The problem with dance in general is it's a lot harder to understand technically than the other disciplines, and even the most devoted and educated fan isn't always going to be able to make sense of what happened without extreme slow motion replays- and even with the extreme slow motion replays you really need to know a lot about the specific rules, about key points, about edges, and be able to see these clearly which also isn't always the easiest with the angles available to us.
People saying P/C didn't make mistakes are very wrong- they did, and a few of them, they just weren't visible to the naked eye in real time. To the naked eye only the twizzle error was visible. They also made errors on the Partial Steps and the No Touch steps, and that's why they got level 3 on those. To even their coaches, in real time, those errors probably weren't obvious because it really is quite simply just one of the two of them not having the correct edge at the correct second or even milisecond when they are supposed to be holding that edge. That's it, level down. Quite obviously this doesn't make sense to the casual viewer, and like I said it's usually not even going to be obvious to the very experienced viewer who's gone to great lengths to educate themselves in real time.
Plain and simple, most of the difference in scores among the top teams today is plainly accounted for by looking at who actually hit their levels and therefore made the fewest mistakes. One can squabble over the PCS if one is inclined to do so, but many of the people who seem to be complaining seem to be complaining just generally or even about the TES because of what they saw in real time. What you see in real time is a much smaller part of the picture in ice dance than in the other disciplines.
I fully agree with the above with the exception of the fact that V/M also had a small mistake on the twizzle that was not reflected in GOE/level. They even got the same GOE to the Shibs' twizzles. The lack of consistency is what is bothersome, especially since in this case V/M would have broken the WR even with less general GOE on this element.
And I don't play favoritism - Savchenko/Massot (who are one of my favorite pairs) received positive GOE's for clearly two footed landing in the SP. I can imagine that as a skater, this must be very frustrating.


So I can't justify their PCS being as high as it was. 