Image by ~طفــس بس محتــرم~ 08.08.08 ~ via FlickrThe summer season ended last week where Jeanine edged out Brandon for the championship.
It was widely recognized the Jeanine had "peaked at the right time" and had made dramatic improvements in her dancing skills over the course of the season.
While we don't know for sure, I suspect that many people saw this transformation and loved her "4th quarter push," thus giving her the crown.
The thing is....it was also widely recognized from the VERY beginning of the season that Brandon was one of the top, if not THE top dancer, on the show.
His audition was memorable. He gave, what the lead judge called, "one of the greatest solo performances the show has ever seen" and he was consistently excellent in his execution.
So, what caused his defeat?
I think it was expectations.
From the very beginning, Brandon was a superstar. Expectations were ridiculously high. A small hiccup that was super minor for another dance became the one thing that the judges could find fault with in his otherwise phenomenal and consistent performances.
So, we expected excellence from him and if he delivered 99.9%, it didn't meet our expectations.
Jeanine, on the other hand, made improvement that relatively speaking seemed far more significant than Brandon's, so in our eyes, she appeared to be the better dancer.
It wasn't about consistency it was about the delta, the change.
We don't notice consistency. We notice change.
And we notice big change more than little change.
One less page of classified ads in our local paper, we don't notice.
The paper going out of business, we notice.
I wonder if there's a lesson here for a lot of things. It's good to start strong, but if you have to choose, it's probably better to finish strong.
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