Previously on Shear Genius, freakishly long hair was styled, though not cut, because we're apparently into coddling the tragically coiffed these days. Then Matthew was sent home to be with his beautiful wife and the sun that shines from her ass.
Jaclyn welcomes the stylists and congratulates Charlie on his 17th win of the season. It's weird how Charlie's gone from tedious to kinda funny to serious threat to win in the span of three weeks. He's got immunity this week, which Nekisa finds annoying. I'm sure Kim Kardashian finds the fact that Nekisa is stealing her look annoying, but you don't hear her bitching about it. The Gollum-mouthed Roy Teeluck (seriously, it looks like he just bit into a giant ball of ink) will be the guest judge on the short-cut challenge (and the elimination challenge tomorrow). That challenge will be to start styling one woman's hair, then at various intervals switch clients with another stylist, choosing to continue that stylist's plan or not. They'll be judged on the head of hair they end up with when time runs out. So it's high-stakes Hot Potato (or Hot Po-tah-to if you're Charlize Theron). Paulo, whose sense of self-satisfaction has become so massive that it's weighted down his hair, low-flow-showerhead-style, interviews that this offers a great opportunity for sabotage. The stylists pick models, with Charlie intentionally picking a woman with steel wool hair (and unruly steel wool at that) in the hope that by starting with her, he won't end up with her.
Daniel interviews that the blonde model Meredith chose had colorization issues, which handily ties into Jaclyn's instruction that the stylists must color hair in the first round. GO! There's a lot going on, so I'm just going to sum up the high points: Meredith decides to dye her straw-head red, which is totally scandalous, and which sends Daniel into a tizzy when he gets switched to her. Charlie gives props to Meredith's balls. Oh, yeah, the way the switching goes, all the stylists end up with their original models for the final round. So Charlie ends up with his wooly-headed menace, whose unruly mane Dee has kindly straightened. Dee does the best job keeping cool in the situation, though bonus points to Charlie for taking Paulo's particularly weepy model into a time-wasting "therapy session" without being even a little jerky towards her. Gail -- there's a Gail on this show? -- gets slammed by the other stylists in interviews for being kind of blah and unsure of herself.
The results... don't look that impressive. Nicole, Daniel (who didn't seem to do a whole lot to his model's hair at all), and Dee are deemed good without much comment. Meredith's redhead color turns out not to well, big balls or not. Charlie snipes that it was "Kool-Aid red" from the safety of his interview. Charlie gets props from Roy for, basically, picking the biggest disaster of the bunch and making her look much improved. Nekisa bitches about Charlie cutting (or not cutting, one or the other) her model's hair, to which Charlie bitch-terviews in response that it's just more excuses from Nekisa. "Big titties can't get you out of every jam, darling, sorry," Charlie hisses, regressing to the kind of soundbite-trolling that makes me positively drowsy. Paulo's weeper seems happy with her chopped 'do, though Paulo still trashes her in his interview, calling her an idiot. Gail (?) gets teased for being a busybody, while Glenn gets dinged for not properly bang-ing her model. Roy puts Meredith and an exasperated Nekisa in his Bottom Two, with Meredith coming in dead last. Not sure if there was any reason to state that explicitly other than to trample Meredith. Dee and Daniel get top honors, and by the grace of blow-dried Jesus, Dee's signature chunky highlights bests Daniel's low-impact do-nothingness. Jaclyn tells Dee that, in addition to picking first in the elimination challenge, she'll have an additional advantage to be named later.
Back at the apartment, Paulo is, shockingly enough, whining about the challenge. He's awesome at that. Dee, risking being uncouth given that she won the challenge and should probably pipe down, loudly declares that she had a plan all along. Charlie manages to echo my own thoughts, which was that all the hairstyles look like crap and that Dee's was the least crappy (I actually thought Nicole's was least crappy, but regardless). Dee doesn't take this well, as you wouldn't, because while Charlie's right, he's also being an asshole, and purposely so. He interviews a whole bunch of tedious mess about how nobody really likes each other and everybody's fake about it but him and he has three faces, one of which he uses to stab you in the back, and this shit is so tired. I can't wait for Charlie's upcoming book, How To Succeed At Being A Reality TV Villian By Really, Really, Really Trying.
Aw, hi-hi, Rene Fris! He ESLs the stylists a happy good morning and re-introduces them to Roy Teeluck... who I guess just looks like that all the time. The elimination challenge is all about styling hair that your client will be able to maintain at home. Nekisa seems to think this falls into the heretofore uncharted territory known as her strengths. I am dubious. Dee's double-advantage is that she gets to not only pick her model first, but she gets to assign the rest of the models to the group. Paulo interviews that this will give Dee prime opportunity to screw Charlie, after their fight, but Charlie interviews and reminds us that he has immunity, so there goes all that suspense and tension. Well done!
So Dee picks the models for everyone: Nekisa gets picked first because, as Charlie however odiously points out, Dee's hot for Nekisa. As I'm pretty sure she admitted last week. But Nekisa obnoxiously interviews that it's not because Dee has a crush on her but because she's "lovely." Seriously, do I hate her so much just because she's a dead ringer for Kim Kardashian? There are other reasons, right? The rest of the order is: Gail, Daniel, Paulo, Nicole, Glenn, Meredith, and Charlie, who ends up with a model with intimidatingly thick and ratty hair. Dee's like, "Duh, yes it's strategy." The winner of this challenge gets a pictorial in Allure. Now GO SHAKE IT!
So the stylists get to work. Meredith wants her curly-haired model to have to perform a minimum of straightening or smoothing for her look. Dee, as always seems to be the case, thinks she has an advantage due to her salon-owning experience. She teaches at-home hair care classes out of her store room, y'all! Nicole picks up the mantle of Resident Shit-Talker and interviews that Charlie might struggle because coloring and cutting aren't his strong suits. Indeed, Charlie's not even going to bother coloring his model's hair -- she'd had it recently colored herself -- but instead uses his time to give her such important hair care tips as "shampoo your hair." Writing it down.... Rene then drops the bomb that judging won't take place tonight, but rather the models will come back the morning, and get 30 minutes to re-create the style, on their own, for the hair show. Now resume SHAKING IT!
Charlie whines up a storm about the restrictions, though Paulo is shockingly positive. In his own way. He allows that he may end up wanting to slash his model's throat. If he weren't such a whiny putz, Paulo's hatred of his own models would be kind of frightening. Nicole interviews that simplicity is her intention with this challenge, unlike the other stylists who have busted out the big round brushes and the straightening irons and other such overly-complicated tools. Indeed, Meredith looks like she's outsmarting herself again, as her model struggles to get the routine down. Nekisa, as is her way, lays all the responsibility for tomorrow's judging onto her model. Time expires and the stylists hold their breath and probably won't exhale until after tomorrow's hair show.
Back at the apartment, Dee's all-too-apparent crush on Nekisa is the talk of the group. Nekisa, who appears to be either oblivious or in denial (why you'd bother denying something so innocent, I don't know), continues to dig her own hole with viewers, saying that she's "all personality... and good looks." Mmm hmm.
The morning, the clients return and the stylists commence shitting bricks. Now it's the clients' turn to SHAKE IT. Nicole boasts about how easy her style was for her client to replicate, then talks about how funny it was to see the other stylists' clients struggle so much. So Nicole's either winning this challenge or losing terribly. Let's hope it's the former -- she's a shit talker, but I like it.
At the hair show, Jaclyn introduces the judges: lady-faced Kim Vo, Kelly Atterton, Kelly Atterton's mole, and Roy Teeluck. I should probably mention that I know fuck all about hairstyles, so I'm going to describe these things minimally but to the best of my ability. Nicole's client (who's model walk leaves a bit to be desired) got a curly, wavy look that appears kind of unkempt but with a good shape to it. Daniel gave his client a sleek-looking blonde bob that I can't complain about, despite my rapidly growing distaste for Daniel. Nekisa boasts about the highlights and lowlights and whatever she gave her client. Charlie cut his client's hair a good bit, and whatever he told her about blow-drying apparently took, because she looks great. Dee says she was going for a "windblown" look which, given the way her client appears looking like she just took a nap on her desk, is apparently successful. Paulo's client has crazy eyes and hair that doesn't look properly tamed. She looks like she's halfway through getting her hair cut. Meredith's client started out as a redhead this time around, and she darkened the color to a nice auburn (Meredith says "caramel") and shortened it up. Glenn's hair is mom-ish, but in a good way, given that her model is mature enough to carry it off. Gail didn't appear to change her model's hairstyle at all.
Daniel, Gail, and Paulo are the middle of the pack this week; Jaclyn sends them backstage, safe but not Shear Genius. Gail and Paulo lucked out, I think, and Daniel got shafted. Back out front, Glenn's client apparently took well to styling her hair and pledges to maintain Glenn's style at home. Kim calls Meredith's model out for inspection, and it does appear that the shape of the cut is a bit wonky. Jaclyn and Kelly both praise the color (word), but Kelly thinks it's too heavy. Meredith's crazy eyebrows seem to like it. Charlie gets pre-defensive about his decision not to color, and indeed none of the judges think that was the right call. They all say Charlie, having immunity, played this one safe. I was expecting some kind of pissy rebuttal (in an interview, of course) from Charlie, but maybe he's wearing his "not a tedious asshole" face today.
Dee gets praise for her highlighting and the "freshness" of the style. Kim Nekisa (I swear to you, that typo was completely unintentional) gets dinged for not doing enough to her client's hair. It does look fairly limp and uninspired in this light. Nicole's model boasts of being able to do her hair in eight minutes today, which impresses the judges. They think the style flatters her. Nicole, for her part, doesn't fail to get a couple jabs in at some of her unsuccessful competitors.
Backstage, Glenn says she'd give her right tit for that magazine pictorial, and she drives this point home by... grabbing her right tit. She holds onto it for a long time, too, which makes me think she maybe wouldn't give up her right tit since she's clearly so fond of it. Meredith takes the opposite view -- she needs to win this or else her reputation as an instructor of cutting curly hair will take a hit. The judges loved Glenn's bangs, hated Meredith's squid-hair, praise Dee's happy, healthy hair, don't think either Charlie or Nekisa did enough of anything (and Nekisa also didn't impart enough styling wisdom to her client), and loved Nicole's 8-minute 'do.
The stylists are called out: Dee, Glenn, and Nicole are the good ones, and the winner is...Glenn! Take a moment to say goodbye to that right tit, m'dear. The stylists give a hearty cheer for her, too, which is nice to see.
Charlie, Nekisa, and Meredith are the bottom three, but Charlie of course has immunity, so he ain't going anywhere. He apologizes and pledges to do better time. Jaclyn draws out the drama on the other two, before telling Nekisa she is... safe. Damn it. She drama-queens like a motherfucker and interviews that it's "game on" or some such bullshit. Girl better start making out with Dee before that storyline goes stale or else she's toast. Meredith, for her part, resigns herself to the idea that opinions are like assholes: everybody's got 'em, and they're all full of shit. Okay, she doesn't take it quite so bad, but she kind of scares me (in a good way), so maybe I'm not so off the mark.
Joe R has never paid more than $15 for a haircut in his entire life. Celebrate his ignorance of hair via email or at his blog, Low Resolution.