'Shear Genius': You should try this at home

If my hair were a person, it would be either an unruly teenager or a crotchety old lady that yells at kids from the front porch. It's a challenge for stylists and it never, ever looks the same at home as it does in the salon. I'd have been one of the last-chosen clients on tonight's Shear Genius.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's talk about the short cut challenge. Tonight it was a completely insane exercise involving working on more than one client at once. The stylists had 90 minutes, broken up into shifts. They started on their own client, and they had to color. Then 30 minutes in, they had to switch one chair to the left. At 45 minutes in, they switched two stations to the right. With 20 minnutes left, they went back to their original clients. Holy whiplash, Batman. And as Paulo stated at the top, the possibility of sabotage is quite great. Charlie clearrly took that into consideration, choosing a client with difficult hair that he didn't want to end with. After Charlie's last two elimination wins, I'm dying to see if he'll pull off the hat trick.

Meredith took her blonde client red -- aimed at being a rich copper red, but realized as Bozo the Clown (rest his soul). And in the end Charlie has to finish with the client he started. Whoops! Luckily, her difficult texture has been tamed by the two intervening stylists who worked wonders with a flat iron. When asked why he didn't do much cutting, rather than admitting he really wasn't trying all that hard, he said he wanted to work with a flat iron because he knew they'd all want side bangs and layers. And wow was he bitchy about Nekisa.

A lame "begging to be banged" joke later (oh, celebrity judge Roy), we have our top two: Dee and Daniel. They both focused on color and styles that flattered their clients -- good choice. And the fact that Charlie didn't win breaks things up a little bit. Dee wins. Meredith loses. And no offense, Meredith, but I'd have had a heart attack if my finished hair looked like that.

On to the elimination challenge. Our stylists have to create a look for their clients that they will be able to replicate at home. This is a fantastic challenge; how many times have you been utterly unable to recreate the style you got in the salon -- and not just because you're inept (my excuse)? And the stylists really take the challenge to heart. They focus a lot on explaining the cuts and styles and products to the clients, and spend a lot of time teaching them how to replicate them. Good thing, too -- because the winner will be determined the next day, when the clients come back and style themselves in 30 minutes.

Meantime, as all of this is getting going, Dee gets to choose her own client first and then all of her fellow stylists' clients. She and Charlie got into a tiff the night before -- he said that all of the styles in the short cut challenge were bad, and the winner was just the least bad (fair enough). So of course Dee gets all high school and picks Charlie last, giving him a Latina woman with tons of hair who had just colored it. "If there's any challenge when you want to have immunity, this is it," says Charlie -- a.k.a., Mr. Immunity.

The winner will be featured, along with the client, in a Nexxus ad campaign. They have 90 minutes for this challenge. It's really clear who's thought about the whole thing from the cuts and styling decisions they've made. Nicole, for example, doesn't use a round brush or any implement with her client besides a blow dryer. Smart. Glenn spends a lot of time showing her client just how to use the brush and dryer. Same with Dee. Charlie comes up with an extremely simple cut, and as he describes it, spends a lot of time "hanging out" with his client. And in the end, he gets totally busted for playing it safe (or lazy, depending on how you look at it) because he has immunity.

Nekisa, who's involved in a little drama earlier regarding whether or not Dee has a crush on her, doesn't cut her client's hair, but focuses instead on color and style. Only to have her client style it differently the next day. Alrighty then. In the end, Glenn, Nicole and Dee made it into the top three -- and rightfully so. All of their clients did a great job -- overall, most of the clients did -- and Nicole's went from taking 30 minutes to do her hair normally to eight minutes after her lesson. Nice. At the final judging, Glenn wins! Which is great, because beforehand she talked about what a coup this would be for her career. Yay Glenn! And I have never seen a reality show where the winner gets a such a huge round of applause from his or her competitors -- it's really nice to see.

Charlie, Meredith and Nekisa are in the bottom three, so you know it's going to be one of the ladies. I thought for sure it was going to be Nekisa, but it seems as though Meredith just couldn't come back from her earlier disaster, and she goes home.

What did you think? Were there any haircuts in the bunch that you'd have wanted? Have you been able to successfully recreate what your stylist has done? Any early predictions on the finalists?

Discuss this show on Zap2it's 'Shear Genius' Forum.

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