Welcome to Week 2, my darlings! The gang files in to the salon and are greeted by Camila, who points out that Janine's winning hairstyle will be featured on the "Allure Wall of Fame," where a photo of her model has been made into a fake Allure cover and presumably will be joined by photos of the winners in weeks to come. Then Giacomo raises his hand, and in the most low-key, unexpected and non-dramatic reality show exits ever, says he is asking to leave the show on account of him missing his babies at home. The expressions on the others' faces range from surprised to blatant eye-rolling. Faatemah speaks for everyone when she says she thinks it's a cheap out but hey, it's one less competitor. And one less head of glorious Kenny-G-esque hair. Alas! Camila wishes him well and he leaves. She then warns everyone that someone is still getting eliminated, which is something they clearly were not expecting. Camila then introduces Kim Vo to judge the short cuts challenge, and he comes out in hot pink pants, a white tee and a khaki cardigan. Naturally, the challenge has to do with color, and Adee promptly freaks out because he's had a colorist doing all that for him for years. A bunch of overprocessed blondes file in, and Camila tells them they have two hours to change their hair color and make it look healthy. Everyone draws scissor boxes to pick clients, and Adee picks first, and picks a girl who he thinks is hot, rather than necessarily the best model. Brig comments that there's one girl who has extra nasty hair -- seriously, it's standing on end and looks half a second from just falling out of her head in defeat -- and that she's the last to pick and doesn't want her. So she starts whispering to Matthew to not steal her model, she wants her, and so Matthew, with his -to-last pick, gives us the episode title and announces, "I'm totally stealing your model." He sounds so proud, and doesn't realize he just played into Brig's trap, so we'll see how he fares. Camila leaves them with Kim and time starts.
Comb, comb, comb, talk, talk, talk, as all the stylists now try to force their will on their clients. Faatemah is totally dismissive of her client wanting to stay blonde, but... dude, she was blonde already by choice, which means that presumably it's what she likes and wants, so I'm not sure why Faatemah so surprised. She wants to give the girl roots so that it's not as noticeable when it grows out. That could go disastrously wrong, that. Adee thought he picked someone who wanted a change, but of course she wants to stay blonde as well. Brian is going... warm blonde. Basically, everyone just wants to still be blonde, and all the stylists are going to do some variety of highlights or lowlights to break things up. Amy gets a little sassy with her girl since she needs to win and the girl doesn't really want any change made whatsoever. Kim is telling everyone that they're playing it too safe, but all the clients maintain that they want to stay blonde, even when Kim starts chanting that everyone is blonderexic. Brig is the first to make a drastic change and wants to take her client red... as does Matthew. Kim makes another round through the salon where he stays skeptical and catty about everyone's choices, especially Adee. But, as Matthew points out, it's the hazard of picking the model you want to screw versus the one whose hair you could do in two hours. The montage o'styling is the broken up by a piercing scream, because Brian gets bleach in his model's eye. Someone better hope he survives this episode, because no one who sees this is going to hire him in the real world, for fear of blindness.
Brian then has to minister to his client's potential blinding injury rather than her hair, but once he has her flushing out her eye he at least takes the foils out and admits he's screwed because his color will be done but he won't be dry. Camila is back with a five-minute warning, and Adee freaks out because he's bad with time restraints and throws his model's head around trying to get her long thick hair dry. Janine gets the quote of the day, saying that Brig's model's hair looks, "Like she bit it off. In my personal opinion." I can't wait to see this. And it's time, the clock ends. Adee tries to keep styling, but they stop him, and he swears and reluctantly joins everyone.
His model looks exactly the same, and the only thing he did was give her dark brown underneath. Kim calls it dated, and Adee counters in an interview that the bob has been around for 100 years, but people are still doing it. Yes, there's a different between "classic" and "questionable fad," dude. Brian's model looks exactly the same but her bonus is that she still has her eyesight even though her hair is only half-dry and is totally frizzy. Brian tries to say that the color is beautiful, but really there's no change and it just looks fried. Camila points out that you could never send someone out of the salon that way, and Brian's explanation that it will look better when she goes home and washes it doesn't cut it with anyone. Faatemah is up and gave her girl some "copper tone" in the blonde, but Kim warns her that if someone wants to stay blonde, you don't put a bunch of lowlights around their face. Her model looks incredibly skeptical, too. Jon is up , and he made her hair look a bit healthier, but basically the same. Arza then comes up with her model, who has a whole range of lowlights, but as the she's still blonde around her face, you can't really see much else unless you look closely. Kim knocks both of them for their girls still being too blonde. I get it, but... there is a fine line to walk when half the challenge is "client satisfaction." Kim is pulling a Tyra Banks and giving conflicting feedback to everyone, too; I think this will probably be a challenge that is never repeated if this show sees future seasons. So far I think Arzo's girl's hair looks the healthiest, which was one of the big goals. April then gets up and presents her model looking exactly the same as before, then bristles when Kim tells her that the color actually ages the poor woman, but he's not wrong. Amy is up , and Kim knocks her for cooling the tone too much and it not going with her girl's skin tone. Janine is , and she warmed up the blonde on her girl, but Kim thinks it should have been brighter. I'm not sure he's going to like anyone at this point, but then it is Matthew's turn. He's taken his client's plastic white hair and made it a deep auburn, and it looks great on her. Kim says it looks too artificial, but then says it looks amazing. Brig is then up last, and Janine's assessment about the biting wasn't wrong -- there's messy, and then there's Flowbee, and Brig falls firmly on the side of the latter. Kim knocks her for just doing it all a solid red and not making any variation and movement. Time for the rulings: Kim's bottom three are Adee's dated look, April's no real change, and Brian's nearly blinded client. His top three are Jon, Matthew, and Janine. Kim needs to get better at giving some positive feedback so that we could predict these things, but those three girls do all look good. The winner turns out to be Matthew, and while I'm not a big Brig fan, I will give her credit for smiling and totally admitting that her plan backfired completely. Matthew is just told he wins an advantage the day, not immunity.
After the commercials we join the gang in their apartment, and Brian narrates his journal writing: if he loses again tomorrow he'll go home, and he doesn't want to go home on his birthday. And... that's it. Like Brig's weird segment last week, that takes us back into more commercials. Ooookay.
The day they all head to the Roosevelt Hotel where, in honor of being poolside, Camila has huge, curled sexy beach hair going. She's standing to a table with a bunch of covered dishes, and says that that night, the Dakota restaurant will be unveiling its new menu. Camila then introduces executive chef Jason Johnston of the restaurant, and tells them that the challenge is to interpret the texture, color and presentation of a dish from the menu into a hairstyle that will be on a server that night. They already were given their picking order off-camera, so go right into selecting dishes -- which they are allowed to taste as part of their research. This is making me hungry. Brian gets chocolate mousse, April gets heirloom tomato salad and Jon gets seared scallops (and he thinks the challenge is brilliant). Brig gets tiramisu, Amy gets the Dakota burger, Janine gets beet salad and couldn't be more bitter about it, and Adee gets steak tartare, which excites him terribly, as his nickname is "the butcher" since he used to be, well, a butcher. Matthew gets yellowtail hamachi, Arzo tuna tataki, and Faatemah gets orange flan trio and of course complains about it, since she's not familiar with flan. Look, I get it, but she's done nothing all hour other than put people down or complain, so get over it, sister -- be inspired by what's on the plate, it's okay that you hadn't heard of it before now. Finally, Camilla tells Matthew about his prize from the day before -- he's allowed to switch dishes with anyone he chooses, but he actually loves what he got and sticks with it. Camila then reminds Janine that she has immunity from winning last week, and Janine says this is going to make her more adventurous than she might normally be. Camila dismisses them to meet up with Orlando Pita back in the salon.
He explains that the models have been randomly selected and are holding their dishes, so they go and get their girls and the clock starts their two hours. They have styrofoam props that they can work with and Brig grabs a ton of stuff, while Matthew declares that if you have to use all that, you're a shitty hairdresser. She's planning a black and white theme to go with the chocolate sticks that adorn her dessert. Arzo, meanwhile, plans to make her model's hair warm and spicy. Jon is going to match the visuals from his plate, while Amy is going to incorporate the colors of her burger, including bacon. Brian gets in this week's plug for a sponsor and says he will be using the So.Cap hair extensions to build a chocolate base. As Orlando walks around and checks everyone out, Jon gives himself a little bit of humanity and admits he's terrified having one of his biggest "mentors" looking over his work -- I'll just ignore that I think he meant to say "role model" or "hero," as Orlando only just became an actual mentor to him last week, because Jon needs to be a little more likable. Brig is going to go big, and we see what looks like a bowling ball on her model's head. Matthew wants to go a combination of fishtail braid and geisha (his own words) and while Orlando seems skeptical, Jon thinks Matthew is talented and actually his competition. Orlando tries to get specifics out of Arzo, but she won't give him anything other than warm and spicy, and she's mad that he seems to think she might need to actually do something associated with her dish other than just a vague color similarity. Everyone seems to be going pretty architectural and there are a lot of various adornments going on -- I'm rather looking forward to seeing how these crazy things turn out. Faatemah of course knocks what Brig is doing, calling it "Circus d'oleil," and while I find Brig annoying, I must have gotten my serious hate out of my system last week, because I just don't care as much. I would prefer if Faatemah would at least act like she's enjoying maybe just the tiniest bit of what she's doing and stop bitching about everything, because it's boring and makes her seem like an inept stylist.
They now head to the Roosevelt and meet the judges -- Jonathan Antin and Kim Vo, joined by Joel Warren, who is not just a colorist, but an "Acclaimed Colorist," according to his chyron, for the Warren-Tricomi Salon. Brig is completely starstruck, but Joel looks bored, like we're taking him away from precious tanning time.
Matthew is up first with his server. Her hair is pulled back in a big geisha style as he intended, with a fishtail braid in back that has started to unravel just a little, decorated with chopsticks and flowers. I was worried about where he was going with this, but the execution is actually quite cool. April is up and her girl has a giant huge updo with a vine and red highlights (along with tomato earrings) to reflect her heirloom tomato salad. Amy's cheeseburger do is an updo with red braids of color wound in, to reflect the bacon, and then leaves worked in as well, with her hair cascading down in some curls in the back. Kim comments to the other judges that he would have killed to see the girl come out with Princess Leia buns, and now that awesomeness is all I can think about, too. Jon's scallop hair is standard in front -- dark brown, thick bangs, which, look, I'm not knocking as that describes my own hair. Fortunately, though, my haircut isn't supposed to resemble food. When she turns around, however, he's done it in structural curls with blonde streaks to resemble the scallops, and giant leaves are worked in as well and it's all actually really cool-looking. Adee thinks his steak tartare look is soft and sexy; I think it's ripped straight off of Janine's look last week. She has long straight bangs in front, and the back is sort of a long bob of big frizzy curls, all dyed raw-steak red. Janine's beet salad server has a giant ball of red hair set on top of her head with straight hair sprouting out of the top, like a fountain.
Arzo is really happy with her model who has... a very nice updo that is absolutely not out of the ordinary. Her hair is a nice dark brown, and the updo is cool with separate pieces all woven in and some height at the crown of her head, but there's no way this could be associated in any way with the dish, even with the tiny bit of greenery woven in. Joel Warren seems to be saying something delightfully catty to Camila. Faatemah is up and reflected the light, airy texture of her flan in a huge orange and blonde updo that looks kind of like a ponytail of cotton candy. Brig says that her tiramisu hairdo is avant-garde and not circus, but... it's circus. It's a series of three balls of hair on top of each other, one black, and the others black and blonde, with some striped pieces on top. It's certainly crazy. Brian, finally, worked his server's hair into a fun updo with all sorts of separate curl pieces in brown and blonde that reflect his dessert rather literally, but in a fun way. Apparently this is the hairdo I can't describe well for the week.
Everyone heads back to the regular judging room and the stylists line up for their feedback. April, Faatemah, Adee and Janine are all safe, and are dismissed to wait in the salon while the others are critiqued. Matthew is up first and describes that he wanted an Asian vibe with the actual fishtail braid because of the fish in the dish (I'm Dr. Seuss!) and the judges all like it. Joel thinks it reminds him of a blowfish, but means that as a compliment. Jonathan does ask about the braid and Matthew admits that it fell apart a little bit from all the backcombing he had done for texture, but it doesn't seem to take away from the judges' enjoyment of the style. Jon is up , and the judges all love the bangs he gave his girl as well as the barrel curl scallops. Kim loves the color, and Jon actually jumps up and down with happiness. Brian is up to explain himself, and he explains that he was inspired by the cream garnish, used brown extensions instead of coloring her hair, and really tried to be literal with his style. Camila deems it "yummy" and Kim thought it looked creamy and soft. Joel actually says that technically it was perfect.
Arzo's critique is , and she's done the math and realizes she's not there as one of the top styles. She gives them her explanation of the color being warm and spicy, but the judges all agree that they can't see anything of the dish in the hairstyle. Kim then knocks Arzo's coloring, as she didn't do anything to the underside of her hair, which is obvious as it's pulled up. Jonathan thinks it's an "old lady updo," which I think is a little harsh -- I think it's boring, not old -- but I get his point. Brig is up explaining that she was inspired by the black and white chocolate straws, and Kim accurately tells her that, "it looks like an interracial snowman." Sometimes he tries too hard to be funny, but sometimes he is spot-on, and this is one of those delightful times. Jonathan called her out on making a hairpiece rather than styling the girl's actual hair, and after Brig tries to defend that this is avant-garde, Joel straight-up questions her taste level. Amy is up last, and man, her model's tan boobs are pushed up so far out of her black dress that they make me think of the hamburger buns more than her hairdo does. Amy says she worked the colors and textures of the burger into the hair and wanted to go classy rather than avant-garde. Joel tells her it's not at all classy, and the other judges all basically tell her that it's just a mess and not at all indicative of the hamburger; she fights back tears as she takes it all.
Camila dismisses them all to deliberate, and Brig thinks about packing up while Amy and Arzo seem to be kind of shellshocked after their respective beatings.
We then join the judges who go over all the styles again -- it's all basically what we heard before. Matthew's braid was messy but overall the look was awesome and totally right for his dish. They all hate Amy's do and Kim reiterates his wish for some kitschy buns. They do all admit that she did a good job with the color, though, so it's not 100% bad. Everyone loves Jon's look that incorporated the dish, and was flawless and beautifully finished. Arzo is knocked for ignoring all the actual requirements of the challenge and just doing an updo. Brig is knocked for not only just putting balls on her server's head, but for doing a messy job to boot. Finally, they discuss how Brian did a great job making his hairdo look just like a delicious dessert. With that, Camila calls them all back in.
Jon, Matthew and Brian are called forward as the top three. Camila compliments them all individually, then tells Matthew that he was good, but not the winner, before awarding the win to Jon. He's stoked and jumps around a lot in glee. Then Arzo, Brig and Amy are called forward as the bottom three of the week. Camila goes through and reminds each of them how much they stunk it up before telling a very relieved Amy that she is safe. Brig and Arzo then are given a few moments to stew in their own juices before Camila dismisses Arzo. Dang. She did do the worst job this week, but I think she's better than Brig and I'm sorry to see her go this early. She gets a little dig in saying that if the judges really believe they are right, then that is their call. Um, yes, that's why in fact you were just announced as the week's loser -- we've all seen enough reality TV to know they aren't at this point going to change their minds and call you back. Camila dismisses her pretty sternly before reminding the rest of the gang that, "Hair? Is important." They file out, and finally Arzo interviews that she's proud of her work and thinks this wasn't fair. I guess we can all just take away the lesson that she clearly does not, which is that if you are in a competition, you need to actually make an effort to do what is asked of you and not just some boring cop-out instead. Bye Arzo -- I would have much preferred to see more of your work and not Brig's gold leggings again!
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