Scream Queens 2

by XdarksparkX

Originally written: August 18, 2010
[Images courtesy of VH1.com]

Scream Queens is one of those shows that I got hooked on by sheer happenstance while flipping through channels and coming across one of VH1’s weird ‘noon premieres’ in 2008. Essentially, 10 aspiring actresses compete each week in 3 challenges (technically it’s two, with an acting class/exercise with bad-ass John Homa being the third) all in the hopes of being the last actress standing and being rewarded with a role in Saw VI. What really drew me into this show was the fact that it was—at its core—an acting competition, and that the judges (Shawnee Smith, the aforementioned demigod John Homa, and James Gunn) actually weren’t afraid to lay into these fly-by-night dime-a-dozen’s if they absolutely sucked ass. Seeing them do that, especially as we watch the Megan Fox’s of the world slowly but surely complete a hostile takeover of our screens, can only leave us acting purists (the scarce few of us left) grinning from ear-to-ear.

A second season of Scream Queens recently premiered on VH1, with the gold at the end of the rainbow being a role in Saw 3D this time around. (The final Saw in the franchise, there is a God!) 10 new aspiring actresses, and two new judges. Jaime King (really… really?) as the new ‘Former Scream Queen Mentor Person’ takes over for Shawnee Smith, while James Gunn’s replacement in the director’s chair is uh… Tim Sullivan, who according to IMDb has directed Driftwood and 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams… okay then, if only I had heard of you before, Tim.

Before I start my recaps of the last two weeks and the most-recently aired third week, let’s get one thing straight: John Homa is your God. Disagreeing with anything that comes from the mouth of the genius that is Homa is not only blasphemous, but sacrilegious, and you will burn in the fires of his RAGING FURY for all eternity. Beware the sacrilege!

Ahem, anyways… lets meet our ten aspiring actresses! Our first hopeful future starlet likes long walks on the beach, Piña Colada’s and getting caught in the rain…



ALLISON
26 – Hickory, NC
Professional dancer, aspiring actress, biggest claim to fame is being an “iPod girl” (i.e. a shadow puppet)... Yup, that’s pretty much all that was said.


CHRISTINE
28 – Porterville, CA
She does children’s birthday parties, so we can assume that she’s already got the whole “immersing yourself in playing make believe” down, but can she impress when her audience is over the age of 5?


GABBY
24 – Santa Fe, NM
Started acting a few years ago. She came out to LA, realized it was hard and that she would be poor for a good long while, and moved back to New Mexico. Now a few years older and wiser (but mainly older, this is Hollywood babe), she’s hoping to give it another shot.


JESSICA
24 – Bronx, NY
“I’ve studied acting for two years, but I haven’t had a big role.” (NO! Really!? Get outta here, ya bum. Back of the line…) Thinks being Hispanic means that she has to work harder, which is probably true, but she’s completely ignoring the fact that Hollywood seems to consider them the more attractive minority to cast, since most can be passed off as tanned crackers.


KARLIE
29 – New York, NY
I have a feeling she will be the “forgotten black actress” in this season, because they didn’t bother to introduce her until it was her turn in the Skills Challenge.


LANA
28 – Santa Monica, CA
Her father is apparently Ron Underwood, director of Tremors and City Slickers. Just because daddy’s in the biz doesn’t mean you can act sweetheart, and there are no cheap passes on the Homa Line to H-Town.


ROSANNA
24 – Seattle, WA
Before getting into acting, she worked as “a church secretary by day and a go-go dancer by night.” I wish I could tell you I was joking, but I’m not… 0_o


SARAH
26 – Chicago, IL
She’s got a strong “Sha-ca-go” accent, this one does. Started modeling the same time she got into acting, but she was knocked up at 19 and well…here she is now I guess? Man, these intros are more bare bones than Calista Flockheart. (cue rim-shot; audience boos)


SIERRA
22 – Suffern, NY
Got into acting when she was very little (according to her – unreliable narrator) and horror is the “#1 genre she loves to watch”, so she’d love to win SQ2 so she could watch herself in Saw 3D and it could be her favorite horror movie. (…heavy sigh) I wish I could make this shit up…


TAI
26 – Chicago, IL
Thinks she has all that it takes and more to succeed in the biz, but has merely been a victim of Chicago’s “small market”.

(God damn! I just realized how flat-out awful some of these headshots are!)

WEEK 1 RECAP:

• SKILLS CHALLENGE:
  
  They don’t waste any time getting the girls into the first challenge, as not seconds after they arrive to the SQ house are they faced with Week 1’s skills challenge. In this challenge, the girls are to wake from a nightmare, realize something’s amiss and then get attacked from behind by a Freddy Kruger wannabe. The prize for doing well is earning a guaranteed “call-back” which makes the actress immune from being “axed”. Let me just say, when Jaime King is describing what it takes to be a Scream Queen, she hams that shit up so much it’s not even funny. The way she’s describing it, you’d think the Scream Queen role was the most taxing thing one can put themselves through as an actress. I get that she would have to do this, but there was just a point where I started rolling my eyes and saying “Yeah, because (last year’s winner) Tanedra did so much more than scream/plead/cry/yell throughout her appearance in Saw VI.”
  
  Jessica was up first, and set a pretty solid bar. The rest after that, pretty much sucked. Especially cringe-worthy was Sierra’s portrayal of waking up from a nightmare that apparently involves… good sex? I watched her clips at least three times and I still wonder if she got what her initial motivation was. She wakes up as if she literally just got off in the dream, it effectively killed the entire setup of the scene.
  
  They showed haphazard cuts of interspersed clips after a few performances, so I couldn’t really tell who was good and who wasn’t, but no one really caught my attention. What I could tell though was that Christine out of all of them had the best facial expression when realizing something’s amiss.
  
  The judges determine Gabby was the best and has won Week 1’s guaranteed call-back. I don’t know, she was up there, but for some reason I just thought Jessica was better. It doesn’t help that the judges really didn’t talk about Gabby’s performance, but rather her ‘aura’. I still give her the nod as a stand out, given the fact that the majority of the room played it like they were in a high-school play. They all also got their first taste of The Wrath of Homa, when he lays into them about how much time they wasted worrying about their significant other ‘Michael’ not being there. Heh heh, and the best part? His tolerance is only going to get shorter…
  
  Stand-Outs: Jessica, Gabby
  Face-Palms: Sierra
  
  
• JOHN HOMA’S “GET OFF MY PORCH IF YOU’RE GONNA SUCK” ACTING EXERCISE:
  
  The girls first full-on taste of Homa’s bad-assery is him telling them that they have to recite the lines “I know what you are, and I’m not afraid of you. You won’t break me” with as much pure, raw rage as humanly possibly. Suffice to say, the girls all get up there and pussyfoot it. John’s not having any of it, and doesn’t even want to waste more than one word on them. The second he doesn’t believe them, he shouts “down” and points to the floor from whence they came. Down, ye feeble maggots! Thou art not worthy, if thou shall display such farce to the almighty Homa!
  
  None of them seem to know what it’s like to actually hate a person with every inch and fiber of their being, and if they did the idea of channeling that feeling went right out the window. So John, his adamantium claws fixing to unleash at any moment, reveals a collection of various pumpkins from behind a curtain. He places one of them upon the lone stool in the area, and starts beating the ever-loving Christ out of it with his baseball bat (Oh yeah, you can bet he always has that sucker on standby in his car). Naturally, the girls are all cowering in fear once they see the true power of this battle-station. Homa recites the lines, and pretty much everyone is waiting to see if he’ll start wielding the bat at the unsuspecting girls…
  
  But Homa is far above that, and with the magical prowess of a Supreme Tri-Mage, he turns off the “HOMA SMASH!” switch in his brain and tells them that is what pure rage is.
  
  Homa lets the girls attempt to connect with their inner Gallagher, yells at them for being pansies, and is more or less indifferent with how the lesson went. The two absolute failures out of everyone were Rosanna, who was blatantly putting on a meek façade of anger; and Lana, who looked more like a 2-year-old not getting her way in Toys R Us than someone who was filled with primal rage.
  
  Stand-Outs: …
  Face-Palms: Lana, Rosanna
  
  
• DIRECTOR’S CHALLENGE:
  
  Here we go, this is where shit really matters, this is what everyone’s been waiting for: The Director’s Challenge. The question of just how well these girls fare on a set and in front of a camera will be answered right here.
  
  The gist of the Director’s Challenge is that each week, the girls will shoot a pseudo-trailer for some D-Grade horror movie concept directed by our D-Grade director—err, I mean our highly talented director, Tim. In this week’s challenge, the girls will star in the trailer for Kiss of The Devil. One scene they’re in their underwear teasing some dude (or… girl?) over the phone, the next they’re flip out over finding a satanic alter in some random room in their house, and finally they’re yelling at nothing in particular while holding some sort of stone with a pentagram on it, daring the evil demon lurking to “come out and fight”. Yes, not even pseudo-trailers need an actual storyline behind them apparently.
  
  Out of all of them, Jessica and Christine seemed to take Tim’s direction the best. They understood his notes and actually gave him what he wanted. Jessica’s finale scene was a little weak, but really I think everyone except Christine missed the mark on that scene. There just wasn’t that believable anger in their eyes that there was with Christine, at least to me. Tai was also pretty good, but she looks like she could be that person that is so consistently solid she flies under the radar because her ups and downs aren’t as severe as some of the others.
  
  Sierra. Sierra, Sierra, Sierra. First challenge you act like you’ve just had the best wet dream of all-time and now you can’t deliver a believably seductive line in lingerie? What in the blue hell happened here? Shouldn’t this be the scene you shine in? I don’t know, her delivery was just… bad. She completely emphasized all the wrong parts on her last line. It was just… bad. She then, in the ‘discover the satanic alter’ scene, opens the door looking for her boyfriend, and is looking up for some reason, and then proceeds to deliver her line to the ceiling. It was just so… amateur. The kids in middle school drama clubs know better than that.
  
  And then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Ms. Immunity herself walks in. Gabby would’ve been in the Bottom 2 easily had she not held immunity. First of all, she had started to lose her voice because the night before she was up with some of the other girls shouting and messing around for no damn reason. Second, any time Tim gave her direction, she had this look on her face as if he was speaking full-on Mandarin Chinese. Her expression more or less said, “Beat? Line? What are these strange and foreign words?” Third, she was so antsy she actually opens the door in the second scene and hit the poor guy with the clapboard. I just… oh man, this is why I value Director’s Challenges more than anything on this show, because had Lana not been so downright awful, I would’ve sent Gabby’s ass packing after that fiasco.
  
  Speaking of Lana, well… here’s how that goes: she came, she saw, she sucked. The end.
  
  Stand-Outs: Christine, Jessica
  Face-Palms: Gabby, Lana, Sierra
  
  
• THE AXE:
  Those called to the Grand Ballroom for judgment were as follows:
  
  Jessica was named Week 1’s Leading Lady, with Tai being this weeks Runner-Up.
  Gabby was called so the judges could hit home just how awful she was in the Director’s Challenge.
  
  Sierra and Lana were this week’s Bottom 2 performers, and ultimately it was…
  …
  …
  Lana, Miss Director-Child herself, who got AXED (and I don’t mean coated in the body spray). Goodbye, and good riddance.
  

WEEK 2 RECAP:

• SKILLS CHALLENGE:
  
  This week it’s all about being the “bad girl/villain”, so for this Skills Challenge the girls must be a vengeful witch who is casting a spell on someone from their past. This is interesting because these are the only limits they give them, so it’s up to the girls to choose who their witch wants to extract their supernatural revenge upon. If I was one of them, I would’ve had my character cast a spell on Sabrina for getting that TGIF lineup spot on ABC back in the day.
  
  Up first is Gabby, and her start is really… rough. Her finish however, is down right comical. After spewing her curse nonsense, she attempts to stir the giant stick in the big ass cauldron, only to get hung up on the fact that the stick is stuck. The straw that shatters the camel’s spine? She breaks character hung up on the fact that the damn cauldron isn’t cooperating, saying “Damn pot! Move!” Hilarious, just hilarious… if only this was a competition for a comedic actress.
  
  As far as standouts go, very few showed their merit. Christine was the far-and-above the standout in this, and rightfully won the guaranteed call-back. She decided to play a girl who’s stepsister had recently moved in and “taken over” her life. She was desperate, angst-ridden, and slightly demented—the perfect storm for the character. The other standout would be Tai, and while I didn’t really care for her choice to be Ms. Diva-Fashion Witch (mainly because it was more comical than disturbing), she was still—once again—one of the more solid performances.
  
  Sierra made an interesting choice that she just couldn’t pull together. Being a witch who had been left at the alter and looking for revenge, good idea. Putting a black and white tutu on your head and trying to pass it off as a veil… not so much, and her performance was extremely lackluster and whiny.
  
  Rosanna, the poor girl, looked lost. She started the scene, stared at the prop book for a few seconds and then just…dropped it. She froze like a frightened fawn staring down a Jeep Wrangler’s high beams. She then asks “…am I done yet?” (splat!) Yes child, you’ve more than paid the price for amnesia in front of a worldwide audience.
  
  Stand-Outs: Christine
  Face-Palms: Rosanna, Gabby, Sierra
  
  
• JOHN HOMA’S “GET OFF MY PORCH IF YOU’RE GONNA SUCK” ACTING EXERCISE:
  
  Oh yes, it’s that time again children. No point in reciting it, you already know he’s better than you.
  
  This week, Homa has the girls face-off in a cage match where only words can be used to scar the opposition! …Okay, so the whole cage thing was bull, but the last part is serious. The girls objective when put into the hot seat is to convey to whomever is across from them that they intend to Hitchcock their ass (in other words, kill them).
  
  He starts off with Gabby in the hot-seat and Tai as her target. He gives her only the ABC’s to work with, the intent is to get the emotion behind the letters to project the desire to maim and kill. Gabby, in so many words, fails up until ‘K’ where she does well enough to make Homa raise the stakes. He now wants her to tell Tai how exactly she’s gonna kill her. Homa is pleased at the way she says she’s going to slit her throat, and tells her to sit back down.
  
  One by one, the rest follow suit. Some hit the mark, some miss it by twenty miles and a state line. Sierra once again gets under The Great One’s skin, and he looks like he wants to shatter his chair over his knee when she finally says everything that she thinks is powerful, doesn’t come out that way. Sarah then thinks that the whole point of the lesson is that “behind every woman, innocent or not, there’s a bad girl inside.” Um… or maybe he’s trying to teach you about the power of delivery. How much ‘bad girl’ can you portray with just words when you can only recite the fucking ABCs!? GAAH! It’s all about intent, you nit! INTENT!
  
  Jessica probably came up with the best line and actually held the perfect cold intent while she delivered it: “I’m going to kill you, because I know I can get away with it.” Even Homa said, and I quote, “that was chilling.” Hot. Damn. I think that’s the best compliment he’s given out… ever.
  
  Last up is Rosanna, but wait a minute—there’s no one to be Ro’s victim. Until… yes, yes, YES! Homa himself steps into the squared circle and sits down across from her. Oh, you better bring you’re A-game sweetheart, the big man himself has got a front row seat! “I’m not an attacker on other people” she says in her confessional. Then what in the turquoise hell are you doing here, on a reality show (that alone should say enough) looking for a horror film actress? “I hate you because you have everything I don’t,” she begins, “and I’m okay with that.” …and she then shoves the gun in her mouth, and blows straight through her cervical. Homa demonstrates last weeks lesson about rage in full effect, yelling at her to not be okay with it, and that he doesn’t give a shit what’s going through her head, she better just say it because the clock is ticking on her. He then goes into full HOMA RAGE mode and scares the ever-loving shit out of everyone else there, as he tries to coax something out of her mouth. Rosanna can simply not knock someone else down a peg, much less tell them that she’s gonna kill them. To get a simple and believable “I hate you” out of her, Homa has to resort to making fun of her delivery and saying “he’s getting his pillow fluffed” when she says the line. Hit the showers, meat! Come back when you’re ready to play with the big boys. Homa can do nothing but shake his head at the end of the lesson. The almighty one is not pleased.
  
  Stand-Outs: Everyone was actually pretty even
  Face-Palms: Rosanna, Sierra (shocking, right?)
  
  
• DIRECTOR’S CHALLENGE:
  
  The girls meet up with Tim for this weeks Director’s Challenge, where he tells them they are in the same studio where the cult-classic Leprechaun was filmed. $10 says none of these girls have even heard of Leprechaun, much less seen it.
  
  Anyway, their task this week is to hint at killing their boyfriend, while only talking about steak (SEE!? INTENT SARAH! Ahem, sorry) before actually doing the deed. Their boyfriend will be played by Trevor Wright, who I will not be familiar with until October 1st , when I see David Fincher’s The Social Network (although according to IMDb, he was also in Season 1’s Episode 2, but we know how shoddy random guest appearance credits are on the Db).
  
  As far as the good goes, I thought Allison actually had one of the best transitions. There was this certain way that she looked up as she was delivering the line right before she’s supposed to whirl around and slice Mr. Clueless that just… worked. You saw the entire thing in her eyes before she did it. Gabby also had a solid outing.
  
  And the bad… well, at least I get to mention Sierra in a more neutral light this time. She was bad, but it was more about her just not reaching deep enough to really get that transition from bubbly to evil. Aside from the fact that she looked like she was having sex with her steak (again with the ham-fisted sexy… that gives you “S-L” Sierra, what do you say we never see U and T?), it was just… clumsy. Meanwhile, Karlie, in her desperate need to stand out, actually takes a piece of the raw meat and eats it during her scene. Foodborne illness, here we come! Sarah meanwhile can’t say “marble fibers” due to her heavy accent, instead saying “marrbaauulll fibers”. It was so tragically funny, in that she obviously can’t help herself, but it was still absolutely awful. As for Rosanna, well she’s still too innocent, and she actually called “line” in the in the middle of her take. ‘Nuff said.
  
  Stand-Outs: Allison, Gabby
  Face-Palms: Rosanna, Karlie, Sarah
  
  
• THE AXE:
  Those called to the Grand Ballroom for judgment were as follows:
  
  Gabby was named Week 2’s Leading Lady, with Tai again nabbing the Runner-Up.
  Sarah was called in so they could knock her accent and how it takes her out of character.
  
  Sierra and Rosanna were this week’s Bottom 2 performers, and ultimately it was…
  …
  …
  Rosanna, Ms. Bubbly McBubbles, who got AXED. She may be a good actress in say, a Disney Channel original series, but they were looking for edge, and she simply couldn’t produce.
  

So that brings us here, to Week 3.

WEEK 3:

• SKILLS CHALLENGE:
  
  This week, the Skills Challenge has the girls getting their Zemeckis on and donning a motion-capture suit, in order to puppeteer a character on the projection screen behind the stage. Since there is obviously no dialog, they must convey the characters emotions and the story through their movements. You had me at “girls, this week you will shut the eff up and tell a story through body language” (sigh, if only Jaime had actually said that). Allison is flat out amazed by this technology, and says and I quote “Who gets to do this? Like…nobody!” Yep, nobody except the character actors in Polar Express and Beowulf; Andy Serkis in Lord of The Rings and King Kong… oh, and the people who work in this little multi-billion dollar industry that pioneered the technology, I think it’s called THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY! Allison also swears she has this challenge in the bag because she’s a dancer. Umm, I’m sorry, last I checked this was Scream Queens, not So You Think You Can Dance. It doesn’t matter if you move well if the movements don’t mean anything!
  
  It seems like what most (if not all) of the girls forgot is that this puppet has just randomly sprung to life. They want to jump into what the puppet would do in order to quickly get to the finale and the diving escape out the window, but it seems like most of them are rushing through the actual amazement of being alive for the first time. They’re forgetting the subtleties, like the fact that the character should be unfamiliar with its motor functions at first, and should be extremely curious about all of its movements in general. Meanwhile, Sarah specifically seemed to forget that this performance has to be akin to a stage production, in that your movements have to be slightly exaggerated in order for the audience (or in this case, the mo-cap suit) to draw the full emotion and intent (there’s that word again) out of your performance.
  
  Gabby then gets up on the stage, and proceeds to spend the majority of her performance looking up at the screen to see how it’s coming off. Really Gabby? I mean, really? I just—ugh, next! Allison, being the dancer that she is, is moving around with fluid and grace. What she seems to forget is that while she may be a dancer, her character is not, and she does shit that someone probably wouldn’t do unless they had some sort of gymnastic training. Front handspring stepout before diving out the window anyone?
  
  I have pretty much lost all faith in having a shining standout in this challenge until… Oh my Homa, Sierra actually came to play! When she begins her scene, she steps out of the cardboard box and actually wobbles, like she’s still getting acquainted to using her legs for the first time. Then, when a realizing how dark and unknown the attic is, she does the most basic thing that no one else had done. She goes back into the box where she knows its safe. I sat there, in front of my TV, jaw agape for at least two minutes. That was—dare I say—genius. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but she got the subtleties that I was talking about earlier. She got that the character was alive for the first time and unfamiliar with the world, and she played it off extremely well. She takes this Skills Challenge and the immunity that goes with it. Somewhere in Hell they’re playing ice hockey, and the Devil himself is figure skating to work.
  
  Stand-Outs: Sierra
  Face-Palms: Gabby, Allison
  
  
• JOHN HOMA’S “GET OFF MY PORCH IF YOU’RE GONNA SUCK” ACTING EXERCISE:
  
  Guess who’s back… back again… Homa’s back… tell a friend.
  
  So this week our Jedi Master asks the girls to cry on cue, but he does not want sobbing. No, he wants controlled, tearful crying. He starts each one of them off, and none of them can get to that place. I think somewhere, he likes proving to them just how much they suck as actresses until he implores them with a nugget of his vast acting knowledge.
  
  After turning them all away, he says that they all need to stop trying to cry, to stop “trying to squeeze out one constipated little tear”, they need to get to the specificity of a thought that can get them to actually cry. To show them what he means, he calls Sierra back up to the hot seat. He tells her that her sister (who she’s extremely close to) is going to get hit by a car, with as much empathy as a goddamn Cyberdyne Terminator. He elaborates further on the scenario, and two or three sentences later… boom, more water then when the levees failed during Hurricane Katrina.
  
  One by one, he calls the other girls up and does the same, and one by one, Homa pulls his epic Jedi Mind Trick and completely wrecks every single one of them. Well, all but one. Karlie, in so many words, failed. She displeased the mighty Homa with her attempt to mini sob, and then her over-effort she put in at being sad. Well, Karlie did say she wanted to be noticed… too bad it was for being the only one to not give Homa what he wanted.
  
  Stand-Outs: N/A
  Face-Palms: Karlie
  
  
• DIRECTOR’S CHALLENGE:
  
  Maggots. This Director’s Challenge contains… maggots (cue shrieks of repulsion). Okay, got that out of your system girls? Good, because I don’t want to hear it again.
  
  In this scene, Tim has the girls come into their house, only to find the place a wreck. As they further explore the house, they come across a trail of maggots, which leads them to the decomposing body of a loved one. Hanging from the ceiling above the corpse is some sort of D-Movie hive of maggots, that will of course, burst and shower the actresses with thousands of the live creepy crawlies. Heh heh, win. Another note of interest, the girls can only use the word “no” in order to show their…oh what’s that word again, Sarah? Oh right, intent. They have to use one word to portray their disappointment, fear, disbelief and horror.
  
  Allison apparently forgets the fact that the corpse is in fact extremely decomposed, and immediately starts touching and hugging it upon discovery. This is exactly why you need to pump some undead body smell in there, Tim! She won’t want to touch that thing with a ten foot pole if it smells like it’s been festering. In some shape or form, I think all of the girls touched it. No, just no. I don’t care who it was supposed to be in the character you created, you are not touching that corpse. Besides, it’s at the point of decay where you can’t even recognize who it is, you’re not touching it.
  
  Anyway, Karlie is still trying her damndest to stand out. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s has stood out… for all the wrong reasons. This Director’s Challenge is no different. The emotion isn’t there in her lines (Tim used the perfect word in his note to her, “bland”), she didn’t really change up anything after Tim gave her his notes, and she did this weird “praise the Lord” shake with her hands facing out towards the sky when the maggots rained down on her. Fail, fail, fail.
  
  Sarah apparently had a huge fear of the maggots, but she was completely professional and did her scene without missing a beat, well with the exception of everything leading up to the maggots. She was absolutely awful in that regard, she rushed through everything because in the back of her head she knew that maggot time was creeping closer.
  
  STOP! …MAGGOT TIME!
  
  Ahem, sorry. Anyway, everyone else seemed pretty solid from what was shown. Sierra took a note from Tim and really ran with it, which just means that this is really her week I guess. She also had the best reaction to discovering the corpse. Jessica meanwhile took a handful of maggots in the mouth during her finale, which alone should’ve made her scene the winner purely because of the sheer gross-out factor it produced.
  
  Stand-Outs: Sierra, Jessica
  Face-Palms: Karlie, Sarah
  
  
• THE AXE:
  Those called to the Grand Ballroom for judgment were as follows:
  
  Sierra was named Week 3’s Leading Lady (HOLY HELL!), with Allison getting the Runner-Up.
  One note to Allison from Jaime was that Ali really needs to work on “softening her features” when taking criticism, because she totally bugged her eyes out when Jaime said that her choice to handspring out the window wasn’t the best choice (and by that, she meant it was a stupid choice).
  
  Karlie and Sarah were this week’s Bottom 2 performers, and ultimately it was…
  …
  …
  Karlie, Ms. Desperate To Stand Out, who got AXED. You stood out, it just wasn’t for the right reasons. Just another sufferer of horror’s “Early Black Victim” syndrome I suppose.
  

So now that we’re through three weeks, we can whip out records and random statistics in order to make things seem legit!

Rankings after Week 3:

1. Jessica (1-0-0; 3) .633
2. Tai (0-2-0; 3) .633
3. Gabby (1-1-0; 2) .533
4. Christine (0-1-0; 3) .467
5. Allison (0-1-0; 3) .467
6. Sierra (1-1-2; 1) .433
7. Sarah (0-0-1; 2) .200
   
   
8. Karlie (0-0-1; 2) .200
9. Rosanna (0-0-1; 1) .100
10. Lana (0-0-0; 0) .000

[KEY: Wins—Immunities/Runner Ups—Bottom Two’s; Total Times Safe (no ballroom appearance/not up for elimination if called. Called for bad performance while holding immunity results in no TTS)
Power Average:
Total number of wins {1.0 for win, 0.5 for immunity/runner up} divided by weeks, plus 0.TTS (I.E. +0.3 for Christine, Allison, Tai, Jessica; 0.2 for Gabby, Sarah; 0.1 for Sierra]

See? Aren’t random, nonsensical statistical algorithms fun when you can make up your own? Take that, Major League Baseball!

Now, the real question to ponder until next week: what is the true over/under for Sierra falling back into the basement? Vegas, tell me the odds!