"Shear Genius" (2.05) recaplet: Tasty waves and a cool buzz

On this week's episode of Shear Genius, we're down to eight stylists, three of whom are out gay men. Daniel, Charlie, and Paulo are the only men left, and the challenges are getting tougher.

This week's "shortcut challenge" is hinted at when the stylists find a bucket o' flip flops in their house, and a note that says "get ready for a hot surprise". My first thought was "Dear God, they're going to style my mother and her menopausal friends!", but the bucket didn't include a collection of colorful muumuus and hand fans, so I knew I was mistaken.

Actually, the stylists are taken to the beach, where Jaclyn Smith (who looks even more incredible windswept) is waiting with this week's Rene Fris wannabe, Oscar Blandi. The challenge is to take their clients and transform their hair after a long day at the beach into a clean, polished look fit for a night out.

Oscar explains that he will be judging their technical skills, creativity, and the "ability to style hair on the harsh condition of the bitch."

That automatically gets him a four out of five on the Rene Scale(tm).

The stylists are introduced to the clients, who are all hot surfer types. Stoked! Oscar informs them that they have "turdy minutes", and the righteous cutting begins.

Daniel, Charlie, and Paulo all have harsh things to say about their fellow stylists, especially the somewhat scatterbrained Nicole, who seems more interested in the hotness of her client than what she was assigned to do (and frankly, I don't blame her). Oscar likes the cut she did, though, and she wins the challenge (and I kid you not, she actually does cartwheels on the beach).

Suddenly I feel the need to hide my pictures of the Pope

This week's elimination challenge provokes a lot of tears and emotions, as all the clients are women who have lost their hair due to Alopacea, which is an auto immune disorder that prevents hair from growing. The stylists will be designing wigs for them to wear, and Paulo breaks down almost immediately, as the enormity of the situation gets to him. Soon, their client's stories and the realization that the stylists can actually make a difference in someone's life opens the floodgates for almost everyone ... well, except Charlie.

Of course. 

See how our out stylists did, who wins and who gets sent packing after the break.

Poor Daniel. He started out as the most exciting of the three gays, and now he seems to have faded into the shadows of Charlie and Paulo. Maybe that's a good thing, though. He keeps getting through, and although he hasn't come close to winning an elimination challenge, he also hasn't come close to being eliminated. Maybe slow and steady will win this for him.

Roar! After weeks of scraping the bottom of the barrel, our Half Transformed Werewolf(tm) finally got his chance to howl! He created a rocking do for his teenage client, and won this week's elimination challenge. That joy was short lived, however, when Jaclyn told him that from now on, no one was safe from elimination ... even the winner of the "elimination challenge". WTF?

Well, this was a good week. My favorite gay wins, and Charlie ... doesn't. In fact, he ended up in the bottom two this week, for his Tova Borgnine monstrosity of a wig. Even he admits that it was awful, but somehow ... somehow ... he isn't eliminated.

That means that novice stylist Gail is the loser for this week. I have a feeling that they want to keep the ratio of men to women as close as possible, so Charlie probably lucked out this week.

Next week's show sounds like a lot of fun. It features an appearance from Kate Jackson in the Charlie's Angels challenge, and it looks like Charlie is finally going to get some sass back from some of his fellow stylists. Can't wait!