‘Ink Master: Rivals’ season 5, episode 6 review: Angel Bauta, Emily Elegado and an octopus

Last week on “Ink Master: Rivals” we saw Emily Elegado get a reality check when Tyesha went head to head with her… and then beat Emily. Do we expect to see a change from Emily’s attitude this week? We sure hope not!

Emily’s return: As you might expect the remaining artists were angry that Emily came back over Ryan and were not very good at hiding it. Robbie beat up the couch, while Angel had a massive blow up and had to leave the room warning the camera person that if they followed him that he will smash the camera to pieces. Normally on reality shows, when any sort of violence is threatened towards crew members or equipment the contestant is just kicked from the show – Luckily Angel is still with us. He is someone that we have been crazy about since the beginning of the season and it would’ve been a shame to see him go after the huge leaps he’s made to the top of the pack.

The reaction to Emily’s return sparked something from her that we have not seen: Humility. She breaks down and softly tells everyone that she recognizes that no one likes her and that she’s going to be focusing on her tattooing from now on and not on tearing people down.

Elimination tattoo: There is no flash challenge this week as they test the artists on “technical application” (applying a tattoo with no flaws) which is something that Joshua Hibbard is really good at. Say what you will about his ability to draw (which is still up for debate), but this guy can apply a technically sound tattoo with his eyes closed.

To make this challenge even more difficult, the artists will be creating 12 hour tattoos and they will be tattooing the gluteus maximus (the butt). The tattoo has to cover both cheeks – 6 hours for one cheek and 6 hours for the other.

Chris and Oliver (he’s back!) chose the skulls and Oliver reveals that he doesn’t want to give out tattoos to an artist that he knows they can’t do, but at the same time wants to push the artists to bring out something that the judges haven’t seen before.

When we heard that one of the canvases wanted the solar system tattooed we couldn’t be more excited (it’s a tattoo that we have ourselves that is still in progress and we love it) and our main man Joshua got that canvas. Emily was given an octopus to give her a chance to redeem herself from the octopus/tree she did.

Aaron has a tooth infection (and if you’ve ever had one you know how painful they are) and this is messing with his focus. He tells his canvas that he can’t tattoo the first shift or he will give her a bad tattoo. He decides to tattoo the next day and submit half a tattoo hoping that it will be enough to get him through to the next round.

The next day the artists are thrown another curve ball when they learn that they will not be finishing the tattoos they started but will finish off someone else’s tattoo. Joshua’s canvas did not return and they are short a canvas (the guy did look like he was in some pain). Because Aaron’s canvas received no tattoo, she will get two at the same time.

Each artists got a number from 1-13 randomly and was able to pick the canvas they wanted in order. Some notable picks were Joshua picking Jason and Emily picking Tyesha’s canvas (hoping to get some redemption from last week). Angel took Emily’s canvas and she quickly went back to her old ways and didn’t tell Angel crucial information about the design. Julia (who has no loyalty to Emily) decides to tell Angel about the design problem, but he had already seen the discrepancy. After the tattoos are done Emily laughs about the fact that she screwed Angel over with a design that didn’t match and wasn’t the right size and no one is impressed.

Judging: There were some really nice tattoos, and some that were a little rough. Emily had a rough showing and she had a heated word exchange with Angel that continued on back at the loft. Emily, Robbie, Mark and Jason were brought down to judging with Jason and Mark voted in by the human canvas jury (which we did not agree with at all), but in the end we lost Robbie.

We were sad to see Robbie go home and although we feel that this should’ve been Emily’s week to go, “Ink Master” is going to keep Emily around for as long as possible. Chris Nunez even called out Emily saying that he wanted to send her home: At least this time he said it to her face – lesson learned from the Kyle Dunbar incident it seems.  Episode grade: A-

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 (our latest ones are with Caroline Evans, Elton “LT” Duarte, Jayvo Scott, Tim Lees and Ryan Eternal) and podcasts all about the show.

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Photo: Spike TV