Final Reaction - No Surprises

The winner of Eurovision 2009 shocks no one! As you may have heard elsewhere by now, Norway won pretty much unanimously. The jury vote hasn't been released as of this writing but I'm sure they got high marks, and they were in the top 3 of voters in every country in their semifinal except France so that means they were probably the televote favorite too. I'm a little disappointed that there wasn't a more exciting voting sequence, unless you count the race for the other places in the top five. But I am happy that like the years before, the winner was in my top 12 and one song out of my top five made it into the top five, as Azerbaijan was in third place. The other four in my top five didn't do nearly as well, with Finland coming in last place, but I'm satisfied that they at least qualified.

The semifinal results were released and Finland and Croatia were the jury picks. Like last year, my 1st place song in my rankings came 12th in its semifinal but made it to the final on the jury vote. I'm shocked that Sweden got fourth place in its semifinal, but not as shocked that it did so poorly in the final. If it wasn't a hit with Swedish juries in Melodifestivalen, it wasn't going to be a hit with other juries across Europe. I'm confused as to why Albania would give Netherlands 10 out of their 11 points, and why Belgium got their only point from Armenia.

The performances themselves were all very good and most were better than their semifinal performances, but I must mention the other highlights besides the competing songs. The part of the opening sequence with Dima Bilan was amazing.

He flies! He struts in place! He strips! He walks through a group of women unfazed! He sprints in place! He runs through a walls! He runs through the wind! He walks through a group of photographers unfazed! He runs through another wall! He strips again! He runs through yet another wall! He flies to an angel! Even when the thunder and storm begins, he'll be standing strong like a tree in the wind. The source of this new power must be in his hair. Although his glorious mullet made him strangely appealing, this new longer hair must give him the power of strength, immobility, and flight!

The voting sequence itself was boring and surprisingly even more predictable than in years past (instead of giving all their points to their neighbors, countries give all their points to their neighbors and Norway), but the highlights were the Slovenian presenter attempting to have a moment of silence for Love Symphony (where were the moments of silence in 2006 and 2008?) and Laka being himself giving the Bosnian points.

It was a great show and now I'm ready to detox myself from Eurovision until the fall. It's been fun and now that it's over I can finally have time to blog about other things.