Meredith is eliminated on Shear Genius
Nine stylists are left on Shear Genius and it seems as if some of the “real” personalities are starting to come out. I guess the honeymoon is over, so to speak.
The shortcut challenge this week was an interesting one. The whole idea was to replicate in a way what happens in a real salon – the fact that a stylists often has to juggle multiple clients at the same time. Jaclyn Smith meets the stylists along with guest judge for both challenges this week Roy Teeluck (editorial director for Nexxus). The stylists would have 1.5 hours overall for the challenge. After a certain random amount of time the clients would be switched up. The stylists would not be aware of how many rounds their would be or how long each round would last. Two things that they were told was that they would be informed when it was the final round and that they had to do color in the first round. There ended up being four rounds and each stylist ended up with their original client. Charlie selected the client with the most difficult hair, taking a risk that if he worked on her first he would not end up with her in the chair at the end of the final round. That’s when the judging would take place – Roy tells the stylists that they would be judged based on the client that ended up in their chair at the end of the challenge.
Daniel and Dee ended up in the top two positions of the challenge with Dee being named the winner. As such she would get first choice of client and an advantage in the elimination challenge. Meredith and Nekisa were in the bottom two, with Meredith being named the “last choice” of Roy.
At the house that evening it gets interesting. We find out that Dee has a crush on Nekisa, even though Nekisa is married. Dee and Charlie also get into it a bit. Like I said, we started to see the real personalities of some people. Charlie said he has three faces – the two he uses during the day and the one he uses to stab you in the back.
The elimination challenge was introduced by Rene and Roy. The stylists had to give their clients a style they could recreate at home. They had 1.5 hours to complete the challenge. Dee’s advantage – she got to assign the client to each stylists. She gave Charlie the last client and said straight out it was strategy. Charlie said if there was any challenge to have immunity for this would be the one. (He had immunity this week.) There would be an additional reward for the winner of this challenge – not just immunity from elimination next week but the winning stylist and client would appear in an ad in Allure Magazine for Nexxus. Judging would not be that night. The clients would return the next morning and have 30 minutes in the salon to recreate the style they were given that day.
The top three stylists in the elimination challenge were Dee, Glenn and Nicole. Glenn really embraced the challenge, taking the time to teach her client how to recreate the style at home. She ended up winning the challenge. The bottom three were Charlie, Nekisa and Meredith. Jaclyn said Charlie was very lucky that he had immunity this week. Charlie really didn’t do much with his client – he didn’t change her color which the experts thought was too dark for her. So the elimination came down to Meredith and Nekisa. The judges thought that Meredith gave the client a style that looked like a squid or a mushroom but said she did an ok job with the color (that it was an improvement). Nekisa spent all her time on color and didn’t do anything to really change the look of her client. The judges said she gave more explanation than results.
In the end it was Meredith who was sent home. I’m thinking her poor performance in the shortcut challenge really hindered her (she gave her client a red hair color that was a poor choice). I thought that at least her color of the client’s hair would be enough to save her. But no. At the end of the show we see that the judges consult with the producers on elimination decisions. I guess the whole Dee – Nekisa dynamic makes for better tv.
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