Last time on Strip Search, Katie returned from elimination after beating out Ty with the lesser of two ho-hum strips and now everyone is calling her “our gladiator”, because it’s totally fun that she was sent up for no good reason two times in a row!
It’s all yoga classes and smiles and chatting about brushes until Graham Stark shows up and asks the artists to pair off so they can play a game where one person has to draw a cartoon character based entirely on a verbal description from their partner. (Something Maki claims to have done in a job interview… wtf?) This mini-challenge is all about communication and with the exception of Abby and Mac, all five pairings do okay, but everyone votes for Amy and Erika as the clear winners and as a courtesy, they vote for Maki and Tavis (you know they wanted to totally vote for themselves) – but not without criticizing them a little first. Amy’s cold, hard demeanor cracks when she learns that she and Erika have won Intuous 5s, not only is she broke and a winner but she got to partner with her role model or some shit — truly, Strip Search is about making dreams come true.
Graham Stark then explains that webcartoonists love themselves some Twitter and our collective consciousness is summed up during Monica’s confessional; “I can’t believe that Twitter is a challenge.” So Scott Kurtz, king of the Twitter flame war and creator of PVP and Table Titans is brought in to explain his perspective on managing your “brand” by dealing with haters on the internet.
But before we tuck into that what the fuck is up with these hats?
Kurtz provides the contestants with 5 twitter subjects, 4 of which are almost 100% from Kurtz’s Twitter @feed and gives them 1 hour to respond. Tavis is confident, Abby is psyched, Erika is done within minutes “I’m a fast tweeter” and Mac is concerned, because he has not yet learned to speak.
Lexxy thinks Kurtz is an “interesting choice” given his “reputation”, and has a ton of opinions about his judging; she doesn’t believe in snark and wants constructive emails from disgruntled readers and to put up polls to help influence her choices and he thinks she’s crazy, “This is your voice and your content and either they like it or they don’t”.
While you can tell everyone in the group just wants her to shut up and listen, Lexxy cannot, “I do feel like I had some legitimate points to discuss and defend and get across” says Lexxy in her confessional, pointing out her own flawed thinking that this is a time to “discuss” or “defend” her opinions. “It’s like she’s engaging Scott, as if he was trolling her” says Nick. And the moment Lexxy foolishly puts herself on Kurtz’s level, he moves on to talk about how much he loves Nick’s snark.
Kurtz puts Tavis in the bottom, gives honorable mentions for Amy and Katie. And hands the prize to Nick, with this response putting him over the edge:
Nick puts Lexxy & Tavis up for elimination, where they randomly draw the words…
“The Areola” & “Circus”, in which they have 90 mins to base around a strip. When all is said and done, there is much hand wringing over the final decision Lexxy’s work is surprising, sophisticated and smart and Tavis’ piece is well conceived, funny and well drawn. Mike would rather drag Abby out of bed and send her home based on her self-portrait alone than send one of these two home.
Mike & Jerry, suddenly realizing that their jobs includes sending home people who do good work are at wits end as the camera is cut and Robert Khoo tells them to pull their shit together. Unable to destroy the losing piece, Mike simply hands it back to… Lexxy.
Episode Highlight: The little “yich” Mac lets out when he sees Abby’s drawing during the blind challenge.
Guess at Final Three Based Entirely on Hat Stupidity: Abby, Maki & Nick
Countdown to Scott Kurtz:
