Foxy and Co.: A SyFy channel first look!

Last night was the first look at “Foxy and Co.” a show featuring 4 past contestants of Face off who have come together in order to achieve special effects greatness, and have a few good times along the way.  The stars of the shows include Eric Fox, Nicole Chilelli, Rj Haddy, and Roy Wooley from various seasons of Face Off who all come to the table with a various assortment of skills and trades.  Just based on watching these 4 interact I already am pushing for this show to be a real thing!  They start the show by testing a melting face!  I mean seriously how do you top having your face melted off as an opening act?!

Well after a brief welcome to the effects studio the team goes through a checklist of projects that they have to get through for a Zombie project about Zach: The Zombie Exterminator which includes a zombie dog, a gigantic fat zombie suit, a pool skimmer zombie decapitation device and a blood spray system that leaks green ooze.  Yeah comparatively speaking, my job blows.  In addition to the Zombie order, Nicole is presenting an idea for a breast cancer superhero for the Susan G. Komen foundation.

This was very heart wrenching for me after my scare last year, and I know it’s unfair but Foxy would have gotten my vote for that alone.  Her sketches include a dress made from the survivor ribbon as well as beautiful red boots and a beauty makeup to kick cancers ass!  Needless to say, she gets the job and the excitement in me swells.

In preparation for the design of the superhero Nicole meets with a cancer survivor who explains that she has just finished another round of chemo after finding cancer a second time.  By this time in my house, I’m getting way too emotional… I’m a chick, it’s what we do.  Nicole decides to honor the young woman by making the wig of the superhero removable which I believe was daring but, totally necessary.  All women are beautiful, despite what life throws at you!

Nothing however could have prepped me for the reveal.  After a wardrobe malfunction they get it together in a flash and the photographer clicks away at a beautiful superhero that is ready to fight this evil.  That would have been, and trust me was enough, to make my eyes serge tears of joy if it hadn’t been for the wig coming off.  I lost my cool completely.  What she did with that character needs to be everywhere.  It was strong and inspiring, proving that any woman is more than the looks on the outside but is the sum of her strength, grace and poise!  Well done Nicole! Well Done!

Back in the studio RJ and Roy make me wish I had followed my dreams into makeup as they test out various ways to make gooey, runny zombie blood.  Life is so unfair isn’t it?!  More important however, is how this concoction is to be sprayed when the Zombies are being killed.  After several hilarious and I’m guessing delicious by watching RJ’s sampling, attempts they settle on a fire extinguisher.  Now what do you do with a fire extinguisher full of green goop?  Spray it all over your friends… duh.  As Foxy soon finds out, See why I’m jealous?

The next item on the list requires the whole three man team as they prep a bod casting of the actor who with play a junk yard Zombie of considerable size and wrinkle.  What I loved about this is that they really took you through what it takes to make a mold and why this business can get so complicated so quickly.  The mold itself seems to be the enemy in all things special-effectsy, from the trouble in trying to get the full body mold to the trouble of trying to free the mold, and after watching so many episodes of face off… it just seems like molds suck.  I could be wrong now, but that always seemed to be the biggest obstacle.

At a preview of the effects the team shows off the pool skimmer decapitation device.  This thing is wicked.  Roy truly went to the quirky killer place with this one.  The trigger activated saw uses the ring of the skimmer itself to slice through the zombies head.  Brilliant!  Next we have the dog and RJ is all too eager to please the client when he agrees to combine the dog with the Junk yard zombie owner.  What comes out is a zombie choking on a zombie dog that is trying to escape his owners gut.

Altogether a great show that I hope gets picked up.  Go to the voting page and let’s keep Foxy and Co. going because I think we all need a little laugh and more amazing art in our lives!  


Go here, vote for Foxy!

Return of the walking dead

Last Sunday brought back a large tradition in my house, the gathering of my family to watch The Walking Dead. It returned after its mid-season finale to a somewhat more introspective look at two of our regular zombie slayers, Michonne and Carl.

Before I get into their personal struggles, I just have to stop and say whoever created Hershel’s zombie head, I want one.  That’s right we get to see bitey head of Hershel still moving… Gross!  Thankfully Michonne finds it and put’s him to rest while taking the time to make herself two new pack mules.  Now back to our defining characters of the episode…    

I’m going to come out and say it, I’m not Carl’s biggest fan but, I’m also not on the kill Carl bus either.  This week, however had mixed reviews from our home audience.  Me personally, I think that this episode solidified that Carl’s depiction of the innocence of child hood on this show is officially shattered and he has become a sociopath born of a hostile environment.  My father insists he’s just an unpredictable, whinny, dumbass.  I do think that Carl makes bad decisions, like this weeks over use of bullets and trying to lure walkers away out in the open without a thought that there may be more outside.  However, let’s take a moment to look at where he is coming from shall we?

Carl opened the show four seasons ago thinking his father had died and began forming a bond with Shane when Rick comes rushing back into his life.  He has to watch as his mother is conflicted between Rick and Shane, and then watch as the two men deal with their own feelings for Lori.  Just when there seems to be some normality in a small camp they are attacked and end up fleeing for the road where he sees the only other person his age, Carol’s daughter, be attacked by zombies.  After the road the he is shot while hunting a deer in the woods with his father.   At the farm he fails to kill a tied walker that kills Dale, he sees his best friend has become a walker, half of the people in his life are ripped apart and he watches his father kill Shane.  At the prison he has to watch someone rip his sister out of his mother and then is forced to shoot his mother in the head.  While Rick has his melt down Carl is responsible for his baby sister and has everything around him seem to come tumbling on his shoulders.  Not to mention killing his first human.  Now everyone he knows has basically died in front of him while trusting in his father, his father is on deaths door and from what we can tell his sister has been eaten.  Yea, I’d say right about now he’s earned the right to blow off a few of those teenaged hormones… You know if it weren’t for the fact that he has to deal with the zombie appocolyps.

Carl also isn’t making things easier as he brings his anger with Rick to a boil but, through that anger Rick realizes that things are never going to go back to normal and despite what they come across, the life any of them had known is just a long ago memory.  At this point, Rick should have had a V8.  Sorry but he has this realization every season.

Rick slips into a coma this week leaving Carl to explore the idea of being on his own.  At first, it doesn’t seem to bother him, he even has time to lure out a few walkers before a third joins and then he realizes the true danger of being on his own.  You would think being on the bottom of a dead walker dog pile would be enough for this kid… Of course not, he decides to go tromping into a house making as much noise as possible.  Why he decides to clear the house after raiding it, I have no idea but what he finds is one angry fucker.  In an intense battle where he finds out just how useless a gun can really be, he loses his shoe but gets to keep his life and the 112 oz of pudding.  I would not want to be his internal organs trying to process that.

It isn’t until he is back with Rick’s sleeping body that his true feelings come out.  Rick begins to wake and, just like the rest of us after waking from a long sleep, he is being very walker-esque.  Here we have Carl’s mini melt down as he tells him that he cannot kill him, that he is scared to be alone.  Lucky for Carl’s crying ass, Rick is very much alive and doing much better.

Now I said this was also an episode for Michonne, and I must say I’m glad that they did it this way.  This warrior needed some humanity.  Don’t misunderstand me she is definitely a draft pick for your survival team but, it isn’t until now that we see her as she truly is, a woman, a lover, and what she used to be, a mother.  This hit home.  I couldn’t imagine being able to breathe without my son anymore, and to have the grim fate they elude to in her dream, I could not go on living.

Michonne’s past is pieced through for the audience in a dream sequence that reads as a flash back that starts in a gentler time.  Slowly the story unfolds to the identity of her first to “pets” Mike and Terri, and that she had a toddler at one point.  In the dream the world around her starts to crumble and she wakes in a car where she had been sleeping.  Now being awake physically, I do not think she had woken mentally or emotionally yet.  As she tracks what she believes to be Rick and Carl she seems to be braking into a walker herself.  It isn’t until she sees a walker that looks frighteningly similar that she comes to the idea that she is still here, no matter what has happened, she is still alive.

Her moment of weakness hits in the hollowed out shell of a bar that Rick and Carl had cleared when she cries out to her dead lover Mike and announces that she is still here and she is going to be here.  After that it’s a walker blood bath as she single handedly clears the town in slices of katana fueled furry!

The three finally find each other as Rick wraps up his heart to heart with Carl, I think I’m going to start calling this trio the new apocalypse family.