V/M were put in a position to take over as the top Canadian team, but they rose to the challenge and skated extremely well after D/L retired. Well, Umbrellas anyway; Dark Eyes was really not right for them. D/W may not have been the top American team, but wouldn't you say they have led something of a charmed life in the past season and a half? In just about every event they entered except 2009 Worlds, the top ranked team either withdrew or was competing with injury issues (2008-9 GPF being the exception, but two teams WD there). While I won't deny that they, too rose to the challenge for the most part, this has given D/W a different sort of shortcut to being perceived as an elite team.
I will not repeat my comments from the previous post because it's no secret I'm not a huge fan of D/W's skating. Here's a question, though: at 2008 Worlds, D/W finished less than a point ahead of P/B, and only beat them in the FD. Now they are 9 points ahead of them after the OD. I don't think this OD is Nathalie and Fabian's greatest program, but have D/W really made such a spectacular leap forward compared to just about every team they skated against? Several other teams that actually were ahead of D/W in the past, sometimes by large margins, no longer are (if not in direct competition than in scores). I'm just curious as to how that somewhat suddenly came about. Maybe USFS decided, at some point, that they were backing the wrong team?
I believe I made many of the points in less detail that you just laid out either in my original post or subsequent ones in this thread
V/M did indeed rise to the challenge laid out for them.
Regarding injuries and withdrawals of other competitors, I would say yes an no. Did those events open doors for D/W?... yes. But they also had to take up the challenge as well. They frequently did that last season, particularly with their free dance.
However, that has often been the nature of ice dance in particular and skating in general. Usually a team needed to make itself noticed first either with a splash or by working its way up the ladder. Then there is the wait for the right window of opportunity to move up dramatically. Sometimes this happens in the wake of retirements, sometimes with withdrawals. Would Krylova and Ovsianikov have won 2000 worlds if her back had been healthy even going up against A/P's Carmina Burana? Who knows? Certainly A/P benefited from K/O's retirement. But they might still have made strides if the retirement had not happened. A similar case can be made in the 2006 Olympic pairs event. Most would like to assume that S/Z would have won if Hongbo had never been injured. But that would be ignoring the fact that T/M had significantly closed the gap with them prior to the injury and were real rivals at that point.
As far as rapid improvement, I'll make two points. First, if you go back to 2007 Worlds, D/W were ahead of two teams who beat them in 2008 (K/N and F/S). In the wake of two retirements and their previous placement, a top five finish in 2008 was conceivable on paper. Yet they failed to make a good early impression on the fall grand prix in 2007 and by Worlds in 2008 were playing catch-up. (That probably proved to be a very valuable lesson for them at the time. They have made a concerted effort since then to start their seasons strong and establish a solid foundation for themselves and with the judges as they build to the big events.) While all this was going on, they were still the #3 team in their camp behind two national champs. One could argue that they were not getting as much attention to their skating as the two other teams. (Pure speculation).
However, after B/A left, the quality of their programs improved noticeably as did their skating skills and performance. There was definitely a concerted effort last season to insert as much difficulty into their programs as possible to live up to their talent, likely in response to some of the criticisms from the previous season. Combined with an improved sense of choreography and a little luck, the right balance began to be struck and the judges noticed. On the other hand, P/B had a very slow start last season, like D/W did the season before. The gains they had made dissolved in the wake of wide-spread improvement throughout the second tier of the top 10. The Kerrs improved, F/S did as well until Worlds.
Second, if there's one difference between D/W and teams they've passed it's that the right balance has now been struck between difficulty (with clarity) and concept to make the whole package very judge-able. It started in the FD last season and now extends to their OD this year. (I know that many don't love their FD this year, but it
is very judge-able technically and conceptually. You could argue that the Kerrs' issue is that they are not always the cleanest team regardless of entertainment value and that their difficulty can waver. P/B can be somewhat inaccessible to the audience and judges. That can hurt them. I think they also sacrifice difficulty at times in favor of clarity. If they punched it up a bit, and made the choreography more "gettable" they would definitely be in the mix. (DelShoes had similar issues in the past btw).
So it may not be that D/W's scores are inflated, but that they are now living up to the talent the judges see in them for a long time. They certainly can handle more difficulty than either Italian team and the Kerrs and at the moment, P/B as well. And as has been pointed out before, the rulebook's definition of what constitutes PCS does not always match our own layman's expectations. BTW, this is not a finite assessment. Any of these teams can improve or regress.
And given Ice Dance's reputation for making youngsters wait their turn under the 6.0, that could have been one hell of a long time. I think at that time no one knew for sure whether D/L (IIRC they said if they could, they wanted to skate in Vancouver) and/or DenStav would retire so both V/M and D/W were waiting in the wings. V/M were clearly the successors in Canada but D/L was still better back then. 
Scott is a "guy's guy" though. Very casual, plays hockey, and I think he wants to be a cop when he is finished skating. He likes simple outfits...I just don't see what's wrong with that as the op originally said? Isn't it the same as people praising Joubert for using music that he likes and for saying that he isn't trying to be something he's not? It's the same thing with Scott, IMO 
