Episode Recap: Dream House

What with all this competition, the makeup gods thought our contestants could do with a little whimsy, which is why they created this week’s assignment in the realm of fairy tales. But because the makeup gods like to keep things interesting, they’re giving the teams just two days to complete three members of a family that would live in one of four fairy tale houses. In their mercy and beneficence, the gods grant a trade of Joseph from Ethereal Effects to Twisted Six in order to balance the scales.

Ethereal Effects elects Suzanne, a master of whimsy, as their foreperson. They decide on a wooden tree house, and envision a witch who has enchanted a woodchuck and a faun to help her build houses for woodland creatures in need. Midway through sculpting the faun, Kierstin realizes this piece won’t stand up to Ethereal’s typical cohesive standards – she’s totally in a different world from Andrew’s adorable, puffy-cheeked woodchuck. Suzanne and the team hash it out and decide on a mama woodchuck instead of a faun. But with only half a day at this point to get the sculpt up to par, Kierstin is worried.

On the other side of the lab, Twisted Six (who had been Twisted Four until Joseph came over) start out on a very unified path under the leadership of Nick – they’re creating one fairy godfather and two fairy godmothers for their house made of flowers – but things soon turn sour when Mr. Westmore praises Nick’s godmother and not Jill’s. Tension brews between the teammates, and when Jill steps away to get some space from the strife, Nick scrapes all the clay off of Jill’s sculpt. She returns and is livid, but must channel her anger into the clay as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The next day the models arrive, and once again Jill and Nick butt heads, this time over the paint job. On reaching the reveal stage, their discord is evident in the lackluster, directionless fairy. KC and Joseph created a stunning rhapsody in green for their godfather, with KC bringing her expertise in crafting and applying horns to this look and rounding it out with a moss cowl. The judges – including guest judge Elizabeth Mitchell of “Lost” and “Once Upon A Time” – adore this fairy, but he’s not enough to keep his team out of bottom looks.

Suzanne is running hot and cold after getting mushy reviews for her tree elemental witch (Nelson’s swirling tree trunk cowl is stunning, but in a very different and overshadowing way from Suzanne’s face sculpt) but her team reached the top, again, under her leadership. As Andrew’s name is called as the winner of this week’s challenge, he thinks of his mom and how proud she’ll be that he finally made something cute instead of gory.

The winning and safe artists file out, leaving Jill and Nick to walk to the center podium. They both know there’s plenty to send either of them home, but Nick made poor decisions in the overall look of the godmothers, and committed a huge sin against the makeup gods by scrapping another artist’s work. He recognizes his poor decision, but it’s too late – this is his last week on Face Off. Adieu, Nick! We hope you don’t get your liver eaten by an eagle every day as punishment.