Episode Recap: Triple Threat

After a tense elimination process, Athena is sent home, but no sooner do the remaining contestants collect their thoughts than McKenzie appears backstage and announces that they will be going straight into their next Foundation Challenge. She marches them back onto the reveal stage to meet a parade of gorgeous, lithe women and tells the contestants that they must transform these runway models into plain Janes. Guest judge Kim Greene gives top marks to Rayce for his "Disheveled Librarian" look, earning him immunity in the Spotlight Challenge.

At the lab the following day, McKenzie has the contestants self-select into groups of three. When Heather hears Sue whisper her name, she frantically looks for another team to join and finds RJ and Beki. Tara is not too happy to wind up on a team with Sue and her partner in crime, Matt, though Jerry is thrilled to be with Ian and Rayce. The challenge this week is to create two old age makeups for twins, one at age 75 and the other at age 100. They should look and feel like the same person, physically and personality-wise. The special guest judge this week is Greg Cannom, Academy award-winner for his work on "Benjamin Button." If anyone knows old age makeup, it's this guy.

The teams have only 90 minutes with the twins, and start casting their teeth, hands and faces for later, when McKenzie pops back in and tells them there's yet another element to this week's work. Each team will get a third twin, aka a triplet, to be aged to 50 years. Each artist will work on one makeup, allowing the judges to evaluate the group at the same time as each individual.

Jerry, Ian and Rayce decide their slender, blonde models would look good as a hippie chick, while tempers flare between Tara and her teammates, who whisper about her to each other in less than kind words. RJ, Beki and Heather seem to be working well together, though they, like the other teams, are intimidated by the amount of work before them.

At the reveal stage, the judges are not pleased with the looks - the hippie chick is far too subtle, and looks nowhere near the advanced ages assigned. The clashing between Tara, Sue, and Matt didn't seem to affect their sculpture, but the cohesion of their design is loose. Still, Sue manages to win top looks for her detailed and realistic 100-year-old. Beki, RJ and Heather had a great concept with a woman who's a little heavy at 50, and loses progressively more weight at the other ages, but Beki's sculpture came out lumpy rather than realistic, and the judges say Heather's 100-year-old looks more like a zombie than a centenarian. Her lopsided sculpt and confused anatomy ultimately send her home, but she packs her kit with stoicism and gratitude at having come so far.