11/9 Results Show Discussion **Spoilers**

[anders332]

BTW, have we ever seen the couple who does the repeat dance on results night get voted off?
I figured as soon as Kyle and Lacey started dancing, they were safe since I can't remember any couple getting bounced on the night they are selected to showcase their dance.

yes, Jake was eliminated the night he got the encore for his Riskey Business performance.

As for last night's show, I turned it off as soon as Kyle was called safe - it was a no brainer Kurt was leaving.

And if Bristol makes it to the finals, so be it. We all know that in the end the producers/judges will manipulate the result they want. If they want Bristol it will be Bristol, if they want Jennifer it will be Jennifer, if they want Brandy, it will be Brandy.

[ironcat]

Bristol herself is NOT eliminating people, but her presence on the show is causing the elimination of more deserving dancers. If I'm understanding other posters', including my own, frustration, it's directed more at the cause for the "unfair" eliminations of more talented dancers. Each week, Bristol comes out and performs below her fellow competitors' standards; early on, it was tolerable, but at this point in the competition, she's still dancing around a 5-6, maybe an occasional 7, but the judges continue to inflate her scores.

No, the voting bloc behind her can no longer be negated (umm, why did I not get the direct mailings from Sarah? I feel left out), but that alone does not determine her standing on the show. If the show wanted Bristol gone, they could give her 3s, like they did Master P, inflate the other dancers' scores so that there was a massive margin between them, and call it an elimination. ABC will not do that for whatever reason, and that reason is money. Bristol will make the final, and that is unfair. The frustration is not about Bristol but that the show allows her to oust better dancers, dancers with legitimate fan bases that are the result of their own efforts not their mother's politics.

For the record, I do agree with IrishGal that this show is 90% scripted, 10% reality with the proof in the unsubstantiated votes.



kara, I have a brain cramp after tonight's show. If things go the way they've been going, Bristol's going to be in the final. So it'll be Bristol and Jen, for sure. Depending on the show's whims, we'll either have the token male and sneak-attack favorite, Kyle, who will pull it out in the end, or they'll go for the all-female final, and Brandy will duke it out with Jen. After last night and tonight, I fear that the show will now switch gears and help Kyle win it all. I wouldn't be surprised if Brandy knows that she's going home next week.

Word to the bolded. Blaming someone else's poor fanbase for not keeping them in only goes so far. If Bristol ends up beating Jennifer in the end, should we blame Jennifer's "poor" fanbase for it?

The bottom line is that Bristol, pretty much solely because of who her mother is, and the iconic status she, not Bristol, seems to have achieved with a certain, perhaps small but incredibly zealous and devoted portion of the population, started this competition with a cushion of who knows how many votes, that none of the other competitors had. She has most probably not added that many fans and votes over the weeks based on her performances or her personality, like Kyle undoubtedly has, she hasn't needed to. She came in with this advantage, which so far has been insurmountable to all but the best dancers. And in another week or two, it may also turn out that it is insurmountable to them as well. That, IMO, is the travesty of this type of stunt casting.

[Bearcata]

The entire basis of this show is performance and a popularity vote. While I do think Bristol Palin is not the best dancer. The judges do see a weekly improvement from where she initially started. That being said the best dancer does not necessarily win this show. If so Mario Lopez would have won his season. Considering there are only 4 dance couples left I would not be surprised if Bristol Palin has a very good chance to be in the top 2 based on her fan base. Since Bristol's mother, Sarah Palin, did not win her presidential election I would not be surprised that she is hoping/trying to get her daughter that ugly mirror trophy. In fact I mght start tuning in again to see if that happens. If it does the posters on this site and others will be furious.

mmmmmm...........the more I think about it the more fun it would be if Bristol does win.

[Bloomers]

The entire basis of this show is performance and a popularity vote. While I do think Bristol Palin is not the best dancer. The judges do see a weekly improvement from where she initially started. That being said the best dancer does not necessarily win this show. If so Mario Lopez would have won his season. Considering there are only 4 dance couples left I would not be surprised if Bristol Palin has a very good chance to be in the top 2 based on her fan base. Since Bristol's mother, Sarah Palin, did not win her presidential election I would not be surprised that she is hoping/trying to get her daughter that ugly mirror trophy. In fact I mght start tuning in again to see if that happens. If it does the posters on this site and others will be furious.

mmmmmm...........the more I think about it the more fun it would be if Bristol does win.:lol

Uh-oh.....time for me to run and hide

[Longhornfan]

First I want to say that I hate that Kurt and Anna were eliminated last night, but I was not at all surprised once I heard that Bristol was saved. Someone here on the board said that Maks and Brandy would end up in the bottom two in order to "put Maks in his place" - and indeed that is what happened.

A lot of people are putting all the blame on Maks for his smackdown with CA, but I agree with those of you who say that there is more going on behind the scenes than we don't know about. I believe that the voting is manipulated, that the judges do influence the voting with their comments, and the pros are completely aware of all of this. I also think that some of the pros are favored above the rest by the judges - like CA - and it shows.

The whole Maks and CA controversy needed to be handled off the air, but instead they had Brooke ask Maks about it and even say that it would be shown again later in the show. (Did anyone see Maks' reaction to that?) Brooke just kept prodding Maks, and he finally gave them another sound bite which they jumped on - thus setting up CA's speech during the Bottom Two elimination. In my opinion that whole blowup could have and should have been dealt with off camera, but it seemed like they were just wanting to embarrass Maks on national television.

I am sick of CA and her nitpicking. Her obsession with "lifts" is ridiculous. I have come to really dislike her and wish she would just dial it back a bit. If the voters turn on Brandy because of how the producers chose to handle that whole Maks-CA incident, then CA can take a lot of credit for it. I don't want to hear her whine about it when they end up with Bristol and Jennifer as the last two standing either. But maybe that is what she wants - her two favorite pros battling it out at the end.

[bibbitybobbityb]

If the voters turn on Brandy because of how the producers chose to handle that whole Maks-CA incident, then CA can take a lot of credit for it.

I think that Maks can take most of the credit, actually. He needs to get a better grip on his temper. The incident never would have flared up if he hadn't had his little tantrum on Monday. Brandy looked mortified at the end of the show. I bet she was thinking, Shutupmaksshutupmaksshutupmaks ...

[veg_out]

Word to the bolded. Blaming someone else's poor fanbase for not keeping them in only goes so far. If Bristol ends up beating Jennifer in the end, should we blame Jennifer's "poor" fanbase for it?

I've been trying to figure out the reason behind the differing opinions about Bristol. People's perception of Bristol's continuation on the show is probably affected by their thoughts on the show's process. If we accept the show at face value, believing that no manipulations occur behind the scenes or with the voting process, then Bristol stays weekly due to this extraordinarily large and fervent fanbase that will ultimately eclipse the remaining stars' fanbases. But, if we acknowledge that the show is currently positioning Bristol to be F3 or F2, then we are also acknowledging that the show does manipulate the final outcome to be what they desire. If that is the case, then aren't they also capable of manipulating things throughout the season, and thus, they could create whatever method necessary to insure that Bristol, who at the moment is the worst dancer remaining on the show, is cut?

From a mathematical perspective, the show could do whatever it needed to do to compensate for the fan votes. At this point in the season, they know the average votes that each couple pulls in, give or take some change. I've not watched the show since day 1 so I can't pull multiple examples from multiple seasons, but last season, finale night was entirely pre-ordained. Erin was tied with Nicole? Evan was 2-3 points behind them? The 2nd night, the judges scored the F3 in a way that countered the popular vote to position them into their pre-determined spots. They knew the numbers, and they worked them and the scores to their desired outcome

As much as I'd love to believe that this show gives "power to the people," I think that it's substantially less than the illusion created. As VAgirl wrote, Bristol is there on ABC's terms. They'll take her to the finals, use her to rake in the money from the online voting, texting, and phone-calls of her rabid fans, and then, probably, dump her at F3. But, like Gilles, the show might go crazy this season again, and let her win when Jen, Brandy, or Kyle should rightfully raise the MBT overhead.

[anders332]

The entire basis of this show is performance and a popularity vote. While I do think Bristol Palin is not the best dancer. The judges do see a weekly improvement from where she initially started. That being said the best dancer does not necessarily win this show. If so Mario Lopez would have won his season. Considering there are only 4 dance couples left I would not be surprised if Bristol Palin has a very good chance to be in the top 2 based on her fan base. Since Bristol's mother, Sarah Palin, did not win her presidential election I would not be surprised that she is hoping/trying to get her daughter that ugly mirror trophy. In fact I mght start tuning in again to see if that happens. If it does the posters on this site and others will be furious.

mmmmmm...........the more I think about it the more fun it would be if Bristol does win.

Of the two seasons I have wathced the F3 have always been the best 3 couples of their respective seasons - Melissa, Gilles and Shawn (although L'il Kim definitely could've replaced any of them) and Nicole, Erin and Evan - I always expect the F3 to be the best 3 couples, but this season is definitely going to have Bristol in the F3 at the expense of either Kyle or Brandy - frankly I don't hink Jennifer is going anywhere.

[ironcat]

I've been trying to figure out the reason behind the differing opinions about Bristol. People's perception of Bristol's continuation on the show is probably affected by their thoughts on the show's process. If we accept the show at face value, believing that no manipulations occur behind the scenes or with the voting process, then Bristol stays weekly due to this extraordinarily large and fervent fanbase that will ultimately eclipse the remaining stars' fanbases. But, if we acknowledge that the show is currently positioning Bristol to be F3 or F2, then we are also acknowledging that the show does manipulate the final outcome to be what they desire. If that is the case, then aren't they also capable of manipulating things throughout the season, and thus, they could create whatever method necessary to insure that Bristol, who at the moment is the worst dancer remaining on the show, is cut?

From a mathematical perspective, the show could do whatever it needed to do to compensate for the fan votes. At this point in the season, they know the average votes that each couple pulls in, give or take some change. I've not watched the show since day 1 so I can't pull multiple examples from multiple seasons, but last season, finale night was entirely pre-ordained. Erin was tied with Nicole? Evan was 2-3 points behind them? The 2nd night, the judges scored the F3 in a way that countered the popular vote to position them into their pre-determined spots. They knew the numbers, and they worked them and the scores to their desired outcome

As much as I'd love to believe that this show gives "power to the people," I think that it's substantially less than the illusion created. As VAgirl wrote, Bristol is there on ABC's terms. They'll take her to the finals, use her to rake in the money from the online voting, texting, and phone-calls of her rabid fans, and then, probably, dump her at F3. But, like Gilles, the show might go crazy this season again, and let her win when Jen, Brandy, or Kyle should rightfully raise the MBT overhead.

Since the show has never, to my knowledge, divulged any figures regarding how many votes are received each episode and who is getting what, it's impossible to know how easy/hard it would be to manipulate this season. If Bristol has been getting millions (or even tens of millions) of extra votes from her mother's fervent supporters since the beginning (people who have never voted or even watched DWTS before), and the show generally was getting 30million votes total (I think I heard that guesstimate thrown out here before, but I truly have no idea how accurate it is) pre-Bristol, that are split with relative equality among all the competitors, then Bristol could conceivably have twice the votes of anyone else, which could mean that even a 20 or 30 point difference in the finale scores wouldn't be enough to beat her. If this is the case, and the producers realize that she is going to win based on votes alone unless she receives 5's to everyone else's 10's (which I don't believe they will ever do), they may have resigned themselves to her winning, plan to try to justify it somewhat by having the judges continue to praise her, and hope that the controversy produced by the highly watched finale will die down by next season.

That is, unless you believe that the whole vote counting is a sham, and then all bets are off and they announce whichever winner they want.

[Bloomers]

I've been trying to figure out the reason behind the differing opinions about Bristol. People's perception of Bristol's continuation on the show is probably affected by their thoughts on the show's process. If we accept the show at face value, believing that no manipulations occur behind the scenes or with the voting process, then Bristol stays weekly due to this extraordinarily large and fervent fanbase that will ultimately eclipse the remaining stars' fanbases. But, if we acknowledge that the show is currently positioning Bristol to be F3 or F2, then we are also acknowledging that the show does manipulate the final outcome to be what they desire. If that is the case, then aren't they also capable of manipulating things throughout the season, and thus, they could create whatever method necessary to insure that Bristol, who at the moment is the worst dancer remaining on the show, is cut?

From a mathematical perspective, the show could do whatever it needed to do to compensate for the fan votes. At this point in the season, they know the average votes that each couple pulls in, give or take some change. I've not watched the show since day 1 so I can't pull multiple examples from multiple seasons, but last season, finale night was entirely pre-ordained. Erin was tied with Nicole? Evan was 2-3 points behind them? The 2nd night, the judges scored the F3 in a way that countered the popular vote to position them into their pre-determined spots. They knew the numbers, and they worked them and the scores to their desired outcome

As much as I'd love to believe that this show gives "power to the people," I think that it's substantially less than the illusion created. As VAgirl wrote, Bristol is there on ABC's terms. They'll take her to the finals, use her to rake in the money from the online voting, texting, and phone-calls of her rabid fans, and then, probably, dump her at F3. But, like Gilles, the show might go crazy this season again, and let her win when Jen, Brandy, or Kyle should rightfully raise the MBT overhead.

Up to this point, ABC (or whoever is ultimately in control of this show) has been in control of this show. I want to point out something that I think is highly significant, though, and that is that we have never - and I mean never been given the numbers on the votes. They are not accountable to anybody let alone us the viewers for those votes that supposedly determine who comes, goes, and ultimately wins this thing. Therefore, I have to question how much weight there really is to the "power to the people."

However, the rumbling about the numbers keeps getting louder, and I believe that it is getting harder and harder for the producers to ignore all of the rumbling. Therefore, I think they may be playing it closer to the actual count and "fudging" (for entertainment purposes) less.

However, I agree that they are using Bristol for their best interests, but I don't believe that it will be to their best interests to let her win.
She might could win - maybe if she got to F2 - if the fan base is as big as we think it might be, and I personally think that the producers don't dare fudge on this one. How do you "fudge" on the Tea Party"

What will happen is that the judges at that point will manipulate her into F3 like they did Kelly, Melissa, and Erin, and the problem will be taken care of and over.