‘Ink Master’ season 2, episode 6 review: The latest pin-up challenge

Was anyone really watching “Ink Master” up against the Presidential Election Tuesday night outside of us? Airing a new episode here was exactly the best programming idea that Spike TV has ever had, even if it was an attempt at counter-programming in hopes that some people were growing tired of hearing the results come in and wanted something a little bit different instead to watch.

Luckily, those of us who did manage to check out the episode really ended up seeing what was one of the best hours of the entire season. The flash challenge was once again a little bit ridiculous, mostly because there’s no way a professional tattoo artist has to carve out the end of a gun on a regular basis. Steve won, but for most of the season winning the flash challenge really did not amount that much of anything. Really, the most important factors here are patience, time management, and getting a client that really is flexible with what they want. (In other words, you need some luck at times.)

The elimination challenge was something that we saw last year in the classic pin-up competition, but the twist here was that they had to use a real-life model as the inspiration. Steve attempted to mess up Kay Kutta by giving him someone with darker skin who wanted the ink on the ribs; sadly for him, that didn’t happen. Instead, what we ended up seeing was more of the same. Lalo and Mark did a terrible job here with their designs for the umpteenth week in a row, and you could make an argument that you should really just put both of these people out of their misery. The only thing that really saved Mark was that he has had one or two great tattoos; meanwhile, Lalo went home after never really impressing the judges as much as he probably wanted.

What did you think this season, and do you think that the right person really ended up going home?