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S09.E05: The Gatekeepers

ElectricBoogaloo

By ElectricBoogaloo
in Face Off [V]

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Monty9

Monty9

I do think that this season's competitors are much better than last. The Foundation challenge faces were pretty good.

 

Libby: something like " I'm scared that Meg has immunity because if we've both been in the bottom several times and if we get bottom looks I'll be sent home".

 Do you know how this works? 1st if you are in bottom looks there is another team in bottom looks and they could get sent home too. 2nd. If you've been in bottom looks several times and then get in bottom looks AGAIN maybe you deserve to go home. Maybe that means you are not that good yet and need to go practice more.

 

Aw Matt. Your chest looks pretty damn fine. You don't need the chest piece for enhancement.

 

The non-Libby bottom team's (sorry too many contestants, still haven't learned names) non-snake look looked like a compost pile threw up.

And the snake look maker who has also been on the bottom a lot looked so stressed I thought his head would pop off. His bug out eyes were kind of unsettling.

 

The winning look was indeed amazing. Good job.

 

 

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GaT

GaT

All around good work this week, the foundation challenge stuff was impressive. I really liked Nora's beauty makeup & for some reason, it made me think of Austin Powers LOL. Both of the top two teams did really great jobs. Libby, I don't even remember you.

 

Has Glenn always had those bright blue eyes? They can't possibly be his real color eyes.

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Maelstrom

Maelstrom

Storms knocked out my satellite last night, so my DVR only recorded the first half of the show. And for once SyFy isn't reairing the episode half a million times in the near future. So I guess I'll have to watch it on their website sometime. Annoying.

 

Liked the Foundation challenge. It's always nice when they do them, and the inkblot idea is pretty cool.

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azshadowwalker

azshadowwalker

 Do you know how this works? 1st if you are in bottom looks there is another team in bottom looks and they could get sent home too. 2nd. If you've been in bottom looks several times and then get in bottom looks AGAIN maybe you deserve to go home. Maybe that means you are not that good yet and need to go practice more.

, 

The fact remains that being paired with Meg means there is one fewer person who could possibly be sent home. Also, it's usually someone from the worst team who does go home. It's never good to be paired with someone who has immunity, especially if they are not really into helping, as Meg didn't appear to be. Meg really didn't need to worry about the one she was doing so much at the end when Libby asked for help. They all essentially did their own make-up. If you're not going home no matter what you do, help your teammate. It's not like her focus on her own model improved that look all that much, anyway.

 

Anyway, didn't really care that Libby left, but I would be happy to see Meg go soon. Her teary-eyed look is getting to me. That "snake" was also seriously fucked up, and I would have been fine with it going. I didn't see much grasp of anatomy there, either. Does the dude even know what a snake looks like? The statue wasn't as horrible as the other three in the bottom. Since Meg couldn't be sent packing, either Libby or the duck-faced snake were equally okay choices.

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Ketzel

Ketzel

I was over Libby when she got all dramatic about dropping her cowl on the floor. I saw the damage and I work with clay. Pick it up, reshape the curve with a couple of smacks and then run whatever tool she'd been using to create the striations over the surface again. Whole problem fixed in less than a minute. I assumed, when she started wailing about all the lost time, that she had dropped the face piece, or at the very least, had damaged the detail work on the top of the cowl. But flattening a small part of the back of the head sculpt? If you have to drop your work on the floor, that damage was the very definition of "No Big Deal."

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CherZ

CherZ

I think it's Meg's time to go. She's been in the bottom too many times and isn't really getting any better.

 

Jordan and Ben are my new favorites along with Nora, whom I still like. Was funny to see - on Twitter last night Tom Savini praised Nora's work, of course she went to his school but it was still sweet to see.

 

Unsure of next week - not a Trekkie so it's not that interesting to me, also I'm super tired of aliens.

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Ketzel

Ketzel

Did I miss something...was there some requirement that the gatekeepers would be mostly glamour women and the creatures they are guarding have to be some brutish character? I find them falling into stereotypes so easily, which surprises me considering how relatively young they are.

I also found the "Beauty and the Beast" pairings obvious and annoying. But I think their youth and inexperience is a big part of the problem. They don't have a huge range of experiences to draw from yet, their imagination is somewhat limited to what they already know and they may not recognize a cliché when they design it. Or if they do, they believe they have been creative and edgy when they make the "Beauty" the guard and the "Beast' the prisoner. Eh, not so much, especially when the Beauty is dressed like a comicon fantasy cosplayer.

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Mindymoo

Mindymoo

I thought Jason's snake looked like one of Bowser's kids from New Super Mario Bros.

 

Really enjoyed the top looks this week. Nora and Jasmine's pieces were on point, but I understood why they gave the win to Jordan and Ben's fauns. They really did look like they belonged together. And I'm rooting for Jordan for the dumbest reason: he looks like a doppelganger of my little cousin. Meg really can go home any time, though. I wanted them to revoke immunity so badly when she was up on stage.

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Pandora

Pandora

I also found the "Beauty and the Beast" pairings obvious and annoying. But I think their youth and inexperience is a big part of the problem. They don't have a huge range of experiences to draw from yet, their imagination is somewhat limited to what they already know and they may not recognize a cliché when they design it.

 

I found it amusingly Freudian---good looking woman guards "gate" from big brutish male. Gosh, what could be going on there?

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Richness

Richness

Every time I see that yellow feather mullet snake person, I burst out laughing. The judges could barely contain their laughter and contempt for it as well. Glenn's Land of the Lost comment was spot on. Of course, I know he added the feathers as a last minute cover-up for problems, but that doesn't exempt it from the well-deserved critiques.

 

Of course, his partner's... thing... wasn't much better. The head was nothing but a confused mess of colors and shapes. I *think* I can see some intended facial features if I squint and look at it just right from far away, but the overall thing was just a bad brown mess.

 

I think either of the two guys should have went home over Libby. At least she tried. While she failed at sculpting, at least it didn't make me LOL or ask WTF.

 

I actually thought Meg's was decent, with a beautiful paint job, even if Glenn thought it's form structure was bad. I'm glad her dirty river mermaid won the immunity though. I loved the coral sponge crown/crest. The other top look in the Foundation Challenge was also an incredible beauty make-up, but on a *man* for a wonderful change. The character looked like a fabulously colorful space rogue prince.

 

Of course, I agree whole-heartedly with the judges for the top looks and the winner. Jordan's ram beast was phenomenal! However, I wasn't as taken by the Jose green slug creature as Ve. I thought the red gatekeeper was absolutely gorgeous, and the better of the two. And while they looked different, I saw more similarity in their looks than the PTV reviewer did thanks to their long, oblong heads.

 

I also loved Stevie and Evan's sci-fi aliens with the round control device on the foreheads. However, their wardrobes are a bit questionable with the gatekeeper's translucent cowled cape and shiny waistband. I also loved Glenn's comment about wanting the pleather jumpsuit for himself, though that's not a visual I needed.

 

My only complaint about this episode was offering immunity during a team challenge. I knew the moment they mentioned immunity, I knew their partner was going bye bye. If you must offer immunity in a team challenge, only offer it when there are teams of 3 or more people. That way, if the immune person phones in their work, the other one isn't automatically sent home. Granted, this wasn't as bad a situation as it could have been since each team member was able to focus on their own model. But if two contestants had to do combine their efforts on a single model, the situation could have been even more dire.

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starri

starri

My only complaint about this episode was offering immunity during a team challenge. I knew the moment they mentioned immunity, I knew their partner was going bye bye. If you must offer immunity in a team challenge, only offer it when there are teams of 3 or more people.

I'm pretty sure the Foundation Challenges with immunity (instead of some other prize) almost always happen before team challenges.  Probably amps up the drama when the immune person just phones it in.  In fact, of the top of my head, I think Anthony Kosar and Emily may have been the only time where immunity winners were still in top-looks.  Emily for sure, with the body painting challenge.

 

I appreciated that Jason and Ricky were the only pair not to do female guardian/male prisoner.  And I giggled about Glen's pronouncement that the snake was "Panic in three dimensions."  And that is the last nice thing I can say about it.

 

I actually liked all of the non-bottom looks this week, although I do agree that Ben/Jordan and Jasmine/Nora were the best.  If Jasmine and Nora's two creatures had fit together a little better, I might have thought the winner should have been Jasmine, because the beauty makeup on her model was gorgeous.

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LoneHaranguer

LoneHaranguer

 

Would an advanced race put a beauty queen at the gate, or would they have a sleek and powerful robot?

An advanced race could make a robot look like whatever it wanted, and what makes you think they would have the same idea of what's beautiful?

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Maverick

Maverick

I'm a child of the 70s, so whenever they showed Jason's creature it made me think a sleestak from Land of the Lost had gone to Mardi Gras and won some awesome lime green beads.  

 

 I don't wanna know what he had to flash to get those.

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needschocolate

needschocolate

(edited)

Norah's attitude is making her my favorite this season. This show is known for its lack of drama contestants, but Norah takes this to a new level. She is always happy for the others and nothing fazes her, unlike that woman a few seasons ago (bright pinki/red hair, stayed way too long, always asking for help and running around willy nilly) or even Libby with her "catastrophic" sculpt dent.  

 

I am not sure that Norah has what it takes to win this, but she has a personality that will help her succeed after she's off the show.  

 

Meg and Libby seem like nice, pleasant people, but I think they are both too inexperienced for this competition.  Meg might have done okay in the season with the mentors, but Libby needs a lot more time.

 

Did I miss something...was there some requirement that the gatekeepers would be mostly glamour women and the creatures they are guarding have to be some brutish character?  Is there some rule book that they can't apply a glamorous makeup to a guy and something more beastly to the women?  I find them falling into stereotypes so easily, which surprises me considering how relatively young they are.  There seems to be a real surplus of red and purple makeup on the show this year...I guess if it doesn't bother the judges, it shouldn't bother me but yet it does for some reason.

 

Most of the teams had one male and one female model.  Which gave them two options - smaller female guarding the gate holding the bigger "monster" or big male guarding the gate holding the smaller "monster."  I can see why they choose to go with the female as gatekeeper.  It would lose a lot of the "drama" of the backstory if a large gatekeeper moved to the side and a small monster came out growling - may have had an unintentional comic effect.  Theoretically, it is possible, but it is easier to have the larger model be the creature.  It would be more difficult to make the prisoner seem imposing or dangerous if the gatekeeper was 6-8 inches taller than the monster.  

 

As for making the gatekeeper "pretty" and the prisoner "ugly" - people expect the hero to be good looking and the villain to be less so.  If they would have switched it, they would runt he risk of the judges saying "Why is the gatekeeper so creepy looking" or "why did they do beauty make-up on the prisoner."

Edited by needschocolate
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PepperMonkey

PepperMonkey

Nora is my current favourite, too. I also like the "older" guy - is it Scott? And I love Jasmine, so far.

 

I don't care for Meg at all. She got lucky yesterday with the win and immunity because other than that ONE time, she has been terrible. I'm sure she's a perfectly lovely human being but she just does not have the chops for this.

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

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I am still laughing at the thought of those feathers. It was like Jan from the Muppets and Farrah Fawcett had a hair baby.

 

I was over Libby when she got all dramatic about dropping her cowl on the floor. I saw the damage and I work with clay. Pick it up, reshape the curve with a couple of smacks and then run whatever tool she'd been using to create the striations over the surface again. Whole problem fixed in less than a minute. I assumed, when she started wailing about all the lost time, that she had dropped the face piece, or at the very least, had damaged the detail work on the top of the cowl. But flattening a small part of the back of the head sculpt? If you have to drop your work on the floor, that damage was the very definition of "No Big Deal."

ITA - that was NOTHING compared to some of the other things that have happened to people's pieces on this show. I know it's frustrating when you have to fix something, especially when you have a limited amount of time, but that was so minor. It's not like she had to resculpt something really delicate/intricate or she shattered something into a million pieces. If that had happened to Nora, she probably wouldn't have even said anything. She would have picked it up, slapped it into shape, and then kept on going.

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needschocolate

needschocolate

With respect, I just don't agree. Some of the most poisonous insects/reptiles/plants are relatively small and therefore fairly dangerous.  Given the fact that judges are well educated, I think they would appreciate out-of-the-box thinking---or I am giving them too much credit.  They did what they did and most people seem satisfied. It matters little that I'm not.

 

I don't think our opinions are that far apart - what I was trying to say (and perhaps didn't do such a good job of) is that the route they took was more typical (or stereotypical) and was, therefore, the easier and safer route.  And, because it was easier and safer, I can understand why they took it.  I feel that many of these people do not have the confidence at this point to try to do something more "daring."  I wouldn't have been surprised if some of the past contestants would have gone the small prisoner and large guard route.  

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LoneHaranguer

LoneHaranguer

 

I feel that many of these people do not have the confidence at this point to try to do something more "daring."

To some extent this is a casting issue. There have been prior seasons when contestants were turning practically everything into monsters, even when the judges were obviously looking for beauty makeup. It's what they knew and could do well in the limited time, so they'd bend the challenges as much as possible to fit. This group's wheelhouse may be more beauty makeup with some classic horror effects on guys.

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akr

akr

Still, how much of a stretch would it have been to imagine a tiny and lethal monster who had to be kept in check by a large, powerful guard?

 

Good idea. Wish they hadn't all been assigned (or did they choose?) a male and a female model; my initial thought on male imprisoning smaller female was that it had too much potential icky sex slave vibe to it, and in a hurry in an early challenge, maybe it's best to play it safe and not land in the bottom by being both unsuccessful and seriously off-putting. Also, the grandiose gates make it seem unnecessary to have a large imposing creature standing guard over something smaller and less threatening looking. It's overkill, story-wise. If you have the gates, you don't need a monster gatekeeper, and why have the gates if you don't have something particularly difficult to contain within them? 

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LittleIggy

LittleIggy

I think the guy who did the "snake" should have gone home. It was laughable and, as someone already noted, with Glenn harping on anatomy knowledge, it's "snake anatomy" was effed up. What did Glenn even mean about "anatomy"? Libby's creature was an alien so couldn't it have whatever alien anatomy she wanted? I've wondered about this before.

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starri

starri

I think the guy who did the "snake" should have gone home. It was laughable and, as someone already noted, with Glenn harping on anatomy knowledge, it's "snake anatomy" was effed up. What did Glenn even mean about "anatomy"? Libby's creature was an alien so couldn't it have whatever alien anatomy she wanted? I've wondered about this before.

I think when Glenn is harping on the "anatomy" being bad, it's not so much that they're supposed to be faithfully replicating something that exists, it's that the sculpture is done in a way that the placement of the bones and muscles COULD actually exist.  Without that, it's just lumps of clay on a canvas, more like the the dreaded "Halloween mask" that will almost always get someone sent home.

 

Probably the worst example of bad anatomy we've seen this season was the groom in Missy and Jason's wedding make up.  The judges pointed out that the direction the groom's facial muscles were sagging was wrong (not being pulled down by gravity), but even worse was the shoulder piece.  It was just a lump that was supposed to look like a broken bone.  Except that's not what a shoulder fracture looks like, and for that matter, it's not what an avulsion fracture of the humerus looks like either.

 

Anyway, I doubt Jason is going to be around much longer anyway.  But Libby's problem, in addition to the bad sculpture was the terrible paint job.

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John.G

John.G

Another thing that bugged me in this episode, and many before it: Why do we always hear people talking about a requirement, real or imagined, that characters look like they 'tie together' in these challenges? Gatekeeper and evil thing should be different, not the same, in my opinion. The 'otherness' of the thing behind the gate should be part of the story. Heck, Jasmine and Nora's two characters didn't match, and it earned them a top look!

There was an 'alien planet' challenge one year where bottom looks were criticized for not being matchy-matchy. As if things must have unifying features to be from the same world. Come on, there are plenty of species pairs from Earth that don't look like each other. Jellyfish / anything with bones. Starfish / anything with bilateral symmetry. Massive, bulky elephant / petite, delicate gazelle. Glenn and Patrick.

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mlp

mlp

 

Glenn and Patrick.

 

ROTFL! 

 

Good points though.  You'd be more apt to fear and capture a creature not like yourself and, therefore, more fearsome - unless, of course, it's not threatening.  We don't run screaming from lobsters.

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carrps

carrps

That chiquita banana snake had me dying of laughter.

I laughed every time I saw. Every. Single. Time. Completely involuntarily. I'm laughing now just typing this.

 

Next time I feel down I'm gonna think of this critter. I'll be perked up in no time!

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Quilt Fairy

Quilt Fairy

Still, how much of a stretch would it have been to imagine a tiny and lethal monster who had to be kept in check by a large, powerful guard?

It seems like our cultural default mode is male guard/male prisoner, so I wasn't surprised when teams thought they were being edgy by having a female guard. (The gender of the models doesn't have to come into play at all unless they want it to.) But even with how the teams were handling it - beauty makeup for the woman, beast makeup for the man - there was nothing to say they couldn't have reversed the models at the last minute, and have a beast guarding a beautiful woman. I don't think it's necessarily misogynistic, all they needed was a background story that would have made sense.

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sourpickles

sourpickles

Ooof. Ok. I'm late to the party again, maybe because I don't have a lot to say that I haven't said before. To sum up...great concept. Loved it. Wasn't overall impressed, again, with most of the makeup. Had forgotten about the gal who got eliminated. Frankly, I'm still not sold on any of them, and this is the first time in recent memory I haven't been struck by anyone right off. I'm not (and it might just be me) also seeing a real divide b/w top and bottom, and that has been a while as well. I find the comments on here much more interesting and enlightening than the actual show, which makes me wonder why no one from here is on it. Honestly, most of the commenters here have better ideas/better grasp/waaaay better interpretation than what I've seen so far, and I'm so bummed. I love this show and this season is more or less a goose egg for me. Sigh. See you all Wednesday..maybe.

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diebartdie

diebartdie

I think Jordan, Jasmine and Scott are the most talented of the current crop, I think they'll be the final three, Im hoping Nora is final 4. I was thinking earlier my favorite season so far was the one with Dina, Cig, Drew, Stella and George's hot pants, so far to me no season has come close to how awesome that season was.

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Maelstrom

Maelstrom

Finally got to watch this episode yesterday morning (after my satellite got knocked out last week due to storms). The winning look was gorgeous! They really looked like they belonged to the same world.

 

Strange that so many (basically all of them) contestants went with the Beauty guardian and Beast monster idea - makes you wonder if there's something in the air.

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Portia

Portia

I was cracking up that Norah said they named their characters Brenda and Jose. I was expecting some grandiose names so having such normal names made it even funnier.

I literally had to pause the DVR so my husband and I could laugh about the names for 5 minutes.

I was happy Ben had a good week, although my goodwill toward him is based solely on his resemblance to my brother's first serious boyfriend circa 1978. That's some 'stache!

I'm rooting for Nora because of her winning personality and great attitude, but it doesn't hurt that she's the spitting image of a dear family friend who happens to be a a young man!

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