Saturday, September 24, 2011

SAW 3D: What Became Of The 2010 "Scream Queen"?

So two months ago I finally got around to watching SAW 3D (aka The Final Chapter) thanks to an EPIX weekend-long channel preview on FiOS. The main thing I wanted to see was the type of role Gabrielle West—winner of the second season of Scream Queens in which the grand prize landed her the role—had in the film, since they actually gave the previous winner a pretty intriguing side-character. So, lets see the role that Gabby secured.

WARNING: Gratuitous Over-The-Top Violence Ahead



…That’s it? You trained her up, you spouted all this bullshit about “how versatile of an actor you have to be to win this competition” and THAT’S what she does? Scream, cry and plead before her head gets a permanent tread-mark run through it? Are you serious?


“…What a fucking waste of my goddamn time.”

The killer is, not only did the original SQ winner Tanedra Howard do more in her first appearance in the series, she makes a recurring appearance in the VERY NEXT scene. That’s… that’s just laughable! Tanedra has more to do in this film than Gabby West! Breakout role my ass, Gabby just became Saw cannon fodder.

To me, I almost feel like this is a statement on how the judges overrated Gabby on the show. I mean, lets be honest, you couldn’t exactly cast Jessica Ortiz as the girlfriend of a skinhead, but I don’t get why they weren’t competing for the role of Sydney, who’s at the Jigsaw Trap Survivor Support Group in the same scene immediately after Gabby’s that Tanedra makes her appearance in.



That was a small role that required everything Homa had trained the girls on, and could’ve very well been considered a small breakout role. I also think it would’ve been a clever little wink to the fans of the show to have Tanedra and Gabby’s characters interact with each other, especially given the fact that Tanedra’s character calls Sydney right out on the carpet for not truly having to sacrifice anything in order to escape her trap. A character who has to recount the trap she had endured, complete with short flashback, seems like it should’ve been the most obvious choice for the role of the second VH1 Scream Queen. Nope, instead what I joked would happen with Tanedra happens in the second go-round with Gabby—pure body count ammunition.

Perhaps Tanedra, and her prominence in this film, is the reason I find this so funny. I said (many times) in my coverage of SQ2 that Gabby was terribly overrated by the judges, and that she really had a hard time quickly channeling the required emotions while also being on top of the technical aspects of the scene. Perhaps the filmmakers of Saw 3D picked up on this as well and as such gave her such a terribly weak role when they made sure to give the winner of the first SQ a follow up role. It just seems like a complete and total waste of the time of everyone involved with SQ2 to give the winner of the competition such a throw-away role. What a damn shame.