Anything but Shear Genius!

Yet another one of the reality shows I’ve been watching since confined to the couch, Shear Genius has little to do with hair styling genius and everything to do with playing the game to win. The game begins with a dozen contestants who are whittled down to the top three, and those three compete to see who gets the big bank to open a salon. The biggest challenge of the show is trying to figure out what the stunningly gorgeous hostess is saying as English is not her heritage language. She dresses beautifully and uses an assortment of wigs to turn her into this week's challenge. She takes her job very seriously, but I'm never quite sure what she actually says, other than "hair IS important," the weekly sign-off.

The stereotypes are almost comical: the flaming gay guy; the totally butch bitch; the sweeter-than-pie goody-two-shoes; the marginally capable bottom dweller; and the bulge of mediocrity in the middle. Completely unrealistic hair styling goals are set for the hairdressers to complete in a totally inadequate amount of time, so no one ever really finishes and/or actually creates a great hair style. The judges, however, take each contestant to task with a critique that assumes the game decides whether the world ends today or tomorrow. After all, “hair IS important."

What interests me is that the odds favor one of the bulge people, the ones who aren’t good enough to win a challenge, but aren’t bad enough to be booted off the show with the dreaded words: “this was your final cut.” This season, it’s Brig, a brassy female clown (red hair, too much make-up, and a big Minnie Mouse hair bow create her signature look) who relies on her ability to talk back to the judges to make it through challenge after challenge because it became readily apparent early on that she cannot cut, color, or style hair. She can’t do anything really well, but when one of the judges said that her hair coloring job on a model left a really bright pink color at the part, Brig said, with a straight face, “I’m not seeing what you’re seeing.” One week she squeaked through by taking down the hair style she had created and pouring a bottle of water over the model's head. Believe it or not, the judges raved about how she "saved" the look and the photo shoot! She is the first to dis other contestants and the last to admit to any personal failings, but she’s made it to the final round after consistently being at the bottom of the score card each week.

Because it’s been a repeat marathon this past week, I’ve watched quite a few episodes of the show. Brig never gets it right, but she always justifies what she’s done as if the whole world is wrong, and she’s right, again, this time, and always. The looks from the judges, as well as the other contestants, should be enough to shut down this approach to the styling challenges, but good ole Brig always says that she knows best what she does best and hangs on for another week. For one of the challenges, she piled fake hair up into a really tall beehive that she accented with metal zip ties (where she got these I’ll never know), while making a rolled up mess of fake hair on another head of hair – and won! The judges were wowed by her personal style and statement, but any customer in his/her right mind would have not just refused to pay for the mess she made of the hair, but demanded a redo from a stylist who knew what the hell she was doing!

The big finale is next week and, yes, I’m going to watch it because I have to see if Brig wins this thing. The grand prize is $100k to open one’s own salon, so I sure hope the big bucks go to someone who can actually style hair!

Brig won it! Don't know how she came out on top as she consistently was at the bottom of the heap, but she received $100k for her efforts.