Face Off Tries To Play Its Cards Right

Spotlight Challenge Announcement

McKenzie is meeting the facetestants at the storied (not really) Normandie Casino, which has pretended to be in Las Vegas for shows like Buffy but which is actually "right here in Hollywood!" If by "Hollywood," you mean Gardena. They're at a casino because this week's challenge is based on the face cards in a deck of cards: they'll each draw a card -- blind -- and create a character representing the card they've drawn, in the whimsical style seen in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland; they also have to incorporate their card's suit into their design. And yes, that means this will be the first individual challenge of the season.

The draw happens way too fast for you to keep track of who got what, which I guess is what I'm here for.

• Julian / Jack of Clubs
• Darla / Jack of Hearts
• Kelly / Queen of Spades
• Regina / Joker
• Jamie / King of Spades
• Logan / Queen of Clubs
• Stephanie / King of Diamonds
• Adam / King of Clubs
• Rob / Jack of Spades
• Ben / Jack of Diamonds
• Daniel / Queen of Diamonds
• Anthony Jr. / King of Hearts
• Emily / Queen of Hearts

Other than who gets which card -- which will also be discussed in the next segment -- there's nothing here you didn't already know from the scenes at the end of the last episode, so skip it.

Design Phase

What's kind of funny about watching this segment is how quickly it becomes clear who is going to do well because they have a strong concept, and who's just kind of flailing around. On the flailing tip: Daniel, who has an idea about a jagged cowl with diamond-ish shapes. However, he knows that doing the Queen of Diamonds means he'll have to do a beauty makeup, which he's never done and doesn't know how to do; he's never even held a lipstick before, he says. Okay, but...he's seen people with makeup on, right? Shouldn't this be the easiest thing he could do?

Sculpting Phase

The facetestants go to the lab and pick their models. Jamie ends up last, and even though she's drawn the King of Clubs, by the time her turn comes up, all the male models have been picked, so she has to revise her sketch to take into account doing a male character on a female model. She figures the best solution is to crank up the whimsy so it's not too distracting that she's basically just doing a drag king. Hmmmm.

We see the champions checking in on the individual members of their teams. Anthony Jr. is excited to have drawn the King of Hearts because that's his favourite card. WHO HAS A FAVOURITE CARD?! Whatever: Anthony Jr.'s character in the card design is stabbing himself, so Anthony Jr.'s going to run with that. Emily's Queen of Hearts is going to incorporate anatomical heart shapes in her face and hair, and also keep hearts she's collected on spikes on a neck piece she wears. And Daniel...is still having trouble. His face sculpt looks like a man, which Anthony, his team captain, calls "too monster." He advises that Daniel start over from scratch, and even though Daniel tells us in an interview that he doesn't have time, he does. This seems like a risky move this early in the competition?

Michael Visits

"It's time to show me what you've been dealt!" Don't feed Michael wild lines, producers. There's not much to this segment: Michael notes that Daniel, who's just scrapped his initial sculpt, is "in clay hell," but encourages him to run with his new concept about a character who compulsively collects diamonds. He also stops by Logan's station to look at his concept -- Logan's thinking his Queen of Clubs should be old and fat, with her facial folds forming the shape of a club -- and recommends giving it more definition.

Molding Phase

As the champions leave at the end of Day 1, Rayce says he's most concerned about Logan, which is how you know Logan will probably be fine.

Day 2 is where the designs actually start looking like...anything, really. While Darla tells us she hopes her sculpted hair will make her design stand out, and Jamie continues fretting about her gender-swapped makeup, Rob tells us that he's going to try to sell his musketeer character with a big floppy hat -- something he's never really tried, other than messing around for his kids. Surprise! It's adorable.

Elsewhere, Regina's concept involves making one face piece twice, to put on her joker's face and the back of his head; Emily is taking a risk by messing around with hair for the third challenge in a row; and Rayce thinks Anthony Jr.'s idea of a bleeding heart chest piece is going to veer more into horror than quirk and convinces him to scrap it. Hmmmmmmm.

Application Phase

This is very chaotic! Stephanie's model can't come, so she's getting a different one on the day! Emily's wig is going to be so heavy that she has to pincurl her model's own hair to anchor it! Jamie's about to put her face piece over the cowl before Anthony comes to tell her to do it in the opposite order! Anthony Jr.'s wig is terrible and his model looks way too feminine! Daniel's still panicking about his beauty makeup! Regina's way behind in getting her second face applied, and time is called before she's done painting the one on the front! Etc.!

Reveal Stage

After an introduction for this week's guest judge -- Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland makeup artist-turned-Maleficent director Robert Stromberg -- we get the parade of designs, and it kind of feels like a lot of these people weren't quite ready for individual challenges yet.

Considering that Jamie went into this with the extra challenge of doing a male character makeup on a female model, it's weird that she apparently told her model to play it really fey.

Logan's face gets lost with all the jazz on and around the head -- plus, as he himself points out, she has a goatee.

Adam's King of Clubs -- which he designed with a "king of nightclubs" notion in mind -- looks like Mac Tonight. Seeing it, Adam is dismayed: "It just reads as a pimp."

Judging

The calibre of design we're dealing with this week should be clear when Neville Page starts messing around with Rob's, the facial appliance comes off...and Rob still ends up safe, along with Kelly, Adam, Stephanie, Logan, Regina, and Ben. To the critiques!

Darla gets a great critique, with special praise for the way she sculpted the hair and beard. (They don't say this, but it's also one of the few white faces that doesn't look totally chalky.)

Jamie is told that her king should have been regal, not a dandy; that her paint job is too drab; and that her head shape is too Klingon.

Everyone loves Emily's Queen of Hearts, with Robert making sure to note that if she'd brought it to Burton's Alice In Wonderland, they would have "gobbled up" the idea of miniature anatomical hearts on spikes. Glenn says there's just one thing to hate about Emily's design: "How much better you are than I was at your age." See what he did there?

Anthony Jr.'s King of Hearts is basically terrible all around. The paint job is muddled; the wig is horrendous; and as a final kicker, Ve says that, close up, it's "not even a good clown makeup."

But fortunately for Anthony Jr.: here comes Daniel. He's apparently tried to do some kind of three-dimensional diamond effect on the lips that has not worked out. Though he tries to explain that his notion was that she's hunting for diamonds in "all the kingdoms," the response is that it's "conceptually unintelligible." It's true: even the costume feels like an afterthought.

Finally, there's Julian. This doesn't look like much to me, but Neville likes that it's not too literal an interpretation. After they all leave, interestingly, Ve says she might have liked to see something from Daniel that incorporated diamond shapes, meaning maybe Anthony talked Daniel out of an idea that would have worked better. Thanks, "champion."

Winner And Loser

In a total non-surprise, Emily is the winner, and Daniel is the loser. In his exit interview, he comments that he's only been doing this for eight months, leading one to wonder why he felt he was ready to come on this show, although I guess he did make it to the third elimination, so maybe the level of undiscovered skill in this field is commensurate with his abilities after all.

Verdict

It was kind of dull overall -- and making such a big deal of it being a Tim Burton challenge without actually producing Tim Burton is kind of dumb (not that I really thought they would, but still) -- but it is the first individual challenge of the season, so it's worth checking in to see who might have been skating by in the first two challenges.