by XdarksparkX
Originally written: September 14, 2010
[Images courtesy of VH1.com]
Five shitty actresses have fallen, five suspect actresses remain… this week, the girls get a dose of handheld camera syndrome, as they more-or-less reenact scenes from Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. It’s Scream Queens 2—Week Six!
WEEK 6:
- SKILLS CHALLENGE:
Back into the maw, we get a crudely rendered pre-visualization during the explanation of this weeks Skills Challenge. The reason for the pre-vis? Because for this Challenge, the girl’s co-star will be a big-ass green tarp. Yup, they’re doing a greenscreen’d monster scene this week.
The scene setup is that their characters will be in the penthouse of a skyscraper, admiring a low flying plane (umm…bad taste? Maybe I just think that because the 8th anniversary of 9/11 just passed and the nationwide depression about it was just running rampant all over the educational channels) and looking at the people waaayyy down below. Suddenly, a giant T-Rex (aka The Cloverfield Monster / Mothera / Mecha-Streisand / whatever the hell they imagine) pops up out of nowhere and scares the living bejeesus out of them. Jaime makes sure the girls know that she wants this performance to be believable and real, because a giant-monster only making “boom” rumbling noises while romping around a populated cityscape without any sort of prior panic or destruction reaching the eyes or ears of the girl’s characters is a completely legitimate setup. Just saying, you want a performance to feel real, probably a better idea to give them a more ominous and logistical buildup.
As far as the performances, well, Christine started out well enough, but after her initial reaction to the monster she just went into this weird wheezing fit. It was almost as if in her head the scene was done, but no one in reality is calling cut. Damn it Chris, why can you not get to the place where you’re as good as I know you can be? Jessica once again kicked ass, insert usual praise here. Gabby also surprisingly wasn’t bad, her set-up left something to be desired but her reaction to seeing Mecha-Streisand was dead on the button.
You know, Tai was on a very thin line after last week. One of two things would happen this week, either she would repeat her performance in an attempt to pry the #1 spot away from Jessica, or she would fail epically after thinking that she is leading lady material without having to try. After watching her Skills Challenge performance, I’d have to say she’s starting to drift towards the latter. I think I’ll let Jessica’s reaction when watching her performance speak for itself.
Sierra is trying to get in touch with her inner onion and show her “layers”. Yet, she still spits out a performance not vastly dissimilar to her previous ones, and still does her weird trademark “constantly cover your mouth” scream. Basically, she went from passable to crap in 6 seconds flat.
Stand-Outs: Jessica, Gabby
Face-Palms: Sierra, Tai - JOHN HOMA’S “GET OFF MY PORCH IF YOU’RE GONNA SUCK” ACTING EXERCISE:
The girl’s walk into Homa’s acting exercise for the week and he’s already pissed off. He’s staring daggers into each and every one of them, and has a pile of bricks by his side. This cannot end well.
Ohhh shiiiiittt...
He states that ever since the last elimination, he wakes up pissed off. He thinks of how stupid and easy it is to get knocked out of this competition, and how the girls are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. He singles Christine out in particular, and then the HOMA RAGE really starts a-building when he says that he’s sick of seeing Sierra in the damn elimination room, so sick that he wants to vomit (lovely visual there, Homa). The HOMA RAGE then hits maximum capacity: “So when I came in today and saw this pile of bricks, the first thing he wanted to do was take one of these bricks and—” The RAGE overtakes him and he proceeds to HURL THE BRICK AT THE GIRLS. At the end of The Big Bad Wolf Massacre, there were six bricks thrown, and no survivors. The man they called Homa, has not been seen since. The case today, remains open…
Okay, seriously, it’s revealed when the girls rightfully flip the fuck out and dive for cover that they notice the brick bounce around. Now that everyone has shit their pants, Homa reveals that it’s an obvious prop. Yeah, obvious now. He has emotionally scarred each and every one of these girls for life, they will have recurring nightmares every time they turn in a poor performance of Homa straight up hurling bricks at their heads with the intent to crack their skulls like a Faberge egg.
Anyway, this week Homa’s lesson is about working with props. He reveals a various assortment of props such as shovels, pipes and fire axes, along with their real-life counterparts. He wants them to get a feel for the weight of the real one before picking up the much lighter prop version, so as to get a feel for how the prop could be realistically handled.
Everyone did fine in this, and then Tai came up. I don’t know what she was thinking, but it wasn’t about a performance this week Tai, it was about believably handling a prop weapon. She gets up there with a fire axe and starts wailing away at the floor, completely forgetting about selling the weight property of the axe because it’s bouncing off the floor like a damn super-ball.
Homa then paired them off and had them take turns hitting each other in the back with the various weapons and make the impact look believable. Gabby seemed to have the same problem as Tai during this, as she was too focused on “sneaking up behind” Jessica and “making faces” as Homa put it instead of just creeping up and wailing Jess in the back. Basically everyone except Jessica and Sierra had trouble overselling the weight of the object in question. However, they at least gave Homa what they wanted after he gave them notes, which is more than what could be said for Tai.
If there was any doubt that Tai was falling into the trap of lackadaisical performances, it was burned with her epic failure when she went up with the purpose of hitting Christine in the back with a pipe. Homa didn’t pull punches after her first swing “Okay, the acting’s sucking because we’re worried too much about the hit.” So she tries again, and again makes a weird face which causes Homa to stop the scene mid-way through. She then tries again, and when she hits Christine, Chris doesn’t really carry the momentum realistically, which makes Tai completely quit on the scene and stand there with a “0_o” look on her face, completely forgetting that she has a lead pipe in her hands. It’s only when Homa says “TAI! C’mon!” that she realizes that she’s stopped selling the pipe and tries to correct it. Facepalm material at its finest, it seems that the “wonderful” Tai just got wrecked by the reality check train.
Stand-Outs: N/A
Face-Palms: Tai - DIRECTOR’S CHALLENGE:
Paranormal Activity ain’t got nothing on this weeks Director’s Challenge! No, but seriously, this weeks DC has the girls dealing with a vengeful spirit. The setup is that the girls are painting a piece of furniture in the attic of their new home. As they’re painting, the paint can is yanked from their hand by an unknown force, before an otherworldly struggle ensues. This is to climax in the finale, where the girls are flung across the attic by the entity via Matrix inspired wire-work. The main thing in this that the girls probably don’t realize is they’re technically crafting two performances, their own and the demon entity that’s attacking them.
I think they keep putting Jessica first because they know that she will set a great bar for the rest of the girls. While she didn’t disappoint, I felt as though her entity didn’t have an intent with its movements. It just seemed all over the place, which made it hard to get a feel for where it was.
Christine. You know, she’s been my dark horse in this competition for a reason. I know that there are strokes of brilliance in her performances, but they can never get culled together to form a masterpiece. Well, after distancing herself from the other girls when they received their scripts the night before and mapping out her performance, I can finally say that Christine has fulfilled the potential I knew she always had. She was absolutely fantastic, it was easily the best performance in a Directors Challenge—strike that, it was one of the best performances I’ve seen period. She chose to have her ghost attempt to drag her in one direction, and the body control she exhibited made this intent and movement believable without a shadow of a doubt. The thing about Chris’s performance that really made it stand out to me is that she—either purposefully or unknowingly—gave her ghost an intent. Near the end of the scene, she had it “drag” her in the same direction she flies off in, almost as if it wanted to get her over there for some reason. This in turn gives the viewer a much more vivid idea as to where the specter actually is in relation to the victim character. It was something so subtle, but yet so perfect and so ingenious.
It became obvious that no one would top that performance, but the two performances that followed it weren’t even “passable”. Sierra comically flopped around like she was either a fish on a boat deck, or being attacked by the evil tickle monster. I shall let the sound guy’s expression say the rest for me.
Tai meanwhile, went three-for-three in epic failures. There was no intent, just a bunch of falling down and screaming, followed by a comical “kung-fu” pose as she flew through the sky. Well, at least the Wachowski Brothers would be proud.
Stand-Outs: Christine
Face-Palms: Tai, Sierra - THE AXE:
Those called to the Grand Ballroom for judgment were as follows:
Jessica was named Week 6’s Leading Lady, with Christine finally snatching the Runner-Up spot.
Sierra and Tai were this week’s Bottom 2 performers, and ultimately it was (in a split decision for the first time)…
…
…
Sierra who got AXED. I actually have nothing snarky to say this week. Looking back, she completely blew my expectations away from what I expected from her after her first performances. For that, I have to commend her. It proved to me that she has the drive to improve herself, and understand her weaknesses. Not to mention, as the youngest actress in this competition at 22, I think she could actually become a formidable actress some day if she keeps up the drive to better herself that she gained here. I honestly wish her all the best.
- Jessica (3-0-0; 6) 1.100
- Tai (1-2-1; 5) .833
- Christine (0-2-1; 5) .667 [previously 4th]
- Gabby (1-1-2; 3) .550
Sierra (1-1-3; 2) .450Sarah (0-1-1; 3) .425Allison (0-1-1; 3) .425Karlie (0-0-1; 2) .200Rosanna (0-0-1; 1) .100Lana (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. +0.6 for Jessica; 0.5 for Tai, Christine; 0.3 for Gabby]
Gabby finally falls to her rightful place as Christine leapfrogs her thanks to her epic performance in the Director’s Challenge. Jessica meanwhile has actually managed to eclipse 1.000, because she’s apparently just that freakishly good. To be honest, I’m surprised that my RSAs (Random Statistical Algorithms) actually reflect the happenings on the show rather accurately. Shame that we’re getting to the point where they will eventually be useless. Oh RSAs, we hardly knew ye.
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