Face Off

I solemnly swear that this post does NOT concern the Nicholas Cage/John Travolta entertaining yet admittedly terrible movie named Face Off.

I have been a naughty blogger. Here I've been, watching a great new show and I have yet to share it with you, my adoring blog public. Well, just in time I am getting off my ass and letting you know that SyFy's reality television program, Face Off, is really quite awesome.

It follows your typical reality competition formula: a bunch of unknowns in a field compete through a series of challenges and are kicked off one by one. A panel of expert judges assesses their work, with a special guest or two along the way. And the audience gets to look behind the curtain; i.e. are made privy to the design and creation process. Think Project Runway, Top Chef, etc. etc. Only this time, since it's SyFy, the relevant group is make-up artists.

Cool, right? This season, the competing make-up artists have had to make aliens, zombies, gender switches, even disguise themselves enough to fool their loved ones. I confess to knowing NOTHING about movie make-up, so the behind-the-scenes aspect of the show is fascinating and just really neat. While I can't comment on the qualifications of the judges on the show (as I said, I know nothing about this industry), they seem to know their stuff and have interesting personalities that make judging time entertaining. It's always nice when the judges in a competition actually help the viewer understand why widget A is better than widget B. The contestants themselves seem like pretty interesting people too, I also can't remember ever seeing that many piercings in one room.

Face Off airs on Wednesday evenings at 10pm and this week is the finale. Another great thing about the show? It's going to be a tight race. Of the four finalists, there are three that I think could take the crown, and that just makes the whole thing more exciting.

It's not too late to tune in; SyFy airs the previous episodes pretty regularly, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a marathon planned for the near future. But you have been warned: the show is addicting. When I started watching I burned through about 4 episodes in one go, and was sad I had to wait a whole week for the next one.