S08.E06: Sticky Situation - Ink Master
Weird flash challenge concept but incredible execution. This is why I occasionally like the non-tattoo related flash challenges, because so many of these people are genuinely incredible artists beyond just doing tattoos.
Personal theory: the reason we're seeing so many non-tattoo flash challenges this season (and in recent seasons) is due to the divide in talent among the top and bottom artists on the show. If the flash challenges were tattoos, that would increase the probability that one of the best tattooers would win, get the skull pick, get a good canvas, and then do a great tattoo. By avoiding tattoo flash challenges, it increases the chances that a "bad" tattooer wins which adds some variability and makes it harder for the good tattooers who would otherwise dominate. Think back to season 3 when Halo, Matti, Scott, and Sausage won every single challenge (flash and elimination), the dominance was so complete that it's honestly hard to remember anybody else from that season.
The bickering is old. The women on this season seem to be especially loud, but some of the men are unreasonably butt-hurt about it as well. An important side note: I once watched a periscope with Jason Clay Dunn (he holds one after every new episode) where he said that an average tattoo-critique/elimination takes about 10 hours on site to film. Keep in mind when you watch these stupid 2 minute "confrontations" that those 2 minutes are being pulled from around 10 hours of material. There's so much going on (or not going on) that we don't see. The people producing and editing these shows are professionals and it's totally possible that the drama is largely fabricated or exaggerated. Hell, my family gets along incredibly well. But if you filmed us for 10 hours a day and then pieced together the worst 2 minutes you could probably make us seem pretty nasty too.
IMO all of the space tattoos were pretty bad. The top two were a very average astronaut portrait and a solid space scene that was overall nice but had terrible rings around one of the planets. Still waiting for more stylistic challenges instead of being assigned a common subject.
Matt went home--who cares. Was bound to happen eventually.
Tito or Kevin up next week
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