Strictly cannot count

Last night’s results of Strictly Come Dancing gave me a mix of emotions that I needed to sleep on it before I could say anything. But before I went to sleep, I browsed through the message boards on the SCD official website. That gave me an idea of what to say now and as I opened my eyes this morning, that feeling did not go away. And it is NOT a feeling of excitement that all the semi-finalist couples are going through the final on 20 December. It is ANNOYANCE.

I’m annoyed that

1. the results show was last night. Good thing that the timings with the X Factor finals did not overlap with the SCD Results Show. But still annoyed nonetheless because I’ve nothing to watch whilst I’m ironing clothes tonight! ;-p
2. the judges had higher praises on Lisa and Brendan’s Argentine tango than Tom and Camilla’s. Why? Because Lisa and Brendan’s had more ganchos?
3. Flavia — a two-time Argentine tango champion, supposedly — referred to the voleo as gancho when she was showing it to Bruce Forsyth.
4. the BBC is piss poor in simple maths.

The reason why all three couples are going through to the finals was down to a failure in counting that the show’s producers failed to anticipate. The scoring of the show is 50% judges, 50% public votes. Last night, after the two dances, Lisa and Rachel tied at the top spot, earning them 3 points each. Tom was in the bottom with 1 point. Why only one point? I don’t know.

So, let’s say that Tom had the highest number of public votes, which was probably the case since the public had seen him on the bottom of the leaderboard. This would then give him 3 points, making a total of 4 points. Whatever score Lisa or Rachel gets on the phone votes in this scenario — either 5 or 4 — one of them would be in the dance-off with Tom. If he was not the public’s favourite, then he’s even worse off in the last position.

The actor would have been in dance-off either way, making the public votes useless and more annoyingly, to some people, decided only by the judges. This uselessness gave the BBC a panic. People’s money would have been spent on nothing because there was no way that they would be able to save Tom and Camilla — even if the public voted only for them.

I would have expected the show’s producers to make these calculations before the show. They had the entire week to make the numbers. Check for all possibilities and make a plan out of it. In fairness, they did realise it but it was all too late. The numbers were already flashed on the TV screens for the public to ’save their favourites.’ So they chose the lesser evil: put all couples through, no one gets eliminated. From their point of view, there would be controversy whichever way. There were people in the message boards who gave kudos to the BBC for reacting so quickly. I say it was really in bad taste. They should have done the ‘roll-over’ the weekend when John Sergeant quit.

There, I’ve ranted.