This? Is a BRILLIANT idea. He'd be wonderful. And get rid of that Canning woman. Is she high?

If she were she might actually be funny, so I'd say "no" to that question :)

fairy76:


Enigmatics:


Wow! He might not have been joking!

I hadn't realized the "pull Arabics" were so dangerous. They just looked totally out of place.

ETA to add emphasis...

Oh please NO!!! Not self righteous "I'm a dance queen" Debbie Allen. She'd end up making the show all about herself.

I agree John O'Hurley would be fabulous as the host.

I read something the other day that Evander was a little ticked off because he didn't think the judges were actually going to judge them like professionals and it was all going to be on popularity.

For anyone who missed this week's show, they are going to be doing an encore presentation Wednesday right before the new episode.

I don't think the judges are judging them like they would professionals. If they were they'd be a lot harder on everyone. I've heard the judges say absolutely nothing that a teacher or coach wouldn't say to a Pro/Am student or to an amateur couple. Or that a judge would say if you went up and asked them after the competition. Yes, even to a newcomer-to-advanced-beginning couple. The only difference is that they are saying it live on national TV rather than in person in a lesson or coaching session. Competitive ballroom dancing is difficult on many levels. One of those levels involves being open to all kinds of criticism and being willing to be wrong so that you can learn new ideas and how to make changes. I do feel a bit badly for Evander because he seemed to be more sensitive than the rest, but on the other hand the DwtS judges haven't done anything out of line.

Edited addition: One thing you can say for Kelly: she's taken the criticisms and kept working and going, which is exactly what a real amateur competitor would do. (I still don't like watching her dance, though, at this point it's kind of an irrational hatred so don't ask me to explain it :) :) )

I actually agree with Evander, and not only that, people seem to be voting for their favorites which is turning this into a popularity contest instead of a real dance contest. Kelly has her GH fans who will vote for her no matter what and Joey has his fans from NKOTB who will also vote for him. This leaves John in a vulnerable spot because he does not have the fan base that Kelly or Joey has. Plus on the main ABC board people seem to be getting the most votes their are Kelly and Joey. Poor John, I think if this was a real dance contest instead of a popularity contest John would have a chance. Looks like John is going to get the boot next week which will be painful to watch, and he will be featured on the entertainment shows as a shocking elimination. At least this has helped his career. Kelly and Joey in finals and Kelly wins.

EDIT: Ooops, somehow this ended up posted twice. My browser hung and I re-submitted. Sorry about that.

I don't think they are judging them like professionals, that's just what Evander said.

I don't mind when the judges give constructive criticism, but some of the comments have been a little harsh for a show such as this. I don't think you can compare this too much to even a pro-am competition because I doubt that most pro-ams only get 1 week to learn a dance and have an overall lack of dance experience like these celebrities have.

I think Evander was stung by some of the comments in week 3, especially when Len said it was time for him to go. My goodness, that was way too harsh and I felt so bad for Evander.

I'm guessing here, but perhaps what Evander felt was that "heart" and "enthusiasm" and "attitude " would count for more than skill and ability, if he said that he expected it to be more of a popularity contest.

The audience votes are largely that way, but even if the judges aren't judging quite the same way that they would an actual dance event, they do seem to be marking more on the dancing, than on who's really trying or who looks smokin' or who has the nicest body. They're certainly taking personal likes and dislike into account, but I haven't seen any real evidence of the kind of "You don't belong here, but you're cute/friendly/whatever and I like you, so you deserve to stay," bias that can so easily come up in contests where the judging is not being measured against some sort of standard (AI, Star Search, I'm looking at you...)

Yes, they seemed rough on Kelly at the beginning, with 5's and 6's , but from what the dancers here have said, it seems to me that that's about what she deserved-she was dancing at right about the average skill level for the amount of coaching she'd had, and on a scale of 1-10, 5 is, well, average. Same thing for Evander. He was --average--, and that's the numbers he got. They didn't bump his scores because they liked him.

I would have bet heavily on this starting in week 2. I even looked online to see if I could find a site willing to take bets on DWTS.

The judging is inefficient and I don't think people realize how powerful it is to have the 'tiebreak' decision (i.e the home audience vote) in such a small field of competitors. Once it was easy to determine that Kelly was the #1 fan vote getter in the early weeks (she came in last with judges, but breezed on through), and that it probably was true over at least the first 3 weeks, it's a pretty easy call to see that she is going to take the whole thing. Realize that whoever gets audience #1 next week cannot be eliminated no matter what, and it just about had that effect this week as well (4 competitors left). The power of the tiebreak increases exponentially with each passing week, until it becomes the only thing that matters.

And since the judges gave Kelly very low marks the first few weeks yet the audience vote was steadfastly for her regardless, we can safely assume that these votes are not 'merit' based, but loyalty based, meaning they won't change no matter what happens on the floor. Only a real statistical abberation, like 90% of Rachel's old votes going to a single personl left other than Kelly (and not even split between John and Joey, that would not be good enough) might change this.

This effect also means that John is a extereme longshot to make the finals if Joey is the #2 audience vote getter as he seems to be. John would need to place first with the judges and Joey would have to place last with them (Kelly MUST come in 2nd precisely). No other combination gets John through, assuming the audience vote stays the same. It could happen though because Joey has been last a lot, so John must beat Kelly. Even then, he will lose to her in the finals based on audience vote alone.

If I was a bookmaker, my odds would be:

Kelly -750
Joey +200
John +550

to *win it all*.

FOLLOW UP:

We can pretty much tell that this whole event was going to be based on audience appeal. We can also say that most likely the order of elimination follows the order of audience vote-getting, with a possible exception being that Evander was more popular than Rachel.

This also means that DWTS2 needs to either change the voting weight of the audience or greatly expand the field of participants so that 'super-popular' contestants have at least a chance of elimination in the early rounds, if they come in at the bottom of the judges votes and somehow only place #2 or #3 in audience votes for a short time. Even with a very expanded field, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the #1 audience vote getter to be eliminated - someone will always be worse off or tie, and the #1 audience vote getter gets the tiebreak. So as it stands, they could get Mother Teresa (yes, even her dead corpse) or some other hugely popular public figure (maybe Rudolph Giuliani or Danica Patrick, just someone who consistantly gets the #1 public vote) to just stand there on the dance floor and they would win it all. This needs to change or else public disgust towards the futility of other contestants will torpedo this show.

YAY! Because that wildly distracting girl in the background on the left was the spitting image of my cousin who also watches the show - but didn't even notice her. Now she can watch again and see for herself. I really wish they wouldn't put people behind Tom!

I agree. First the guy reading the teleprompter along with Tom and now that girl. They need to tell the people sitting in those chairs that they are NOT allowed to look at the camera.

Thank you, sgtbecktar for the thorough analysis and excellent explanations. See, I was really not happy when Rachel got voted off because I got this feeling it would mean the end of things for John too, but I didn't really think through exactly how the whole voting system worked. You have really explained my sinking feeling. When Rachel got voted off the real power of the audience vote sunk in for me, and I realized I didn't care any more what the outcome of the show would be because there would be virtually no way for anyone but Kelly to win.

The audience voting works on "American Idol" because they are looking for the person who the audience wants so that the audience will then go out and buy tickets and record albums. All "American Idol" is is a brilliant marketing ploy. So I don't care that the best singers don't win, because it's clear that in the end AI is a viewer's choice contest. But DwtS was about combining the audience vote with the judges, so I have subconsciously been hanging on to the idea that the best dancer will win. But you've pretty much proven that they won't, so now I'm a little sad, even though I kind of knew it anyway before you drove the point home. Oy vey. Maybe next time the judges' votes could have twice the weight of the audience's, or something like that.

OH yeah, Danica Patrick: I've love to see her on DwtS but she's got too many other big fish to fry, like getting out there and winning the Indy 500 next year!!

ziglettospal

I had to go and change my post even MORE. As it stands, it is IMPOSSIBLE to eliminate anyone who gets the audience #1 vote, no matter how big the field or how they do with the judges.

I suggest that they do expand the field, and then every 3 rounds or so make it so ONLY the judges scores matter for that week. Either that, or give tiebreaks TO THE JUDGES since their scores change more from week to week than the audience's vote seems to.

Bruno's Blog is updated for week 4. To be expected, he is beside himself with grief over Rachel's departure.

Easy enough fix. Weight the scores so that the differential between first through last is more than a single point. Instead it can go:

1st = 10
2nd = 7
3rd = 5
4th = 3
5th = 2
6th = 1

Drop the lowest number each time a team gets eliminated.

Or, the audience vote can be used to "save" someone by using the weighted system but the judges scores stand as is, so that if, say, in a group of four, if the judges loser only gets 21 points but wins the audience vote, that couple would have 31 points total. Meanwhile if the judges winner gets 26 but comes in third, they'd also have 31 points.

I agree with Bruno... I also would like to see, "the best dancer win."

I think the popularity thing is a fundamental flaw with this show and it will be extremely silly if Kelly were to win...

I agree with Bruno (not Evander) that the best dancer should win.

That said, does anyone agree with him that Rachel was the best technical dancer week after week? Because, I thought she had her strengths (and a lot of weaknesses), but in no way eclipsed everyone else.

I definately want to see the best dancer win, but I sometimes feel that the judges aren't rating the performances accurately. For example, I generally liked Rachel and Jonathan's dancing, but they didn't deserve 8's - and certainly not 9's - for their samba.

You just know that Trista's agent is pimping her for this. So she can be known as Trista the Reality Show Host instead of Trista the Reality Star (or Trista the Failed Dancer).

Seeing Rachel go and Kelly stay reminds me of American Idol's first season when Tamyra was voted off. She had been giving great, consistent performances up until one particular night where she chose some very weak songs . On the flip side, Nikki M. had been mediocre up to then, but was really able to shine in that episode. Tamyra got the boot, even though she was a far superior singer. Of course the comparison isn't perfect since the DwTS voting isn't as cut and dry as AI but I still see a similarity between the two instances.

Now that Rachel and Jonathan are gone, I'd be happy with John and Charlotte or Joey and Ashly winning. I really wanted to root for Kelly on this show as I was a fan of hers when she was on Port Charles but I can't find much to enjoy about her performances. John looks like a natural. Joey looks like he's having a great time. Rachel moved beautifully. Kelly's just...there.

djork, thank you for hooking me up with a link to those dance clips. I actually had seen the Kelly/Alec rumba before and had just blanked (how I could forget Alec's arms is beyond me.) What I hadn't seen was the K/A waltz. I didn't think that it was nearly as horrible as the judges did and I can see now why people felt like they were picking on Kelly the first few weeks. Kudos to her for working with the criticism rather than letting it totally undermine her self-confidence.

I was reading all of the dancers' bios over at the ABC site and woah! Alec has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. Hot and smart. Who would have thunk it? Those comments about him knowing how good-looking he is and using that to his advantage on the dance floor were a big turn-off though. Self-confidence . . . good. Arrogance . . . bad.

Found this on Yahoo.....

Yahoo News: Some Dancing Voters Call Wrong Number

Crap I can't get the link to work properly but it's up at Yahoo Entertainment.

Rewatching this week's Tivo'd episode; 2 things:

Did anyone catch Rachel's comment backstage after receiving the samba scores? Something about screwing up - "if they screw up at home" or "if they screw up out there" or "mumble mumble screw up mumble mumble..." Lisa the unCanny host said SHE got it -- but the close captioner sure didn't. After 5-6 replays trying to decipher it, it's driving me crazy.

If John had a little Botox work before next week's show, we wouldn't have to watch the facial choreography anymore. Not that he needs the Botox; I'm just sayin'...

I just re-watched it too and I finally remembered the comment I wanted to make.

Charlotte scared the crap out of me when she did her "wake up" move. The combination of feathers, WAY too much eye makeup, and the epression on her face reminded me of an evil jack-in-the-box clown.

Yes, but would she be able to stand next to or touch the male dancers on the arm? She is married, you know.

So perhaps Ryan should be her co-host...

I think DWtS is doing so well because the audience does vote and have an active interest in the results, and unfortunately, like AI that never means the best one wins. NBC's "celebrity" competition Hit Me Baby One More Time, keeps going lower every week in the ratings due to the fact in part (IMO) the audience has no say in the result, and only the "studio" audience votes. I would love to see more serious dance programs on the major networks but the truth is that without the celebrity or voting aspects tossed in, these programs won't do as well.

Word, barkley! I just about bust my gut laughing, and asked mr. zigs if we could pull a still out of the dvd. Blackmail material for sure!

I read that it was John and Charlotte's number that got screwed up, which adds to my existing fear that they're going to go home next.

I went back and checked the TiVo for any sign of John's number being screwed up by ABC. It wasn't. Lisa even said it correctly at the end of the show and it was correctly shown on screen.

I'm sure they aren't the only ones who have fans dialing the wrong number. I can see how people could mistake 1-866 for 1-888.

Or 886. Or 800. I remember Seacrest urging people to use the correct area code because a bunch of people ended up calling some company during the first season. At least it wasn't a poor lady in Canada like the misdialed DWTS calls.

Were J/C the only ones with an 866 number? Maybe J/A's and K/A's were non-working 888 numbers. Because otherwise, I would imagine that all three would have been equally screwed.

I knew from the moment that the announced audience voting that this wasn't going to be a "Best Dancer" contest. I know enough about ballroom to know I am completely unqualified to attempt to judge it. At least the judges' scores balance it out a bit.

I rewatched last week, and Kelly was totally smoking. As distracted as she must have been with both straps coming off, she kept her steps and looked HOTTTT doing them.

Ok, I went and dug around a bit, and the only story I can find about wrong numbers is that some callers apparently used the wrong toll-free prefix (800 or 888 instead of 866), and got connected to an answering service company in Michigan. Nothing about a woman in Canada.

Me too, TudorQueen. The only thing that may save them is that I think maybe the judges and producers would rather see a John/Charlotte and Kelly/What'shisname final for the ratings sake.

For those who are interested in a more inside look at the world of competitive ballroom dance, the NY Times has an article today following a serious competitor in his quest for the right partner. It's Here

(Free registration may be required, photos included online....)

But that is very subjective. Who is the best? The person that is technically the best? Most improved? Most entertaining? Most popular? And even if everyone agreed on what the criterion for best is, there would still be disagreement on exactly who is the best. Personally, I don't find John to be the best and would disagree if he won because to me they're all mediocre, although entertaining.

Personally, I find all "judged" sports to be popularity contests. Even with professionals, judging is often biased. Most times when I'm watching an athletic event that is won through judging, the winner is often a big name that doesn't necessarily do the best routine. Why? Because it doesn't pay to have Joe Nobody to win the world championship. The most egregious example is Ice Dancing in the Olympics. It's been fixed for years and was accepted as fixed until the debacle at Salt Lake. So the Olympics are just AI with 8 people voting.

Personally, I don't think the judges did Rachel a favor by elevating her scores to try to protect her against the audience vote. If anything, it probably hurt her since people wanting to vote for either Rachel or someone else voted for the other person as they would "need the votes more" since Rachel won the judges' vote. I would guess the majority of watchers probably don't realize how much more weight the audience vote carries.

In my way of looking at dance competitions, yes, to a point. With beginners like on this show, there are people who are clearly more technically accomplished than the others. As you start looking at more advanced dancers, then other things come into play, but on this level it's about technqiue. However, since DwtS isn't run like the dance competitions I'm used to organizing or dancing in, my expectations are unrealistic in the context of this show. That's why I said I've been subsconsciously hanging on to that idea.

sgtbektar jolted me out of that idea, though, so now I see that the next two weeks are going to be all about Kelly. I hardly care who the other couple is going to be at this point since it seems there is no way anyone but Kelly will win anyway. Joey's nice and I'm proud of his new-found posture, so watching him and that cutie Ashly for another week will be fun. John is a very good dancer, so watching him and Charlotte for another week would be great too. I was kind of hoping one of the male stars would win, though.

Things aren't totally set in stone. A case can be made that Joey is the #1 audience vote getter and Kelly is #2. Even with the #2 vote, Kelly could have survived the early rounds.

In the first elimination, assuming the judges totals are added from week 1 and 2, Kelly was last, giving her 1 point from the judges but 5 points if she came in 2nd from the audience. Trista got 3 from the Judges, only 1 point from the audience. Bye Trista, and I hope the fact that the world hates you being spelled out clearly stings you badly.

In the second elimination, Kelly was acutally second to last for 2 points, but got at least 4 from the audience if she placed #2 with them (maybe higher if #1). Evander was dead last with 1 point from the judges, so if he was #3 or below with the audience, he's gone - which is what happened.

In the third elimination, Kelly placed #1 with the judges, meaning 4 points, and at least 3 points if she was #2 with the audience. Joey was last (1pt) and survived meaning he had to place either #1 or #2 with the audience since he was not bottom two, so Joey had either 5 or 4 points total, PLUS THE BEST TIEBREAK. John was #3 with the judges for 2 points, and #3 with the audience for 2 points for a total of 4 points, while Rachel was #2 (3pts) and #4 (1 point), meaning she lost to John on the tie break.

My point is this: It has not been conclusively proven that Kelly is indeed the #1 audience vote getter but is at least #2, and that Joey could have been the #1 audience vote getter all along. Kelly could have survived her dismal start with the #2 AVG - that is how powerful the tiebreak is in this tiny field.

I think it's a strong possibility that she indeed is the #1 AVG since she is the only one of them currently on TV (i.e. not a hasbeen), which helps tremendously in popularity. Also there was a show that Joey did indeed get placed in the bottom two, so it's hard to imagine that he skyrocketed to the top of the audience poll afterwards. That is why I put her as the heavy favorite in my odds. But its definitiely within mathematically possibility that Joey is the #1 and we'd get the results we've seen. Maybe NKOTB was more popular than we thought. And thus why I only have Joey as an 2-1 underdog instead of a bigger long shot.

What we do know is that John, Trista, Evander, and Rachel had no chance of winning if the audience order is pretty static, no matter what they did on the dance floor.

Plus there is always a chance that people who have never voted start to get motivated to do so now that we are towards the end, and this has a larger than normal possibility of creating a "Kelly-backlash" since she has never been in danger of elimination (i.e. publicly declared a bottom two candidate), while the other two couples have been. A sense of justice might kick in to the normally dormant home viewer to 'save' these two guys vs the Kelly onslaught. This scenario would explain it if Joey went from bottom 2 in one show to the #1 AVG after. If so, being in the bottom two BUT SURVIVING is a very fortunate event, since it boosts the 'lazy viewer' into action for you.

I still stand by my odds and make Kelly the heavy favorite, but its NOT guarenteed.

We have seen that Kelly has a large (and voting) fan base, that kept her in the competition in the early weeks when she was struggling with her dance...

I cannot imagine how she will not advance to the final two, because those "Kelly good or bad" fans will be augmented by several other categories who will vote for Kelly this week:

a. Voting for Kelly as the "most improved" dancer.

b. Voting for Kelly as a competitive person who listens to criticism and learns from her mistakes.

c. Voting for Kelly because she is funny ("Oompah-loompah")

d. Voting for Kelly because she did such a professional job of dancing with her wardrobe malfunction.

e. Voting for Kelly to keep her in the competition hoping that she has another wardrobe malfunction.

f. Voting for Kelly because she really did have a smoking hot Samba. And remember, next week's audience votes will have been largely cast within one hour of last week's show, when Kelly's Samba is fresh in their minds.

d. Voting for Kelly because she is hot, and easily the sexiest woman left in the competition. (YMMV)

Of course, there are many who do not like Kelly and/or Kelly's dancing and/or Kelly's wardrobe, but all of those would have voted for John or Joey anyway. Kelly will keep most of her original fans, but I really feel that she will get a lot of extra votes for the reasons above.

Next week Kelly could fall down, forget all the steps of both dances, and start singing the Oompah Loompah song in the middle of the Paso Doble, but since her audience votes will already be counted, there is probably no chance on earth that she will not be in the finals.

Interesting analysis, sgtbecktar.

I'd add one other factor in, as well--voter migration. As each couple is eliminated in turn, the viewers who voted for them will migrate in one of two ways. They'll either remove themselves from the voting pool, OR they'll give their votes to another celebrity.

Which celebrity they migrate to will depend on what they were basing their votes on in the first place. This could be what helped Joey bounce from the bottom to the top of the stack: if the majority of Evander voters were voting more for enthusiasm than style or skill or grace, Joey would be the one I think that they'd be most likely to migrate to; he shows much of the same quality, certainly more than Rachel or Kelly and somewhat more than John.

I agree about voter migration. Shallow people like me who voted for Rachel because of her hotness will likely be migrating all their votes to Kelly. Because who wants to watch if there's no hot? ;)

I posted about voter migration in a previous post. Just realize that it would take a real statistical anomaly for just one of the other non-Kelly contestants to get a dominating majority of the, say, Rachel vote in order to pull ahead if Kelly holds say a 300,000 vote lead. If we look at the Rachel votes, a 40-40-20 split amoung the remaining three is not that damaging to Kelly. It would have to be something like 85-10-5 for real damage to her standing. Statistically this is very unlikely, but you never know when something involves humans.

It also has some logic that the Rachel vote might flow more naturally to Kelly due to gender.

This is assuming that out of 13 million viewers, about 20% (purposefully high) actually vote and a simplistic model that all 5 phone votes that each household gets go to one candidate (so it can be seen as one vote). A voter who actually splits his vote up decreases the weight of each of his vote by doing so - the dumbest being voting for each contestant when there are 5 left. This person might as well not have voted at all. So I'm assuming a pool of about 2.6 million votes which sounds large, but my theory is that they are mostly loyalty based instead of merit based, with perhaps less than 30% in total being switchable merit based. This means that about 800,000 votes might change, and again, its unlikely that a vast majority go to one candidate. Also realize that migration voters are usually just a few, since the contestant they represented previously was the one booted off (showing that that contestant didn't have many votes that can now migrate).

BTW, merit based means even better for Kelly as she won the last week.

Note that ALL my analysis assumes that the audience vote does not swing much week to week (i.e a large loyalty voter based). No one knows for sure if this is the case, but for Kelly at least its easy to see that she's claimed at least 2/3 of the #1 or #2 votes running even though she was murdered by the judges, which, though admittedly a small sample size, does indicate a strong trend.

I just finished reading all the posts on this thread, so now I have no energy to say anything very interesting. Thanks to all the dancers on here providing comments, it's very enlightening! Also, I didn't know until I read this thread that the woman doing the women's costumes on DWTS is the same one who does Navka and Kostomarov's costumes. Well, that explains the garishness and, um, brevity of the Latin dresses. Navka is constantly in danger of falling out of hers. Be they Latin or be they not.

I've never been a Kelly fan (well, the whole three weeks I've been watching her on DWTS, I had no idea who she was before then), but she's really been working and improving, and she handled the wardrobe malfunction quite well. I have a Latin dress (ice dance, not ballroom) that I actually have to glue and tape myself into, so I feel her pain. I'm sure she'll make the final. I hope J. Peterman is the other one because (a) he's awesome and (b) Joey's posture bugs.

sgtbecktar's analysis is very enlightening, though I agree with ziglettospal that it makes the show less fun for me. I am not a Kelly fan though not acrimoniously opposed to her either. It doesn't help that I don't think she's the best dancer, but my now-mathematically-decreased enthusiasm has less to do with her winning than with the idea that it's an essentially inevitable outcome. If first place is sewed up, then the excitement for me will be in seeing who gets second place, where there seems still to be some uncertainty.

Can anyone offer an explanation on how the final weeks' scoring will be done? Or have I missed this posting? It doesn't seem possible that they will continue with the format they've been using because once you get down to just a few couples, ties get more common. How will they combine judges and audience score with just 3 and then 2 couples' left?

So glad for this thread - it's really helped me watch the show in a more informed manner. Thanks to all the dancers for the insight.

I think a lot of people are assuming that the home audience is, for the most part, voting cumulatively. As in who's been the "best" all along, over the course of the 4 weeks. But I know *I've* been voting based on who's performance I liked "best" that week. And that's how the judges have presumably been scoring. And I honestly wouldn't be surprised if John gets sent home next week not because of rabid Joey/Kelly fans but because his and Rachel's sambas were the weakest of the night. I really think this show is functioning more on a "Any Given Wednesday" mechanism (which is what a poster further back suggested with the AI/Tamyra example). That is, you're only as safe as your last dance. Give a weak dance and, even if last week rocked, you're in jeopardy for next week.

I also think there may be too much credit given to soap fans saving Kelly/Alec. I think they are benefiting from what the ABC folks planned when they put them together (which we have to believe was no accident). Sure, Joey/Ashly are fiesty and John/Charlotte are classy/funny. But I think Kelly/Alec are smokin' together - they're sexy and they give great chemisty. There may be people that don't see it that way but I'm betting that a lot of the audience does as evidenced by the fact that, before this week's dance (arguably their best technical performance although I loved their jive), most of their buzz was about their hotness factor. To the average home viewer, this show is about who you want to see dancing next week. Who you want to see more of. Kelly/Alec haven't made it this far based solely on a bunch of Kelly-ites with robo-dialers and twenty phones and a million email addresses each. The ratings, etc. are just too high to substantiate the fact that Kelly fans, or even GH fans, have been able to single-handedly save her from the brink, especially with the low scores they had to overcome at first. I think the amount of votes needed were just too high.

Here's what I think happened: they were the underdog at first when their waltz was (unfairly?) criticized...then they did an (arguably) hot Rumba....then they did a pretty fun jive...now they did a great samba. I think Alec and Co. have been smart with the choreography path they've chosen. I think they've lucked out by getting music that didn't suck as bad as a lot of the others (Austin Powers? REALLY?). And I think Kelly's attitude has only helped to a lot of people in that she didn't give up and dug in her heels. Evander and Trista were goners no matter what cause they were bad (I'd say worse than Kelly ever was). Rachel's dancing was loved by the judges but iffy as far as entertainment value. Seems to me she, Kelly and Joey were either love it/hate it and one of them had to go. Rachel went first because she's not as viewer-friendly.

And I'm going to go cry now about the fact that I have read this thread in its entirety - you folks can talk.

Alec had a Q&A on Kelly's site last night and a few tidbits came up.

He verified that Kelly's strap broke seconds before the dance started (as verified by TiVo) and there was nothing they could do but dance the best they could.

The foxtrot and Paso Doble are individual dances this week, no group dances.

From what he said, they are offered 3 or 4 songs for their dance and they have to choose 1 of them. (If Toxic was the best Jonathan got for the tango, I shudder to think of what else was offered).

Just chiming in to say that I find John much hotter than any of the other guys! It's a combination of looks, masculinity, confidence, accomplishment and pure sex appeal. He really does it for me!

I think he's fantastic on this show, and he's the reason I tuned in in the first place...along with Evander Holyfield (hubby and I are long-time boxing fans)!

I wouldn't hate it if Kelly wins, but in response to John's last place finish this week, I went online and voted for him; the first time I've voted throughout the show.


I wouldn't say weaker, just a different style that might not be as energetic as the other two couples. A lot of that has to do with the music you're given to choreograph around and what you do with it.

Watched Strictly Ballroom over the weekend and fell in love with it all over again. The whole thing is so marvelous. Of course, I was dancing around the room when it was over and humming "Love is in the Air" all day long.

All right so what dances are left?
Week 1-Waltz & Cha cha
Week 2- Rumba & Quick Step (Trista out)
Week 3-Jive & Tango (Evander out)
Week 4-Samba & Viennese Waltz (Rachel out)
Week 5-Paso Doble & Fox Trot
Week 6-?

Do we know who's doing the Paso Doble and who's doing the Fox Trot? Whoever's doing the PD must watch Strictly Ballroom. Required watching. And practice with sultry Spanish workers who always dress in toreador outfits and spunky grandmothers. Hoping for a lot of audience clapping!

Looking back over the posts, someone mentioned Barry Bostwick and Perry King as potential “older men” for the next season(s). I’ll add David Soul to that list, thank you very much!

Oh yeah, the women in back of TB were very distracting.

ETA: Kelly's still in the competition, Trista isn't.