It's Like Music To Your Face

Foundation Challenge

But sparingly. The facetestants show up to the lab to see four makeup stations set up in the lab, and McKenzie telling them that because life on a film set can be "pure chaos," a makeup artist may, from time to time, have to hand off his or her work to someone else to finish. And here's where they're going to try it out! They've been divided into teams of three for a relay. They're starting with the inspiration that's already on their model -- various different kinds of crazy claw hands -- to create an original character that would have those hands. As time is called and each contestant tags in the next member of his or her team, he or she also hands off a new prosthetic to incorporate. They can't communicate at all while they're working, nor see how the character evolves until it's their turn to take over the makeup. The judge for this challenge is Jill Wagner, who plays a were-panther or some damn thing on MTV's Teen Wolf; the winner will receive immunity for this week's spotlight challenge.

Skip all that, because you've seen a reality show before. Start watching when the challenge itself actually begins. The hand styles are: Edward Scissorhands ripoff; pointy gold embellished finger rings; a bunch of plastic toys and gears; and white icicles. Everything moves fast and ends up goofy -- it's like the Face Off version of a game of Telephone. Everyone kind of gives up on the idea of perfection and just throws themselves into it, and the best is when the artists who started the first round come back after their two teammates have taken their turn and see how much their original idea has changed, and are sort of like, "Well, I guess we're doing THIS now. Okay!" When everyone is equally working with these crazy impediments and -- even with immunity up for grabs -- it doesn't really mean that much, it's just fun to watch them fool around with it.

In the end, the best look belongs to Kelly, Adam, and Rob, who create an ice queen character.

Jill is particularly taken with the bold choice of giving her a big blue wig, and since that was Adam's call, he wins immunity for the next challenge, and is excited about getting to do crazy shit without consequences in the Spotlight Challenge this week.

One More Thing

Then Rayce shows up to say he has a big job that's going to keep him from being around for the days leading up to the Spotlight Challenge, which seems like it shouldn't be allowed, but anyway: a past contestant named R.J. Haddy, from before I started watching the show, will be mentoring Rayce's team while Rayce is gone. R.J. looks like someone who should become slightly more famous so that Horatio Sanz can do an impression of him.

Spotlight Challenge Announcement

The contestants are brought to the "historic Newman Scoring Stage" on the Fox lot to find out all about this week's spotlight challenge. McKenzie explains that "often," sound designers are involved before creatures are even involved. "Often"? I feel like "sometimes" is probably more accurate. Anyway, the idea behind this challenge is to start with a sound and build a creature off it. Emmy- and Oscar-nominated sound designer Erik Aadahl comes out so that they can lay eyes on the guy who created the specific original sounds that each team of two will be using as the basis of their makeup design this week. The designers are permitted to pair themselves up, but the sounds have been randomly assigned and pre-loaded onto their tablets. Bye, Erik! We won't be seeing you again.

Design Phase

This, almost more than the Reveal Stage, is the most interesting part of the episode: it's the most we hear of the custom sounds Aadahl has designed.

• Logan and Rob are put in mind of a "T-Rex with a cold," and jump off from there to a bog creature idea. They're planning to build a head-to-toe creature suit.
• Jamie and Emily's clicking noises, accompanied by rustling and water, inspire them to create a birdlike prehistoric creature who defends herself with quills.
• Adam and Regina, unlike the other teams, actually have words in their sound clip -- "Activating," "System On," etc. She doesn't want to do a robot because it's too obvious. He may not be so sure.
• Anthony Jr. and Darla, who get sounds of men groaning, women screaming, and ghostly moans, get the idea of doing a "demon banshee," who drags souls into Hell. It'll have a demonic face and the faces of the damned on the chest.
• Stephanie and Kelly get loud, unmistakable ticking sounds, but they don't want to do a clockmaker: their idea is to make the clockmaker's wife. The backstory is that she died, and the clockmaker made a clockwork porcelain replica of her.
• Ben and Julian are...stuck. To both of them, apparently, their clip just sounds like breathing.

In what seems like a terrible decision, Ben just grabs some clay and starts slapping it on a head without any idea at all what he's actually designing, so Anthony and Laura figure they better come over and offer some direction, WHICH IS AFTER ALL WHAT THEY'RE THERE FOR, I THOUGHT. They both start throwing out suggestions -- Good guy or bad guy? Frankenstein? Orc? Horror? Science fiction? -- to which Ben and Julian just stare at them blankly and fail to engage or lock in on any of them. In an interview, Laura is juuuuust this side of disgusted as she describes the zero ideas that are coming out of Ben and Julian, who then go off to sketch some more, or just stare into space. Finally, they come up with a demon executioner idea: their guy takes faces and wears them on his own.

Meanwhile, Adam and Regina haven't really started doing anything either. Adam still wants to do something robotic, but that will require more fabrication, which Regina says she isn't good at -- and she needs to make sure her contributions to their design are clear and obvious, because he has immunity and she doesn't. Instead of a robot, her idea is an alien supersoldier, and Adam -- recognizing that he has immunity -- decides to go with her idea. She says they're behind in their process for such a big concept, but then again, their design is different from what all the other teams in the room are doing.

Little of note happens on Day 2: Emily's version of hair this week is doing a whole thing with the quills in the cowl; and R.J. is worried that Rob and Logan have gotten overly ambitious with their fabrication.

Application Phase

As the models come in, Adam is still fabricating his arm pieces, leaving Regina to do the facial prosthetics and paint job alone. There also seem to be a lot of models in physical distress -- Jamie and Emily's model is being poked by the quills in her head piece; Logan's model is having a problem with his lip; and Julian's facial prosthetic has to be stretched to fit the cowl and is also stretching the model's eyes -- but then nothing seems to come of any of that, so never mind.

Reveal Stage

Okay, so the judges complain that Logan and Rob's design...

...is too textural in the face, "just a mess," and that a bunch of jazz they did on the back is "a waste of time." Of Emily and Jamie's...

...Glenn comments, "Amaaaaazing profile." So one of those is in the top and the other in the bottom, right? Wrong! Those looks are safe. Emily and Jamie got robbed, if you ask me.

When we come to the top looks, one is obvious and one is weird. Glenn tells Stephanie and Kelly, "You could not have done a better job of integrating a sound cue," and it's true.

It was Stephanie's idea that they not go steampunk with the idea; she also drew a little sketch of the clockmaker and his wife for their model to carry, and considering that these are all artists who presumably sketch every day for their jobs, all the judges seem way too taken with this little cartoon Stephanie did.

They also love Ben and Julian's, somehow.

To me, this looks like an extremely standard Mephistopheles design, but Neville tells them they hit it out of the park.

Adam and Regina, rightly, get dinged for their weird hybrid design that is clearly work by committee.

Ve Neill describes the face Regina designed as looking like an old man with its mouth sucked into itself, and not, as I said while watching, like a shriveled half-watermelon.

I actually think Darla and Anthony Jr.'s came out pretty cool, although when he first came out, their model should have stopped rolling his stomach like that.

Neville points out how the model has had to give dimension to their design with all his clowning, but it's bad all around: face is out of proportion, bad paint, "directionless."

And then all of a sudden the champions who have team members in the bottom get a chance to stick up for them? Laura and Rayce (Anthony's people have all escaped) seem ill-prepared for this, so Laura blah-blahs something about wanting to see more from Darla, who's been in the top until now (not mentioned: Anthony Jr., in the bottom this week for the third time in four challenges, dragging her down), and R.J. points out that Anthony Jr. had the good idea of using the models' real life masks that were in the lab to create the faces in his model's chest piece.

Winner And Loser

Stephanie and Kelly, obviously, are the winning team, with Stephanie the super-winner. Note to future contestants: incorporate more of your doodles into your designs! Since Adam has immunity, Darla, Anthony Jr., and Regina end up in the bottom three, and Regina is eliminated. She cries on the stage, which is a bummer, and clearly puts all the judges on edge. I have mixed feelings about this one: she did shit the bed, but she also never really had a chance given Adam's immunity, since it didn't exactly put him in a position where he had to collaborate or compromise.

Verdict

The creations that resulted were mostly pretty clichéd, but the idea of a sound inspiring a makeup is cool enough to make the episode worth checking out.