S10.E04: Covert Characters

[ElectricBoogaloo]

The artists create realistic disguise makeup for their Focus Challenge; producer Gale Anne Hurd guest judges.

Sneak peek:

Edited January 28, 2016 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Frozendiva]

Yikes. I really did not have a favorite look. Rob and Robert were the best of the bad lot. Most looks really stood out and not in a good way. The losing look was bad. Like a girl putting black pieces of straw on her face to make her look male. Bizarre glasses too. The Indian woman looked like she dipped herself into a can of brown paint. Overly shiny, weird faces. Just a no this week. The three bottom looks all could have been eliminated.

[FormerMod-a1]

So many horrible make-ups and so many horrible wigs.  The top 2 were easy to pick, at least, there was no hiding it.

[rustyspigot]

Witness protection? Let's make him a rock star! What? Making your models look like extras from Willy Wonka is not  a good challenge concept.

[Rhetorica]

That was so uncomfortable to watch...

[Toaster Strudel]

The winner was the only remotely good makeup!  Maybe it's because the contestant was inspired by his own face... next to his makeup he looked like a fraternal twin.

 

I finally learned the name of my favorite model: Nieli.  Those huge almond eyes of hers are an asset to any beauty makeup.

[Frozendiva]

Witness protection? Let's make him a rock star! What? Making your models look like extras from Willy Wonka is not  a good challenge concept.

 

There are a bunch of formerly popular bands out there still touring. With newish members to replace the old ones, you may get away with a 'replacement' rock star. Not so much the FBI lady with eyebrows where they are not supposed to be. Unless she's touring the basement X Files office.

[Maelstrom]

Was it just me, or did both of the top two makeups look eerily like their contestants?

Love the idea for this challenge, even if most of them missed the boat. I did think the winner did a good job, in that his makeup looked the least makeuppy of any of them. And I had no idea Michael Westmore did actual disguise makeups IRL.

Poor Njoroge, not realizing how poorly his turned out. Did none of the contestants pull up references photos of actual Asians or East Indians to work from? (I'm guessing not).

Had to laugh at Glenn making fun of his hair (he beat me to it for once), and denouncing camping. Glenn not being very outdoorsy somehow doesn't surprise me.

[Ketzel]

That was painful to watch. A stark demonstration of the technical and creative limits of nearly everyone competing. I don't think they failed to understand that they were supposed to be making realistic disguises. I think they simply couldn't (with the sort-of exception of the winning look. And I have to say I think it was only the comparison to the rest of the dreck produced that made the judges praise it so highly.) Watching the models on a good HD screen, they all came across to me as badly built and painted puppets. To think I was looking forward to the contestants breaking free of team challenges and showing their individual styles!

The makers of all three of the bottom looks should have been eliminated. IMO, They were THAT bad, I've lost any hope that those three are capable of achieving a professional standard of work going forward.

[Quilt Fairy]

Oy vey, that was amateur night.  Did anyone else notice the funky editing wrt Melissa? She was one of the 6 the judges talked to but then she didn't come up as either a top or bottom look.

[HunterHunted]

Yikes. I really did not have a favorite look. Rob and Robert were the best of the bad lot. Most looks really stood out and not in a good way. The losing look was bad. Like a girl putting black pieces of straw on her face to make her look male. Bizarre glasses too. The Indian woman looked like she dipped herself into a can of brown paint. Overly shiny, weird faces. Just a no this week. The three bottom looks all could have been eliminated.

The other thing that was really interesting is that so few of them understood was that a couple of good pieces could make all of the difference in altering the appearance instead of a full facial piece.

[mlp]

 

Did anyone else notice the funky editing wrt Melissa?

 

I noticed that too.  It did seem odd.

 

I liked Njoroge and was sorry to see him go but he did himself in by not realizing he'd done bad work.  The others on the bottom knew theirs were not good.  I kept wondering about his name.  It looks like a weird mash up of Norse and maybe Swahili.  I guess I'll never know.

[HunterHunted]

I noticed that too.  It did seem odd.

 

I liked Njoroge and was sorry to see him go but he did himself in by not realizing he'd done bad work.  The others on the bottom knew theirs were not good.  I kept wondering about his name.  It looks like a weird mash up of Norse and maybe Swahili.  I guess I'll never know.

It's a Kenyan name.

[Maverick]

 Is this the first season Ve's been giving them the "keep tryin' / have a nice life / c ya" speech?  It's really kind of lame and feels like she should be passing out a Participation Ribbon to the loser on the way out the door.

[GaT]

Wow, there wasn't a single look that I thought was good, including the top two. Any one of them could have been sent home IMO.

[Thog]

Melissa also looked confused when she wasn't a top or bottom look. My take on it was that half of her work would have been in the top, and the other half would have been in the bottom. They were so befuddled by it that they wanted to hear her explain it, but they couldn't really place her in either category.

 

Some of the close-up shots during the sculpting phase showed such beautiful detail on the skin that I was sure this would all turn out better. Something must have gone very wrong in the molding and painting phases to turn those great textures into such a plastic-looking mess.

[Linderhill]

 

Did anyone else notice the funky editing wrt Melissa?

I just figured the judging ran long and there just wasn't as much time to show her's.  I guess that's one of the advantages of the team challenges.  There aren't as many individuals to judge.

 

There were some truly awful make ups up there.  Luckily most of them knew it. I did love Glen's comment about the hair.

[Apocalypso]

Robert is beginning to grow on me.  I like his skewed viewpoint and unusual way of expressing himself, and I loved his little homage to Scarface.

 

I also really enjoyed the joking around about how to act like a man.

 

I thought this was a great challenge idea, especially after it turned out to be unexpectedly difficult.  Subtlety was called for, but most of the contestants were still in alien/grotesque mode and didn't scale down fast enough to the level of nondescript human.  They all tried too hard, in a way, and then couldn't back out of the overpainting.  I always hate it when the eliminated one goes in thinking their work is great and they could win, and then they have to fall from that height.

[Iguana]

Well if that's the result when the contestants are challenged to do a real person makeup, no wonder they go for monster and aliens so often. All of the make ups looked fake to me, with the top two being the least offensive, but that's damning with faint praise. All of the bottom looks were send you home worthy, though they eliminated the right one. How anyone could look at even just that ridiculous facial hair and think his look is acceptable is beyond me. If he was that delusional about the quality (or lack thereof) of his work, there was no chance he could do well in the competition anyway.

[Rumtmtiger]

This clinched it for me. I don't think the contestants are very good this season. This was painful to watch. Fortunately, I watched a recorded show and was able to skip through most of it. Throw the whole lot out and start over with new contestants.

[Rammchick]

It may well be the result of attending the Tom Savini make-up school as so many have that has given rise to the limited ability to do anything besides monsters. If you haven't been taught about human anatomy, skin colors and textures and how hair really looks and grows, then this challenge would be very difficult. I don't know that all this is deemphasized but it sure seems like it given the difference in quality. And this is hardly the first season that we've observed this.

[Primetimer]

A realism challenge goes to some unexpected places.

Read the story

[Nutjob]

Most of those makeups were scarier than any of the monsters the contestants have made this year. Ugh. I think Robert and Rob were the top two simply because theirs were the only ones that didn't have any horrible edges and didn't look completely like wax figures, but they still weren't fantastic.

[RococoChanel]

WOW. This episode was dreadful. EVERYTHING WAS SO BAD.

[Toaster Strudel]

The makeups were terrible... yes, but at the same time it made for a fascinating episode.  I hope they do it again!

[LadyMustang65]

I loved the idea of this challenge.  It was a great concept.  It also brought home very forcefully to anyone watching that doing realistic is much more difficult than doing alien or monster.  Yes, most of them failed badly, although we did like the top 2 and agreed with the winning choice.  But I think some of the others would have been better if the paint jobs hadn't gotten so messed up.  I felt bad for the one girl who knew hers was going south and had no idea what to do to fix it.  Everything she tried just made it worse and worse.  We probably would have sent home the one who did the Indian woman who makeup was just falling off when they asked her to move her mouth.  (Sorry, I still don't know most of the names.)  Between the horrific paint job and the horrific application, it was, we thought, even worse than the Asian boy with hair stuck on his face.  But I think that may have been that guy's first time in the bottom while Njorge was making his 3rd consecutive appearance.  Three strikes and you're out?

[PepperMonkey]

That was all just pretty damn bad. Having said that, I was happy Robert was near the top. It seems only he and Rob understood the actual point, which was to blend in and not be noticed, not stand out for having four different colours of skin on one face and lips and noses that look like they're about to fall off.

 

I knew Silent N wouldn't last much longer; he was in the bottom a lot and he's also 49. I really hate the way the show seems to be heading towards contestants under the age of 20: I think this career cries out for some actual experience, which so many of these guys don't have.

 

I was okay with the winner, but wow, "winner" in this case is damning with faint praise. At least Robert is safe for another week. His age and experience worry me as regards to his longevity on the show (A. he has experience, and 2. he's over 30).

Edited February 4, 2016 by PepperMonkey

[LoneHaranguer]

Was this model appreciation day? We got everyone's last names to go with the first names the show has been occasionally tossing out.

 

I couldn't tell if Neville saying that one of the creations had too much hair was intended as a joke.

[Rosieroo]

The skill level of the contestants has just plummeted these last several seasons. My goodness that was awful.  Remember the first season when the final three had to disguise themselves and interact with family members without being detected and two out of three managed it?  This poor bunch couldn't pull that off without a wolf mask.  I just kept thinking what would Anthony, Roy or Laura do. Their work was always so clean looking. (others too I'm sure but those are the repeaters so I remember them more)  IMHO all that needed doing was changing the cheekbones and jawline maybe with something (teeth?) in the mouth to change the shape of it plus a wig that didn't look like it was bought off the back of a truck.  But they all thought they had to go full on mask.  

 

I kept expecting the judges to just tell them they were all awful and nobody wins.  Their poor faces were just frozen as dud after dud took the stage.   I've said this before  I think but if they continue to cast this level of contestant, they need to give them more time for each challenge and bring back the mentors to teach them better. I didn't love the mentors idea but good googly moogly these poor folks need help. 

[Ananayel]

This was bad. I didn't think the winner was invisibly nondescript, I thought he was creepy. Really, this would have been the challenge for one - maybe two - perfectly sculpted, proportioned and applied facial pieces, and then a deft hand with "beauty" makeup altering the skin tone slightly, and using contouring to change the facial appearance. Jennifer Grey was nearly unrecognizable with a different nose, and Nicole Kidman nearly got there with a nose appliance for a role. Use wig, glasses, contacts, etc. to draw attention to the "new" features. Everyone just tried to take on too much.

 

I didn't understand going with a "rocker" at all. They attract attention, when you want to deflect it.

[Merneith]

It may well be the result of attending the Tom Savini make-up school as so many have that has given rise to the limited ability to do anything besides monsters. If you haven't been taught about human anatomy, skin colors and textures and how hair really looks and grows, then this challenge would be very difficult. I don't know that all this is deemphasized but it sure seems like it given the difference in quality. And this is hardly the first season that we've observed this.

 

I got to say - my opinion of the Tom Savini school is rapidly plummeting. Someone needs to sit those kids down on day 1 and explain that non-monster movies outnumber monsters by about a million to 1 and if they want to be professional makeup artists, they need to know how to make their humans look, you know, human. If I'd seen that Cowboy out in public, I'd have called police.

 

The only good bit of technique I saw going on was Robert's hair laying skills.

 

I would have sent all three of the bottom looks home and I would not have been kind about it, either.

[Kaoteek]

Not a good week, far from it. And the final results were really a case of best of the worst, rather than really top quality make-ups. Can't say it was disappointing, since my expectations were pretty low to begin with, but still...

[Ruprecht]

I know the results ranged from "eh" to "EEK" but I loved the challenge and thought it was a true test of skills. I would say this was in the same category as the Shakespeare challenge where the artists had to make the male models appear as female characters. That was another focus challenge that on paper seemed easy but turned out to be very difficult (gah - I remember how terrible Ophelia looked).

 

I agree that the participants are not up to the caliber of some past competitors but I'm hoping they can grow from this and we'll see some really excellent work. So far this season, I've not seen anything I would say is an instant classic - unless the metric is "10 worst looks". Some from last night might be in the running for that.

[Ketzel]

The problem is that these people just don't have the skills. I'm pretty sure they won't grow into excellence as a result of more high pressure challenges, with five minutes of mentoring from Mr. Westmore per week. Someone who can teach needs to show them things like how to paint realistic skin tones and how the bones of the face actually connect. They surely won't have time to figure the basics out by trial and error.

[starri]

I can't for the life of me understand why everyone thought Robert's looked so good.  It just looked like the model wearing a fake goatee to me.

 

Now, Mel's I really liked.

 

The biggest sin on Njoroge's makeup was the Fu Manchu 'stache.  Couldn't one of the other contestants maybe pulled him aside and gentle suggested he rethink it?

[Quilt Fairy]

The problem is that these people just don't have the skills. I'm pretty sure they won't grow into excellence as a result of more high pressure challenges, with five minutes of mentoring from Mr. Westmore per week. Someone who can teach needs to show them things like how to paint realistic skin tones and how the bones of the face actually connect. They surely won't have time to figure the basics out by trial and error.

I agree, but this is Face Off, not Face Off Academy.

 

Perhaps part of the problem is that they're all training to be special effects makeup artists, not just plain makeup artists?

 

Maybe they had too much time for this challenge. Maybe if it was a 2 hour foundation challenge they wouldn't have all been trying to hit for the fences.

 

And it wouldn't have hurt if they had more realistic wigs available.

[starri]

Now that you mention it, Face Off Academy might make for a really interesting idea for something to do in lieu of yet another season.  Bring in past winners to give lessons, have the judges and mentors teach, hell, even give the models a week to talk about what's least uncomfortable for them to wear.  At the end, the winner gets to go on to the real deal.

 

Producers, you've listened to us about not going down the straight "Monsters 'n Aliens" path as much.  This is a really good idea.

[OSM Mom]

Everyone's makeup looked horrible. God that was the biggest mess ever. Glens hair comment had me laughing.

Nobody should have won. They should all have gone home.. Yeesh.

[Richness]

Loved the premise for the episode, but I knew the results were going to be a train wreck, especially for this early in the competition. Any time they've gone with a realistic make-up to try and fool someone, it doesn't go well. Plus, that doesn't go well with what some consider to be a diminishing talent pool; however, I don't think that's happening. I definitely agreed with Rob's work as the winner, but I wasn't overly impressed by Robert's other high looks.

 

I nearly laughed out loud in disbelief when Njoroge stated how good he thought his makeup looked. Plus, Katie's make-up reminded me of the overly tanned skin of the old lady in There's Something About Mary. If the skin wasn't quite so shiny and smooth, I think she could have had a safe look if she also reworked her model's cover story as being someone who spends all their time in the Florida sun.

 

Melissa also looked confused when she wasn't a top or bottom look. My take on it was that half of her work would have been in the top, and the other half would have been in the bottom. They were so befuddled by it that they wanted to hear her explain it, but they couldn't really place her in either category.

 

I'll jump on that theory bandwagon as well. The light shade of makeup around the eyes created a really horrible bandit's mask.

 

 Is this the first season Ve's been giving them the "keep tryin' / have a nice life / c ya" speech?  It's really kind of lame and feels like she should be passing out a Participation Ribbon to the loser on the way out the door.

 

Actually, they've been doing kind words of encouragement for the past three or four seasons now, even for the early departures. However, the judge saying it changes every week. I'd rather hear encouraging words than some catty remark or a simple dismissal.

[carrps]

Oy vey, that was amateur night.  Did anyone else notice the funky editing wrt Melissa? She was one of the 6 the judges talked to but then she didn't come up as either a top or bottom look.

Melissa actually did a double take! She thought she was up for elimination. I agree she was half and half. Very good on the lower face and a total fail from the eyes up. Why in hell did she raise the eyebrows so high? It was SO unnatural, plus it was impossible to disguise the actual eyebrows and brow ridges.

 

Remember that contest who did really good work with wigs a few seasons back? That's what these noobs didn't understand. You don't just take a wig off the stand and plunk it on a head. You need to shape and manipulate it.

 

And Robert? I am soooooo sick to death of the Scarface line. Lame and try-too-hard for me.

 

Anyone else notice we're not seeing any house shots this season? They must have them in a hotel somewhere.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I was ready for Rob to go as soon as he asked if the others were nervous about doing an individual challenge. Ugh. If it were up to me, ALL of the challenges would be individual challenges. No team challenges!

 

For a challenge that focused entirely on the face, this was really disappointing. I think this showed just how terrible these contestants are at realistic/non-monster makeup. The results ranged from bad to offensive.

 

Anna's hipster didn't look different enough to me. His skin didn't look right. It was shiny and the colors were different. The tone looked ruddy on the forehead, yellow under the eyes, and like silly putty on the cheeks.

 

Katie's mechanic (?) was a step away from being a Halloween mask. The guy's face was orange and looked like a rubber mask. His 70s hair looked like a stiff wig.

 

Walter's biker looked like someone who was just learning how to do drag makeup. Those eyebrows were SO fake looking, as was the alleged five o'clock shadow. And I felt like he cheated a little bit by putting a bandana on his model so he didn't have to deal with the hairline. Once again, the skin tone didn't match. The forehead had an orange huge while the nose was pink and the cheeks were very pale.

 

Rob's tourist wasn't terrible compared to the others, but it still wasn't great. The hairline was really weird. The eyebrows were too light. The skin done didn't match. The forehead was very brownish and then the area just above the eyebrows, around the eyes, and underneath the eyes were very pale (but not in a tanline kind of way), and from the cheeks down the color was orange.

 

Robert's maintenance man was very obviously a girl. He didn't make her features masculine enough, but he did a pretty good job keeping the skin tone even, probably because he used the least amount of prosthetics so he was putting makeup mostly on her skin. Robert totally cracked me up when he said he loved the pressure washer and that it reminded him of Scarface. Please stay forever, Robert!

 

Yvonne's rock star was hilarious in the dressing room when he was practicing his guitar moves and then fell on the floor. But holy crap, what a rubbery looking face. Everything seemed too rounded (the area around the eyes reminded me of Eric Stolz in Mask) and the texture of the skin on the chin was terrible.

 

Njoroge got some really good advice from Michael Westmore but holy crap the texture of the skin on the lower cheeks and near the mouth were just terrible. The makeup under the eyes was just straight up yellow. And the moustache and beard were a total caricature. How many young Asian guys have you seen sporting the Fu Manchu look? And he did a terrible job gluing the moustache and beard hair on her face. I've never seen a beard where every hair grows straight down. There was something about the eyes that was still very feminine so this was another fail for me on several different levels. If you remove the wig, the glasses, and the facial hair, this poor model did not look Asian.

 

I was afraid that Melissa was setting herself up for the kiss of death when she said that she had done disguises before. What the hell was going on with the brow ridges? She looked like she had two different sets of eyebrows! The skin tone looked okay from the cheekbones down (even though she looked like she was wearing way too much blush), but from the bridge of the nose up, her skin tone was much too yellow. That area also looked like an immovable mask. The area around her eyes was totally white. I thought the frown lines looked very unrealistic. Her model is freaking gorgeous in real life though.

 

Johnny's agent was terrible. It was really obvious that his model was a female disguised as a male. But seriously dude? The skin tone and the fake dreads were ridiculous.

 

Kaleb's Indian woman was also really bad. The skin tone was waaaay too dark and then he left the area under the eyes really yellow. And what was up with the weird bumps? There was one on the left cheek, one under the nose, one on the right side of the mouth, and maybe one over the right eyebrow. The blue eye shadow was just bonus bad. Horrible wig choice and the hairline was too low. The prosthetics he created made it look like this was a man disguised as a woman.

 

Mel's old man was obviously a woman disguised as a Ben Franklin. The wrinkles in the forehead looked really fake and the area under the eyes was too dark (the opposite of the problem many of the other contestants had this week).

 

The moral of the story: do not try to change your model's ethnicity unless you know you are very familiar with the facial structure of the ethnicity you are changing your model to AND you know that you are comfortable working with non-Caucasian skin tones. The three people who really went out of their way to make their models into non-Caucasians ended up creating terrible looking caricatures that made me cringe.

 

On a shallow note, I liked McKenzie's dress this week.

[starri]

On a shallow note, I liked McKenzie's dress this week.

I loved that she got to wear pants (albeit with five-inch heels) for when she gave out the challenge.

[Red Bridey]

I do not understand why almost every one of the contestants felt the need to do full facial masks.  Mr. Westmore even said partial applications were better.  Work on the nose, the teeth, chins, maybe.  Different eyecolor contacts.  What is wrong with these people?  Or you know, use makeup!  I loved the idea of this particular challenge, but yeesh, these contestants are awful!  (I thought my hi-def tv was to blame, but no, they really were THAT terrible!)

[sourpickles]

Oh, good gravy, what a clunker of an episode. I guess we found out the hard way where the skill set of this particular group does NOT lie. I don't ever remember an individual challenge that was that bad, especially with that number of contestants. I didn't like any of them. Every single one looked like a bad Halloween costume, and that was a pretty cool challenge. Though I guess Rob's was the best of the worst. Those were poor "disguises". How they picked the top looks I will never know. I don't know where the judges hang out or what kind of people they are used to (it is LA after all) but any one of those would have stood out in a crowd that I was in. I could not stop staring, and that is not a compliment. The one plastic Ken doll with the Burt Reynolds mustache, that crooked stashe drove me nuts. I think it was Kaleb who was upset about his skin tone and said "people aren't orange", and I started squawking at my TV "yes they are! Just tease the hair and make her a Housewife!!!!!". Or Tan Mom or something. I was beginning to think I'd wasted an hour of my life when that crack about the hair came forth and that made my night. Methinks Neville was jealous. You were around in the 80s, you've seen worse hair, dude. I sound really harsh and I usually try to be positive because I love this show so much, but if this is the yardstick for the rest of the individual challenges this season it is going to be a long haul. On the other hand, it can only get better from here, right?

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I do not understand why almost every one of the contestants felt the need to do full facial masks. Mr. Westmore even said partial applications were better. Work on the nose, the teeth, chins, maybe. Different eyecolor contacts. What is wrong with these people? Or you know, use makeup! I loved the idea of this particular challenge, but yeesh, these contestants are awful! (I thought my hi-def tv was to blame, but no, they really were THAT terrible!)

You know that these people did a terrible job when I realized that they could have brought in a drag queen or a Kardashian and either of them could have totally changed the look of a model's face with some good contouring.

I loved the idea of this challenge but I was so disappointed in what the contestants produced. I too remembered the previous season when they had to disguise themselves from their own family members. The people on the current season would have to resort to a paper bag with a smiley face drawn with a sharpie.

[LittleIggy]

I can't for the life of me understand why everyone thought Robert's looked so good.  It just looked like the model wearing a fake goatee to me.

I couldn't understand the praise for Robert's either. The model looked as if she were wearing a big fake nose attached to glasses thing.

The maintenance guy with the pompadour and the John Boehner orange tan cracked me up!

[RococoChanel]

The challenge itself was SUPER cool. But the artists are so... devoid of talent. Even a talented beauty makeup artist could transform a person, no prosthetics necessary.

[Canada]

I thought Yvonne's rocker character looked just like her! 

 

Not impressed with any of these looks, but I thought the right person went home.  The others seemed to be aware of how shit their looks were.

[hincandenza]

Yeah, there were some absolute clunkers in this episode (late to the party, just watched it tonight).  I thought Rob's was the clear winner; although it wasn't great it did meet the point of the challenge in a way that no one else seemed to even grasp: make them look different but unremarkable.  The eyebrows were weird- they looked bleached- and the forehead was a bit too big, but overall it was way ahead of everything else- even if past season contestants would have wiped the floor with them all.

 

There is, and has been for the last few seasons, a startling lack of understanding of anatomy by the contestants.  Along with that, all the skin textures, episode after episode, are usually so bad I can't understand why they'd come on this show without hitting the lab and practicing truly realistic human skin tones and textures.  Everything this week looked so plasticine and dry; isn't that what silicon is supposed to be good at, looking not so clay-like?  We've seen in past seasons where someone can coast for weeks on just doing great paint jobs, far more than great sculpts; I can't remember her name, but there was a young woman a few seasons' back who kept having lousy sculpts and great paint jobs, and she made it pretty far.

 

It's odd, and someone said it above, but during the crafting portion some of the sculpts look like they were going to be great... and then they came out and it was just awful.  I think there were three classes of people in this episode: basically Rob as the only one that wasn't completely buried in the Uncanny Valley; the set of people like Melissa or even the mechanic (who honestly, I thought had some neat detail like the forehead vein) who had elements of competence buried by an atrocious paint job or sloppy edge work; and then the bottom who we all seem to agree should have been collectively booted en masse.  Some of those monstrosities were so malformed, so obviously fake, inhuman, or blatantly misshapen, I don't know how these people could even keep from bawling on stage at how bad it was; the only consolation is that their undercover agents would probably not be shot, since the bad guys would be doubled over howling with laughter.

 

Which made the elimination choice easy: if you could turn that crap in, and still think you had a shot at winning... hooboy, that's a horrible sign.  That was the Dunning-Krugerest Dunning-Kruger effect I've seen in ages.  Njoroge thinking he might win with... that thing... is almost "Amy's Baking Company" levels of delusional.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

Face Off Goes Undercover
A realism challenge goes to some unexpected places.

 

And here's our seven-year-old Face Off correspondent Liv's take!

 

EHG Mini: Secret Ancient Face Off Report
The contestants try to hide their models in plain sight. Did it work? Liv tells all.