Face Off Mortal Sins
Face Off gets religion with a challenge based on the seven deadly sins.
This season’s group house looks like a nice place in a fairly regular suburban neighborhood, instead of the fancy porn mansions from past seasons. But did you notice the hedges in the yard when Laney and Laura were chatting? I’ve never seen 60-foot hedges before.
The challenge is revealed by McKenzie and Glen in a church. Each artist has to create a creature based on one of the seven deadly sins (because there are seven contestants left, of course). They also have to tie each sin’s traditional color into the design. Glen urges everyone not to do the most obvious thing, such as do a challenge based on the seven deadly sins. The gang hangs out in the pews to come up with their weird ideas. Frank decides to do a big fat guy, because if you do the most obvious thing super obviously, it might transcend obviousness.
Quote of the week goes to Laney: “I have a lot of experience with burning things.” Sho’nuff, she did some fine pyro work toasting that money dress.
Most of the designs were pretty boring, but there were two I was excited about. Eddie’s creature with stained glass eyes was just very different. And Laura’s vision of wrath was awesome and should have won. A woman tearing her own bloody face off to reveal a demon skull underneath?! That’s freaking incredible. And the damn show is called Face Off! The only possible improvement would be a makeup of Glen pulling his face off to reveal Ve underneath.
There was this silly “Are we not helping people now?” thing. It’s always been very cool how Face Off’s contestants help each other out. You might buy into Roy’s argument that Miranda has four wins and Tate shouldn’t be taking the time to help her. And to some extent Miranda’s self-doubt has gone from endearing to whiny. But last season’s winner, Anthony, mentioned on Twitter during the episode that, “On our season we helped each other to the end.”
Frank not helping Miranda wouldn’t be a big deal if the editors hadn’t juxtaposed it with him going, “Ok, who wants to help me?” Even if those things didn’t happen two minutes apart, it was still kind of a dick move. I’ve never seen a mold come away from the clay so cleanly. I think Frank used up all his karma on that clean mold.
The guest judge this week was Bryan Fuller. A writer! Finally. It was really obvious how excited Bryan was to be on the show. He had a huge grin all through the judging.
I’ve already explained how I feel about Laura’s wrath. The other middle looks were Eddie and Laney. I liked the seed of Laney’s idea, that greed makes you ugly, but in the end it was just a gross old age makeup. I was expecting the judges to play the “anatomy issues” card. I just wasn’t terribly impressed. This is where I offer the disclaimer that I couldn’t sculpt a cube if I started with a cube, so when I say something was poorly sculpted, I’m speaking relative to other work I’ve seen of Face Off.
Eddie was really underconfident in his envy. It was a little unfinished, I think, but I loved the idea. Building some of the architecture of the church into the cowl was very original. It gave the creature a weird sort of Guillermo del Toro feel, and that is a huge compliment. Given a few more days to refine it, and maybe some input from some other designers and sculptors, and that could have been awesome.
At the bottom we had Frank’s well-crafted but intellectually lazy gluttony. The result was Frank saying, “I’m out, bitches!”
I totally agree with Glen’s criticism of Roy’s pride. The plastic surgery gone awry idea is a very good and creative one, and really fertile ground for all kinds of body horror. But Glen pointed out a bunch of ways Roy could have made that more interesting and obvious, like pulling back the eyebrows. I imagined a flap of skin folded over and sutured across the cheek, revealing skull underneath. Instead it was just some drawn-on stitches. This is the man who has created insane, enormous projects. I can’t help but wonder what the heck Roy was doing all week.
At the top we had Miranda’s lust demon, which was stunningly beautiful and had crisp, clean lines and perfect symmetry. No lust though. Fuller asked for more T&A, which is something I’ll always agree with, but in this case it was really necessary.
Tate won with sloth, a very difficult sin to interpret. Fuller was taken with Tate’s storytelling, and I agree. The spiral staircase and crown were interesting ideas I’d never have thought to incorporate into a makeup, and the snakes binding the model gave it a distinctive silhouette. There was something disturbingly wet about the face and eyes. That whole thing was just terrifically creepy. You looked at that final look and wonder what tortures that poor being had endured.
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Tuesday, October 8th, 2013. Filed under Dark TV, Headline.
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Tags: face off, mortal sins, syfy
