All is Love That Ends Well - 2017 E!Online's TV's Top Couple Analysis & Recap

[fandomwarrior]

(Image: NRK & Freeform via E!Online)

Another year of E!Online's TV's Top Couple, another year of LGBT ship faceoff, this time featuring Shadowhunters' Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood, who marked their second appearance in the final, and the breakout dark horse coming from Norway: Skam's Isak and Even. Both have gone through the finals in their first ever year, both are gay couples, and both are those worth celebrating for. Once again, whoever won has colored that shiny championship trophy in style.

As usual, so many upsets and surprises abound during the competition's run for all ship fandoms competing. For me personally, I have learned my lesson from last year, which is to stand by minutes before every voting deadline to finalize the results for the sake of record keeping, and I did for almost every round sans Final 4 where I missed it (but thankfully the guys on Twitter saved my slump there). Even, I stored a little surprise after the recap!

STATISTICS, STATISTICS

But first, before we get on with the recap, there's some stats to chew on, comparing this year's numbers with last year's.

20162017
Fandoms4444
Characters122128

First up is the general tidbits. 44 TV titles were included in the roster of the 64 most-nominated couples, of which it comprises of 128 characters. Yup, it's no joke, no couples with duplicate characters exist. The fact that being a canonical couple in the series as an eligibility criteria can be one of the playing factors why.

Compare to last year, the competition's amount of characters went up by six, with none of the characters having secondary appearances in another pairing. New to the competition were those from Skam, The Magicians, Gilmore Girls, This is Us, Stranger Things, Good Behavior, Eyewitness, Person of Interest, black-ish, Lucifer, and The Real O'Neals, while last year's shows such as The Americans, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The People vs O.J. Simpson, Legends of Tomorrow, General Hospital, and UnREAL, among others, did not return (but did anyone see Rachel Goldberg and Quinn King playing in the neighboring competition yet?).

Having 64 couples and all 128 characters represented throughout, multiple representations for characters per last year are rendered obsolete. We've seen Caleb Rivers, Clarke Griffin, Jane Villanueva, Liv Moore, Spencer Hastings and Stiles Stilinski competing in two ships last year, but not anymore. Again, the fact that only couples who declared their love as the eligibility criteria played part. Out of the people listed, only Liv Moore who didn't return (but did compete in the Zimbio competition days later).

Fandoms with Multiple Representatives
4Pretty Little Liars
3How To Get Away With Murder, The Big Bang Theory, This Is Us
2The Walking Dead, Shadowhunters, The Vampire Diaries, The 100, Teen Wolf, Once Upon A Time, Gilmore Girls, Supergirl, Grey's Anatomy, Nashville

Pretty Little Liars took the cake again as the series with the most couples represented in the competition, with four couples with all the liars in it, followed by HTGAWM, This Is Us, and The Big Bang Theory with three. This is the second time they sent four couples to the competition, and so did HTGAWM. Unlike last year, where PLL sent Hanna/Caleb, Spencer/Caleb, Spencer/Toby, and Ezra/Aria, they featured Emily/Alison, replacing Spencer/Caleb, while HTGAWM put Wes/Laurel, Connor/Oliver, and Asher/Michaela in its lineup. The Big Bang Theory meanwhile upped its ante with one more couple compared to last year, adding Bernadette/Howard to the recurring pairs of Amy/Sheldon and Penny/Leonard. Stranger Things meanwhile began its Fandom Season campaign with two ships, being Steve/Nancy and Mike/Eleven, and another debutant This Is Us did it in a more spectacular fashion with three (Rebecca/Jack, Randall/Beth, Kate/Toby). Netflix-reborn Gilmore Girls took on the competition with Luke/Lorelai and Rory/Logan, two of the show's mainstay ships. Other fandoms expanding their ship slots were Nashville, Supergirl, and Grey's Anatomy.

Other fandoms like The Originals and The 100 down-scaled their operation for this year's running. Cami/Klaus (Klamille) was the sole representative of the former, while latter only fielded last year's victor Clexa and, new for this year, Marcus Kane/Abby (Kabby). Same can be said to Teen Wolf and Once Upon A Time, fielding two ships instead of three for this year's running.

Pairing Rates20162017
Male/Female5552
All Male47
All Female55

Last but not least, hetero couples took 81% of the roster share. In last year, there were 55 hetero ships, 4 all-male, and 5 all-female. With the increase of 7 gay couples this year, only hetero ship numbers that were decreased by 3. The slot for lesbian pairings did not change, although Emison, Sanvers, and Shoot filled up the slot as Clexa and Vauseman were the recurring participants since last year.

HOW IT WENT DOWN

There are things to note before this recap. The structure for this year's competition was as follows:

• Each round lasts at most 54 hours, each begins at 11 am PT and begins at 5 pm PT on the third day, with some exceptions for later rounds.
• First round pits all 64 couples together in one match where the top 32 couples will prevail, in contrast to the conventional tournament-style matchups done in previous years.
• Round 2 onwards are done in old-school, tournament-style manner, where competing couples in one tie will be drawn randomly per competition's tradition.

First round of Top TV Couple be like.

The first round is, as I already said, a 64-couple madness which kinda reminds me of how the first game on Takeshi's Castle is played. Two The 100 ships Clarke Griffin/Lexa and, surprise, Marcus Kane/Abby Griffin (not that Marcus Kane though) topped the first round poll with 22.3% and 16.3% respectively, while the final Top 3 spot saw the sacred number 64, Skam's Isak and Even, with an impressive 9.9% bringing the first ever non-English TV series to its online polling competition campaign.

Eleven couples, namely Glenn/Maggie, Rebecca/Jack, Jackson/April, Hanna/Caleb, Bonnie/Enzo, Rory/Logan, Jimmy/Gretchen, Cami/Klaus, Connor/Oliver, Luke/Lorelai, and Rayna/Deacon involved in a tie with 0.1% of votes, with only seven spots to spare. The last seven couples would be later revealed in the second round.


(Image: originalhbicrebekah.tumbl)

Come second round, where the identities of the seven remaining spots were revealed: Glenn/Maggie, Rebecca/Jack, Jackson/April, Hanna/Caleb, Bonnie/Enzo, Rory/Logan, and Jimmy/Gretchen. Cami/Klaus, who had 0.3% during my last check was somehow not making it to the next round for unknown reasons. At one point, they had 0.4%. Last year's winner Clexa showed their strength against PLL's Hanna/Caleb, while another of The 100's favorites Kabby had to concede defeat against Glenn and Maggie despite the former went close to overtaking the TWD pairing at one point. PLL's Emily/Allison, fighting Shameless's Ian/Mickey, had a large deficit which amazingly recovered ten hours before the deadline in a valiant effort, going from 40s to 49.7%, even overtaking the male pairing before ultimately handing their lead to Gallavich as the round closed, rendering them unable to repeat PLL's success last year, reaching the third round. Mike/Eleven of Stranger Things and Lukas/Philip of Eyewitness traded leads throughout the voting timeline, but eventually went into the former's favor with a much stronger voting mass, sending the final score to 56.6%-43.4%.

The third round (Sweet 16) left 14 fandoms, with two ships from Once Upon A Time and The Walking Dead still standing, along with favorites Isak/Even, Root/Shaw, and Stiles/Lydia. However, this was also the same round where both of the TWD runners falter: Gleggie conceded defeat to Shoot despite holding an early lead before the latter gathered their powervote mass, while Captain Swan ended Rick/Michonne's journey in a straight win which saw the TWD pairing stuck between 42-43%. Another OUAT ship Regina/Robin had a very bad luck, being drawn with Clexa and predictably lost against the lesbian couple, but Barry/Iris and the 2015 winners Stefan/Caroline had it way worse: not only defeated by Oliver/Felicity and Evak respectively, but also had their losing percentage the lowest of all, being in the sub 40s. Mileven and Stydia, meanwhile, were a subject of another arms race this year, with numerous lead changes and a narrow gap to recover, before Stydia was declared the round's victor. Fights aside, the voting was somehow not closed one day after the deadline, with the mobile voting somehow still open even after the deadline.

The fourth round drew powerhouses Olicity against Stydia, pitted People's Choice Awards winners (Claire and Jamie) with Zimbio March Madness winners (Shoot), and drew LGBT couples Clexa (last year's winners) and Evak together, in addition to Malec going up against Captain Swan. The Shadowhunters pairing who reached the finals last year made their fighting with Captain Swan look easy with a landslide win, while the polling competition experts Shoot weren't in form with a defeat of 58.6%-41.4% to the Outlander couple's favor. Evak showed its prowess once more as they defeated another of the competition's past winner in a 55.7%-44.3% game, finally becoming this year's breakout favorite, and Stydia barely fending off Olicity with a very tight finish of 49.9%-50.1% in former's favor. However, due to the techincal difficulties, the poll was re-ran on Friday, and it was during that time Olicity seized the game prior to the re-run until Stydia took it back, leaving the condition stay at where they were: Stydia, Evak, Malec, and Outlander going to the Final 4.


Magnus and Alec's game faces as they fought their way to the final round (Image: We Heart It)

The Final 4 repeated Outlander and Malec's last year's faceoff, and drew Stydia and Evak together. In addition, the round ran for 72 hours (three days and four hours), in contrast to the previous rounds. The Teen Wolf pairing, who recently declared their love canonically, had seized an early lead against the Norwegian breakout, but gradually slipped big time 16 hours after the round opened. Despite valiant efforts which followed by a slight lead at one point, Evak won the round by edging Stydia with a winning percentage of 51.8%. The Outlander/Malec faceoff on the other hand had Malec holding firmly to the lead almost all the time, with Outlander pulling all stops to recover their lost percentages, unlike last year where they traded leads frequently. In the end, Malec ensured its second consecutive TV's Top Couple finals with 53.5%-46.5%.

Also interesting to note that in the Final 4 post, the host incorrectly named Jamie and Claire as the 2015 competition's winners. This was later corrected to name Stefan and Caroline. The name "Ivan" though is still yet corrected until now (where it should be "Isak" instead).

Finally, the final round saw both Malec and Evak in the game, another case of an all-LGBT finale just like last year, and the first case of both finalists being gay couples. In the first 24 hours, Malec tried to resist Evak's domination, trying to stick to 45% while preventing it to become 40-60 in the later hours. The following hours saw Malec catching up in percentages, with a percentage of 49.6% being recorded on Monday at 11 pm PST, 18 hours towards the deadline. However, it soon dropped all the way to 44.8% by the end of the voting as Evak declared as the winners of this year's Top TV Couple competition, with Malec taking a runner-up place the second time in a row, but with an even better result than their first year. The round also recorded 5,675,176 votes being cast, more on that later on after the next section that follows.

With this victory, Evak marked the first time a non-English series (in this case, Skam, the Norwegian teen series) won in an online polling competition in the history.

THE SPREADSHEET

Remember the #TopTVCouple voting? KABBY made it to the second round in SECOND place! Out of 64 popular ships! With the 16% of the votes! pic.twitter.com/tyP5YTnEgd
- Jane | kabby pattie (@KabbyKru) February 12, 2017

"Wait, a user-created spreadsheet for Top TV Couple was created?" Yup, you're not dreaming. Unbeknownst to you, I've been keeping track of every round's percentages and progressions at a fixed interval. If you've seen the first round results floating everywhere courtesy of the Kabby shippers (posted by @KabbyKru above), you've seen just a small bit of what I've been working!

Here, the spreadsheet dedicated to the 2017 TV's Top Couple contains results for every round, complete with the "Who's Who" of the competition, TV titles involved in the race, match results, progressions on percentages (Round 1 results not included), and rankings. The results presented for each round are bound to be as accurate as possible, tracking movements after the voting deadline has passed which saw a couple of adjustments during that time.

The rankings have its own protocol, which determines each competitor's ranking (in this case, the couples) by the following method:

1. The winner of the competition.
2. The last round a competitor is eliminated in.
3. The final number of votes tallied.
4. The final percentage of votes in a match, if the number of votes as explained in #3 were not accessible.
5. Highest average of voting progress in the last round the competitors in question are eliminated, in case of a tie.
6. Tied competitors' performance in the previous round (and onwards) if #5 yields no result whatsoever.
7. Alphabetical sort, if #6 yields no result whatsoever.

The rankings are made because of the fact that, in the previous year's running, a ranking gallery a la 2015 were not present. The rankings were sorted by the number of votes cast for the couples, but since the polls were closed a very long time ago, it is unknown how many exact votes they had (but the gallery did state to whom the couple lost against). But one thing's for sure, the rankings thingy didn't exist since 2016, which is the very reason why I had to do such a length for this one.

The rankings presented below are provisional and based on the eliminated couples' vote percentage in their losing round, aside from the protocol listed above. This ranking will be rendered obsolete whenever the writer herself made a ranking gallery for this year's running, which she will do it in perhaps a million years unfortunately.



In the end, I can assure you that I will do the same with the rest of the polling competitions, which includes the Zimbio competition that's still running. The full spreadsheet of this competition can be seen here. Additionally, you can download the Excel format file here.

BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE?

Latest graph pic.twitter.com/Z6ZoDSeWut
- EVAK TV COUPLE 2017 (@vote4evak) March 6, 2017

"And I was just sitting in front of my computer saying 'how they do it?'..."

This just in. Before I proceed, I actually hate how the competition runs, with polls being deleted once they are finished which would deter my record-keeping purposes, like I said in last year's running. Therefore, I've learned my mistake: standing by at 8 am my time, and keeping the percentages noted as it readjusts over time past the deadline, most probably because of rounding down/up votes to a single decimal. Thankfully, I did that in every round sans Final 4 where I had to ask the Twitterverse for each matchup's final results because I missed out on that. The idea for tracking vote percentages in specified intervals meanwhile was born during Round 2 where I had to peek on the current numbers and determine the average out of them.

However, one person. No, one team, did an even better task: create a script to fetch not only the percentages but also the number of votes cast in one round, updating it in a matter of minutes. This way, it's possible to see the number of votes being cast in a specified interval, which is really vital. The team in question is the Skam campaign team, precisely those at the kosegruppa.dk site. What they did was absolute bonkers, I admire the determination to even going as far as to provide clearer statistics of who they were up against, although they only started this in the Final 4 timeline.

Nicolaj Paaske Holm Hansen, one of the campaign team's people, copied the poll's current result on the mentioned site and inspected the source code of the web page while at it. Here, Nicolaj was able to identify both the current percentage and the current total number of votes cast, which were hidden in two versions of the site: in the desktop version, marked by the variable choicePercentage, and the mobile version, which hid the total number of votes in one round under input class="total-votes" value="5626143" type="hidden", where 5626143 is the number of votes cast at that time. During the Final 4 where Evak faced Clexa, Magni Onsoien, another figure behind Evak's successful campaign, made a script that fetched the values automatically which was a very simple shell script, and was run every specified minute. The result allowed a graph being born out of these data, with this tweet as one of the examples. The datafile gathered during the round can be seen here.

In addition, the value of 5,675,176 votes in the final round is courtesy of their very own script. The winning numbers for Isak and Even are 3,148,251 votes, with a gap of approximately 600,000 votes against Malec in the final round. Never in any polling competition has got a very deep campaigning to the point that they could even determine the numbers by putting their coding game like the Evak campaigning team! I tipped my hat to Scandinavia's best polling campaign team for inspiring me to fetch data so I can get the vote numbers!

As I witnessed their hard work though, all I thought was that "I wish I have discovered this way sooner," but next year exists for a reason, and now that I have the key to determine how many votes cast in the E!Online competition, the rankings for the next season shall be determined by the number of votes instead of vote percentages as the protocol posted above, unless that E!Online changes its voting format which would defeat the purpose.

A special thank you for @vote4evak, the campaigning account for Isak and Even, from yours truly! Although the account has done the job and no longer tweets, you should check out the account!

IN CONCLUSION


"All is Love that Ends Well" (Imnage: NRK via frida.se)

The end of the competition's final round shall be remembered as the day where a non-English show prevailed the voting competition: Skam (Norwegian for "shame"), a Norwegian low-budget teen drama production by creator Julie Andem, with the first season being aired in 2015 and airs both on the Norwegian channel NRK and on its website, with clips from the show being put online in "real time" without warning. Each season, the series centers around a different character, with the third season (October 2 - December 16, 2016), which also became the series' turning point in international popularity, having Isak (Tarjei Sandvik Moe) as the season's main character, dealing with his homosexual life and becoming friends with Even (Henrik Holm).

Isak and Even have put the show on the map of the online television fandom much clearer, perhaps being the first non-English series to do so. The couple has captivated the fandom to the point that it gave a better visibility to the LGBT representation in the media. At the end of the day, more people will be intrigued by how the series goes, even despite having to face difficulties in watching it for geo-restricted reasons which was the result of the stance of the Norwegian music industry. However, those initiated to the fandom will discover that even such restrictions do not bar them in enjoying the series.

As disappointed as I am by seeing how they didn't keep the polling results online and the lack of rankings, it was a fun task to record keep it to the public, and even discovered what the Evak campaigners have worked: working on data and graphs, rather than inciting hate towards the fandoms competing against them. This has allowed yours truly to appreciate this competition in a new light and a new perspective, and hopefully with all the ways provided by the Skam campaigning team, I could provide the accurate rankings of the couples competing for next year!

As usual, I'm a person who expects that the successes of Malec, Stydia and Outlander should be reflected to poll-based award shows. However, most of them did: Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe (Jamie and Claire respectively) already won PCAs this year, and both Shadowhunters and Teen Wolf won their fair share of last year's Teen Choice, but neither as a couple, although Dylan O'Brien (Stiles) and Matthew Daddario (Alec) already did. Perhaps it could be Dylan's time, with Holland Roden, to win either Choice TV Chemistry or Liplock, perhaps both, thanks to the backing of the Stydia fandom, or it could be, if possible, Matthew Daddario and Harry Shum Jr.'s. The road towards the next nearby award show is quite a long ride.

However, this was just the beginning. There's a Zimbio poll to be taken care of. Now, can any of these Top TV Couple hopefuls who were eliminated in their rounds overcome the treacherous voting timelines against even the non-canon ships there? Factors aside, the fandoms' desire will speak.

~[R]