Scream Queens 2—The Finals (Week 8)

by XdarksparkX
Originally written: September 28, 2010
[Images courtesy of VH1.com]

Seven shitty actresses have fallen, the top three actresses remain… this week, all the proverbial marbles are on the line; it’s put up or shut up. In the end, one of the final three will in all likelihood become just another forgettable victim in the massive Saw body count. It’s Scream Queens 2—Week Eight: The Finals!

Week 8

• ELIMINATION CHALLENGE (SEMI-FINAL):
  
  Changing things up right out of the gate, as the first challenge is not a Skills Challenge, but rather a Director’s Challenge where the lowest performer will be eliminated on the spot. This is serious girls, one mess up and everything that you worked for will go down the toilet faster than Mr. Hanky. (I’m staring intently at you, Jessica. One flub and your power trip comes to a more disappointing end than the Philadelphia Flyers 2010 Stanley Cup Playoff run).
  
  Tim reveals that they will basically be copying the Semi-Final Challenge from Season 1. The challenge is named The Gauntlet, and it will entail a long chase scene that will be done in one continuous take. The only difference between this challenge and it’s predecessor from the first season is the location; instead of a dark, seedy apartment complex the chase will take place in a sun strewn park playground. THE HORROR OF DAYLIGHT SHALL OVERTAKE YOU! (They actually started filming after dark, so I'll stop knocking that).
  
  There are a lot of complex technical aspects (Hi Gabby), and transitions from “unsuspecting, to terrorized, to an ass-kicking heroine in the end.” (Man, Homa’s still kicking after eight weeks in hell). Blah blah blah…ugh, enough. You get it, it going to be hard and complicated. Let’s just skip the bullshit and get to the performances.
  
  Like the sun rising in the east, Jessica is once again up first. This challenge is particularly hilarious because we see all three judges react to the scene as they watch it as well. Jessica’s first mistake that they “calmly” pointed out? She didn’t get in the damn car fast enough after the stalker on the phone says “I’m the guy who’s watching you walk to your car”. Seriously, would you really be that nonchalant about that kind of comment in real life Jess? Gah. She corrects this in her second take, but I’m not actually believing her when the stalker pops out and grabs her from the back seat of her car. She’s much to reserved, infact she doesn’t even scream. Not to mention, she oversells her leg injury after tripping him up so much I thought she was auditioning to be a WWE wrestler. Your leg is not broken Jessica, stop dragging it around like you’ve got a lead weight in your shoe. Her third and final take she seemed to pull everything together, but what does it say when the powerhouse of the competition has problems with this scene?
  
  My dark horse Christine is up second, and her first take she makes almost the exact same mistake that Jessica made: hesitance to act on the urgency of the situation. Why do I have to say this twice? Someone is watching you from afar and knows your cell phone number, get your ass in the goddamn car, you dumb broad! She was also admittedly boring as hell in her setup while walking to her car. She completely turns it around in her second take after Tim’s direction, and she added a very realistic and subtle improvisation that made the setup ten times better. She then corrects what I thought Jessica failed at and completely panicked when the stalker grabs her, going as far to honk the horn out of reactive instinct. It was all going so well, and then Homa in his vast wisdom made the great point of “I don’t know what it is, but I’m just not pulling for [her character] to win.” Sadly, he was right. As good as her second take began, there was just something missing in the finale of Christine’s second take. It was almost too… light, I guess is the word I’ll use here. There was no power to her taking this guy out, it was all just… light. However, she does her finale much better on her final take, with a much better emphasis on the situation that has just occurred. It would seem the dark horse isn’t out of the race just yet.
  
  Then there’s Gabby. For someone who’s as technically inept as she is she didn’t do as bad as I thought. She was overly frightened during the beginning of her first take, and she was the only one of the three to actually outrun the camera but other than that her performance was solid during her third take. Very good showing from her given her previous track record with technical scenes.
  
  All three girls put out above average performances, but in the end only two could move on while one got the axe, and the person who tasted cold steel was…
  …
  …
  CHRISTINE. NOOOOOOO! Damn it! She was so damn close! (heavy sigh) Well, I hope this can open doors for her and that she can go far, because in my opinion she has more potential than any of the other girls. I saw it from day one, and I’m sticking to that belief even now as she walks away. Best of luck to you Christine Haeberman, I hope to see you acting again soon.
  
  
  ---
  
  

  So now it’s down to just two. Jessica and Gabby, a knockdown-drag out fight to see who will win it all and appear in Saw 3D. To the death—NO, to the pain!
  
  
  Before their final challenge, the girls are picked up via limo and driven to Lionsgate headquarters. Inside, they are greeted with a personalized greeting from Billy, Jigsaw’s iconic puppet (voiced terribly by some n00b stand-in who sounds nothing like Tobin Bell) welcoming them to the Final Challenge and congratulating them for getting this far. Video game voice replacement guy also tells them that their final challenge will be their take on the situation Lawrence Gordon found himself in in the original Saw film when he answers the phone and hears his wife and daughter on the other line begging him to help them, unaware that he is helplessly shackled to a pipe in an industrial bathroom.
  
  They return to the house after picking up their final challenge scripts for one last exercise with Johnny H.
  
  
• JOHN HOMA’S “GET OFF MY PORCH IF YOU’RE GONNA SUCK” ACTING EXERCISE:
  
  Homa starts the final meeting off like only he can. He asks the girls if they had a big meeting at Lionsgate, and both nod excitedly with grins lining their faces. “Yeah? Forget about it!” Bam, he takes them back to reality so fast they can do nothing but hang their heads in shame. “Focus on the task at hand! Take a look at each other, if you are not better than the person across from you, you are going home!” I will miss you and your epic rage Homa, if only you had your own show.
  
  So this exercise is different in that they will actually be doing the scene that is in the final challenge. In essence, this is their practice run. This is their only run where they can mess up without any negative repercussions (other than Homa raging at them of course). One of the girls will be the character they will play the next day, and the other will be the character’s sister who’s on the phone in the hands of Jigsaw. Jessica’s up first, and right away Homa shows that just because this is the last class, no one will skate thorough this unscathed. “The start of the scene, you wake up, you’re chained to a wall—you’re a prisoner. Where is that? All I’m getting is this [vacantly looks around without reacting to the scenes setting]. How long does it take you to realize you’re not where you should be?” He then tells them to switch it up, and Gabby is basically just as awful, you can just see the rage festering in Homa’s eyes as he watches her.
  
  They both didn’t fully commit to the scene for whatever reason, and Homa makes damn sure that they both understand this. “I need a series of realizations here. Your sister is on the phone saying ‘don’t let me die’ and you say you won’t. You made a promise to someone, you don’t know where they are and you’re chained to a wall!” He wants them to show him the desperation that comes with saving their own life in order to save their sisters, and he wants the full commitment to make him feel like the situation isn’t a damn high-school musical, but an actual life and death situation.
  
  Second tries, and Jessica’s performance feels like the biggest rip-off of Cary Elwes in the original Saw. All she’s missing is the goofy accent leak moments and it would’ve been straight from the movie. I’m not necessarily saying that’s bad, it’s just… interesting. Homa’s final task for them is that at the end of the scene, he needs the primal rage of a survivor, someone who is a victim no longer (ohh snap, and he comes full circle with everything back to the very first class! Homa, you sick genius, you).
  
  Gabby’s second try is up, and Homa calls her on ‘attempting to cry’. (boy, he’s just hitting every mark from everything he’s shown them, this is pretty damn epic). “Is the character trying to cry? No, the character is trying to solve a problem!” Then, Homa does what he does, he hits that emotional water valve and the tears come a flowing from Gabby like the Hoover freaking Dam just collapsed. From there, the transition to the final line of “I will kill you” becomes nothing but a formality, and Gabby delivers it with believable angst and power. Game, set and match, the mighty Homa’s work for Scream Queens 2 is complete.
  
  
• FINAL CHALLENGE:
  
  For the final Director’s Challenge, Tim states that his job was to merely prepare and coach them to work with any director. He reveals that for the final act they will have a guest director. The man who sat in the chair for Saw II, III and IV, the one and only Darren Lynn Bousman! Hell to the mother eff’n yes! Full Sail U alum in the hizzouse!
  
  Ahem, anyway, Jess is once again first out of the gate. She does exactly what she did in the Semi though, she does not look like she’s actually aware and present when it comes to her situation. Darren calls her on this, and gives her tons of notes for her second take. To her credit, she did exactly what he asked and was a more “proactive character” in her second take. Then, the call came in. “You’re not asking her if she’s at the mall buying clothes, you need to be urgent.” BWHAHAHAHA! Oh man, I had no clue Darren had that kind of snark in him! That was freaking brilliant. Jessica then stalks around, shouting that she’ll kill whoever is doing this, repeating “I’ll kill you” over and over like an annoying sound byte on a child’s toy. Darren once again calls her on it, and tells her not to pace back and forth but to actually try to find a way out. In the end, he thinks that she got where he wanted and he noted how well she takes direction.
  
  Gabby steps up to the plate, and in so many words whiffs on her first take. Darren didn’t even let her get 30 seconds into her scene before slicing it off. She was far too alert for his liking, especially for a character who was supposed to have been mildly drugged beforehand. Of course, after some direction it’s no problem, but her second take has no progression from sorrow to rage and she just kind of jumps from one to the other. Again, some direction rights that ship and she finishes strong and Gabby of all people finally fully commits herself to a scene and completely rages out in the finale. Nice.
  
  Like last year, this final is really up in the air. Either one of them could win, but there can be only one. Without further ado, the winner of Scream Queens 2 is…
  …
  …
  !!GABBY!! Wait, what? The fuck just happened here? How–when–who… how? Talk about upset of the year. Seriously, on consistency alone I probably would’ve gone with Jessica, but it is what it is. Jessica was right, it is really hard for Hispanics to break out in Hollywood. I think there was some judgmental bias possibly floating around, I mean they praised Gabby since the first challenge even though her performance was average. Never-the-less, congratulations to the underdog. It will be interesting to see how she fares in Saw 3D…
  

Final Rankings (links to each girl’s IMDb page embedded in their name)

1. Gabby (2-1-2; 4) .757
2. Jessica (3-1-0; 7) 1.200
3. Christine (0-1-2; 5) .571
4. Tai (1-2-2; 5) .785
5. Sierra (1-1-4; 2) .450
6. Sarah (0-1-2; 3) .425
7. Allison (0-1-2; 3) .425
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 Percentage:
Total number of wins {1.0 for win, 0.5 for immunity/runner up} divided by weeks, plus 0.TTS (I.E. +0.7 for Jessica; 0.5 for Christine; 0.4 for Gabby, etc.]

And thus ends another season of Scream Queens. Whether or not there will be a Scream Queens 3 now that the Saw franchise is coming to an end is unseen. All that I know is that if there is, you can be damn sure that I will be watching from opening night until the finale, and I will be sharing the acting failure induced lulz and epic HOMA RAGE moments until the inevitable end.

The 2010 VH1 Scream Queen -- Gabrielle West

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