Thursday, July 24, 2008

Almost a Winning Disaster

We all know what happened last year-- they decided to show the voting graph with the faces during the Finale show, it crashed their servers, and the show turned into a huge mess while they tried to figure out who was supposed to win the damn thing, running an hour overtime in the process.

This year they tried again, at the start of the Finale showing Rory was the slim favourite to win over Terri. This time it led viewers to cast the "wrong votes". Voters just started voting out Terri and Rory, ignoring Ben, and Ben slipped into the winner's position (just as Mike Goldman predicted-- spooky!).

Realising what they had done, Jackie O urged viewers to not forget about the one who didn't look like they would win, clearly pointing out that the original favourite evictee had now become favourite to win because of their blunder. Obviously this did not sink in, because despite promising they would not show the voting tally again, they did-- and showed the nation what their votes had done. Terri was now favourite to be evicted, and Ben was favourite to win. Nothing like what the blind votes had reflected, and certaily not what the producers wanted!

But, as expected, like sheep the viewers just reversed their voting pattern yet again and tipped the see-saw back the other way, leaving Ben to be evicted, and Rory and Terri to fight it out, averting a crisis the producers had stupidly not forseen. (Did they think the voting public all had maths degrees or something?)

With Ben gone, it made for a much more gripping winner announcement. Had the public done enough to bring Terri back? Or did the Rory fans get in enough votes to see the Nanna kicked to the curb?

We all know Kyle's favorite was Terri from Day 1, and Jackie O also said she wanted Terri to win out of the three finalists. It was obviously in the producers' interests to have their oldest ever HM, also be their last ever winner. So I'm sure there was many a wiped brow in the control room when it was announced that Terri had actually made it back into the winning position.

It could have been another monumental cock-up in the axed show's history if Ben had wrongly won just because they wanted to get those last few voting dollars. (Make that thousands of dollars!) Thankfully they managed to turn their mistake back around before it was too late....

But we never did see that final voting tally, did we?!

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