Face Off

Face Off has now officially been around for five seasons, this being the start of its sixth. I’ve seen the name pop up occasionally here and there, but I had yet to get around to watching it. That being said I was given a two episode disc, of which only the 3rd episode will be reviewed here, but nevertheless I watched them both. 

 

From my viewpoint Face Off is a mash up of Heroes of Cosplay and Chopped. We have a handful of special effects artists that are given a theme they have to design within a certain amount of time. In this particular case the individual players were given shields featuring damage done by dragons. Their goal was to invent these dragons using everything in the workshop and then apply their creations to models that show up at the end of the show. 

 

The designs are split up into sections. The teams, or in this case, individuals are given a set time frame in which they can create their visions. At the end of the time frame one of the contestants will yell out that time has passed and everyone to put down what their doing, just like on chopped. This of course resumes for each timed round in which the players must complete their self assigned tasks so that they can present their visions to the judges. 

 

What made me think of Heroes of Cosplay was seeing the players getting frustrated, losing their cool, storming off, coming together. Some of them would be blown away by what they’d designed while others were disappointed with their creations. Of course the consequences are much higher then just not being able to compete in a cosplay costume contest. Failure means that one person is going to be heading home and their dream of making it to Hollywood, on this particular road, is over. 

 

So basically there was nothing really new as far as the theme went. We had video confessionals of the contestants, nerve racking moments where nothing seemed to be going right for one or two contestants, and of course the judge round. 

 

I liked the designs, not so much all of the designers. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the judges, but they did their job with sufficiency. What killed me on this particular episode was the finale. 

 

I understand the concept of showmanship, but this thing was just drawn out for too long and the judges repeated themselves not once, not twice, but three times in the span of fifteen minutes. I just wanted to know who had been the top designer and who was going home. By the time we reached the end game I had almost lost all interest. I just shrugged and turned away to begin working on my review. 

 

Thankfully the disc came with more then one episode so I could clearly see that the episode I reviewed was a bit of an isolated incident (I hope). The other episode was good (Cosmic Conspiracy) and ran pretty smoothly from theme, design, and judge round. 

 

I’m not a major reality fan. I don’t see myself watching this show again unless my kids want me to or I get more reviewable episodes from work (I wouldn’t complain), but the show didn’t seem quite there for me. To many similarities to other shows, a bit rough around the edges when it came to all around design. I did like the creations though. As always final judgment is yours. Enjoy.