Jaclyn Smith welcomes the remaining 11 stylists (I imagine over the coming weeks we'll see proof that some of them will deserve the Air Quotes of Scorn -- "stylists" -- but for now I'll be charitable) to the salon and announces that as last week's winner, Daniel has his hairstyle pictured on the "Allure Wall of Fame." He's also got immunity for this week and he grins toothily. She tells them that today's Short Cut Challenge is to do just that -- give their client a short cut. Dee thinks she's got down as it's all about "texture and sexy" and Nicole and her cute blonde pixie cut announce that she's living proof that short can be sexy. This probably means one of them is the best and one is the worst in this challenge. As winner, Daniel will get to pick his client first but the WAY cooler and more sadistic prize is that he'll then choose the order in which the others pick their clients. This show is trying to ensure that one of them goes after someone else with razor-sharp scissors right off the bat! He's actually freaked out by the task and the idea that people will then hate him.
The clients file in and all have giant masses of hair -- Daniel picks a girl with brown waves because she's, "a big, fuzzy frizzball" and he can't wait to smooth her hair out. I'm so curious how she reacted to just hearing that comment on national television. Daniel then calls names for people to pick their clients, and says he's trying to be random and as fair as possible even though it's a game, and that he's never been that competitive. It's not a comment you generally hear from someone on a competitive reality show, and he seems sincere, but dude, come on. You're going to have to sack up just a little to survive here. Parker picks first and reads all sorts of stuff about color into why he was picked first, but claims it was bad strategy. Glenn is , then Dee, Charlie, Matt, Nekisa, Nicole, Meredith, Gail, and finally Paulo, who takes it very good-naturedly and happily promises to kick Daniel's ass with his haircut.
Nekisa has a challenge because her client doesn't want her hair too short. One wonders why she (presumably) volunteered for this challenge. Her hair is already a mess from too much bleach and is broken off. So far the theme is to have it a bit longer in front. Dee wants to see Nicole go home because she's so good, which is just about the most honest thing I've ever heard a reality contestant admit. Meredith is cutting her curly-haired client dry, and Rene is terrified at how it's going to turn out. Charlie is giving his client a Mia Farrow haircut, but she doesn't know what that means as she's never heard of Mia Farrow. OH MY GOD THESE KIDS TODAY. Well, that's out of my system. (For now.) Thirty minutes in, Jaclyn stops them to introduce their guest judge, Tabatha. From what I can figure out, Tabatha was on the show last year and was a giant bitch. Or, as Nicole puts it, "sassy." Tabatha walks around glaring at everyone and acting like they are absolute crap. It's kind of awesome. Jaclyn then calls time.
The clients and stylists are all pulled to the front. Tabatha walks through and checks them all out -- Meredith's cut actually turned out quite well, and her clients hair is still super curly but short and sassy with longer bangs. Tabatha wonders if it's too frizzy, but Meredith claims it's better than before (true) and that "not all frizz is bad." (... true?) Glenn gave her client a short, pixie-ish cut and Tabatha questions if it's right on a young girl. Glenn defends it but Tabatha is spot-on, as Glenn somehow left pieces too long, plastered it to the girl's head, and added at least ten years. The poor girl knows it, too. Charlie's client looks great and loves her close-cropped cut. Dee left the sides of her client's hair pretty heavy, as Tabatha points out, and while Dee thinks this means she can wake up and go, thick-haired me thinks it means get up, wrestle with a brush, hair dryer, iron, and tons of product to get it to not look like a mushroom cap. Tabatha looks at Nekisa's client and asks if she tried to blend in the broken bits of hair. Nekisa announces that she didn't try, she did it but Tabatha gets the last word in that it's sticking out, so she actually didn't. Matthew's client has a short cut with longer pieces in front, and it looks sleek and great. Parker gave his client the exact same cut, but it's shaggier and less sleek than Matthew's. Nicole's client has a sleek black bob with bangs and looks great, but Tabatha asks Nicole if the cut was supposed to be symmetrical. Nicole says that it was and sounds dismayed that it might not be. Daniel gives his client a flippy bob, saying that the flips help it not look like a football helmet. Gail gave her client a chin-length curly bob and gives Tabatha an icy death stare when Tabatha points out that the cut will start to look like a helmet as soon as her hair grows. Paolo is there fighting for his short bob on his round-faced client. It turned out better than I predicted, but Tabatha doesn't seem to be a fan.
Tabatha gives the usual judge comment that some are great and some aren't. Nicole and Charlie are the top two this week, with Charlie the winner and Nicole once again the runner-up. Charlie's client does a cute little dance in her chair. The bottom two are Paolo and Nekisa, neither of which is a surprise. I hope these two poor clients get a free make-up cut, seeing as how they sit and listen while Tabatha tells them that their hair shape and texture doesn't suit them. There can only be one loser, though, and that's Nekisa. Nekisa makes excuses and clearly is going to go try and kill Tabatha in her sleep. Back at the house Paolo rants and raves about the feedback he got, while Meredith offers toasts to both the winners and losers. She then admits as an aside that she thinks Nicole and Charlie are the only ones to worry about. I'll give her Nicole, but Charlie seems to be the kind who is going to pull something crazy that will take him straight out of the competition one of these weeks.
The morning they wake up to find a bowl of oranges and a note that says, "The fruit of your labor is on this table. Take your pick of the best oranges in the county and bring it to the salon." Everyone chuckles nervously and grabs an orange, each of which has a number on it. Parker talks again about color, sure that this challenge will be about color, which he doesn't do. Dude, maybe you should have thought about that before you entered a hair competition.
They walk into the salon and before they can line up, Rene runs in front of them and stops them all, promising them the toughest clients that they'll ever face. He tells them they need to give their clients a new look that meets the stylist's vision and the client's expectation. Two episodes in, and I've already noticed this type of wording used a few times. Do they know they can just say, "Give a good cut that both you are proud of and your client is happy with?" They then file in and shriek at a bunch of really plastic-looking women. Some look happy, some don't, and some look like they probably couldn't change the expression on their face even if they wanted to. These are The Real Housewives of Orange County, folks. This would mean more to me if I'd ever watched this show. Clearly, Daniel has watched it, as he nearly passes out with excitement. He actually held a party where he and his friends dressed up to watch an episode in which one of them got married, and Nicole takes the words out of my mouth that if she had ever done that, she would never actually admit it. Rene introduces the Housewives and their daughters to the stylists -- their challenge is to satisfy the clients, and Tabatha will be a judge again. Each of the women is holding an orange that corresponds to the oranges the stylists are holding, so they are paired up through their citrus.
Charlie has Orange Number 1, and he gets paired with Megan, who is Tammy's (?) daughter. Parker gets Tammy. Gail gets Kimberly, and Paulo gets Vicki, who he claims is the most "memorable" character on the show (after he watched one episode). I honestly wonder if the producers made them watch an episode the night before or something, because I can't actually believe that all eleven of these people have really watched that show. Dee gets McKenzi, Lauri's step-daughter, Glenn gets Tamra, and Nicole gets Jeana -- the very person she didn't want because of her stringy hair. Daniel gets Jeana's daughter Kara and squeals about it, Nekisa gets Lauri (whom Daniel has a total crush on), Meredith gets Vicki's daughter Briana, and finally Matthew is with Quinn. Before they start, there is one more twist -- because he won the Short Cut Challenge, Charlie gets to trade out his Housewife for another if he so chooses. He wants Kara, who he steals from a very ticked off Daniel. Charlie points out that Daniel was pissed, but who cares, because, "The bitch had immunity." He asserts he would have taken Kara from anyone, though, just in case we thought he was going soft on us. They've got two hours to cut, and Rene starts the clock.
There's a whole lot of talk about what people want, but the one memorable comment is Gail, who tells us that her client had a traumatic experience with extensions once. I... I've got nothing. TRAUMATIC EXTENSIONS, people. These are a bunch of long-haired women who want to keep their long hair and their color. No one wants any actual change. The housewives are offered champagne, which Paulo points out is just what is needed to mellow them out. I wish I had some champagne right now. The champagne doesn't seem to work, as Vicki just keeps freaking out about what is happening to her daughter's hair. Parker then talks about his lack of color experience again. Yawn. Gail is putting lowlights in her client's hair, as her client has forbidden her to cut. That is just one sucky luck of the draw, there. Vicki at one point actually runs over to see what they're doing to her daughter and to make sure they aren't losing any of her hair's length. Excuse me while I take a moment to call my mom and thank her for being absolutely nothing like this freakshow. There's a bit more freaking out, and then time is called. My prediction is that we're about to see a whole lot of women who look exactly the same as they did when they came in.
Let's meet the judges! Again we have Kim Vo and Kelly Atherton, and they are joined by Tabatha, who was voted the Shear Genius Season 1 fan favorite. Jaclyn looks a little more pleased to be here today, and it might be her awesome hair this week, which is blown out all big and shiny. Nekisa's client Lauri is first. Her hair is still long and blonde, and just looks smoothed out nicely with some waves. Nekisa seems to think Tabatha is going to like that, for some reason. Daniel's client Megan had long brown hair, and now she has long brown hair with bangs! Paulo's client Vicki had long blonde hair, which is now long and blonde with a few extra layers and way too much product so that it looks a bit crispy. Nicole's client Jeana is the first one to really look better. Her hair had been really stringy, but on the runway it's soft and shiny, a bit shorter, a bit darker, and she now has bangs. Matthew's client Quinn wanted more body, and so he used a round brush on her hair. I think he darkened it up a bit too, maybe? Glenn's client Tamra had long blonde hair, and now has long blonde hair with layers. It does look much more well-maintained now, if not terribly different. Charlie's client Kara looks great. She had really long, dark hair. He brought it up a few inches so that it's still really long but has some shape, and gave her really long, thick bangs. He claims he softened the color but I must admit I can't tell.
Gail's client Kimberly... looks exactly the same. This is probably on account of the fact that she wouldn't let Gail even trim her hair. The lowlights add pretty much nothing to the picture. Jaclyn looks vexed and we see why -- over Gail's comment that she thinks Kimberly could have used a few inches cut off we see the back of her hair, and how the bottom few inches thin out into ugly strings and an uneven line. Gail should have put her foot down. Parker's client Tammy had long dark hair that's now -- say it with me! -- long and dark with bangs. It's noticeably darker, and while the cut is really nice, the color is too dark now. Dee's client McKenzie went from long, really blonde hair to a cut just a few inches past her shoulders with lowlights in the blonde. She also cut bangs, and all together the look is great. She still looks young, but she looks much more put-together. Meredith's client Briana had long, blonde hair (wow, that's getting boring to type -- well, and to watch, frankly) into which she also cut bangs. She also seems to have put in some slightly darker color, which does look nice, though I feel like the bangs are a tad heavy for Briana's face.
It's time to call out some folks for conversations. First off are the ones who are safe: Daniel, Nicole, Matthew, Nekisa, and Meredith. They are sent away, and the other clients are brought out to stand with their stylists. First to be questioned is Gail, and the judges are surprisingly understanding about the not cutting, probably because Kimberly tells them how she forbade it and was so happy that Gail didn't override her like so many other stylists have done. I just wonder what it's like to spend your life resisting the people that want to help you actually look better? Gail says she focused on color and wishes she'd had more time to make it a bit ashier. She then describes how she styled it, with mousse and rollers. Tabatha isn't a fan of the color. Parker tells the judges how he darkened Tammy's hair, and Kim asks Tammy if she were to do it herself, would she have colored it this "deep?" She stutters that it's "okay," but there's a sharp cut so we have no idea what the rest of her sentence was. That in mind, maybe it wasn't as obvious when this took place that when Kim asked Parker if he'd do the same color again, Parker should have said that he would have gone lighter. Instead, Parker says he would do it all the same. Ooooh dear. The judges all hate it and think it isn't age-appropriate, but Jaclyn at least compliments the shine, which is rather spectacular.
When it's her turn, Glenn admits that she wanted to go shorter but that this length was the compromise she and Tamra came to. Kim asks about the color and calls Tamra "blondarexic," much to Tamra's surprise, but she quickly recovers. Glenn tells them that she hand-painted lowlights in between the highlights, and seems to get approving nods from the panel. Charlie is and talks about how he used slices rather than blunt lines; when Kelly tells him he might have gone a bit lighter, he explains that in this short time he doesn't like to mess with the color. Tabatha tells him she thinks that the bangs could have been a smidgen shorter, and he replies, "I'll take it, Mommy," which makes her laugh for the first time all day. It's even funnier because he delivers the line without a hint of irony. Dee talks about McKenzie and how she gave her Dee's signature single lowlight. I don't know that as a hairdresser I would make my signature a big stripe in someone's hair, but it works here. McKenzie loves it and the only change she might make would be to lighten it back up a bit, and Kim delights in calling out, "Blondarexia!" Someone's a bit enamored of his witty catchphrase, but he's rather delightful about it so I'll let it go. Kim takes a close look at Vicki's hair and tells him that it looks exactly the same as before. To her immense credit, Vicki jumps in and says that she's, "kind of a hard client to work with." All the stylists and housewives agree by letting out a giant, embarrassed laugh. They then are all called away while the judges deliberate.
Backstage, Gail is sure that she's going home and says her goodbyes to the room. Back in the judging, Tabatha likes Dee's cut but not quite the color that she did, and Kim reminds us that it takes both color and cut. They all like Glenn's cut for the movement and shine. Kim doesn't like Parker's color, calling it basically a rookie mistake for going too dark for his client's blue eyes and pale skin. And everyone agrees that he made her look older. All of them love Charlie's cut and the only minor complaint is that he could have made the color a bit lighter. They all discuss Paulo's non-style. Kim says that when a client comes to him with a signature look that's fine, and he gives them the best polish. Does this mean that Paulo didn't do that? I'm guessing so, but they never really make an actual comment to that effect. And finally, all they say about Gail's haircut is that it was dry on top and had too much product on the bottom.
The top three are Glenn, Dee, and Charlie. "But only one of you is a cut above the rest." Oh, Jaclyn, you slay me! I wonder what hair pun we'll have week. She compliments all of them with the very same comments we've already heard. Dee is safe, and then Jaclyn announces that Charlie is the winner. He does a cute dance but interviews that he knows this could be a jinx and that he needs to be on the ball week. Glenn is also sent back, safe.
The bottom three are Paulo, Parker, and Gail. Jaclyn reiterates all of their problems for maximum humiliation, but only one can go home that week. Jaclyn tells Gail she's safe, but before she can announce the loser she notices that Daniel is crying, and he says it's because it's just so sad that someone has to go home and they're all so good, blah blah blah sobcakes. Charlie brilliantly interviews, "I was like, girl, the Oscars are over. I know you want to win best supporting actress, but really." See, Charlie needs to not try so hard to be the villain and instead should just be the obnoxious, hilarious shit that he is. That moment over, Jaclyn then sends Parker home. He was honored to be there, glad to make it as far as he did, etc., and Jaclyn reminds him that they are all winners. This is the most touchy-feely elimination I've ever seen on television! He leaves, and then Jaclyn reminds them to keep getting better and have a good night. Parker packs up his stuff and talks about what a great experience this was for him, and how he leaves with some humility. Seriously, who knew reality contestants could be so classy? Not me, that's for sure.
What were the most hair-raising moments on TV? TWoP Asks the Shear Genius stylists. See what they had to say. Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what other shows are starting up in the weeks to come in our Summer of Love and Hate!