What always bothers me about the criticism of Evan in this competition is that it tends to fault him personally, as if he did something bad by winning; as if he handed in something substandard. He did his best and pushed himself to the limit.
Except not. Pushing himself to the limit would have meant going for the Quad and trying to replicate something on the level of his 2007 Nationals performance. Evan did not do his best at all. He skated a safe and robotic program and hoped for Plushenko to make enough mistakes in order to win. It actually doesn't bother me that Evan didn't do the Quad; what's bothersome is his total lack of respect for the artistic side of the sport. He didn't even attempt to put anything personal into the program or to have any kind of viewpoint or creativity or give an actual PERFORMANCE.
The judges should be blamed for part of that, though. He never should have been receiving those kind of PCS marks. Because of poor judging, a circumstance arose where he WAS able to focus on just skating a clean, safe by-the-numbers program and receive big marks for it. His ridiculous "World Champion" bonus pulled extra +GOE and PCS that were not deserved.
Like Buttle/Joubert, Plushenko/Lysacek was a close call.
A close call for who should have won the Bronze medal, I suppose.