Nicky is totally random, and gives ridiculous marks and there are two other people there who can say what he says and mark logically . He can go.

Ruthie and Jason may pan various people's favourites and make themselves unpopular but at least they have defensible orders behind their marks which do relate to what they are meant to be marking for and they do use the whole mark range rather than give poor performances 3s or 3.5s for turning up or putting the skates on the right way around. Thats guaranteed to make them unpopular though too.

I didn't mind Jason in the past, but he's been gratuitously nasty this year, and both he and Ruthie seem to be giving low marks and making nasty comments in a bid for screen time.

I don't think either of them are qualified to comment on ice dancing, and I suspect that they focus on relatively trivial details because they do not have anything intelligent to say about anything more important.

Very true.

Pointless Ruthie

That they work harder does not mean his comments were constructive. "You were rubbish" (which is all some of his comments amount to) might cause someone to work hard to void getting the same thing again, but there's nothing constructive about saying "you're rubbish".

Even his more constructive comments ... Here we have a show in which some contestants can barely move on the ice without being in contact with their partner, what is the point of making someone who can skate feel small because they could use some work on their "core" or on details of how they're moving their hands?

If Jason treated these things as ways to improve something that was already pretty good by DOI standards, his comments would make a lot more sense.

Instead, as I said above, he seems to be making a big deal out of relatively unimportant matters because he's not competent to comment on anything else.

Why does there have to be a ""judge who is mainly looking for pure performance"?

ruthie and jason.
ruthie because she only comments on performance and NOTHING ELSE, also i find her very annoying and she seems quite bitchy.
and jason because he plays the bad guy to big up his ego and can be plain rude.

i like the other 3, they can actually judge.

Ruthie needs to go

Totally agree- she hasn't a clue about performing on ice skates- bring back Kres

I think there needs to be a judge who's job it is mainly to judge perfromance
a) because it is such a big part of a good skating programme and
b) because of the sort of skating the couples on DOI are doing.

Nicky, Robin and Karen all know what looks good on the ice from a competitive point of view but are less qualified on what looks good from a show-stopping entertainment (okay maybe that's a bit optimistic but still) point of view. Jason comes from the world of stage entertainment. He's looking for "performance" in a different way from the ex-skaters. I think that adds to the judging panel but I don't think that there is any need for more than one of this type of judge, nor do I think that the "performance" judge should overlook skating ability - which is why I favour Jason over Ruthie.

Ruthie or just less of Jason, he gets to comment far too much.

Ruthie or Karen.

Ruthie.