Nope. IMHO.
V/M are getting the second spot because their FD doesn't work.
More precisely, it doesn't work as well as V/M thought it would.
In the GPF thread,
@allezfred said that when they watch their score coming up, V/M don't understand why their FD isn't scoring higher.
They are (were ?) convinced they have the perfect vehicle.
I'm convinced it is an error. Even before seeing it, after reading V/M's early interviews, I had questions.
And when I first saw the program at Autumn Classic, I thought it wasn't working. Parts were working. Some parts were impressive. But as a whole, a deflated baloon.
And I wondered how they would change things to make it work.
They fined tune the interpretation, the costumes, some details and by Skate Canada (basically, they scrapped the drama), it started working. The balloon was inflating. To a limit.
That is not a problem in itself but when the neighbours' balloon makes their house fly, no wonder that's where the gazes are going.
Why doesn't Moulin Rouge Balloon "work" more ?
Because it is incoherent. It is a V/M idea / canvass with 3 choreographers to embellish it, but no one in the lead to put some coherence / concept in it.
As drama, it doesn't work. The choreo has no transition between parts to justify a change of mood/tone.
A woman and a man "fight" / they are in love, it is so cute / she dies. That's it. No transition, no dramatic justification.
So when they played for the drama at the Autumn Cup, the program felt blah and dramatically "underserved" after the first part.
As a concept program based on a story, it works. That's how they have skated it from Skate Canada.
But what is the concept ? Moulin Rouge is a metaphor of V/M's career.
Ok, nice.
But it feels artificial and it doesn't build up. The momentum is in the first part. The second part is nice but feels more bland (and refers to V/M's earlier days while the tango refers to later Carmen).
And in the end, she slowly dies / they leave (and I absolutly don't care about it, which I suppose is not the goal *sound of deflating balloon*).
The more it lasts, the less I'm involved.
Is it metaphoric for their career ? Starting from the highest point to end with a whisper is not the kind of metaphor they want for their program / career.
And V/M thought they had the perfect idea, the perfect set of choreographers, the perfect everything. While the key problem is how they constructed the program from the very begining. No main choreographer, no coherence, no POV, no interest built.
Now is it fixable ?
I explained how I'd do it in the GPF thread (split the parts of the choreo and "play them in reverse", starting with the death and ending with the tango so it would end with a BANG, Tessa rising back like a phoenix, the same way they want to end their career).
There are probably a lot of other strategies to try to improve this FD.
But V/M must be quick. Because here lies the crux of their problem.
make up your ice dance scenario 
