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SyFy Face Off — “Pirate Treasure”

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Face Off 302, Pirate Treasure
On this week’s Face Off, the contestants fought through the pain for a shot at Mckenzie Westmore’s booty, Alana got crabs, and Nicole’s model suffered from a limp mast. This was either the filthiest Face Off ever, or it was pirate themed. Avast.

Before we dive in (hell yeah, puns) to this nautical episode, one last word on Joe Castro’s meltdown last week. This weird video surfaced recently, and I guess it will put to rest any rumors that his nutty behavior was a put-on for the cameras.

With that in our rearview mirrors, let’s move on. I groused about the lack of a prize for the weekly winner, and this week the producers ponied up five large. The prize really lit a fire under the contestants, who received a pirate-themed prop at random that had to be incorporated into their designs.

The work was fraught with medical drama. First, Rod revealed that he’d seriously screwed up his tendons with his speed-sculpting last week. His sea horse character wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, but it was solid, and considering that he had to do a lot of it one-handed makes it pretty damn impressive.

Alana, meanwhile, was a walking calamity. Quote of the week: “I just don’t want to take any more time for bleeding.” A powerful life lesson for us all. Who knew Alana would turn out to be the show’s biggest bad-ass? Well, she’s still suffering from self-doubt and slow molding, but it was great to see the rest of the contestants pull together to help her out. The crab-pirate she eventually created looked pretty awesome to me – so much that I would not have been shocked if she’d made top three.

It was pretty clear that CC was in trouble right from the start, when she confessed to not being great at sketching, and spent hours trying to come up with a design. Her final product wasn’t terrible, just bland and uninspired.

The Face Off Drinking Game. That’s a thing, right? Well, it is now. Every time Ve Neill says, “Bitchin’,” drink!

There were a lot of middle of the road make ups this week, like Tommy’s seaweed guy, Derek’s whatever, and Eric’s spyglass dude (that eyeball was pretty goofy looking). I thought Nicole’s “ship in a bottle” pirate was underrated by the judges. Yeah, the mast had some mechanical issues, but the character had a real feeling of malevolence about him, which is even more impressive since the model was a her.

I can’t argue too much about CC’s dismissal, since she just didn’t have much creativity. Still, Jason’s jewel guy with the octopus stomach was really bad. Worse than bad, it just felt lazy. I’d have sent him packing just for not seeming to give a crap. There was even a hint of a brilliant idea in there – his character exuded greasy, sleazy 70s charm. With jewels as a theme, he could have done a crazy disco pirate creature with mirrorball eyes or something.

Roy’s Dolly Dagger was cool, though the daggers looked too fake. I wish he’d worked in some actual metal on the design to make her look a bit more dangerous. I loved Laura’s shellfish pirate. He was the most alien looking creature. With his shell helmet and the spines angled out from his face, he reminded me of some kind of aquatic/organic Macross Valkyrie fighter.

Then there was Sarah’s haunting, oozing sea urchin queen. She crafted a complete character, from the appliances to the costume to the paint. It wasn’t just, “Ooh, cool design.” There was an emotional resonance there, a level of art beyond what the other contestants created. Glenn hit the nail on the head when he talked about the color palette and the effect it created. Something in this design brought to my mind Japanese ukiyo-e art – I’m not sure if that was intentional, but it was a really interesting flavor to find in a pirate themed design.

There’s really no question who deserved to win, and the judges got it right. Plus, Sarah seems incredibly likable, like she’d be great to work with and bounce crazy ideas back and forth while you hammer out designs.

We’ll see how everyone does with next week’s kinetic performance challenge.

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Posted by on Tuesday, August 28th, 2012. 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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