More or less completely agree. I'm not usually fussed about under/overmarking and 10's, if the leader board looks "right", which by and large it does. Last night it wasn't for me, Helen and Katie got get out of jail free passes on their errors and Anita's "performance" was about par for the risible Paso stomp. Puzzle is, I can only think they want more than one male celeb to get to the SF if not all the way - so why (correctly) shove Peter to the bottom?

I hear they make him eat dog food out of the tin on the canteen steps in the rain.

I nearly did a Bruno now and fell of the chair with laughter

He should have been joint top with Anita, Georgia was overmarked again.

Nah. He's a veggie.

If anything surely that makes it worse?

Touché.

I so love your posts - so clearly explained and obviously very knowledgable! It does help, of course, that so often I feel vindicated (my thoughts on subtlety, movement and general energy). Thank you

oh, but there is vegetarian dog food...

Um...I think that it was me who used the 'wow' word in this thread first in that I (rather foolishly some might think) said that I'd enjoyed Jays dance but that it didn't have it for me compared to Anitas.

Thing is, whilst I take everything on board you say about dance techniques. aside from a few lessons a few years ago, watching Strictly and an ill advised (but wonderful) fling with a Cuba dancer. I know little about what steps should be there. I don't know if that's the same for most viewers but I imagine it is TBH.. and I liked Anita's dance better and found it more entertaining. Sorry...

and I'd like to add that I think that Jay is a great dancer and if he's danced Anitas routine I'd probably gone for his dance as best.

Maybe it was not technically good and 'utterly dire' as you say, although I'd hate to think that I'm that bad at judging, but still I genuinely liked it better than Jay's and Georgia's dances, both of whom I like and rate as contestants.

Totally agree with you here. I was VERY surprised Darcy didn't give him a 10, especially after the glowing comments from all the Judges. At the time I thought four 9's were about right, although I did feel at least one 10 should have been scored. But as you say it was the rest of the evening and seeing other scores that really annoyed me.

Luckily Helen came below Jay as that has to be, IMO, one of, if not THE worst dance she has ever done on the show. She was out of time, stumbling and looking confused in at least a couple of places. Of course everyone saw her fall up the stairs, but even with all that she still gets 34 which is an incredible score considering Jay made one mistake last week and got hammered for it.

Kellie and Kevin's dance was ok, I liked it enough that their scores were fine and I was VERY pleased to see Anita finally get scores that merit her dancing, but Georgia's dance I felt did not deserve such high praise and scores. This will be two weeks in a row now she has made mistakes in a dance, this week more so than last, and yet got 10's from the Judges. When Craig and Darcy gave 9's I figured it would be 9's all the way and that would annoy me as Jay didn't put a foot wrong, but I could of lived with it, but 10's from Len and Bruno p*ssed me off royally. She was out of time with the backing dancers in her solo dancing and near the start of the dance she comes out of a spin with Giovanni and for a second looks lost as to where she should be going then spots the three guys waiting for her and heads off to them.

Jay is following the usual scripted curve of the winner:

Someone come along and is stunningly above everyone else in the early stages and so they can't have him being top every week as that doesn't make a show. So after praising him, they start slagging him off and marking him down. they know the public voting figures so there is no chance of losing him and so they are safe to play their 'how to make a show' script and manipulate things for drama.

Then closer to the end, Jay will storm back from the pretend jaws of defeat, win the show and have the judges all saying "Oh we knew that he was the winner all along".

The exact same script was used with Lewis Smith: Find out he is excellent. Knock him down and then build up to the finish. And all totally independent of what he actually danced like. If he danced well of a week where the script needed to put him down, they would find fault somewhere. Yet on a week where they needed to build him up, they would ignore any faults and scream undying love.

I hear what you say, but...Jay danced first and had a 9 from all 4 judges so the only question for them from that point is did Kellie/Anita/Georgia dance better than Jay or not. I would say that in all three cases they did, whether there were minor technical deficiencies or not. If as a judge I have given a score of 9 to someone and somebody else comes along who I think is better, what score should I give to that somebody else? The only score I have to go to in order to signify that I thought they were better is 10 and so that is what I should score them. Now, perhaps if I had started out by giving Jay a 7 or an 8, I could do the necessary without awarding a score of 10

Spot on.

Will it make him do big poos though? Just asking for a friend(/Jamelia)

There have been plenty of posters on here that have talked a load of crap, but this is the first time it has happened literally!

Had to log back in to say..

Technically Jay was superior to Kellie, Anita and Georgia for the reasons I said. People on here who have technical expertise (well, okay, person) says as much too. All four judges stated he nailed the character of the dance.

The public have different views on what is better, hence the public vote. But the judges should be far more locked in on technique than they were last night. This is not the first series and won't be the last when some couples are let off for deficiencies and others are criticised, marked down accordingly.

Well, we will have to agree to disagree on whether Jay was technically superior to the others because I don't think he was and clearly the judges didn't think he was either because he was below them on their leaderboard. There is more to it than just technical excellence anyway. Jay has been good technically for quite a while but he lacks performance qualities, even though he is starting to improve. Just because there were minor technical imperfections in the other performances does not mean that Jay was better than them overall.

Its great hearing another dancers comments on the leaders dances last night. Not sure which style you dance but my own take on it was that only Kellie's dancing technique and performance warranted equal marks to Jay.
If I was scripting that show, I would have wanted Len to give a 10 and then one of the other judges could have given a 10 to Kellie for her quickstep).

No way was Anita's dance skills close to either Kellie or Jay - but that was to be expected. However, the dance content and technique FOR ANITA, the non-dancer, wasn't 10 worthy. I do get frustrated when I feel people say Anita's dancing was brilliant (her performance was good, dancing not so much) rather than Gleb's choreography was dramatic and worthy of a 10.

Georgia, as already mentioned, faltered more than once on her spins, which surely in a VW-inspired routine is a serious mistake rather than one to be overlooked.

All of this strikes a chord with me, a non-dancer, and makes sense.

A score ranging from 1 to 10 (although only Craig uses the full range ) is quite a coarse tool to reflect differences in technique and performance. Would it improve the show if the judges gave two scores, one for technical merit and one for performance?

I certainly agree with that. There seemed to be quite a lot of showboating from Gleb reducing the content for Anita. Whether that is because Gleb wanted to show off or because Anita was finding it challenging and there needed to be a distraction I can't say, but in these circumstances I will always assume the latter.

I don't think it is a question of overlooking things in the dances. In truth, if these celebs were being judged against experienced couples all of them would struggle to score anything above a 1. They aren't, they are being judged comparatively between themselves taking into account both technique and performance and so long as the marks produce a fair ranking it doesn't matter what scores are dished out to achieve that. Different viewers, and different judges, will have differing preferences on the weightings they give to those two elements but that doesn't make either wrong.

Overall I think that last night's leaderboard was a fair result. It wouldn't have been in the order I would have had them but I can't say that there isn't any justification for it and certainly 1st and last were pretty clear cut to me.

Her performance was outstanding, it's not just about the dancing but the performance and execution, week upon week Anita has shone and this week she really blossomed into the character.

I believe Jay was undermarked, but I think he was on par with Anita. (Who has no training, unlike Jay and Kellie.)

Oh Christ no, DOUBLE the whining, imagine it...