‘Ink Master: Rivals’ season 5, episode 9 review: Jason Clay Dunn battles stress, anxiety

There’s no doubt that the “Ink Master” competition is one of the most stressful ones out there: Not only do you have the stress of the competition, but you’re also doing long hours of tattooing, living with your rivals and getting told off by the judges pretty much every day.

Flash challenge: The focus this week is adaptability – which is really quite ironic because Jason is terrified of heights and the details of this challenge takes place on the rooftop of a skyscraper (which left him a little shaken for most of this episode).

We’ve always said that the human canvases that go on this show are the craziest people on the planet, but when we heard that this week the human canvases would be all getting their very first tattoo we thought it might be a joke. Because the canvases are extra nervous we were most curious to see how Julia was going to handle her canvas after last week where she told a canvas to go f*** themselves, but we were happy to see that she was gentle and put him at ease about his first tattoo.

Joshua’s ability to draw has come up again tonight, but this time by Joshua. He let the judges know that his canvas gave him the idea and he drew it on the spot without a reference photo and Oliver was happy to hear it. Very smart game  move by Joshua.

The judges were giving everyone great critiques and loved everyone’s tattoos – we suspect that this was because these are first time canvases and didn’t want to scare off future first timers. Although we expected Joshua to land in the top with his microphone tattoo (and showing that he can draw), Erik ended up with the win and will be handing out the skulls.

Elimination tattoo: Last time Erik had the skull pick he was gunning for the top dogs (smart choice), but this time he’s looking to weed out the weaker artists – which we personally think is a waste of a skull pick.

We’ve been complaining this season that there has been too many tag team, working on the same canvas style tattoos and it seems like the show isn’t done yet. While still testing adaptability the artists will be paired up and will have to create interlocking tattoos. Each artist will tattoo an image on one forearm and when the canvas puts their forearms together it will create a seamless image.

Eric matches up what he thinks is a strong tattooer with a weak tattooer: Mark/Don, Joshua/Julia, Emily/Aaron, Jason/Cris and Erik decided to save Cleen for himself to prove that he’s as good as the top dogs.

We saw Jason dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety on season 3 and although he seems to be dealing with it better this season, there are some strong moments of it washing over him in this episode and we are immediately worried for him.

Julia depended a lot on Joshua to guide her through her tattoo, but what was really interesting was when Emily suggested that Joshua set Julia up to fail by choosing a style that he was good at and that she hasn’t done much of. Joshua denies doing that, but when he says that he didn’t point out things she had done wrong (because she already tattooed it and it couldn’t be fixed) Julia questions his motives.

Judging: There were some rough tattoos, even from top guys like Joshua. Jason was tattooing what he was most comfortable with (Asian style dragon) and it looked strange (guess the stress got the better of him after all). Julia, Aaron, and Jason (human canvas jury pick) were called down to judging and after a little squabbling between the artists, we saw Julia pack up and go home.

One of the weirdest things we’ve ever heard from any season of “Ink Master” came from Aaron Is: He said that he made mistakes in his tattoo to match up to Emily’smistakes in her tattoo so they were interlocking. What?!?!?  We are going to be shaking our heads at this for a while. Episode grade: B-

If you are looking for more news on “Ink Master: Rivals” then head over to the link here where you can check out previews, reviews, interviews with eliminated artists (Caroline Evans, Elton “LT” Duarte, Jayvo Scott, Tim Lees, Ryan Eternal, Robbie Ripoll, Ty’Esha Reels and Angel Bauta) and podcasts all about the show (or head here if you want to download our podcasts from iTunes).

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