It's just some food for thought, but with the judges having the ultimate decision power, do you think they will push for a woman to win? Based on my impressions tonight, even with the very entertaining male group dance, they still seem to go on about the female perfomances. Don't get me wrong if a woman is the best, she should win, but I don't want a man to go out each time the judges have to choose between a male and a female contestant.

I'm sure other people have said it, but the power has been taken away from the voters. It's only marginally about dancing and more about personality and how much the respective celebrity and their dance professional entertain us. This year I fear it will be more about these "technical girls" (and I'm a girl myself).

The judges will just want the best Dancer to win. At the moment the girls are premier league while the guys are performing like a pub team. The guys are going to have to embark on a very long "journey"
before they reach the standard that the top 4 girls have set.

See above,

Three (possibly four) of the women are lightyears ahead of everyone else at the moment; if the rest of them don't improve, then a woman will win.

(at least there are lots of contenders this year, unlike last year when it became obvious early on that Mark & Karen were going to win [not that they didn't deserve to win])

I am hoping some of the male contestants have upped their game since week 1. It would be a shame if the girls just left the boys behind.

Len?

Is that you?

There is no chance a woman will win when they get slated for being competitive (Gabby) or confident (Kelly)...I'm surprised Penny hasn't copped for it yet...let's hope she doesn't start to believe her own hype...for her sake.

OP, you noticed then ?
Arlene was asking for eye candy for the ladies this year , way back in the year .
I believe that the BBC have gone out to get ladies they think will do well and a group of men , some of whom they think would go early .
Certainly some of the ladies look to have had dance training and Gabby apparently has been taking lessons for many weeks .

My money is on Alesha and Matt . Lovely couple .

Given the standard of women versus men in this series, who can blame them?


The men were rubbish. Absolutely useless. Their group routine looked like a pub dance. Compare it with the women's group dance, and who wouldn't want a woman to win?

In series 2-4 we got in the last 3 a woman who was good from the beginning (Jill, Zoe, Emma), a sportsperson who was good from the beginning (Denise, Colin, Mark) and a wild card who wasn't good at the beginning (Julian, Darren, Matt - not that I think about this too much or anything) and the winner varies between them. In a sense, the people who can dance are in competiton with each other, fighting for one group of voters, and the unlikely dancers are competing for another group of voters. Usually the best dancer wins (if they don't scupper themselves by dancing with dolls, sob).

I have no problem with one of the women winning, if they are the best - great. But I do worry about a last five or six that are just the women who could already dance when they arrived, I think that could get boring. I really want to see some journeys (yeah, shoot me) emerging from the next few weeks, because that's what I enjoy. And I worry that the judges will vote off everyone except their chosen women the moment they get the chance, making it all very bland. Mind, when we get two of those women in the last two, things will get interesting.

I think people are already saying she's too nice, and boring!

Very soon people are going to be put off by Alesha's fun and loud dispositions as distracting.

Well, catty, catty...

Yes, I am glad (not in a bad way - cue in Claudia) that I wasn't the only one who find the group dance of the boys last Sat vomit-inducing. It wasn't even 'its-so-bad-its-good' like the Girls Aloud routine last year. It was just plain AWFUL.

Someone MUST shoot the Chris guy who is supposed to be World Champion...

I think you're right on the mark there

( I happen to like both Kelly & Alesha btw)

It doesn't relect very well on little shouty guy does it?

I will cut him a bit of slack though as he didn't have much to work with and it is the beginning of the series. Hopefully some of the guys will improve as the series goes on.

I think that Matt, Gething and John seem like they have the capability to improve, they do seem to have some natural rhythm, I'm not sure about the others though.

I enjoyed your whole post but particularly agreed with this section .


I think the men were not really giving it their full attention in rehearsals . I am sure Chris the choreographer was mortified to see the mess they made of it .

We have seen his routines before and they have been excellent and it was he and his partner who helped with teh salsa dances last year

I think 3 or 4 men have potential if it hasn't been criticised out of them and they haven't given up in the face of the judge's comments .

Although I do think the men are weaker at this stage than the women, I don't think the group dance was particularly reflective. For whatever reason it was badly choreographed IMO.
Also I wouldn't be surprised if the female pros decided the group dance wasn't really their priority, and decided instead to concentrate on the week three dances instead. After all they had no risk of being eliminated this week, and I think the judges were always going to pick holes in it and say the male celebs weren't as good as the women.

The one thing that makes me think that a woman won't win this year, is that the judges seem so determined that a woman should win! They don't normally get their way in these things

But it could be diferent as the judges now have the final say.

It could, but I think eventually it will actually make the problem of "favouritism" worse. If anyone is saved week after week by the judges when the public don't want them there, that is hardly going to make them popular!

If the judges had had this power last year, the final would have been between Mark and Emma- but I can't believe Emma would have had even a chance of winning.

Yes, little shouty guy is the "Official World Salsa Champion" - apparently.

Of course, there are about 274 salsa world championships, so that title's about as meaningful as a not-very-meaningful thing.

Plus, he's an idiot.

Plus, salsa is not merengue.

Plus, that wasn't a merengue show dance.

But he's good telly, so they keep him on.

Apparently he or his partner helped Darren and Emma choreograph the Salsa and the choreography was panned by the judges (too much out of hold, the music too slow and heavy for salsa)... Emma and Darren put up when I think was their best effort, but it was what caused them to loose precious marks from Arlene and co. (except Bruno, who was on ecstasy)...

Chris the shouty guy, well. I really don't want to see him choreograph ANYTHING, ever.

EVER...

I liked the group Salsa they choreographed in series three though. And actually didn't they choreograph all the Salsas last year, including Mark's?
Maybe they're just inconsistent!

He and Jackie (I know the spelling of her name is a little funky) were 'teachers' to them, but I don't think they choreograph the salsas. I remembered them saying Vincent's salsa was clever but music was too slow or something, and Vincent didn't deny it. So if he didn't choreograph the salsa for Louisa, he would say so...

And I know for Karen's salsa, she made that body thrusts in the beginning, which is her favourite move, as I saw it in her cha-cha routine with Bill. So I think Karen also choreographed her salsa with Mark...

So they did, I'd forgotten that. I wonder why they choreographed Emma's then?

Anyway, I did still like the Salsa from SCD3, although that was later in the series so they'd all had a bit of training and the weaker dancers had already left. I don't think it would have been so great if Fiona, Gloria and Siobhan had been in it for example!

The males are poor to a man. Their group dance looked like a poor wedding group dancing after multiple bottles of champagne.

The girls are top loaded with talent. Alesha, Kelly and Penny all look better than some recent winners already and Gaby isn't far behind.

There may already be signs though that the votes don't reflect that. We already have one limping performer in and one better perfromer out and I wouldn't be surprised from the order they announced the names (which was decidedly unrandom ) if either Penny or Kelly is getting fewer votes than their dancing ability might suggest.

Given they have mucked up the casting by putting too many talented girls in the same year (and every girl is better than most of the males) it would be a travesty if a girl didn't win. I suspect we will still see some of the males there near the end though - because they are on a journey from not dancing to being relatively poor at dancing , or because they look good topless or because they are funny.

Darren said he never done salsa properly before. When I saw their initial training of what Darren thought was salsa, it had a lot of Samba moves and I thought Oh dear, Darren is making a mistake here.

Then on Thursday or Friday when they showed their training footage again, Arlene said it was a little heavy-footed...

Alesha isn't shown as much as Gabby, Kelly or Penny; so i don't think there is any worry of too much overexposure of Alesha. I think Alesha's fun side is what people like about her and her chemsitry with Matt.

I think the girls mentioned above and Gethin and Dominc have a chance of winning; the rest no chance IMO.