One of the TV shows I watch with Jenn is the Syfy series Face/Off. (Wednesday on Space.) It is a Survivor-meets-effects-makeup show where they start with a bunch of people and each week one of them gets sent off the island, until you are left with one "next great effects makeup artist".
One of the things which the series producers probably don't want to hear is that one of my favorite parts is watching head judge Glenn Hetrick interact with the contestants. The highlight is always his initial greeting to the contestants on the reveal stage -- his "Good Evening" ranges from "we've never met, not even the ten weeks or so we've already been running" to "polite disinterest" to last week's new one "I've got a late dinner reservation so let's get this over with". You could almost gamble on what Glenn's greeting is going to be like, and it always amuses me.
This week's show had some changes to Glenn's personality. He was the celebrity surprise visit midway through their work processes, and he was unusually positive about almost everyone. On the reveal stage, he greeted the contestants with a "Hello" which was a "hi guys you all know me I'm just friendly Glenn here" type greeting.
The absolute gem of the show Glenn-wise was after the first reveal, the unfortunate editing choice was to cut to a held shot of Glenn sitting there with a somewhat stunned look on his face that said "WTF is this thing you are offering me on my stage".
Personally my choices with regards to the offerings are almost always different than the judges. There's an inherent conflict in many of the challenges which are orthogonal to the show's stated goal of showcasing effects make up tallent. This week it was Chinese new-years dragons, and only one team produced something that looked like a new-years dragon. And the judges said, do we reward the team that delivered to the challenge's spec, or a team which produced something really interesting?
One of the offerings this week they panned was a snake/rabbit head, and to me that was the only one that looked like a real creature to me. Even the bright coloring worked, it said to me this is a creature that is painted and polished up brightly to wear some ceremonial garb, which was colored with the same bright colors. And while the details were lost at a distance, I thought that hiding them that way worked, that you saw more the longer you looked at it.
I'm not big on these "bicker" shows that highlight the conflict between contestants, but there's enough here that I'll keep watching.
PS: Dear SyFy, rolling that spoiler-laden video promo for the show on every page for the show, every time the page is loaded, gets annoying really fast -- and I only loaded three pages. Roll it once, if you have to, then post a damn cookie like every other site in the universe does so that it doesn't roll again for -- I'd say a week, but at least an hour. If I want to watch it again, I know where to find it. But I don't. So stop it. Love, me.
