Cute dress, Ugly Betty and bad hair

Even though I know this show was recorded months ago, I think it's evocative of Shear Genius's success that a pretty major star gets to be a guest judge. This show really does have it all, doesn't it? Talent and bitchiness in the correct 5:2 proportion, interesting challenges with failure or success easy to judge at home, flamboyant personalities who sooner or later have to produce the goods or go the hell home...

And love. Lots and lots of love.

Maybe I love this show so much because it and I seem to be on the same wavelength. In my first recap, I predicted a day-to-evening hair challenge, and hikeeba! The ShortCut challenge is for the stylists to create a daytime style that their models can convert into an evening style in 5 minutes.

Whoa... they're working with real live heads this time! I discover that I will, oddly, miss the disembodied-heads-on-tripods lineup. But I'll live. One of the things that makes me so sanguine is the realization that the 65" TV that J and I recently welcomed into our lives allows me to see what color everybody's eyes are. This fascinates and delights me to a ridiculous degree.

Ben gets the last model pickins' and for once, I think this truly puts him at a disadvantage. Nothing against his model, but her hair is really fine and really fried. To Ben's total credit, he improves the condition of her hair and gives her a lovely evening look.

Danna does a trippy, braid-y, messy do for daytime, but when her model gathers the hair-storm into a side ponytail, it suddenly looks much more put-together.

This episode, I think, marks a sea change in my take on Dr. Boogie. I like him as a person, but I no longer think I want him coming near my hair. He takes a model with long red hair and gives her -- in his own words -- a mullet crossed with a mohawk: a mow-let. He says that like it's a good thing. I recoil in horror. (It's the hair with the headband -- for damn good reason -- in the picture up there.)

Although Ben's triumph over fried hair is noted, Danna's look is the winner of the ShortCut challenge. Aw, it's like a happy Benneton ad. Dr. Boogie's assault on aesthetics is noted, as is Evangelin's overly complicated evening change, which her model ran out of time to complete. It involved tying hanks of hair into knots; that can't be good.

After the ShortCut, the stylists are all given a reward: an afternoon at a spa. At first I think it's some kind of trick, that they'll have to do something at the spa, but no. They actually get a relaxing afternoon, and I'm very happy to see them get it, especially because it allows us to watch Anthony and Tabatha dishing about everybody else.

Well, actually, they mostly dish about Tyson and Evangelin, who's decided to keep using the garden shears as a haircutting implement. Is that even legal? Wouldn't it ... I dunno, cost her her license or something to use those as part of her regular repetoire? (If not, it should.)

The next morning, the great shear debate continues. Danna and Tabatha argue that using a garden implement on hair is unprofessional and doesn't reflect well on hairdressers as a profession. Evangelin makes me worry for her sanity as she says that the shears are just part of the evolution of cutting implements, which started with rocks.

Yeah. I don't get it either.

The next day, Rene greets the stylists at the studio.

I am happy to report that while Allure Editor-in-Chief Linda Wells' eyes are Daniel-Craig blue, Rene's eyes are more of a bluish gray. Rene says that the elimination challenge will be to create a red-carpet look for Vanessa Williams, who is planning to wear the dress on the right there.

At first, I think, "Tweed. Odd choice." Then I see the color scheme, which is loden green and pale pink, one of my favorite vintage color combinations. Then, when we see the dress in close-up, I realize that that pattern is created solely with beads, and my mouth drops open. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of highly skilled hours in that dress. And I respect a garment that I like more the closer I get to it.

Danna gets to choose the order of model selection. Referencing Tyson's sad little wang-waving order of the previous week, she reverses the order in which the stylists get to choose their models. She figures that everyone has different skills and weaknesses, and I'd say the constantly-changing roster of top and bottom styles bears that out.

Ben gets another challenge with his model: she's got extensions already woven into her hair. Apparently figuring that if you're gonna be a bear, best be a grizzly, Ben decides to add more extensions into the mix. And gives himself one for good measure.

Rene, having been told almost immediately by Tabatha about Evangelin's devotion to those damn shears, has a quick come-to-Jeebus talk with her at her station. "You're not going to use those on a client's hair," he says in the voice of a reasonable person talking to another reasonable person. I think you're being too optimistic, Rene.

Meanwhile, Tabatha's client has asked her to spill the dirt on her fellow contestants, and Tabatha, never one to hold back an opinion, does so. It goes something like this: Anthony is her best friend, Danna is cool, Daisy talks too much, Tyson's an insufferable dink, she can't get a read on Dr. Boogie, Ben is very cool and Evangelin's a nutbar. And you know what? I agree with her 100% on all of that. Can't argue with one tiny bit of it -- although I think it's slightly bad form to talk about it with a client.

Like Tabatha, I'm having a hard time figuring out Dr. Boogie. At first, I thought he was a genius with the clippers and I loved to hear his quips. But his haircuts on actual heads haven't impressed me much. I still like to see his reaction, but I've lost my faith in his hair prowess. Rene seems to be undergoing a similar disillusionment. He asks Dr. Boogie what celebrities he's styled, and doesn't accept the answer, "All of them." Eventually, Dr. Boogie cops to doing hair for LisaRaye, Viveca Fox and Kimora Lee Simmons. Which is pretty cool; good for him!

Is it hair show time yet? I think it is.

First off, Vanessa Williams looks lovely, even in unforgiving 1080p HD video. Evangelin refers to Williams as a "pageant girl." She means that the two of them have something in common, but I think she's got her frame of reference all wrong. Williams is an incredibly rare creature: not only a beauty queen who went on to have a fantastic career in entertainment, but a dethroned beauty queen who turned out to have more than enough talent to compensate for a famously bad decision. She's been nominated for several Grammys, a Tony, a Golden Globe, an Academy Award (both for Best Song) and a Screen Actors Guild award. She left the pageants behind decades ago, Evangelin.

Anyway, let's focus on what truly matters: the hair.

Anthony (dark brown eyes) has created a mega-beehive, and I see what he's doing, working off the mid-60s color scheme of the dress. But I don't think it works with Williams' style.

Ben (hazel eyes) was clearly out of his element on this challenge. Not just the extensions, but the concept of red-carpet hair is outside Ben's normal milieu. Williams says this looks like hair after a long prom night, and she's spot-on correct.

And speaking of things that remind you of bad proms... I've come to expect unattractive, unflattering clothes on the hair-show models on this show. But these dresses simply cannot be ignored. That's a manifesto of antipathy rendered in fabric right there. Damn, Cynthia Rowley. I expected better from you!

Daisy (luminous green eyes, very lovely) decided to play up the curl in her client's hair for this look. And if Williams wore her hair curly, I'm pretty sure she would have picked this look. But she doesn't, so Daisy came in second.

Danna (brown eyes) hits it out of the park. Not only did she choose a model with Williams' coloring, she captured Williams' style. The front is sleek and the back has a really interesting overlap-weaved style to it. It complements both the dress and the wearer. Williams gives this the win, and rightly so.

Dr. Boogie (dark brown eyes and, as we saw at the spa, a bit of a receding hairline, which explains the headgear) did a pretty good job on this one. It's kind of a modified Gibson-girl style. I like how he thought of all the possible camera angles on the hair. And lord, the man can sell his ideas. I just don't see Williams wearing this hair, nor do I think it meshes with the dress too well.

Evangelin (dark brown eyes with the distinct glint of crazy) is just out of her tree. She's taken an interesting idea -- combining straight hair and curly hair -- and done it in the most unflattering way possible. No, really.

See? No way in hell would Williams wear that look. And can you imagine all this hot mess on top of a small-scale print dress? I need to lie down.

Tabatha (steel gray eyes, aptly enough) also takes an interesting idea, but doesn't do anything compatible with Williams' style or the dress. Of course, it's executed much better than Evangelin's science project hair, but it still falls short of the goals of the challenge.

Tyson (blue eyes) takes the same general blueprint as Danna: sleek in the front, woven in the back. But he doesn't execute it as well. The back of his hair looks like a braid that's coming undone after a long night and the front looks a little haphazard as well.

After Danna is awarded the win, Evangelin and Ben are left in the bottom two. Ben comes down with a major case of the giggles, which is actually quite endearing, to me and to the judges. Ben did do a pretty lousy job with all the tracks and pins, but Evangelin is finally sent home.

In her tearful exit speech, Evangelin rambles about how fortunate she is to have been there and what she's learned and -- I swear I'm not making this up -- she says she's like Willy Wonka living in some kind of fantasy land, only she's found what she's looking for right here, and my last thought before I frantically turn off the ramblings of a crazy woman is that she's managed to conflate Willy Wonka and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and how the hell do you even do that in the first place?

Next week: Now that the pool is getting smaller, the drama is getting steeper. (And Leon's getting laaaaarger!)

Comments

[Marius]

Yeah, I don't get Dr. Boogie, and he hasn't impressed me. He's all talk. Tabatha rocks! Also, what's with describing the different eye colors? Just wondering. It's cute, but I don't get it. Hm, I wonder if eye color correlates with mental stability.

Anyway, great recap!

[StinkyLulu]

Your eye color bit cracked me up. Windows to the soul and all that (exhibit A: Evangelin's eye color.) Does your tv have a friend or sibling to set me up with?

And, yes, Boogie's dead to me after that evil clipper cut. He can still talk, and I'll still be amused, but I'll be laughing at a voice from the other side. (I can't imagine that he's not a goner in the next episode or two.)

[Catherine Cantieri]

Marius: the eye color bit was because I now have an enormous TV in the family room (65" -- which is how tall my best friend is, for reference), so I can actually see what color everybody's eyes are. Like I said, it delights me to be able to do that. I'm really a very simple mammal who likes large, bright, shiny things.

[SueBee]

Woman, I LOVE that you said, "If you're gonna be a bear, best be a grizzly"! Frankly, I think we should be putting it on t-shirts for all our JPWVP friends. Just a thought...

[Lozza]

Fun blog! I just realised how fun this show is after watching the Vanessa Williams challenge for the second time. LOVIN IT! So I went blog hunting to soothe my schadenfreude heart.

Tabatha and Danna and Anthony are awesome. The Aussie and the South African and the Brit ... all so laid back yet so ironic.

I'll be back!

[Marius]

Ah, it all makes sense now. Sorry, I'm a little slow. I envy you; I really want your new TV. By the way, I clicked on some of the ads on your blog.

[Stacy]

dang i wish i had an awesome tv like that!! This show rules...I like Tabatha, too. I've been hearing a lot about the show lately cuz I work with Conde Nast and there is a sweepstakes going on. You and a friend could win a 2-night trip to NYC,a shear genius haircut, a complete makeover and a $500 shopping spree! It free to enter: http://condenast.eprize.net/alluresheargenius/?affiliate id=1d. Good luck!!!

[xl pharmacy]

This blog is mind blowing. I have to admit at first I thought it didn't have anything interesting to offer, but after read some posts my opinion changed radically.