‘Ink Master’ season 2, episode 8 review: Tatu Baby keeps improving; Clint freaks out

Teamwork is never easy … but is much harder when you are having to exhibit it for a competition that is about something as creative as making tattoos. You are effectively putting your life into someone else’s hands; and on this week’s episode of “Ink Master,” there were even some moments where it was admittedly rather unfair.

For one, the winner of the flash challenge this week had an opportunity to pair up the remaining tattoo artists, and Jesse and Tatu Baby (who is suddenly awesome after floundering early in the competition) put a few people in a bad position right away. First, they put Sarah, who has established herself as a force all season, together with the emotional-but-entertaining Clint, and then forced them both to collaborate on a tattoo that made them spend plenty of time together in the same area. In addition to that, they also forced Sebastian to be with the weak link in the competition in Mark.

The most impressive thing in watching this challenge play out is just how far ahead some of these artists are compared to the others. At the moment Steve is easily the most consistent person here, and it would be a crime if he was not to win. Meanwhile, Jamie, Sarah, Tatu Baby, and Jesse, and to a lesser extent Clint also deserve to be somewhere near the top; as for Sebastian and Mark, let’s just say that they are ranked a little bit closer in our eyes due to inconsistency and spending too much time in their own head.

The irony here is that Mark actually did a pretty good tattoo, but he also picked out a design that was small and relatively easy, that way he would not mess it up as he has done with some other catastrophes in the past. In terms of complete teams, Sarah and Clint were the clear losers here, and it led to Clint having a complete and total meltdown over all of the negative critique. Why is a man so intense-looking so sensitive? The only thing better than this was seeing Sarah’s speech to the judges, which she acted like she was literally about to rip off Dave Navarro’s head and eat it.

Really, we don’t even understand why in the world the contestants were freaking out as much as they were. Given Mark’s overall body of work, it was obvious that neither Clint nor Sarah would be sent home for what really was a blip on the radar. The man with the magenta hair is gone, and now we are at a point this season where anything can happen.

What did you think about this episode?