User blog comment:Epic~00/In Defense of: The Daters/@comment-24971793-20151002235044

They're definitely not the best team/characters but they're pretty harmless. Sometimes I think that the fanbase just needs to have at least one character they can ritually sacrifice in hope for a better harvest.

I'm not bothered by Stephanie and find them quite enjoyable to watch, but that's personal taste.

To me they are the dark horses of the competition, I didn't expect them to make it this far but if you sum up their strengths why wouldn't they? Ryan is potentially the strongest contestant out of all RR and TD characters (physically). Stephanie is known to be sportive as well (met in the gym). They're both extremely competitive and they have shown to be quite smart as well. Ok, they've made several dumb decisions but this always happens when they're in the middle of an argument and not thinking straight, when they're calm they seem pretty sensible. Mainly Ryan. It makes sense that they made it this far in the competition. Who from the eliminated pairs is competitively stronger and should have outranked them? I don't mean who would you rather see instead of them, I mean comparing competition related strengths and weaknesses who should logically outrank them?

I get that people are frustrated about them getting "saved" twice, but the thing is they were never really saved.The writers often pick the most dramatic duo's to come in last on non-elimination episodes because it adds the most storywise. Like the ice skaters, vegans, cadets or Heather in TDWT. The threat of being almost eliminated makes them more passionate or amps up the intensity/drama. Having a team like the goths (for example) come in last would be a bit of a waste since they would literally have no response to being saved from elimination. They would just stand there, slowly blink and move on. But with the daters it adds fuel to the fire.