put Gareth into a vote. Thats going to need a reversal by the skating judges who have the deciding vote. Bonnie wouldn't normally get credit from them for acting/dancing better or doing bigger tricks. They then have to think as you do that Gareth has less votes than three top females - they may know the votes though. If it looks at all at risk of putting people who should stay longer or make the final, their safer bet is to put Bonnie into the vote.

Yes, but the problem with routines is that T and D wrote so few really good complete ones. Music is one thats got difficulty, exciting moves, solo skating, acting and dance. Jai Ho has much less difficulty but even more dance If you go to Suzanne's next best number (as confirmed by being used used on the tour) from week 5, its got almost as much difficulty, even more excitement, but got much less from the judges You can add to the difficulty by adding to the big move, but its not going to score quite as highly for intricate steps , dance or acting.

Its just basically a silly way to decide anything - as the past routines are limiting, and we already have three people who have used up theuir best routines, and are left to do something thats less complete and less mark worthy.You can add to a routine on the margins, but you probably can't turn a 30 routine into something that will ever beat a 40 routine.

You do analyse things an awful lot! I agree with a lot of your posts but nothing is ever going to be perfect, you can find fault in everything if you look for it.

What I do think is ridiculous with the judges is what happened to the panel that used to judge a routine as a whole? Robin and Karen being so focused on the skating is completely absurd when it should be about everything. Likewise the non skaters can still tell if someone is basically good or not at skating! We all have eyes, we don't have to skate to know who is doing well even if we don't know what the moves are called. It makes their marking a bit off sometimes and Robin especially has gone downhill because of it.

Of course in the case of Bonnie vs Gareth, this is where it should be judged fairly. He can skate better but personally I think it's absurd he should be rated higher than her when her performance outstrips him and he's the next weakest skater anyway. As a whole she edges him although naturally it is affected by the routine they get.

If they put her beneath him in the duel then it's no question that she will be out on Sunday and then we have him for at least another week. If he's up for the vote yes there's a chance that he might still get through and we have to lose someone stronger than Bonnie, but I would be willing to bet that person will be Sam who I don't think would be a huge loss at this stage and his vote is clearly not as strong as certain others.

It is better that they put Gareth in the vote, though who knows what they'll do!

it depends how much they actually change. I doubt there's any rules here.

I also can't see it affecting much overall. Sam and Kyran have used their best but that's because for several reasons they've been in the skate off. So if they have to face Music or Jai Ho you could say it's rightly their time to go. Beth has nothing stellar (all her routines this year have far outstripped any in her series) but with a few tweaks she could put something strong together to challenge Sam or Kyran. Basically I don't think it will affect the finishing order much if at all.

Bonnie's marks the last 2 weeks have been affected by her rather hesitant skating 2 weeks ago & her wobbles last week. If she skates clean then she really should beat Gareth & I have no doubt Robin and Karen would vote accordingly.

I don't see any evidence that Robin & Karen ignore the performance aspect at all. Hayley did little that was difficult in the way of technical skating last week it was mostly rather static & on her toe picks but Robin & Karen were doling out the high marks to her. And we saw last year that they were joining in the Lapinskas love in even though Beth was the better skater.

A couple of years ago, Kyran wrote a DOI blog on another forum. Sorry I forget which, maybe some of you saw it. He had a theory - which I'm inclined to believe - that The Duel was created for purely practical TV scheduling reasons. With so many contestants, if they devoted enough time to everyone the show was going to seriously overrun. By doubling up, they could have longer routines whilst halving the amount of time needed for VTs and judging, which allowed them to fit better into their allotted timeslot. That sounds very feasible to me although the effect it's had on the quality of the contest is another matter, as you know!

The problem this year is they seem to have missed the boat. Surely, if they HAD to duel, the best time would have been with the top 10, winner Group 1 v winner Group 2, etc. By doing it now, having the losers skate again still results in 8 routines so they may as well have just had a regular week! The only new challenge is that everyone has to have 3 routines prepared, assuming the Save Me skate is going to be different to the losers' 2nd skate.

Kyran was on Daybreak the other day and confirmed he's against Sam and Ray's with Suzanne so it looks like that Daily Mail list is correct.

Is there going to be a theme tonight?

I thought the show worked so much better last week than the first three weeks.

Ray after the show:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ray-...b_4731328.html