A Steaming Pile Of Punk

Spotlight Challenge Announcement

The facetestants find McKenzie on the Old West town set at Paramount Ranch, and after she puts the moment in historical context by telling us all the dead movie stars who rode horses at this location (OH WORD, JOHN WAYNE?!), she tells us that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the TV series The Wild Wild West. What does this mean for the facetestants? "Steampunk." Specifically, they're putting a steampunk cyborg twist on a classic western character -- a barmaid, a bank robber, an undertaker, a blacksmith, or a sheriff. Logan says he likes steampunk and that such a challenge brief will give him the chance to do some fabrication, but everyone else looks nauseated -- perhaps because, as McKenzie says, "Steampunk is not easy because it's such a specific and intricate space." That's a lot of words for "it's lame," but sure? However, she has good news: someone's there to give them a pep talk who knows "all things steampunk."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE. Honestly, that strut and THAT COSTUME are why you have to watch this segment because NO, GLENN. NO. NO. Which don't you have: self-respect or a mirror?! Poor McKenzie has to stand next to him and not crack up as she explains that, every season, the designers are scared of steampunk challenges because "Glenn is intimately familiar with this world." OH GOD, DON'T SAY IT LIKE THAT, it just makes it sound like he goes home and orders up a bear from Grindr to dress up like Rick Deckard and roger him with a rivet-covered faux-aged chrome dildo. McKenzie acts like it was her idea for Glenn to show up and tell the designers where people go wrong with steampunk (sure, McKenzie, you're totally running the show), and as Logan looks on, clearly chewing his tongue to keep from guffawing at Glenn's get-up...

...Glenn advises them, "Do not glue gears or rivet brass plates onto an area that does not make any sense. It must look like it works." God, define "works." Guys, I'm sorry if you like steampunk; I stand firmly with everyone but Logan on this issue: Julian is not a steampunk fan; Darla doesn't like steampunk or westerns; and Emily doesn't do robots. But here they all are, with only this baloney standing between them and a spot in the finale.

Design Phase

Other than self-described steampunk fan Logan -- who says he wants his cyborg barmaid character to be the best character he's made so far -- everyone's in the weeds as they're sketching at the ranch, but Darla's in the worst shape by far. The camera finds her crying -- we actually get an authentic moment as she tries to hide her face and then tells the offscreen producer who's obviously bugging her that she has to focus on figuring out her blacksmith concept right now -- and she VOs that the entire time they're at the ranch literally sitting on their inspiration that she comes up with nothing. Not an auspicious sign, one might surmise if one had never seen a reality show before.

Back at the lab, Logan gets going on the giant boobs he intends to give his model, so it's a good thing that the coaches arrive almost immediately: Rayce tells him he's concerned about "the size of the hoots" and that Logan should probably get rid of them. Logan (maybe reluctantly?) agrees. By the time Laura gets to Darla, she's pulled her shit together and come up with an idea for her blacksmith: he's replaced his heart with a forge, so he can heat up metal in a little oven in his chest. It actually looks pretty cool, and Laura compliments the silhouette. Emily's already well on her way to making a coffin-shaped chest mold for her undertaker character.

But the real reason to watch this segment is for all the ways Laura runs down Julian -- not much to his face, but definitely in her THes. I feel like this is the first time we've heard that Julian doesn't actually draw, so when he describes to Laura what he wants to do with his bank robber character, she ends up drawing it for him. His concept requires a lot of fabrication, and when she asks if he's ever done that before, he says he hasn't. "If he leaves himself enough time for fabrication, I'm sure he can pull something good off," she THes, VERY UNCONVINCINGLY.

When Michael Westmore arrives, all his advice is pretty prescient: Logan's beauty makeup will be very important for this character; Julian shouldn't waste time making an arm piece that ACTUALLY rotates like a gun barrel as long as it looks like it could; Emily shouldn't give short shrift to her character's face since that's most of what the judges will be evaluating her on. This makes her frustrated in the lab after he leaves, and she cries in her TH about not wanting to go home, but she ultimately takes his point, coming up with the idea of fitting a respirator into her guy's beard to filter out embalming fumes.

On Day 2, Rayce takes Logan aside, apparently in secret, to show him how to draw filigree on his character's arm appliance with a waxing tool they apparently hope no one else realizes is there. And Laura continues undermining the hell out of Julian. "He's going to try his hand at fabrication for the first time ever," she THes, and her face kind of gives away how little confidence she apparently has in his ability to do it.

"Hopefully you'll have enough time at the end of the day to make this shoulder piece," she says TO HIM. He spends most of the day sculpting his face, and then -- again, because he doesn't draw -- she sketches the shoulder piece he wants to make; he doesn't actually start on it until she's left for the day, and his incomprehension staring at what she's left for him is...not promising.

Every part of this process is apparently beyond his capabilities including the use of the hot glue gun -- something America's great-grandmothers have all mastered if their bedazzled sweatshirts are anything to go by. I can't tell if this is bad coaching from Laura in that she hasn't tried to get him to scale back his ambitions to fit his limited skills, or good coaching for Emily and Darla who, unlike Julian, haven't been skating by for weeks.

Application Day

Laura continues hating Julian on Day 3 as she arrives and informs us, "Julian got as far as he could on his fabricated arm." How far? Well, nothing he made is actually painted, and he is basically behind for the whole day. Elsewhere, we get the contrast of Darla explaining how to achieve a natural-looking skin tone -- layers and layers of paint, with imperfections (freckling and the like) on each coat -- and Logan almost failing to heed Rayce's advice on the symmetry of his model's facial prosthetics, and his anxiety over how much her neck piece is wrinkling every time she moves. But he's still further ahead than Julian: when they all head into Last Looks, his model barely even has any makeup on because he's spent so much time on his fabrications. Already it's clear that Logan's best friend on this challenge is Julian for being so much worse.

Reveal Stage

All the drama is in the construction, because the results are, across the board, pretty bad, and really reflect how bearish almost everyone was on the challenge specs. Even Logan, who was excited by it, really shits the bed.

Darla's up first in the judging, and of course because we saw the most of her freaking out about not having a strong concept, the judges love it. They appreciate the attention to detail that she gave her blacksmith a sheen of sweat on his forehead and arms. Glenn likes how she made the core of the concept -- the forge -- the literal core of her character; Neville says that the skin growing over his goggles takes that steampunk cliché (my word, not his) to a new level. So Darla, maybe you shouldn't have acted so downcast when you explained your backstory, like you almost always are?

Oh, Julian. The best Ve can think to say in order not to telegraph the ending is that she likes cowboys, so she likes this bank robber character. You can see that he completely gave up on the gun barrel hand idea he'd talked about earlier -- I mean, forget functionality; it's just not there at all, so it's unclear what all that jazz on his arm is even for. Ve goes on to say that his face sculpt doesn't look like flesh, and Neville says the brain just looks like he glued some stuff on it for no clear purpose. Yep, that about covers it.

Emily's complimented for the overall colour and the patina effect she achieved on her undertaker; Glenn calls her fabrication of the embalming-fluid bottles "genius." And look, I don't want to say that the fix is in for Emily, because this is definitely one of the night's top two looks (not that it's saying much), but: even though the judges comment at A Closer Look that they don't know what's happening with the bottom half of her undertaker's face -- from a distance, it looks like a smooshed wolf snout to me -- no one asks her about it during her judging segment.

Normally I never cap the end-of-morph image because the treatment they use almost always makes the makeup look good regardless of how it appears to the viewer...not this time! Look how mottled her neck is! Why couldn't Logan have just said she became a cyborg after she survived a saloon fire?! As he and his model take the stage, my esteemed colleague/spouse Dave says, "Logan's out"...

...because Logan's model's costume literally falls apart as it's about to be critiqued. All that's missing is a "poink!" sound effect. But I maintain that they'll overlook the deficits on this look since he's had a better season than Julian, and the judges bear me out: his blending and edging work are rough and the beauty makeup is terrible, but the concept is cool -- and it's true; from a distance, she looks great.

Winner And Loser

After some blah-blah about how hard a decision this was -- I feel like the only thing hard was deciding which of the two bad looks was worse -- Emily wins. With that chin? Fine, whatever. Darla is also going to the final, obviously. And the third slot goes to...Logan, of course. I manage not to rub it into Dave's face too much. Bye, Julian! I think we all saw this coming, including your coach, who really did you no favours. Julian wanders out, but the finalists are not dismissed, because...I don't know, there's a twist or something; we'll find out next week.

Verdict

I know it's the last one before the finals, but all the looks are so crappy, and it's been obvious for weeks that Julian's not finalist material, so there's not even any suspense in the outcome.