Welcome to Season 3 of Shear Genius, dear readers! They've shaken things up a little this season, starting with a new host, Camila Alves. She's hot, she's modeled, she has two children with Matthew McConaughey, and she has a thick accent and great hair, all of which makes her totally qualified to host a hairstyling reality show! Jonathan Antin (formerly of Blow Out) is a new judge and joins Kim Vo, who is the only familiar face from last season. We have a montage of the tantrums that are to come, and Camila tells us that the winner of the show gets $100,000 from Nexxus Salon Hair Care, an apprenticeship with Nexxus, and the opportunity to style hair for an Allure photo shoot. But most importantly, that person will be SHEAR GENIUS.
The new stylists all file in, and we meet Giacomo, who has kind of golden-brown Kenny G hair, and who is drooling over Camila. She greets them all and reminds them that they are the twelve most talented stylists of everyone who tried out. Unspoken is that they are also likely to be nuts for the sake of entertaining television. April has a salon in NYC and has a "me and my shears against the world" attitude for no apparent reason. Adee is from London, and his (quite legitimate, actually) claim to fame is that he gave David Beckham his fauxhawk. He doesn't call it that, though they show some pictures, which makes me wonder if someone snatched up that copyright. Jon is from Nashville and is that douche who keeps his sunglasses on indoors so that he'll stand out from everyone. His obnoxious attitude will probably do that just fine on its own, as he describes himself as "a large pill to swallow." It's too easy to make a sex joke as if I had the maturity level of a teenage boy here, isn't it? Faatemah is from Minneapolis and says that the competition is going to be a bloodbath, and someone is going to go home in a "body bath" but it won't be her. Camila says they have London and the US, and asks what else they have. A girl with horrifically processed-looking, brassy hair says she's from Simi Valley, and there is a kind of record-scratch effect as if to say, what kind of imaginary city is that? And though this girl, Brig, tries to make it sound like a tiny hick town in the sticks where everyone gets around on their horses, I just find it all incredibly lame as I grew up near there and while it's not a glamorous town by any possible stretch, it's not some country town where they just got electricity and indoor plumbing. It's true that they didn't have a mall, which meant that those poor, mall-starved teenage girls had to drive, oh, ten miles to get to one in a neighboring town. It's a wonder that anyone ever escaped to the Big City! Brig loves doing hair for regular old moms, and she's here to "take out the city folk." All the people who live in Simi Valley and commute to Los Angeles are at a danger of hurting themselves by rolling their eyes too hard at this. Between this, the yellow hair, and the overly-quirky clothes, this girl is trying way, way too hard.
Camila then brings in Jonathan Antin, who created the "signature look" of the Pussycat Dolls. Never mind that his sister Robin created the group and he probably happened to be the one there when they needed it. Jon can't stand him and for that matter, none of the stylists look genuinely excited to see him there. He sets himself up as a harsh loudmouth, and then we meet more contestants. Amy is the youngest on there, and she lives in Canada where she owns three salons and a scissor company. Camila explains to all of them that each week they'll have a short cut challenge which will be, well, held in a short amount of time, and then there will be the elimination challenge and one person will go home. She then goes through the prizes while most of the contestants smirk as if they've already won.
Time for the short cut challenge! Twelve totally punky girls, with hairdos ranging from a bright pink half-bouffant to dreadlocks, walk in. Camila says the girls are now looking for a more refined look and Brig, of all people, says their hair is crying out for help. Methinks the one with the orange-yellow tone shouldn't throw the first stone. Janine is the contestant we meet, and she has her own salon in Hollywood and says she's no stranger to this kind of crazy hair. Jonathan is going to be the judge and is looking for technical skill, creativity, and overall transformation. They draw scissor boxes with numbers that give them the order in which they'll choose. Arzo is first. She was born in Afghanistan and has a salon in San Francisco, and looks a little like Sandra Oh. They all pick their girls and Amy, who has the last number, was hoping to not get the girl with dreadlocks; of course this means she does. To Amy's credit, she's super nice and upbeat with the girl even though she was apparently dying inside.
Hairstyling montage! We meet Brian, and as he says he looks beyond Vogue and is inspired by "indigenous cultures" and "history books." No one told him he actually just looks like a dime-a-dozen hipster. Matthew from Denver invites us to Google him, which will show us that he's done the covers of all the local magazines and always does hair for New York Fashion Week. His haughty tone seems more appropriate for telling us he's done the covers of all the high fashion magazines, rather than a bunch of locals, but good for him and his confidence. Giacomo is up and likes to tell his model all about himself. He has worked "all over the world, with every celebrity in the world, every supermodel in the world, with every wealthy queen, king..." God gave him a gift, you know, but I do like that he admits he loves his life and what he does. I do think, however, that if he'd really done that much already he wouldn't necessarily be trying to win Shear Genius. It's just a theory. Joey is from Australia and has won a lot of hair competitions, but he doesn't know if his aesthetic will appeal to the American market.
Amy starts without a specific idea, instead focusing first on getting the dreadlocks out. Faatemah is trying to style her girl's hot pink hair into something "Barbie goes inner city." Janine's first task is to wash out the Elmer's Glue that is holding her girl's hair into giant spikes. She tells the girl all about the bob she's going to give her, and is appalled when she realizes that under all the glue, her girl has super thick, super curly hair. Another styling montage! Jonathan walks around asking everyone what they are doing and sounding a little doubtful that anyone is going to really get done in time. Faatemah takes out the style she was working on and decides to start over, putting all of her girl's hair up. Amy decides to go asymmetrical with some hair extensions, and Faatemah thinks this is a totally lame cop-out and Amy is out of her league. Trim, brush, blow dry, freak out. And with that, the time is up!
It's time to see the results, and Arzo's girl is up first. She took her girl's faded pink/blonde hair and went bright red, giving her bangs and a sleek layered cut that frames her face. Jonathan likes it all, though he's clearly not someone to, erm... overpraise. He calls her fabulous cut "pretty good." Giacomo took his girl's black hair with white-blonde, thick, short bangs and managed to give her a sort of auburn-ish, flippy, layered look with side-swept bangs, and Jonathan's happy with that. Janine is up and sadly, her 'do is a mess. The bob is totally uneven and not at all smooth, and I fear for what this poor girl is going to look like when she has to try and style it herself. For the first time this season but definitely not the last, I hope these people all get to visit another team of stylists immediately afterward to fix whatever might have gone horrible wrong during the challenge. I don't like Jon already, but I must give him props for calling it "a brown Speed Racer helmet." Jonathan doesn't have much good to say about it at all. He likes April's work better -- she turned her girl's hair from dark brown to a lighter, well, orange, and I agree with Jonathan that it was better dark. But it's not a bad cut: short but still with enough length to flip it around some so it's still kind of funky. Jonathan calls it, "good okay, not bad okay." Jonathan calls Joey's hair, "a very cool mullet," and it's actually a fairly good description as she's got bangs and a few bobbed pieces in front, but the hair is long in the back and streaked with purple. The mullet comparison is still kind of alarming, but it's not bad. Brig used a whole lot of implements to style her girl's hair, but all it looks like all she did was add some wave to what was previously a style that was both big yet smooth, and then pinned it up. Boring.
Jon cut his girl's hair into a spiky red short cut with longer bangs, and tries to claim that she could go from roller derby to Chanel pantsuit. He gets some laughter from Jonathan and Camila at that because... no. It's a really cute cut, but it's more Rock & Republic than Chanel. Faatemah put her girl's hair up into what Jonathan points out is a pretty messy updo, considering a '50s look like she was going for needs to be sleek. Brian notices his model has a "who farted face," and clearly hates her hair, and rightfully. It's super sloppy, amateur '40s look, with terrible color that not just no longer pops, but is super drab. Jonathan isn't impressed. Adee calls his own work average but then blames it on his girl's overprocessed hair, and she doesn't look entirely thrilled by his honesty even though Jonathan appreciates it. He basically cut off a few inches and gave her flippy layers, leaving her hair dark with blue streaks. If she didn't have the color, it would be completely boring. Matthew had a girl who had Mohawk with Kate Gosselin bangs to begin with, which was brown with some blonde streaking. He dyed it super light blonde and smoothed it out some, keeping the long bangs, and Jonathan says he did everything he could have with that cut, which is meant as a compliment, and he and the girl seem happy with it. Amy is up last, and her girl now has awesome, thick, dark, glossy hair with a couple of purple streaks that goes from shoulder length on one side to a few inches longer. While I can never look at that kind of cut without imagining how it would drive me absolutely insane on my own head, she looks totally great and Jonathan is really pleased.
He then chooses his bottom three: Faatemah, Brian, and Janine, all of whom I totally agree with. His top three are Amy, Giacomo, and Arzo, which are also the three I would have picked. My favorite was actually Arzo but I have no problem at all when he announces Amy as the winner because she also did a fantastic job. She wins first choice of model the day, and then Camila dismisses them all.
The gang head to their digs, which are of course awesome and beautiful, and there is champagne waiting with the label covered with tape so we don't see the brand that didn't give permission to be on TV. They have a toast, and Adee toasts Amy for her win. Brig takes a different approach, and tells everyone that she's the best one there and going to beat them all. Everyone clearly thinks this is a little bit ridiculous but they play along (for now) and clink glasses.
Weirdly, there is then a segment that's only about two minutes long, and I actually rewound it to see if it was some, "Here's your Quirky Moment of the week, sponsored by The Home Depot!" But no, it seems to have just been a really strangely timed segment of the show, in which we learn that Brig likes to roller skate around the apartment in her gold bathing suit and a captain's hat, and generally make a spectacle of herself while annoying all of her housemates. She actually says she plans to, "throw off [her] competitors with [her] flash." Brian likens it to a band needing to wear crazy costumes because their music sucks, taking the words right out of my mouth. And with that... another commercial.
They gather in front of Camila to hear about the elimination challenge and Brig is in her roller skates, white tights, a gold sequined skirt, pink sheer shirt, and suspenders. Did she not get enough attention from her family when she was a kid? I am desperately hoping that the reason we've seen so much of her this episode is that she's the first one to go. Camila introduces the gang to their mentor, their Tim Gunn, if you will, and he's someone named Orlando Pita who has an amazing John Oates-esque moustache. Most of the stylists seem faint in his presence, which means he probably REALLY has styled every celebrity and supermodel's hair in the world, Giacomo. Camila then tells them that their challenge will be designing the hair for a runway show for L*Space swimsuits. Janine is super excited for runway hair, while Adee is super excited that the models are all sexy. Camila leaves, and Orlando has the models bring out their outfits for the show, which consist of bikini bottoms and nothing more. The stylists must create a hairstyle that both looks good and covers their boobs. The winner receives immunity for the week. Amy gets first choice of model, while the rest of them draw from a bag of bikini tops that match the bottoms the remaining models are holding to see who they are going to be working with.
Brig grabs her So.Cap™ hair extensions and is ready to go. She works in her roller skates and describes how she wants to weave hair into a kind of halter top. Amy's idea sounds nearly as regrettable: she wants to make a bikini top out of braids. Adee's idea was to just have some wisps of hair over his model's nipples, which he imagines will be "really naughty." Janine is trying for giant "sea nymph" hair, while Joey wants his style to stand out and decides to go with brightly colored extensions made into a necklace of sorts. Seriously, any ideas that involve fashioning hair into clothing or jewelry of sorts sounds horrifyingly bad to me, but maybe I'll be happily surprised? Maybe? Anyone? Bueller? Orlando in fact tells Joey to make sure it looks like a hairstyle and not a necklace. The other unfortunate concept that a couple of stylists are trying out is just sticking hair directly on these poor girls' breasts. Adee glues a bit of long blonde hair to each breast, and it winds up looking like she has hairy man-boobs. Orlando tries to diplomatically dissuade him from this course and fortunately Adee agrees that he needs to switch it up, but his solution is to do a "veil" of hair... a hair choker, if you will, where he's taken a line of extensions, which hang from a kind of wire, and tied it around her neck so the hair hangs like a bib.
Jon has his sunglasses back on for the show, so my slight softening towards him for the Speed Racer comment is now totally reversed. Camila comes out and introduces the judges: Jonathan, Kim Vo, and guest judge Monica Wise from L*Space, before reminding everyone that someone is going to be eliminated.
Matthew's model is out first, and she's got a lion's mane of curly hair cascading down and covering everything it should, with some of it on top of her head fashioned into a kind of Mohawk to make the 'do even bigger, and it's great. Faatemah's girl comes out and looks kind of like she just rolled out of bed. Her hair is all messily swept to one side, and there's a braid that comes down and is stuck to her forehead. The hair on her head only covers one breast. So on the other there's what Faatemah calls a beautiful rosette, but what I call a creepy bird's nest. Janine's model comes out and looks fabulous with crazy frizzy-curly hair that covers all her bits, while her bangs are long and straight with a crazy feather-flower-thing over one ear. Ah yes, thus starts my incredibly articulate and precise descriptions of the hairdos this season. But that's what it is! Is it a feather? Is it a flower? Who knows? Who cares, if it rocks? Not me. April's girl has big, beachy, huge long hair that's simple, but gets the job done nicely and goes with the swimsuit. Giacomo's girl also has a giant head of curls, but where Faatemah failed sweeping it to one side he totally nailed it, and he left a big lock falling out on the other side to artfully cover all it should while still looking sexy and fun.
Brian calls his style Caribbean, and I do actually like the crazy orange-red and ultraviolet pieces in there. It looks a little less sexy-frizzy and a little more I-lost-my-smoothing-gel-when-I-got-out-of-the-shower, but even that's not the issue. The issue for me is the big skunk stripe on the back when she turns around. It's totally out of place. Amy's bikini top is a piping hot mess. It looks sloppy and strange. Jon's model comes out with the strangest stompy walk I've ever seen (and I've watched a LOT of America's Top Model, y'all), but her hair is pretty cool -- half of it piled up on her head in loose curls while the rest comes down, and there are bright blue pieces worked in. Jon just sounds so ridiculously poncey, though, saying it's not his best work but it will do, like he's a bored genius. How can he even see it with those stupid glasses on?
Adee's girl has her hair pulled up into a sort of mushroom-do of frizz, and then has her horrible hair collar around her neck. The problem is that you can still see the girl's nipples, and it's kind of hilarious how the camera keeps panning in to prove it but they've had to blur them out and did a fairly good job, so you don't actually see anything at all. He tries to defend it as editorial and sexy, but it's not what he was supposed to do. Joey's girl comes out and I like her actual hair, which is big and wavy with red-orange pieces underneath, but then she has this giant rope-like hair necklace, and from there the pieces come down that preserve her modesty. Joey doesn't like that she strikes a couple of unnecessary poses on the runway, but he should be more worried about that necklace. Arzo's model is , and her hair is half pulled back, in a bouffant on top and wavy on the bottom. Like some others it's simple, but it gets the job done just fine. Brig's girl then comes out and has used rubber bands to do her crocheted effect, the hair pulled down and then criss-crossed across her sternum, with the ends all frizzed out and crazy, but covering her nips. And with that, the first show is over, and the contestants are dismissed.
The actual judging panel takes place in a separate room, not on the runway. The four judges are on stools facing the contestants and Camila reminds them all how this works. She then calls Matthew, Jon, Faatemah, Brian, Arzo and Giacomo's names -- they are all safe, but none of them are the winner of the challenge. Amy is then the first up of the remaining stylists to defend her style; unsurprisingly the hair bikini was not a hit. Kim gets saddled with a clunker of a joke, saying it was "discontinued in 300 B.C. because it's a prehistoric push-up bra." Thank goodness he's better at color than stand-up. Brig is up , and to my chagrin Jonathan really liked it, though the designer didn't like the fact that the eye was drawn more to the hair than the swimsuit. Joey tells them he was going for loose and beachy, but Kim says it looks too harsh. Joey makes a completely amateurish mistake and tries to blame his model's dance moves on the runway as part of the problem, but Camila promptly calls him on it. Janine tells the judges about her sea nymph idea, and they all love the result. Camila asks April in what direction she was going, and April talks about how happy she was with how much hair her model had. Kim likes the color, but Jonathan dings her for it being pretty but boring. Monica loved it though, and the client's is always the most important opinion. The last one up is Adee, who has to concede that his veil covered nothing but he tries to defend it as sexy. Monica likes that her eye was drawn to the suit and not the hair, but Jonathan points out that Adee just took a length of hair as it was sold, hanging off a wire, and just wrapped it around his model's neck, which is something his toddler could have done. He tries to get Adee to admit he knows it's not great, but Adee is going down fighting that he did a good job. Once they are dismissed back to the salon during the judges' deliberation, though, he loses his cool and kicks some stuff over, proclaiming them "wankers." Jonathan is certainly a little ridiculous, but Adee needs to have at least the tiniest bit of perspective on his own work if he's going to make it.
They discuss Amy first, and the overall consensus seems to be that the idea was good, but the execution was sloppy. They discuss April -- Monica loved it, and Kim compliments her job with color -- dark all over except lighter at the tips. Apparently that is what's hot right now, though personally that's what happens to my hair naturally when my ends split and I need a trim, so it's not a dye job I'm rushing out to get. Kim also is impressed by how Janine nailed the color of the extensions to work with her model's hair, and Jonathan thinks she went exactly as big as she could go without things turning scary. No one likes Joey's red necklace disaster, but they all love Brig's design. Blech. Monica does stick to it drawing the eye away from the suit, however, so she probably won't win this one. Lastly they discuss Adee, and while Monica kind of liked it, Jonathan describes how stupidly easy it would be for anyone to do that "style."
April, Janine and Brig are called out as the top three; Brig is STILL in her roller skates, and if I'm ever going to do anything but root against her with all my might, she needs to tone it down and stop trying so hard to be noticed. Happily, the winner is Janine, and it's well deserved. Amy, Joey and Adee are then called out as the bottom three, and Camila runs through each of their problems once again before announcing that Amy and Adee are safe, and cute little Joey is going home. He gives the usual final "it was a great opportunity" and then heads out with little fanfare, given that no one really knows each other that well yet. Camila reminds the rest of them how fast they can go from best to worst and finishes with, "Hair is important," before dismissing them. Joey then gives a last interview in which he laments that he didn't have a chance to really show everything he can do. Ah, such is the fate of the first person kicked off of a reality show.
Jonathan Antin gives tips on what not to do with your hair.