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Face Off – It’s Better in the Dark

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Face Off It's Better in the Dark

It’s lights out on Face Off, and two contestants are eliminated. Plus, food poisoning!

Last week I made fun of the weekly, “I’m so sad that {person who was eliminated last week} is gone,” that starts off every episode. When Autumn was eliminated, I kind of wondered if it would hold true this week. It did not. Foxy put a hand to his ear and said, “Listen!” Moment of silence. “No negativity!” I guess Autumn won’t be missed.

Before we go any further, I have to fix something that’s amiss. This episode was titled “It’s Better in the Dark,” but they didn’t make a single reference to the Dio song of the same name. So go listen to it now. I’ll be here when you get back.

There’s only one challenge this week – out at some ocean caves, a surprisingly symmetrical McKenzie reveals that the goal is to create a creature that could plausibly exist on Earth. Something heretofore undiscovered. Later in the episode, producer John Landau (Titanic, Avatar) is brought in to guest judge. And that’s cool. But this would have been an awesome opportunity to have, say, a marine biologist, or an expert in bioluminescent creatures to judge. That would have been more interesting than the parade of Hollywood insiders.

Speaking of bioluminescence, in addition to the basic creature design, the challenge requires a second paint job that would show up under UV lights. Or, as Meagan put it, “Bio-lumina-whatever. I don’t even know what that is.” When they back to the lab, a hidden UV light message reveals that two contestants will be eliminated this week. I’m already feeling worried for Meagan, because she’s struggled at times throughout the season. I haven’t been a fan of her concepts, but I’ve grown to like her goofball ditziness, and she did a great job on those zombies last week.

But her situation gets even worse when a bout of food poisoning sends her to the hospital, missing an entire day at the lab. Her sideways venus flytrap faced creature was quite cool, but flawed (muddy paint job, not the best sculpt I’ve seen). Even with her illness in mind, it wasn’t enough. So the last female contestant has been sent home.

Eric Z. had a good plan for a cave dwelling creature, but all he really had was a head piece that wasn’t that impressive. It was a nice idea to model it after a cool rock formation he saw, but the end result was just…lumpy. And his UV paint was pretty sad. As Glen said, it looked like child’s fingerpainting. So, Eric Z. was sent home as well.

The other bottom look was House, who put together an uninspired fish person. There’s honestly not much to say about it. Fish dude. Sloppy paint job. House has skills, but he has off weeks now and then, and this was one of them. Luckily it didn’t get him sent home.

Foxy. Hell yeah, no matter what the judges say, he keeps having huge, crazy ideas and running with them, even when he knows he’s at constant risk of total failure. He came close this week, not really finishing his jellyfish woman. But the idea, making her outer skin translucent with the UV paint revealing an internal skeletal structure and organs, was mad genius. And he pulled off the internals. There’s a certain kind of producer who’s going to want to hire Fox. Someone who wants to create a truly transgressive, original, brilliant creature, something no one’s ever seen before.

Wayne’s crab creature featured an intricately detailed face sculpt that was a wonder to behold. Watching him at work was very cool. If only we’d seen more of that. Honestly, ten solid minutes of Wayne sculpting would be infinitely more interesting to watch than Glen and Neville poking at someone’s makeup and making snide comments. The chest piece was well done too. As usual, Wayne didn’t leave himself much time for the paint job (something he acknowledged). It still looked excellent, although his UV paint felt incomplete. I liked how it highlighted the fins, but the torso needed some black light action too.

The instant you saw Anthony’s squiddy-faced creature, you knew he was going to win this week. It was detailed, weird, and yet very expressive. And in a challenge that was about paint as much as anything else, Anthony smartly spent a lot of time working on blending his paints, testing UV paint in the dark room, and creating a stunning paint job. Vivid, yet realistic colors. I loved the red hands and feet. And under the UV light, there was a complete transformation of color and shape.

Anthony is still the clear favorite to win, but we’re at that point now where everyone left is incredibly talented and capable of doing amazing work. One bad week could send you home. Worse, you might do the best work of your life and it still won’t be enough in the final five.

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Posted by on Tuesday, March 5th, 2013. Filed under Dark TV, Headline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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