Halloween Wars - Week 3

*chews through ropes, dribbles acidic blood across chains, stops for a sandwich*

Finally! After all these years of recaps, of struggling against the torture, I can see it. The flickering light of freedom.

Damn it!

Much like the protagonist in a horror movie whose contract is extended, you honestly thought you'd get out of here alive? Ha ha ha ha!

And to accompany us on your boat ride to Hades, complete with souvenir photo of Charon, is this lovely old lady.

Apparently she wrote the Sookie Sackhouse/True Blood books which all the contestants gave a shoulder shrug about.  Since she'd finished them off months ago, I assume Food Network offered her a free slice of buttermilk pie and then refused to let her leave.

From now on, every time Alexander Skarsgard gets naked you'll picture this face behind it all. Mwhahahaha!

But to the competition and why we're all here! The jabbering cupcake demon lured the contestants close and launched burnt toast at them.

This bit of gluten terrorism was all to highlight his deep disgust of bread and its many wondrous forms. Cupcake demon proceeded to dump a canister of bread crumbs over his head screaming "DEATH TO YEAST!" and then set his entire body aflame. Or he used to it segue into the stupid small challenge: appliances run amok. The brave little toaster is back and armed to the teeth. Of course it's just a stupid toaster so all it can do is really burn the hell out of your bread.

It was obvious they were trying to capture the magic that was Reaper out of an iPad from last year but failed to tell the contestants what they were really looking for.

 Any time the camera cuts back to him this guy has one face. I'm fairly certain this judge is really a wax figure.

Team paying everyone off gave us a wax skull you left on the floor of your car along with all your CDs in the hot sun. Good going.

 

Stuck a feather in his head and called it Meltaroni!

Apparently it's supposed to be a haunted mp3? that impaled the skull? with a music note? Question question question. I have no idea why, if the mp3 is getting revenge there, say, isn't one. Or why a bunch of CD's, already on the extinction list, were on its side. The feather music note makes perfect sense of course.

I joke a lot about how this team is clearly paying people off which was just some joshing until this episode. This piece solidified my bubbling rage at what any other year would get trounced from the judge as being "barely above throwing at someone's front door" raised to "this is the most amazing skull I've ever seen!"

And apparently these headphones are so spot on you cannot tell the difference between these pumpkin ones or a $500 set from Puff the Magic Daddy.

Uhhhh...huh.

But we shall return to my conspiracy theory soon enough, for now we have to get to the other contestants abominations.

Team received none of the camera's attention so probably safe this week gave us "A Very Hungry Microwave" from the lucrative collaboration of Eric Carle and Sears.

 Or it's an ancient Rabbit Ears TV out for revenge because you tossed it heartlessly onto the curb where passing dogs use its real wood paneling as a bathroom. You monster.

Black boxes are a good way to preserve your flight data, but not so much to scare people.

 Glass teeth are what all the cool kids are doing nowadays.

Tell my wife I said "the remote's behind the couch."

Our last team, Team Mad At The World, showed why the Food Network will not replace licensed therapists. Their captain, quibbling lip, shared with the camera and world how as a child he was terrified of the vacuum. Perhaps he was raised by a family of dogs Mowgli style.

So, rather than talk this out with someone he insisted they create this:

A walking land lobster that enjoys the bracing taste of sharpened metal and raspberry jam.

I am uncertain what kind of vacuum has little black legs, perhaps that is the next evolution state. I choose you, Roomba!

Apparently it was hoovering up various implements of death around the house to use those to dice up weiner sausages. I'm wondering what kind of kitchen keeps a saw blade with their chef's knife. Is a built in fabrication table with walk through carcass hanging meat freezer going to reach levels of "granite counter tops" and everyone has to have it?

Frankly, all of your pieces were incredible let downs and the lobster vacuum evolved into a steam cleaner during the break so we'll give it to burlesque impaled melting skull.

I can't believe they fell for this shit.

Having used up vampires, zombies, zombies vs vampires, zombies in love, vampires vs love and love vs vambies for this episode they made the category so myopic you knew every piece would include trees, moss, and a color palette ranging all the way from grassy green to monster mud: the swamp.

Team You Best Get Your Coat, had an interesting idea to make swamp moss by dying noodles green. They looked pretty cool, but needed a bit of brown to cut down on the bright easter basket green.

As Paying Everyone Off bickered like an old un-married couple, tensions rose on the judging panel. Someone finally, sanely called their chattering voice box out on his horrific puns. I get it, you damn writers craft the puns first and from that derive your cake challenge categories. But I'm begging you, your contestants, even your judges are begging you SHUT THE HELL UP!

I will destroy you little man.

The Broadway musical of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame goes way off script. Quasimodo as half saber toothed tiger is as believable as Phoebus being a romantic lead.

To inject some Drama, the two Ex's bickered over a giant hole in the back of their piece because collaborating before everyone carved their cake or pumpkin was too difficult. Instead they raced about cinching up the hole with spare cake, rice krispies, pumpkins, change, three rolls of toilet paper, and a hamster.

Then we got to watch three guys give themselves simultaneous hernias lifting 200 pounds of pumpkin. This is about food the way redneck porn is about learning or truckers are history.

 The other team guy tried to snap his own neck to get out of carving a Guinness book's worth of pumpkin.

The team the camera wanted nothing to do with because they cooperate and don't yell at each other while throwing buckets of fondant across the stage created a swamp monster.

Broodmother! (Do not click this image link unless your work is cool with rows and rows of nippled monster boobies)

They named their about to be eaten fisherman Fred Flinstone (no relation)

I have been and remain incredibly impressed with this cake carvers face skills. She also did the witch from Patty-Cake last week (did you know there's a witch in that nursery rhyme? Well there is now) and the haunting zombie eyes from week one. This little cake guy is about action figure size, give or take, and she got that much detail in such tiny work. Most other people get something that looks like polymer clay half melted in a major acid accident with a marshmallow.

Details abound in the piece too. So much so I didn't even notice the sugar fish until the camera zoomed in.

I give this swamp monster 10 Creatures from the Black Lagoon and am sending her to feed on the promo graphics that are invading half the screen.

Our other team tried that go big or go home approach. Nine times out of ten this ends in go home.

Our friendly neighborhood entomologist became ensnared in the excessive yard hose he forgot to roll up before winter.

 Naturally it raged at the slight and constricted upon him. Oh wait, this isn't the haunted appliance challenge. So this is a snake then?

A snake with four eyes, three fangs and was smashed in the nose with a frying pan? Okay. Snake...you're certain?

There were some really neat bits, like the jar of fireflies.

 Or a gorgeous coral snake hanging out on the side.

 And the camera guy could not get away from their tasting element.

Too bad the bashed in snake noggin' couldn't live up to place setting of some frosted green cookies.

The team, that other team who gave us immortal Zombie Slug and Farside does Nursery Rhymes actually cranked out something decent.

I am uncertain why the poor saber toothed reptile turned the cover of the Necronomicon from Evil Dead into an afghan, but at his age the eyesight is starting to go and swamps get cold at night.

Supposedly this pumpkin, where you can still see the bloody stem by the way, was so seamless with the cake the judges creamed themselves raving about how this monster was the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen.

An overgrown lizard in need of braces in an Army of Darkness themed wheelchair?

Since they couldn't pick on the monster because we're all once again pretending it's perfection for some reason, they ranted about the rope lighting but kept calling it disco lights. Six feet of rope dangling off a disco ball, I never want to go to their parties.

Never ever try to use rope light, it's too uniform. Uniform is anti scary. Uniform is not a team player.

 It's damn obvious that their team leader, Mr. Tantrum, is good friends with the cake judge. She greets him warmly every time while stomping over the crushed hearts of others and said proudly  "It took three weeks for him to finally show his talent."

*record scratch*

This is bloody Food Network, Food "If you don't impress me before I finish this sentence you're gone" Network. And you gave him three weeks to make something decent? This is the most obvious case of ass licking I've seen on reality tv in quite a while.

I despised Zombie Slug, I thought the cartoony blind mice were sad, yet I wanted to like some of this swamp monster. The fin was really good as were the teeth, and the beleaguered sugar artist feels like an unsung hero as the judge trips over her own tongue to bathe the cake carver; but the obvious nepotism is pissing me off. I shake my fist at the screen every time they appear and start to bicker once again.

So after the "judges pretend to debate as if the producers didn't decide for them" segment, our teams are back. Toaster boy goes on and on about how this team really brought together their pieces into a coherent story easily told and then announced that, of course, Team "Laced the cakes with diamonds" won.

Because seeing stems of the pumpkin means it blends well, and having no fucking idea what was up with the stomach having a face without them explaining a giant, possessed digestive tract is supposed to be someone it's eating is a tale easily discerned just from looking at it. Sure, right. Keep blowing that dry ice up our assess food network.

The snake team was sent home, keeping up with the tradition that whatever team wins the week before is sent home next time. I can pray that the trend will remain and the Green Team, who work cohesively and don't get into little bitching matches wins. But I suspect the blue team could crap in a bag and put that on the cake board and they'll still win.

Sigh.