I has a Strictly prediction

[ionlylurkhere]

I don't think I've posted about this series yet; frankly, it hasn't been quite up to the standard of previous (in terms of who the slebs are or their dancing, tbh) and my Brucie-embarrassment-squick grows weekly (the "Bette Midler, I am your strippergram" bit was moderately lulsy, but then he took it way too seriously at the end to satisfy his ego and ugh), but I have been watching and enjoying it (though I missed a few of the middle weeks where they got rid of some of the not obviously awful but not going to make it all the way types). Also, no Camilla is a Bad Thing. I was prepared to hate Ricky (Whittle, the Ricky who's still in it) for the appalling crime of being on Hollyoaks but then he was both good at the dancing and funny in the behind the scenes bits, and he won me over to the point that he is now my favourite. But it's not a strong sort of favouriteness like I've had in some series in the past.

Anyway the reason I'm posting now is that I love all the daft intricacies of the horrendously broken voting mechanisms and tonight's Ricky-v-Laila dance-off can only have come about as a result of a very limited range of scenarios for what the public vote was, given that he came top with the judges. Assuming that the public breaks ties for who gets saved (which I seem to remember is the rule) then there are only four out of twenty-four possible arrangements of the order of the public vote that give us that:

• Two scenarios in which Chris comes top and Ricky comes bottom (with Ali and Laila in either order in the middle)
  
• A scenario in which Ali wins the public vote, followed by Chris, followed by Laila, with Ricky again dead on the bottom
  
• A weird scenario where the public vote goes Chris-Ali-Ricky-Laila, so that Laila has a total of 2 and the others are all equal on 6, but the public-has-the-casting-vote thing saves Chris and Ali, putting Ricky in the dance off.
  

It all hinges on next week. If Chris gets in the dance off, he probably goes, but the thing is that I don't think he will be in the dance-off. (They made a big deal during the show of the fact that he hasn't been there yet all series, which is very good going for him.) Assuming that the general pattern of the judges' vote going Ricky-Ali-Chris (I think this is a fairly justifiable assumption: Ali has beaten Ricky a few times, but not nearly as often as he's beaten her; the balance of their current form is very much in Ricky's direction; and in the event of a tie I think Len'll give it to Ricky -- tbh, he seems to like him better) continues, then that's the exact inverse of the most likely public vote (only one of the four scenarios that can explain tonight has the public vote-Laila going in an order other than Chris-Ali-Ricky) and we get everyone on a total of 4, with Chris safe because of the "public trumps judges" rule. And a Chris-Ricky final almost certainly goes to Chris, as in all of those scenarios he's beating Ricky hands down in the public vote, which is the only thing that matters there.

This all assumes that nothing changes in the public voting pattern, of course, or that Ali or even Chris don't pull out a fantastic dance that completely wows the judges and beats Ricky there too. It may be that the public votes are really really close -- all we can guess about is the order, not the size of them -- and so Laila's vote is big enough that any redistribution of it drowns out the patterns we can figure out from this week, or alternatively that someone's disliked enough to get an Anyone But X effect giving support to their opponent if they get into the final, or any number of other things. But if I was the gambling sort, I would put money on Chris to win.

I am sort of surprised that Ricky's doing so badly with the public; I was sort of assuming that everyone else liked him the same as I did. It may be that he's liked but people think he's safe and don't vote, I suppose. (Seems unlikely after him being in the dance off last week.) Or it could be that the recent press coverage has turned people off. I dunno really.