Clipped! - General Discussion

[ElectricBoogaloo]

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Top topiary artists compete to create larger-than-life living sculptures. Michael Urie hosts and gardening icon Martha Stewart heads a panel of judges (Fernando Wong and Chris Lambton) as they decide who will be "clipped" and who will win the title of Clipped Champion and $50,000!

Airs on Discovery+

Promo:

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by ElectricBoogaloo

[ElectricBoogaloo]

S1.E1: Getting to Know Yew

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The topiary artists carve a work of art out of a yew tree and create fantastic carousel horses.

Original air date: 5/12/21

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Town and Country: The New Series Clipped Explores the Cutthroat World of...Topiary?

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Filming the series offered other pleasures. “Working with Martha was so much fun,” [Fernando Wong] said. “She brought gummies and cookies for everyone. We all stayed in the same hotel and one night Tim [Wong’s partner] and I were just about to go to bed when she called and asked if we wanted to have a drink. Martinis and gossiping about the show in Martha’s room at 10 p.m.? Bliss!”

 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

After watching The Big Flower Fight and Full Bloom, I wasn't sure what to expect from Clipped. What I found really interesting was how different the contestants' backgrounds were. Meghan was a cartographer! Marie used to be a scientist specializing in DNA cloning! I also like all the little pop up factoids we have been getting on the screen about the plants, tools, and techniques that the contestants are using. A hog finger can help you attach burlap, metal, or wood to a welded frame!

I really liked that the topiary challenge was very open ended so that the contestants all had the opportunity to be creative and show their own style. I have never made a topiary so I had no idea if the four hour time limit was reasonable, so when one of the contestants said that this was something they would normally spend 2-3 days on, I was trying to figure out if she was a really slow worker or if the show was trying to screw them royally by only giving them a fraction of the time they actually need. Unfortunately, some of them left a lot to be desired.

Juan's sea turtle could have been a bit cleaner in the shape, which would have made his design more obvious. From certain angles, it just looked like a shaggy, unkempt bush. I liked how he added the turtle's flippers though.

Although everyone was in love with Ed's three layer topiary, I didn't like it. There was a small space between the top few layers, but there was a huge space between before the bottom layer. That made it seem more like a pruning mistake. I was also a little baffled by how many people said his shapes were so clean and precise because I could definitely see big chunks where the shapes were not symmetric.

I could tell that Gibson's topiary had some sort of design but it didn't really read as a queen chess piece to me. I liked the flow of it though.

Ryan's anchor was not very well proportioned/even. The little bar going across the top of the anchor was thicker and longer on the left side. The right side was very short and noticeably thinner. The bottom part of the anchor that curves up at the bottom was also crooked but in the opposite way. The right side was longer and fuller while the left side was much shorter. I liked that he made a rope out of other plants, but the way he draped it onto the anchor didn't look right at all.

Marie's martini was not recognizable as a martini at all. I think her major mistake was not working with the existing shape of the yew tree, which, like a Christmas tree, is full at the bottom and narrow at the top. That is the exact opposite of a martini glass shape. The olive at the top looked more like a musical note. The shape of the martini glass was not sharp or even triangular. It just looked like a blob with a smaller blob on top.

Meghan's fish was even worse. Even though she had said earlier that she was making a fish, when the judges got to her topiary, I had no idea what it was. It looked like a bush that needed some TLC. It looked really terrible.

Jade's cat was also not recognizable as a cat. The only thing that made it slightly better than Meghan's was that I could tell someone had done some work on it, but I still couldn't tell what the hell it was supposed to be.

The carousel challenge was a great idea. I liked that it still gave the contestants a lot of room to be creative. I was trying to figure out why Gibson and Jade were taking so long to weld their frames. At the end of the first five hours, they were the only two who were still in the fabrication tent. Everyone else had already started putting plants into their frames. And then the first thing Gibson did the next day was cut the feet off and weld some more!

I liked that for the main challenge, they were given ten hours but it was broken up into five hour blocks on two different days. I always worry about contestants on competitive reality shows being sleep deprived, especially when they have long challenges like this (I get especially freaked out on Lego Masters when they are given 15 hour challenges - the most recent finale had a 28 hour challenge!).

One things that these contestants do not lack is confidence. So many of them were falling all over themselves to pat themselves on the back, describing themselves as geniuses and giving themselves compliments that they claim were given to them by other people.

Even though I am 99% sure that having the contestants move their structures from the tent to the carousel was the producers hoping that there would be some kind of disaster, I'm mostly okay with it because it does simulate what would happen in real life since they would have to transport their pieces from their workspace to the event space. I was glad to see that there were extra people to help with moving them though. There seemed to be a lot more glue gunning than I expected.

Although I liked the color that Marie's crown of flowers added to her bronco, the crown looked too big to me. It looked more like a hat because it was so huge. The tail of her bronco needed more length because that was a really stumpy tail. My main issue was the shape/pose of her bronco which seemed off and unrealistic. Ha, I had to laugh when she pointed out that Ed was giving her shit for using too many flowers but that he ended up using more flowers than she did.

Ed's horse had some anatomy issues too. It looked like the body was too long and the front legs were too short, which ended up giving his horse a t-rex look. His horse also had a HUGE ass. I laughed when Martha said she has a "chunky" horse. Using sunflowers as the eyes looked like something a kid would do. Although I was fine with him using flowers to show the mouth, using snapdragons made it look messy. It would have looked better if he had used something more compact that he could make into a solid line.

I really liked all the blue that Juan used on his seahorse but I felt the shape (particularly the outline) needed to be cleaner. I could tell it was supposed to be something specific, but if I'd just seen this at an event, I would not have guessed that it was supposed to be a seahorse. The frame had a good shape so I think the issue was the plants he hchose.

Ryan's pegasus would have looked better as a plain horse. Those tiny little purple wings looked too small to let this horse fly. The wheels on the back legs were weird and unnecessary. Not only were the front legs very thin for the heft of the body, but the way the forelegs were curled up seemed anatomically impossible.

Jade's horse had no neck.  She had the flowers piled up way too high on the back of the horse. The chest was sticking out too much. The head looked too small for the body.

I ended up liking Meghan's stag way more than I thought I would. One of the big things in her favor was that she got the shape/anatomy/proportion correct. I liked the manzanita antlers and the flowers.

Gibson's horse looked more like a pinata due to the stumpy front legs and the short neck. I liked the different colored roses he used for the saddle but I didn't like that they weren't in straight lines.

I was surprised that Marie ended up winning this week. I would have given the win to Meghan. Neither of them did well in the quick clip challenge but I thought that Meghan had the best carousel animal.

Bon voyage, Jade!

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Meet the contestants!

Edwin (Ed) “Cowboy” Pequignot
Age: 30
Location: Kent, CT
Occupation: Horticulturist

Ed Pequignot grew up on a family farm in Kent, Connecticut. After an injury cost him his baseball scholarship, he returned home and studied under a traditional English topiary master, who inspired him to launch a high-end garden business of his own. Ed says he earned the nickname “Cowboy” for his trademark western style, a nod to his grandfather who was a farmer and helped raise him. Ed, who is a member of Master Gardeners Association, Master Gardeners Guild of America and Europe, has had his work featured on the cover of Architectural Digest. Now two years sober, Ed says he wants to win this competition to prove to himself, his wife and his 6-year-old daughter that he’s moved on to a big, bright future.

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Jade Rojas
Age: 44
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Occupation: Designer/Topiary Artist/Horticulturist

Jade Rojas is the founder and owner of a floral and botanical design company based in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised in Kew Gardens, Queens, Jade, who grew up in a multi-generational Puerto Rican family, says idyllic summer picnics at the Statue of Liberty and afternoons running through the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her grandparents as a child inspire her design skills and topiary artistry. She started her career as a freelance florist, working for many of New York’s top event companies. Through her work she aims to compel others to cherish our natural world.

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Juan Villanueva
Age: 43
Location: New York, NY
Occupation: Florist/Topiarist/Gardener

Juan Villanueva is from a small ranch town in Texas where he learned to garden by watching his grandmother and helping his mother, a florist. Juan says he chose a career in topiary over the Air Force Academy and has never looked back. After leaving art school in Chicago, he moved to New York with his wife to fulfill his dreams of becoming a floral designer. He now owns his own events and gardening services company and claims to be “New York’s Best Kept Secret” in the topiary world. Juan is an expert in floral design, winning best in show at the Fleurs de Villes competition in New York where he created a dress made of fresh flowers inspired by Cyndi Lauper.

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Marie Danielle Vil-Young
Age: 45
Location: Franklin Park, NJ
Occupation: Wedding and Event Planner/Floral Designer

Marie Danielle Vil-Young defied her family’s expectations in 2008 when she quit her job as a scientist to open her own events business and follow her true passion for event planning and design. Her work has been featured by Forbes, NBC and CBS, and she was named one of the top event planners in the world by Harper’s Bazaar. She approaches her topiary design as both a science and an art, striving for a high-end European feel inspired by her travels and upbringing in Haiti. Marie hopes her hard work will inspire her daughter to be a strong, successful woman.

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Meghan Petricka
Age: 36
Location: Eden Prairie, MN
Occupation: Topiary Designer/Botanical Mosaic Artist

Born the youngest of seven children in rural Minnesota, topiary designer Meghan Petricka says she is passionate, strong-willed and in it to win it. Meghan studied graphic design and typography in college and credits her grandmother for inspiring her love of plants and gardening. She was born deaf in one ear, but considers it a superpower, as it made her a stronger visual artist. Meghan and her husband are a topiary-welding duo and aim to be the Chip and Joanna Gaines of the plant world. Their work has been on display at various theme parks, resorts, hotels, restaurants and museums worldwide.

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Mike “Gibby Siz” Gibson
Age: 34
Location: Youngstown, OH
Occupation: Topiary Expert

Mike Gibson, who started trimming bushes at age seven floral and topiary artist dad, believes topiary design is in his blood. He credits the craft with keeping him focused and productive in his rough neighborhood and was later mentored by Pearl Fryar, the legendary topiary artist. His friends call him “Gibby Scissorhands,” because he is ambidextrous, and known to cut hedges with lightning speed. Mike, who is a new dad, is the owner of a topiary design company. He says he loves to spend his free time working with neighborhood kids, beautifying and “greening” their local parks with topiary.

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Ryan Zoeller
Age: 40
Location: New York, NY
Occupation: Creative Director/Designer

Ryan Zoeller says he has been design-obsessed since he began saving his allowance money at age 11 to buy Wallpaper magazine. Ryan obtained his BFA in interior design from the Massachusetts College of Art while simultaneously serving in the Army Reserves. A self-described visionary force within the special events industry, Ryan creates lush and stylish environments for distinguished clientele, including celebrities, US presidents, royalty and sports figures. In his current role as creative director of a luxury events company, Ryan uses his vast knowledge of floral and botanicals to create curated moments for all company productions. When not overseeing the most complex of event installations, Ryan enjoys his favorite pastimes of collecting everything nautical, being a foodie and watching James Bond films.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Instagram accounts:

Ed
Gibson
Jade
Juan
Marie
Meghan
Ryan

Host:
Michael Urie

Judges:
Martha Stewart
Fernando Wong
Chris Lambton

[nb360]

I loved Meghan's stag and thought it should have won. Marie's horse was nice, though.

No way is Ryan only "40."

[TVbitch]

I liked the stag, too, and thought it would win. I thought the seahorse was going to look amazing based on the animated sketch, but I would not have even been able to tell what it was looking at the finished piece.

These pieces were not as strong as some of the downright magical stuff of a similar scale that was on The Big Flower Fight, but I enjoyed the show.   

[ElectricBoogaloo]

S1.E2: Sod and the City

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The artists pair off to create living rooms with functional sod furniture.

Original air date: 5/19/21

[TVbitch]

Episode 2 was a step down for me. First of all, as I was just complaining about with the new season of Ellen's Design Challenge, having just one challenge per episode is not enough to hold interest. And it was a team challenge to boot! I liked how the first episode had the shorter classic topiary challenge, then the bigger display piece. This one I got bored watching people shove sod around. None of the finished rooms were a "wow", although I did like the winner's room divider.  I feel like we aren't seeing the contestant's best work yet, and hope for more challenges that let them shine. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

S1.E3: A Night at the Museum

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The artists must create gigantic topiaries worthy of a museum exhibition.

Original air date: 5/26/21

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Marie and Ed definitely deserved to be in the bottom two because their finished pieces looked like big lumps. If I had seen either of them at the entrance of a museum, I wouldn't have known what the hell they were supposed to be.

Ed's volcano was much too boxy, and I thought that he used too much yellow. I could have lived with it more if he'd used a darker or more orangish/golden shade of yellow but the lighter shade he used did not say fire or lava to me. I had to laugh about him using so many flowers because I still remember that he was the one who told Marie she was using too many flowers for a topiary competition in the first episode.

Marie's whale needed larger flippers. She also needed to define the whale more. Instead if was just a big blob with two little flippers, which is why it was unrecognizable as a whale.

In contrast, Ryan and Meghan definitely deserved to be in the top two because it was obvious what their creations were at a glance.

When Ryan first said that he was going to do a funny/whimsical t-rex, I thought are you sure about that? It ended up being a fun creation, but I noticed he covered up the plants that made his dinosaur look like it had udders.

Meghan's woolly mammoth wasn't my all time favorite thing, but I appreciated that (1) it looked like what it was supposed to be and (2) she used sisal to create a woolly look so that it didn't just look like an elephant.

Gibb was in the middle for me. His sarcophagus was not great. He kept talking about hieroglyphics so I was waiting to see how he would create that effect but I saw nothing of that even when he was telling the judges that he had.

Congrats to Meghan for winning! Bon voyage, Ed. I noticed that he didn't shake hands or hug anyone after he was eliminated which made me think he didn't really like anyone and just wanted to get the hell out of there.

 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

S1.E4: Tee-Rific Topiaries

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The artists create playful characters for the Clipped mini-golf course.

Original air date: 6/2/21

[ElectricBoogaloo]

If I could be in charge, I would have cut both Marie and Gib because their mini golf topiaries were SO BAD.

Even after Gibson explained that his was supposed to be a dollhouse with PAISLEY written down the side, I couldn't see it because it was so poorly executed. It looked like a big green lump with with pink fluff on the back. The whole thing was bad but I really wish he had abandoned the idea of putting his daughter's name down one side. The P that he spent so much time working on did not look like a P. He said he finished the Y at the bottom but I couldn't see it. What he ended up with after spray painting all that sisal was a giant AISLE. I also hated when he said he wanted the L to be taller because that just made it even harder to read.

The Marie/Gib battle of wills over the pink flowers was so weird that I didn't know whose side to take. On the one hand, it's first come first served so you best get your ass out there to pick out your flowers. Even if you aren't done fabricating, you can still go put the plants you want in your cart. Going with that logic, it's Gib's fault for waiting so long to get his flowers. But on the other hand, they were each assigned a specific color to use and it was shitty of Marie to take all of the pink lilies. The whole conversation between them ("If you want anything, tell me" vs "I need pink flowers") was so passive aggressive.

If Martha was THAT pissed about Meghan's octopus being unplayable, then I can't understand why she gave Marie a pass on her terribly conceived and designed gnome princess. That ramp was WAY too steep to be played and even after Martha managed to get her golf ball up there, Marie didn't design the top properly so the ball just sat there instead of being sloped down to the second ramp/hole. Marie's was a complete failure because it was not playable at all.

I really liked Meghan's blue and purple octopus. Despite Martha's complaints about how difficult it was to play, I've been to mini golf places with a similar obstacle. You have to hit the ball harder to get it past that part. And really, if they'd had more time to execute this challenge, Meghan could have easily just created more structure at the bottom so that the octopus would be higher, which would make it easier to hit your ball if it somehow got stuck under the octopus. I thought she designed a very creative and pretty course.

I wasn't crazy about Ryan's teddy bear. It was big but that was about it. I didn't mind the front (although I didn't like the white on the stomach - it would have looked better if he had made it a solid white to resemble a stuffed teddy bear) but the back with all the yellow flowers was ridiculous. I get that he was trying to incorporate the yellow color he was assigned but I think there was a better way to do it.

[TVbitch]

This show has dropped to the bottom of my "creative competition" viewing list because the level of execution is so poor. Maybe it is not the contestants fault and they are not given enough time and/or the right materials, but these works do not even come remotely close to what the artists on "The Big Flower Fight" produced. A lot of these finished pieces look like giant mounds of a mish mash of botanicals. I would have no idea what they were meant to be. Even the ones that I can recognize do not have the precision, color schemes, and magical flourishes that the UK artists came up with.  

[ElectricBoogaloo]

8 hours ago, TVbitch said:

This show has dropped to the bottom of my "creative competition" viewing list because the level of execution is so poor. Maybe it is not the contestants fault and they are not given enough time and/or the right materials, but these works do not even come remotely close to what the artists on "The Big Flower Fight" produced. A lot of these finished pieces look like giant mounds of a mish mash of botanicals. I would have no idea what they were meant to be. Even the ones that I can recognize do not have the precision, color schemes, and magical flourishes that the UK artists came up with.  

I'm totally clueless about how long it should take to make any of the stuff that's done on this show, so I have no idea if the time limits are tight but reasonable or completely ridiculous. I do remember Meghan saying that one of the things she made would normally take her 2-3 days but even with that statement, I don't know if that means she is a slow worker or if the show is asking the impossible with the challenge requirements and time limits.

I think one of the differences is that on The Big Flower Fight, they came onto the show in teams of two so not only did they have two pairs of hands to create their designs but they had (hopefully) worked together before the show so they knew how to communicate with each other. On Clipped, they do get assistance from the fabricators but from what we saw in one of the previous episodes, they are only allowed to do EXACTLY what the contestants tell them to do which means that the contestants have to basically supervise them rather than being able to have two people working simultaneously.

I mean, the other possibility is that the people on Clipped are awful at what they do. Whatever the explanation, there have been way too many finished designs that just look like big blobs of green.

[TVbitch]

I had forgotten The Big Flower Fight was teams! ... ...but still.

Edited June 7, 2021 by TVbitch

[ElectricBoogaloo]

S1.E5: Bust a Move

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The artists must create topiary sculptures of bodies in motion.

Original air date: 6/9/21

Edited June 10, 2021 by ElectricBoogaloo

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Have any of these people ever seen human beings in motion? Based on their sculptures, I would say NO.

Meghan said she took dance classes as a kid, but she created a ballerina in a position that was completely unnatural. She also claimed it was an arabesque but when the knee is bent, that is an attitude, not an arabesque. Ballet also has very specific arm positions, which do not include "throw your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care." The supporting leg should have been straight but I think it was bent due to the weight. The torso shouldn't have been leaned back either. Overall, it looked like someone caught in a slip and fall. I did love the way she made the skirt with flowers though.

Ryan said he was a cheerleader. My sister cheered in high school and college. We used to watch the annual cheer competitions on ESPN every year. Not once have I ever seen a male cheerleader with his leg in a turned out passé position as his sculpture had. In cheer, the knee would be facing forward, not turned out to the side. He lucked out with the bamboo onto the megaphone. He should have left the face alone because it looked terrible. The head was slightly too small for the size of the body.

Marie's basketball player was awful. The pose was not basketball specific. It looked like a guy with his hands up. The headband looked terrible and the right arm was anatomically incorrect so it looked really bad. The hands were also WAY too big, like freakishly so. But for me, the biggest problem was that if you took away the basketball hoop, it was not clear at all what the hell she made.

There were problems with everyone's creations this week so I would have said no one won this challenge. By process of elimination, Marie had the most problems with her sculpture so she was the right one to go home.

[TVbitch]

Oof, that was not pleasant to look at. Those heads/faces will give me nightmares! 

[TVbitch]

I'm gutted for Ryan. Dude lives and breathes topiary and has always had the biggest smile on his face while creating. Honestly, I actually liked Megan's final space better just cuz Ryan's was so busy I couldn't really tell what was going on. BUT, Megan had wire and water tubing showing! Her water feature was just a shower head at the end of the tubing! And her step decoration was an ugly nothing. The judges only negative comment about Ryan's was the plastic ivy. At the very least they should have been even on the final pieces, and Ryan has done better throughout the competition and I think deserved to win. As soon as Megan said her piece was all about her "tragic" deaf in one ear story (and ps. don't forget her dad is sick!) I'm like, oh no, they are gonna give it to her! It's like they wanted that final moment where she calls her dad ...and then he barely reacts. 

Winner aside, the show needs some serious retooling. For me, one challenge is not enough to hold my interest. I actually was FFing over 10-15 minutes of the build in each episode. And either make the challenges simpler or give them more time, cuz a lot of these builds were not worth the wait. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

SEASON FINALE!

S1.E6: The Garden of Champions

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The finalists race for Clipped Champion with an immersive garden challenge.

Original air date: 6/16/21

[TVbitch]

Oh dear Lord, if ever there was a show that did NOT need a NINETY (!!)  minute retrospective after the season was over, it is this show.