Best Ink {season 2}

Wednesday night I stumbled on Best Ink. It's apparently the second season though I hadn't heard of the show before. I love tattoos and I love competition shows so I got sucked in. It's seems a bizarre thing to compete about since it is so permanent, not like hair or clothes, but I kept reminding myself that these are actual professionals. Not just apparently the best professionals. Quite a few are certainly not selling themselves very well.

The format is they do a Flash Challenge involving some kind of art and then they do the regular Tattoo Competition. The Flash Challenge has a cash prize and sometimes an extra bonus. With the Tattoo Competition, the winner receives immunity (at least at the beginning of the season).

Episode 1

Let's meet the contestants (as far as I can remember them)

Kelly
Derek
DJ
Teresa - seems like a cool girl
Melvin- seems like a nice guy
Ralph
Brittany
Carolyn - looks like a Monster High doll, is scared of people
Alli
Dollarz - is street
Tylor - was very briefly a male model and he reminds me of someone famous. Maybe Kevin Dillon?
Jerod

The first Flash Challenge involves hanging from a building and tagging a billboard with a self portrait. Melvin wins.

DJ won the first Tattoo Competition. Carolyn lost with her gory girl tattoo because it had a dead eye.
Kelly gets to stay despite the fact that her girl just up and walked out. It got pretty ugly. So the girl left with an incomplete tattoo. Maybe she was having second thoughts of being a tattoo competition show? 

Episode 2

Flash Challenge, guest judge Ray J (gross) - Using blacklight paints, the artists have to paint a picture that looks different under the blacklights than it does in regular light. Jerod wins with pretty cool painting of a girl and a boy who look broken but under the blacklights the picture changes to a silhouette of them kissing.

Tattoo Competiton - Using UV ink this challenge follows along with the flash challenge, create a tattoo that looks different under the blacklights. All the "skins" have secrets to reflect in their tattoos.

Brittany wins with her portrait of a girl who under the blacklights is very bright and loud. Jerod's was also cool looking like a Native American pin-up and then changing to a roller derby girl under the blacklights.
Melvin lost with his owl and snake. The snake was huge next to the owl. Kelly gets to stay despite that hers is ugly too. Teresa misspelled Philippians on her client because she didn't spell check but other than that her tattoo was really nice.

Episode 3

Flash Challenge, guest judge Vanessa and Angela Simmons - The artists paint on Pastry sneakers. DJ wins because he panders to the judges and brings up their dad.

Tattoo Competition -  Pairs. The artists are paired together to do matching tattoos for their pair of skins. Mostly it is parent/child pairs but there are two sets of siblings too, a set of twins who have had a colorful and seemingly troubled filled life despite looking like they are only 20 years old and a stepsister pair getting tattoos to commerate their late father.
Winner - Teresa who is shaping up to being a real competitor. She does good work. She won for her puzzle piece tattoo on one of the stepsisters.
Kelly loses (finally) for her ridiculous horse tattoo that one of the twins has to wear. I hope they offer to fix it for him. The best part is when the head judge Joe told her that they didn't want to see anymore from her. So it's fine to let her fuck up 3 different people but this is just the limit?

So far I am liking this show. I like how the 3 top artists of the challenge get to choose the 3 bottom artists. It actually seems fair and they are kind of strategizing but mostly playing it straight right now. Some of the artists are much more passionate than the others. I'm actually shocked that Taylor is a good as he is and I really like Teresa even if she did screw one of the most basic things about lettering. Alli doesn't seem to have it together with her inability to make a decision on her own. They must do a lot for her at her work. And Dollarz isn't going to make it. He always seems a bit confused and he had a hard time going outside his comfort zone in Episode 3.