S05.E15: Fight to the Finale

[thewhiteowl]

 

The last four artists battle it out with emotional outbursts, explosive fights, incredible tattoos and total fails.

 

 

 

[Iguana]

Let me guess...

"emotional outbursts" = random clips of inktestants shouting that they aren't going home and/or Jason having a meltdown;

"explosive fights" = the repetitive petty bitchery about each others tattoos;

"incredible tattoos" = one tattoo doesn't suck; and

"total fails" = pretty much this whole season.

[murf1013]

Josh really should've had that 3rd spot ... dumbass!

[phoenix780]

I have to give it up to the producers of this show, because they managed to create a surprising amount of tension and drama out of a foregone conclusion. 

 

Though I would have gone the route of having a final 2 and telling the others that if they can't pull off a decisive victory to even get to the finale there's no reason to have them there.  And I may have found a way to feature the quiet guy who's name I barely remember, with the face piercing by his eye.

 

Love the twist- let's get ugly-ass tattoos in the finale, too.  Perfect frickin' cap to the season. 

 

Is this the first time since the first season they've acknowledged New School as a legitimate style?  It seems like they tend to ignore it, and they rarely have it as something they're testing people on far as I can remember..

[Muffyn]

They would have done better to just send two to the finale or scrap the whole damn thing.  There were yet again some really disappointing tattoos.  

 

Hey, Jason was "freaking out".  There's something we've never seen before. 

 

That boob/naked lady skull that Mark did was hideous.

 

phoenix780, my thoughts exactly on the twist for the finale.  So now we will potentially have three "canvases" with 35 hour full back tattoos that are the tattooers worst work.  Perfect.  It's not like they could get cover ups if they don't like what they get.  

[MuMuGuy]

I already knew who the final 3 would be for a while, so meh. As far as the elimination tattoos, Cleen obviously had the best one, but Eric's wasn't bad. Jason's geisha was jacked and I couldn't tell what Mark's was supposed to be. I would've been fine with a 2-person finale as well. In the final tattoo, Jason's bird was the worst. The only thing that saved Jason was Mark's bad report card since he was on the bottom frequently, with his only wins being the face off with Eric and a flash challenge. The flash challenge with the head phones was more of a win by Cleen since he took the reins in that one.

 

 

Josh really should've had that 3rd spot ... dumbass!

 

Part of me still wonders if they came up with the whole marijuana angle to make for a more interesting finale. I'm pretty sure all of the contestants know what weed smells like, so it seems a little suspicious that it took so long for someone to notice that someone was smoking. I wouldn't be surprised if the producers made a backstage deal with Josh to get him to leave the competition. Josh was clearly the best artist this season and was the only one with enough charisma to be able to negotiate with his clients, so the producers wanted to make the finale a contest, when Josh would've won for sure had he remained.

Edited December 10, 2014 by MuMuGuy

[Dirtybubble]

That boob/naked lady skull that Mark did was hideous.

Mark should have been given his walking papers for that jacked up tat right then and there!  UGH that thing was atrocious!

 

ITA that if Josh was still here he would have been in the finale 3.  I still don't think he is good enough to beat Cleen though; I seem to remember some of Josh's tats were kinda jacked lookin' as well.   As much as Cleen's attitude bugs me he isn't talking out of his ass--he really is as good as he says he is.  He's pretty much got this wrapped up.

 

Part of me still wonders if they came up with the whole marijuana angle to make for a more interesting finale. I'm pretty sure all of the contestants know what weed smells like, so it seems a little suspicious that it took so long for someone to notice that someone was smoking. I wouldn't be surprised if the producers made a backstage deal with Josh to get him to leave the competition.

I've wondered this myself--if it's true it must have been a pretty sweet deal the producers and Josh made for him to go out like this though....

[phoenix780]

So now we will potentially have three "canvases" with 35 hour full back tattoos that are the tattooers worst work.  Perfect.  It's not like they could get cover ups if they don't like what they get.

 

I hadn't even thought about the permanence of it, which is weird since it's a tattoo.  I wonder if they told the people that when they recruited, as in "you can be a blank canvas for a great artist...who will be forced to draw in their worst style."  

 

I don't think the Josh situation was invented.  Manipulated and strategically used, sure, but I'd say he was doing something wrong.  Sucks for the show that people are still talking about him, at least here, and not the people still in the competition.

[thewhiteowl]

New School is not to my taste but I think they did Jason a favor since every time he has done his supposed specialty of Japanese. it has been underwhelming to disastrous.

Eric's bird was stunning, he may give Cleen some real competition.  

Mark's titty skull made me want to do him physical harm.

Josh, who?

[LoneHaranguer]

 

New School is not to my taste but I think they did Jason a favor since every time he has done his supposed specialty of Japanese. it has been underwhelming to disastrous.

Jason said he was going to do New School Japanese. He could still win if the others mismanage their time.

[thewhiteowl]

 New School Japanese sounds to me like an awesome disaster but to each their own. I didn't think Japanese style pin-up would be a Geisha but that seemed okay to all. You are right, he could win but IMO only if some one breaks all of Cleen's and Eric's fingers.

[Eliza422]

My dvr cut off the last few minutes...what styles did the guys get? I only heard Jason got new school.

[thewhiteowl]

Cleen and Eric got color realism.

[Rancide]

The idiot parade continues.  There's no reason to get gleeful about your ability to screw your competition when they're going to get the opportunity to screw you.  The strategically smart thing to do is to enter into an agreement among yourselves that everyone gets assigned a style they're good at.  This is clearly the winning strategy if you think your best is better than your competition's best which, for some reason, all these idiots seem to.  Everyone screws everyone else is only the winning strategy if you think you're a really good all-around tatooer, and you think your opponents have big weak spots such that their worst is going to be worse than your worst. 

 

Plus, if you cooperate, then all the canvases get good tattoos instead of shitty tattoos, which I would hope is something the contestants care about.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Rancide

[LoneHaranguer]

 

This is clearly the winning strategy if you think your best is better than your competition's best which, for some reason, all these idiots seem to.

A contestant wouldn't agree to that if he thinks the judges are biased against his best, which is likely what they believe after being criticized, instead of recognizing that they're not as good as they think.

[thewhiteowl]

This show as rarely, if ever been concerned abut the canvas getting a good tattoo, I would be shocked if that changed.

[psychoticstate]

I miss Josh.

 

Color me confused as to what the entire purpose of the first tattooing was for, other than to send Cleen to the finale, which . .  DUH.  Mark's tattoo was hideous and he did not follow orders, so to speak, but had absolutely no ramifications for it.  Excuse me?  He didn't get a verbal ass whipping, he wasn't told to pack his machine.  Just ridiculous.

 

Add me to the group of posters who are miffed and angry that by allowing competitors to choose the finale tattoo style, the show is potentially condemning the canvases to a jacked up, fugly ass tattoo.   I've personally never cared for ANY of the finale tattoos because I find them too large, too extreme and too showy.  I think it would be much better to allow the inkestant to select whatever tattoo the canvas would like, placed wherever he or she would like and judge that, along with the overall body of work from the entire season.  But hey, that's just me.

 

Jason may be a perfectly nice guy and do good work back home but after watching him and his neverending anxiety attacks this season, I would never want to get ink from him.  Where is Josh and his pot when Jason needs it?

 

Why was Cleen so surprised that he got a spot in the finale?  He's been telling us and everyone else all season that he's going to be in the finale.

 

I miss Josh. 

[whirlingdervish]

I miss Josh.

 

Color me confused as to what the entire purpose of the first tattooing was for, other than to send Cleen to the finale, which . .  DUH.  Mark's tattoo was hideous and he did not follow orders, so to speak, but had absolutely no ramifications for it.  Excuse me?  He didn't get a verbal ass whipping, he wasn't told to pack his machine.  Just ridiculous.

 

My guess is that they had originally planned to send the top two straight to the finale, with the bottom two facing off in a head-to-head tattoo...and they just didn't have a clear-cut 2nd place tattoo. 

 

I really hated this idea that a Japanese pin-up HAS to be a hackneyed geisha (or, for that matter, this idea that any Japanese woman in a kimono is automatically a geisha, JASON).  There's lots of beautiful Japanese imagery of beautiful women in various states of dress without trafficking in that geisha stereotype.  Learn a little about the culture in whose art you claim to specialize, bro.  Or, at the very least, if you're going to traffic in stereotype, at least to a good job of it...that thing had not one ounce of sensuality or charm...it looked like my obaasan wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her kimono after eating an overly ripe persimmon. 

 

As far as the finale, I would much rather the finalists just get to do their very best full-back tattoo interpretation of something a client asks for, like they did on Best Ink. Let's see these artists at their best, already.  Gawd knows we've seen plenty of their worst.  

[qtpye]

I really hated this idea that a Japanese pin-up HAS to be a hackneyed geisha (or, for that matter, this idea that any Japanese woman in a kimono is automatically a geisha, JASON).  There's lots of beautiful Japanese imagery of beautiful women in various states of dress without trafficking in that geisha stereotype.  Learn a little about the culture in whose art you claim to specialize, bro.  Or, at the very least, if you're going to traffic in stereotype, at least to a good job of it...that thing had not one ounce of sensuality or charm...it looked like my obaasan wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her kimono after eating an overly ripe persimmon.

 

 

Just Google "Japanese Pin-up" and behold the huge variety of beautiful and cool imagery.  I am beginning to think Jason's expertise in Japanese extends to having seen a couple of Godzilla movies.

 

Make did himself no favors coming on this show.  His many years of tattooing expertise was not apparent and he often came off delusional.

 

Cleen showed five seconds of humanity when he said that good things did not often happen to guys like him.  Of course that did not last.