Thursday, June 26, 2008

Shear Genius, season two: They're here, it's shear, get used to it!

So remember last season when you were like, "Hey, there's this new show called Shear Genius" and I was all, "What?" and you were like, "Yeah, it's a reality competition show about hairdressing" and I was all, "You've got to be freaking kidding me" and then you were like, "No, seriously; we should watch it" and I was like, "I'm not watching some goddamn reality competition show about people cutting hair; I've got better things to do with my time" and you were all, "No, you don't" and I was all, "bitch" and you were like, "Come on; we at least have to watch the first episode" and I was like, "ugh; whatever" and then we watched it and it was fantastic?

What? You don't remember that conversation? No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it went. Anyway, the only problem with the show was that the season was over too quickly.

Fortunately it's back for season two! René and Jaclyn are back but that woman with the shag has been replaced by master colorist Kim Vo.

Jaclyn: "Kim Vo is responsible for Britney Spears."

Why would someone admit to that?

Here are my helpful descriptions of the contestants so you can tell them apart, based mainly on their hair:

Paulo has a goatee and tattoos. He is a gay dude with a crush on Jaclyn Smith. For some reason, he thinks this is unusual.

Nekisa has long dark hair with highlights.

Charlie is bald with glasses and he is a total badass who doesn't care what you think about him. Ooh, I'm scared.

Nicole has short blond hair. She is one of the few geniuses who actually has a decent haircut. Why do most hairdressers have such awful hair?

Daniel has glasses and a blond fauxhawk. He is from Dallas and he likes his hair dyed, fried, and pushed to the side.

Dee has short streaked hair and dresses in men's clothes. She immediately tells us about her girlfriend because she is afraid we might not be able to guess that she is a lesbian.

Matthew has blond hair and immediately tells us about his wife because, you know, most male hairdressers are gay and he isn't, OK?

Gail is a brunette and has kind of a bob.

Parker has glasses and dark spiky hair. He also has two-days growth of stubble that he has been working on for three weeks.

Glenn has long mousy blond hair. She loves color.

Meredith has long blond hair.

Oshun has been nominated for an Emmy and he thinks he is good at rhyming. Also, he's deep:

Oshun: "I'm deep."
How deep are you?
Oshun: "As deep as the ocean."
That's pretty deep
Oshun: "Yeah, that's what I'm saying; I'm really deep."
Right.
Oshun: "As deep as the ocean."
got it.
Oshun: "Actually, you know what? I'm even deeper than the ocean."
oh, boy . . .
Oshun: "If you went down to the bottom of the ocean and were digging way down into the sand for a really long time, you still wouldn't be as deep as I am . . ."
um . . .
Oshun: "I could talk all night about how deep I am but I still don't think I could properly convey to you the extent of my depth . . ."
well, please don't try
Oshun: "I've been nominated for an Emmy."

Anyway, for the quickfire challenge, the geniuses have to cut their clients' hair while they are wearing blindfolds. That doesn't seem like much of a challenge. Who cares if the clients are wearing blindfolds?

Jaclyn: "No, dummy; the hairdressers are wearing blindfolds."

Oh, cool! They come up with the best challenges on this show!

So the geniuses have to feel their way through a cut. I love it! But, again, I find myself wondering where the hell they find these clients:

Client One: "I'm off my meds."

Client Two: "Wait . . . what?"

Client Three: "I was planning to shave my head anyway so I thought, 'what the hell.'"

The results are a mixed bag, as one would expect. A few cuts look pretty good, a few cuts are pretty bad, and a few of the cuts look like they were done by Andrea Bocelli:

Paulo: "What the hell do you expect?! I was blindfolded!"

Yeah, so was everyone else. But they weren't all equally bad.

Nicole and Dee are the top two and Dee wins the quickfire. Oshun is at the bottom. Dee will get first choice of client in the elimination challenge:

Dee: "This worked out so well for me that I'm going to keep cutting hair blindfolded for the rest of the season and even when I get back to my salon."

Daisy from season one: "Excellent idea!"

For the elimination challenge, Jaclyn introduces us to our hair mentor, René Fris:

Jaclyn: "You remember René. His books have all been number one on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for over twenty weeks (not really). He looks like Superman and he talks like Donald Duck on helium! Isn't he adorable?"

René: "Hi hi!"

Hi hi, René!

The challenge will be to make the clients look like cartoon characters.

Rene tells us the rules of the challenge. We have no idea what he's saying. Just smile and nod.

The geniuses shake it.

So, there are six cartoon characters between twelve geniuses, which means there are two of each character and the geniuses end up going head to head with one other genius. Somehow they all got the memo that one of each had to be good and one of each had to be bad:

Wilma Flintstone:

Daniel - good. It really looks inspired by Wilma but it's still wearable.

Gail - bad. Just awful.

Jem (I don't know this character):

Nicole - good. It looked fun and young.

Glenn - bad. Dull, inappropriate, and ugly.

Lucy van Pelt:

Nekisa - good. I think this was the most difficult character because the hair is just a blob. Nekisa's style was strange but, for some reason, it totally made me think of Lucy and yet it was still kind of cute. I was surprised and impressed.

Oshun - bad. I don't even have words to describe it. It's possibly the worst hairstyle I've ever seen in my life.

Marge Simpson:

Charlie - good. Well, maybe good is too strong a word. At least it looked like Marge. But there wasn't any interpretation there.

Matthew - bad. This was almost the opposite of Marge Simpson. I don't know what he was thinking.

Betty Boop:

Parker - good. I thought this was really successful. Very cute.

Dee - bad. This wasn't terrible. It just wasn't very good.

Judy Jetson:

Meredith - good. This was a tough one and I thought Meredith did a good job.

Paulo - bad. This had nothing to do with Judy Jetson.

So the two Marges, the two Bettys, and the two Lucys are the top and bottom styles.

One of the judges tells Charlie that part of the challenge was to create a style that was wearable everyday:

Judge: "René told you that."

Charlie: "Really? I had no idea what he was saying. Sorry about that."

No, seriously, I'm pretty sure that was never mentioned. Anyway, they like what he did so it doesn't matter.

The guest judge liked Daniel's Wilma but thought he used too much hairspray:

Daniel: "Can there be too much hairspray? I don't understand. I'm from Dallas."

I completely agreed with the judges that Nekisa's Lucy and Daniel's Wilma were the top two. Daniel wins! Congratulations, Daniel!

I also agree that the bottom three were Gail, Matthew, and Oshun. All three were really hideous. Oshun has given his last cut. Sorry Oshun.

Oshun: "This is bullshit. Really deep bullshit. Bullshit as deep as the ocean."

9 comments:

Cliff O'Neill said...

Eric, your work is Shear Genius.

Still cracking up over "Donald Duck on helium!"

Thanks. I'll be smiling all day now!

Eric said...

I cannot believe you don't know who Jem is! She's truly outrageous...truly, truly, truly outrageous.

By day she was Jerrica Benton, a record company, heiress mogul who ran a home for girls or something. She was also Jem, who along with her band, The Holograms, would perform concerts, solve mysteries and had something to do with an evil band called The Misfits.

It was pretty fantastic, 80s pop awesomeness.

Anonymous said...

Eric - fantastic again! Thanks for the grins.

Linda Merrill said...

Anyway, for the quickfire challenge, the geniuses have to cut their clients' hair while wearing blindfolds. That doesn't seem like much of a challenge. Who cares if the clients are wearing blindfolds?

Jaclyn: "No, dummy; the hairdressers are wearing blindfolds."


Laugh out loud funny as always!

Anonymous said...

And for some reason Jem had a computer named Synergy that she contacted through her earrings.

LauraK said...

Great recap, Eric. My husband keeps asking what is so funny...

wildflower38 said...

You're so funny Eric. Please than other Eric for the info on Jem. I had no idea who that was. Why didn't they pick Smurfette instead?

Anonymous said...

Hilarious as usual. I'm so glad that got rid of Oshun, he was driving me crazy

mumblesalot (Laura A) said...

That was hysterical.

I think Oshun should wear a white cap.