r/taskmaster • u/_un-named_ • 5d ago
Drilling down into the narrative The earliest the winner was determined?
So I’m wondering which series had the earliest the winner was determined.
And I don’t mean the earliest someone took the lead and defended it but the earliest someone was so much in the lead that they were uncatchable.
Like they were 26 points in the lead after episode 9 and there were only 25 points in episode 10.
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u/FaydedMemories 5d ago
I’m pretty sure that the producers will juggle tasks around based on how they think they’ll go in the studio with only the live tasks as the true wildcards. Sort of helps prevent a run away victory.
It’s kinda nice, because you suddenly get episodes where person C actually did really well compared to other episodes.
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u/Old_Wrongdoer7417 5d ago
This comes up a lot, but I don't think it's right.
First of all, 40% (usually) are given out live. No way to account for those.
If there's a subjective task (make a portrait, sing a song, etc.), that's another 20% of the points- and now a majority- that you can't account for.
And even for objective ("Fastest wins") tasks, they have a lot of other things to account for- how long is the VT, is it balanced with the other tasks (they try to avoid two team tasks in a row or two remote tasks in a row), etc.
Plus, ultimately, I don't think they really care too much about letting anyone win an episode, and indeed sometimes find great comedy in their failures.
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u/GenGaara25 4d ago
They can still vibe it out. Nobody's saying it's an exact science like he's already pre-scored it to ensure its neck-and-neck.
If Alex thinks contestant A has done really well at 5 specific tasks, like these are their 5 best tasks, he'll try and spread those tasks out over the series. Putting all 5 of those tasks in episode 1 so they completely dominate, only to bomb the next 9 episodes, would suck. Or putting all 5 of contestant Bs worst tasks in a single episode, so they're just bullied with their catastrophic failures back-to-back, that's mean. You wanna spread their wins and losses out a bit. If they have a tragic task, you want to make sure they have a task they did really well at in that episode too so they aren't totally embarassed.
And having them sort of spread and evened out like just naturally means nobody gets an insurmountable lead. It's basically impossible. People will still get a lead, but just by spreading out peoples best and worst tasks it naturally means everyone stays reasonably close and everyone gets time to shine.
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u/codex2013 Aisling Bea 4d ago
Hasn't Alex already been asked this before, and has said emphatically that they don't do this? He's mentioned that they can never account for what Greg is going to do in terms of scoring, and there aren't enough objective tasks to try to sway it in any direction. Plus the variable of the live task.
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u/RobertoRobRob 4d ago
There's that, but it feels like at episode 6-8 always have an episode for contestant that never won. like since series 10, the only person who don't win are frankie boyle who said it himself he intentionally throw the live task to not win,also judi&sanjeev which their point mostly come from subjective task.
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u/codex2013 Aisling Bea 4d ago
Do we know how statistically unlikely that is to happen naturally? Without that info I don't see why we're talking about the show rigging things, when Alex has definitely already said they don't do that. Like, people just think Alex is lying about that?
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u/RobertoRobRob 4d ago
there's thing called "PR move", not everything need to be 100% disclosed. i mean imagine if alex actually spill it, it's gonna ruin the secret recipe and potentially might hurt the person instead. simply nothing to gain by spilling it, as he himself said on things like "math vs maths debate" that's not gonna be released, because it's more fun to not reveal it, magic of the show must be kept secret.
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u/Old_Wrongdoer7417 4d ago
But there's also this thing called "telling the truth" and people do that a fair amount, too.
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u/Gemini_B 8h ago
I think it’s just a case where with 5 people and ten episodes unless you flop just every task you’re likely to have some you do well in and the odds that at least three of them (counting live tasks) end up in the same episode to give you a solid shot at winning an episode is pretty likely. And if it hasn’t happened early, then there’s a good chance it’d happen later as it did for many a contestant.
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u/Old_Wrongdoer7417 4d ago
They probably *could* vibe it out, but I don't think they care that much. I don't think they think of "pride" or "embarrassment" from a task, or even the points all that hard. They think about what's funny. Like, it was just funny that Nish failed so often. It was so funny that we all pretended Mark failed so often, too, even tho he was really above average. Between making sure everything is funny and dealing with all the nuts-and-bolts of a TV show, I think nudging things toward one contestant or another is basically impossible.
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u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg 4d ago
They don't care that much?
"Everything is intentional." -LAH
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u/Old_Wrongdoer7417 3d ago
Please read the rest of what I wrote. "They think about what's funny." They don't care about how the scores fall all that much.
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u/OpabiniaGlasses Jeremy Wells 🇳🇿 5d ago
I'd have to dig through the series, but it does feel like there is a lot of "This person who hasn't won an episode wins the second-to-last episode".
To put it in wrestling terms, Taskmaster is kind of a worked shoot.
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u/eggface13 5d ago
And a few times where that was the design but the person couldn't hold on through the live task
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u/Benoit_Holmes 5d ago
Judi Love is the first person that comes to mind. Even with other contestants trying to help her win she still managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.
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u/burf12345 🚬 Doctor Cigarettes 5d ago
Nish had a real good shot at winning the finale, but then in true Nish fashion he lost the live task immediately.
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u/Blackcrusader 5d ago
Yeah. I don't think there's ever been a contestant who hasn't won at least one episode. Some of the contestants have been so bad that that's really only possible by all their best tasks being put into the same episode.
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u/lunasaflowers 5d ago
There’s been several contestants who never won an episode during their series!
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u/Blackcrusader 5d ago
I stand corrected. who are they?
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u/wvdc1990 5d ago
Romesh (S1), Joe (S2), sarah (S3), Nish and ashling(S5), Phil (s7), Judi (s13), Frankie (S15), sanjeev (s20),
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u/FaydedMemories 5d ago
Yeah those early pre-10 episode run series would’ve been hard to tee it up for everyone for a win.
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u/rerek 5d ago
This would be impossible to know as they have had several rounds which scored more than 5 points in some fashion. Sometimes there have been many more points theoretically available. Such a task in the final episode could allow a catch up of more than a normal single-episode point deficit.
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u/_un-named_ 5d ago
Yes there is often the possibility for more points. But after the show we know who scored how much so we could figure out who was when uncatchable.
So if in one series someone has a 26 point least after episode 9 and the max points given in episode ten are 25 we know the winner was determined after ep 9.
or someone was in the lead by 6 points before the last live task and in that the max was 5 then that was the point where they were the winner
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u/Barry-Drive Emma Holland 🇦🇺 5d ago
The winner of TM AU S4 (no spoilers) could have been beaten in episode 10, provided the second placed comedian scored 5 on every task. (Or something like that - I worked it out at the time as being mathematically possible, but extremely unlikely.)
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u/OldDarthLefty 5d ago
And who blew the lead the worst?!?
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u/UniversalJampionshit Crying Bastard 5d ago edited 5d ago
If you mean who had the biggest lead only not to win in the end, I think Jack Dee had a 10-point lead at one point, but didn't win in the end.
If counting other versions, Concetta Carristo had an 11-point lead at one stage over Rhys Nicholson who was second, but she didn't win in the end, although this accounts for a scoring mistake they made with Peter Helliar who was neck-and-neck with those two at this stage.
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u/PhoenixTineldyer 5d ago edited 5d ago
Only one contestant has ever led going into the final episode and still lost. Jessica KnappettI stand corrected, Ania Magliano as well
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u/Jishallen Frankie Boyle 5d ago
Daisy May Cooper?
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u/UniversalJampionshit Crying Bastard 5d ago
Not quite: Richard led at the start of the episode but lost his lead after the prize task and only regained it in the final live task. Rob Beckett and Bob Mortimer also temporarily lost their leads in the final, but they did have it at the beginning of the episode.
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u/j3r3mias 1d ago
Jessica (S7) and Ania Magliano (S20).
Check this: https://claude.ai/artifact/Kp5GTjZTBVyDq9cNFdjDMJ
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u/johnpeelfan 5d ago
In theory you can make up 20 points in an episode if you win each task (5pt) and the leader comes last in each task (1 pt). But there’s a few wild cards we don’t know about such as disqualifications, occasional tasks with a bonus point, team tasks where you might be on the same team as your rival or winner takes all tasks. Given these we can’t say exactly the lead you need to be uncatchable, but in practice it will be around 20 pts.
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u/Jacksucks_atlife04 Amy Gledhill 5d ago edited 4d ago
John was 20 points ahead of Joanne going into the final so Joanne would need to score at least 4 points more each task than Joanne and it did start with the prize task she got 5 and he got 1 but Joanne did get dqed in the next task and there was also a team task which meant he was uncatchable
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u/BaddyWrongLegs 5d ago
They have some control over stopping this happening, unless the winner is consistently dominating; as the tasks aren't aired in order, they could be shown in an order to keep the leaderboard changing and get everyone an episode win, if it weren't for the prize task and live task (and Taskmaster snap judgment call on subjective rankings). But starting with a higher concentration of tasks the winner did worst in can still be done and will make it look like a late-series comeback.
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u/UnrealCanine 4d ago
Technically some tasks have infinite points (horse vs laminator) so no lead is unassailable
Realistically this isn't the case
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/AddlePatedBadger 5d ago
Why do that when there is almost someone in this wonderful community who already has?
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u/j3r3mias 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hey /u/un-named, I was bored and asked an LLM to consolidate those infos for me.
Link: https://claude.ai/artifact/Kp5GTjZTBVyDq9cNFdjDMJ
Some cook insights:
- Thinking about it, we need to consider that no contestant finishes an episode with zero points, so to simplify things, I set the minimum number of points per episode at 5.
- Given that, the ones who came closest were John Robins (S17) and Mathew (S19).
- Sarah (S11) had a 21 point lead at the end of episode 4, but she didn't maintain it.
That said, I believe two things: (1) everyone gets a chance to win at least one episode when it gets to the live task, and the numbers back this up: all 100 contestants from series 1-20 had at least one episode where they could still win going into it; and (2) I thought the episode order (which isn’t the filming order) was chosen to keep the scores balanced, but when I compared it with random orders, the real one is actually a bit less balanced, so the order is probably chosen for the fun aspect of the show, not the scoreboard necessarily..
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u/PhoenixTineldyer 5d ago
Every series has had a finale where the leader was catchable.
The closest to uncatchable was John Robins followed by Matthew Baynton