We Can Be (Super)heroes

Spotlight Challenge Announcement

The facetestants meet McKenzie at downton L.A.'s Herald Examiner Building -- a filming location seen in The Usual Suspects, Collateral, and Spider-Man 3 -- to get this week's brief: they're creating superhero characters! (...Feel like maybe in that case you only mention Spider-Man 3?) As McKenzie reminds us, superheroes generally have regular old humanoid alter egos, and so will the superheroes in the challenge, because this time they're going to be doing makeup on THEMSELVES! McKenzie calls this challenge "the most daunting in Face Off history, and for once I actually think she nailed it. The segment is pretty rote: the only thing worth noting from McKenzie's whole intro is that, as described, this is explicitly a superhero challenge -- not supervillain; not "humanoid character with extraordinary powers"; SUPERHERO. Just remember that when we get to the reveal stage, because more than half the artists totally don't.

Design Phase

"We're going to be applying makeup to ourselves," Logan recaps.

This segment is fun because it lets the facetestants dip into their personal biographies to inform their characters. Logan's bringing in his own interests -- dragons -- to create the character of Slayer, an immortal assassin who defends them. As an introvert, Emily's always considered nature an outlet, so her character is a Mother Nature-inspired superhero who's a healer. Since Darla was also shy, she wants to create a character who's the opposite -- a guardian angel who's elegant and beautiful, and with a powerful silhouette.

And then there's Stephanie. Other than shapes and colours, she's got nothing. Again.

The fun continues when the facetestants go back to the lab to see the life casts of their own faces they'll be working on.

Darla jokes that hers makes her look like an old man, and Ben says his is a lot fatter than a life cast of himself he has at home, but they're both good-natured about it. It's cute.

Speaking of cute: it's Emily's birthday! So when the coaches arrive, they've got a plate of what look like Magnolia cupcakes. Excuse me a moment while I deal with my Pavlovian saliva response. The last two cities I lived in had Magnolia locations within walking distance of where I lived. Now the nearest cupcake store is an hour's drive away and the last time I went it was well before closing time and they literally only had seven cupcakes left in the whole joint.

We get a reminder here that Ben is the last member of Team Anthony, which is bad news for Anthony because when we see him in consultation with Ben, Anthony really looks like he's sick of Ben's shit.

Ben, who has a real-life military background, has decided to do a supersoldier villain (not in the brief) who was in a helicopter crash and got reassembled as a war machine. Anthony THes that since Ben's the last guy on his team, Anthony can give him a lot of individual attention. And he seems just thrilled about it.

Moving on: Julian explains that his guy, Reckoning, is an antihero who got his powers via a deal with the devil and is now slowly turning evil. Barely conforms to the brief.

Adam wanted to go comedic with his character, so he explains that his guy is a hero who fights giant monsters but has no idea what he's doing and mostly ends up wrecking the city he's trying to protect. "Much like my life, he is a fish out of water." I don't know what that means and we never find out.

Back to Emily, who tells us her mom is a wigmaker, and that since her mom is her superhero, she wants to honour her in this challenge by making the biggest wig imaginable as a tribute.

How's Stephanie doing? Still bad. She tells Laura her part-demon character lives in a post-apocalyptic world, and protects humans. She wants to make her black and white like she jumped out of a comic book, which, that's not my world, but have comic books been black and white...ever? I mean, other than Frank Miller-y pretentious ones, I feel like that's not really typical. Also, she still doesn't have an idea for the face. We all see where this is going, I assume. Laura suggests doing just a small, subtler piece, like just a prosthetic for the brow. "Just make sure your makeup looks flawless," says Laura. GREAT ADVICE, COACH, I BET STEPHANIE NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT. Brief stops at Ben (vacu-forming a helmet), Emily (testing out purply makeup before abandoning it for something more natural), and Logan (sculpting a dragon-ish mask), we end up back at a still-flustered Stephanie. She's gotten as far as naming her character Dollface, because she's a pretty demon. "Just do an immaculate job," Laura advises. Again, this is an idiotic note BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, and yet, as we'll see, Stephanie still manages not to rise to the occasion.

Molding Phase

We learn that Emily can't use foam latex because she's allergic, so she's sculpting her face prosthetic in gelatin instead. Laura, worried about Julian's time management, shows him how to do speed-sculpting. Logan decides to add wings to his character, in a nod to his ten-year project to become a military pilot, and fabricates something out of cheesecloth and stuff.

Now that you've seen that, there's no reason to watch the rest of the segment, in which Emily's mold doesn't set and she has to do a workaround with powder; Adam turns buckets into his character's cannon arms; and Stephanie makes a second rough mask for her character to...hold. 'Kay.

Application Phase

It's worth watching to see the mix of giddiness and anxiety as the facetestants -- each with the help of an assistant brought in for the day -- get themselves ready. Emily's silicone appliance ended up coming out "perfect," she tells us, while Adam says he's not sure his look -- which involved more fabrication than makeup -- will be enough to impress the judges, and Stephanie finally tells us why her makeup is so half-assed: she doesn't like to put prosthetics on her own face. WONDER IF THIS WILL COME BACK TO BITE HER LIKE IT DID A CERTAIN DRAG QUEEN THIS WEEK. And it seems like she may belatedly wish she did more because in order to meet Laura's expectations that her makeup be "flawless" and "immaculate," her paint is going to have to be great, and it's already REALLY not.

Reveal Stage

After McKenzie hilariously gets thrown when she asks the judges how they are and Ve says she's "bitchin'," out come the looks. Adam, Logan, and Ben actually put some effort into giving their characters...like, character? Everyone else is stiff and/or awkward like the models they definitely aren't.

McKenzie brings out Todd McFarlane, and since he's not the one on trial, I won't say it looks like he's been spending some of his Spawn money to mess with his own face to the degree that he could be a husband on The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills.

What makes this segment the most fun is that the facetestants aren't really sure how much modeling they're supposed to be doing when the judges get up close for their inspection. Neville kind of adorably steps up to the first in the line and then says, "Hi, Logan!" Logan: "...hi!" It was clear from Logan's reveal that he's loving his modeling début, and when the judges ask him to make some faces to show how expressive his mask is, Glenn giggles in delight. They do the same with Julian and Darla, the latter of whom knows her paint is cracking and thus tries to move her face as little as possible. Stephanie is told her ears could have been sculpted better. "You love that big hair, don't you, girl," says Ve to Emily, in a preview of critique to come.

Safe are (clockwise from top left above) Julian, Darla, and Ben, and I have to say, that they make it through is proof more than anything else of how few people actually made FUCKING SUPERHEROES. Julian? Demon. Darla? Goddess. Ben? Monster. Julian and Ben's are not even heroes, and while Darla's guardian angel is at least a figure of good, I don't know how much heroism she's going to be able to get up to in her floor-length gown. BUT ANYWAY. When Emily remains for further discussion, she mutters, "Shit." And ends up being right to do so.

Logan's up first, and after a still-amused Glenn orders him to describe his guy's backstory in his growly character voice, Logan gets showered with praise for his conceptual design, technical work, colour palette, wings, facial mobility, and overall originality. In short: he's one of the top looks.

At the other end of the spectrum is poor Emily. "Well, Forest Babe, tell us all about yourself," says Ve, trap-settingly. Emily says she heals animals and brings the good out of people. Ve starts by saying she loves the paint job...and that's a wrap on positives for Emily's look. "I'm a little tired of the big hairdos" is the next thing Ve says. Glenn agrees that it's not appropriate for the challenge: "You look like a hedge or topiary." And they're right: there's nothing super or heroic about Emily's concept, but since that's equally true of any of the safe looks, I really feel like Emily was kept for critique so that Ve could tell her to knock it off with the wigs already.

Adam's character is called The Crimson Wave, and gets praised by Neville -- rightly -- for having come up with an "overall superhero character," as only he and Logan actually did. They like that it's a comedic character because the proportions are so exaggerated. Glenn likes it for being on-brief from head to toe. When Adam gets back to his place on the side, Rayce stops him to say "Good job," and Adam replies, "Thanks, Dad." hee.

And then there's Stephanie, who gets the review we all knew she was speeding into at 150 mph. Todd McFarlane starts slow by saying he would have liked that extra mask she was holding to have FIT HER FACE, like, duh, and things get worse from there. Glenn tells her she could have done a demon in virtually any other challenge on this show, calling this one derivative -- which Ve backs up by saying it looks like what she did on Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys like thirty years ago. Not great!

When the facetestants leave, the judges get even meaner. Emily is "Marge Simpson as Poison Ivy," per Glenn; Stephanie's sucky paint job was matched in shittiness only by the very obvious shape of her brow prosthetic.

Winner And Loser

Despite my having put "Adam is obviously the winner" in my notes...the winner is actually Logan, which is also fair. And now that Emily's gotten the wig wake-up call she apparently really needed, Stephanie is dismissed. Glenn tells her in her exit speech that it was obvious she wasn't inspired by the challenge (which she denies), and then she tells us she feels good that she made it to "the final seven," as if that's a thing. She also says this is a bittersweet end, particularly since she has to give her final TH in her makeup, which does add an extra layer of pathetic to it. Bye, Stephanie! Work on methods of pushing through artist's block.

Verdict

The idea behind this challenge was obviously to see what the facetestants were like as models, and that makes it completely worth the watch.