Canada’s Best Beauty Talent, episode 5: a lack of colour

Canada’s Best Beauty Talent, episode 5: a lack of colour

Andrea and Isabelle work on their bride-to-be (Image: CBBT)

Canada’s Best Beauty Talent, Episode 5

It’s wedding week on Canada’s Best Beauty Talent, and contestants are tasked with creating the perfect look for a real bride-to-be. The premise is good—some of our favourite Project Runway episodes involved real clients or brides. Sadly, unlike that show, which is packed full of drama, this episode of CBBT runs the length of a leisurely trip to the bathroom (10 minutes, 32 seconds), so the drama is underplayed. While we do pick up some tips from Roger (who actually looks as perfect on camera as he does in his headshot—it’s weird), Marcia and Cait, and while Isabelle and Andrea do get paired with a somewhat needy bride, that’s not enough to make it a meaty episode—and no one cries. (Remember when Jeffrey Sebelia made Angela’s mom cry in season three of Project Runway? That’s the kind of entertainment we’d like to supplement our learning with.)

Coco Rocha spends a good 36 seconds laboriously explaining how the teams will be selected: team four chooses team one’s model, and so on. That kind of time-filling means the actual competition—a one-hour challenge—doesn’t start until the 4:10 mark, and the fairly complicated task of making a bride wedding-perfect only gets about six minutes of airtime, which includes preliminary consultations. Rocha also explains, in a very serious tone, that before the hour is up, models must be in their gowns with hair and makeup ready; yet when the time is up, no bride-to-be is in her dress and no one is scolded for it (it’s as if we’re supposed to pretend that Rocha didn’t make a big deal about it a few minutes earlier). Oy. Here’s what we learn this week: Marcia talks about how she’s blending two different foundations to create a perfect match for her model, and shows us how an eyeshadow palette can double as a bronzer in a pinch; Cait packs gold powder into a liquid liner for a gold eye that fades to black (even though we won’t get to see the result until next episode, it seems like a pretty neat trick); and Roger puts his model’s hair in hot rollers so the look will last the entire night.

• The “teaming up” process is already a bit awkward, but Andrea’s apparent reticence to work with Isabelle is actually uncomfortable to watch—especially since everyone else seems cheery (complete with hugging)

• Isabelle’s affected manner of speaking makes her sound like she’s the host of a jazz radio show, and it’s starting to get on our nerves (it takes her longer to complete sentences because she stretches out syllables, which eats up a lot of precious, precious airtime)