Strip Search Recap: Episode 13 (aka Day 4)

Strip Search sends its fourth contestant home after episode 13, but not in the way you’d expect.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec175HpLxDM?rel=0]

Spoilers galore after the jump so don’t click read more until you’ve watched the episode.

I am enjoying Strip Search but I am probably only going to blog about it after the elimination contests. Regardless of my thoughts on the rest of the show, the elimination contests are pretty straightforward — two peoples enter the WebcomicDome; only one exits.

Or does s/he?

If you want more frequent recaps and just another point of few — Jamie Noguchi has been blogging after every episode at his webcomic Yellow Peril. He already has up his recap of the above episode.

The contest in the last episode was to design a skate board around a Magic: the Gathering character. Erika Moen won with easily the strongest visual design. Great to see Erika win something strongly — we already know she’s a good webcomic creator, it’s really a question of whether she can deal with the format of the show. The downside, however, is she has to pick the two contestants for the elimination contest.

She picks Mac Schubert and Nick Trujillo. Mac did an absolutely awful job on the contest, got called out for it in that episode. No reason not for Erika to pick Mac. Nick, despite winning the last two contests (and he had to pick the last four visitors to the elimination zone) was also dinged for not nailing the Magic character and so Erika cites that as reason for picking him as well. So two completely new contestants to the elimination contest.

Mercifully, many fewer “minutes left” jokes from Mike this time. Mostly still entertaining banter from Mike and Jerry with the contestants as they work on their comics. The comics are in and the judging begins and this time I completely agree with the judges. Both of them are not good.

So guess what happens? They send both of them home. I would rather they follow their show’s format but what the heck, it’s their show, if they want to send both of them home I guess they can. The upside of that is they end the show with a teaser that clearly spells out that they are bringing Lexxy back next week.

Time to update the Powerrrr Lysst. Ultimately this is going to come down to how well you can create a comic in ninety minutes — most of the contests outside of the elimination zone are not really telling us much about how folks will do in the elimination contest. Because of that you have to put Katie, Tavis and Lexxy up at the top of the list. Erika, I don’t know how fast she works but unless 90 minutes is a huge squeeze for her time-wise, she’s going to do more than fine whenever she has to go to the elimination zone. After that it’s a bit of a guess, although Mike doesn’t like Abby’s art so she’s going to have a hurdle to get over to win.