Road trip!
The artists head out of town to be Inspired By Nature. The "Work of Art" show producers have decided you have to go to Connecticut to find the woods, but at least they chose a public park with an impressionist art trail. Swanky is, again, thrilled by the challenge, which also stipulates they must use something they've found in the woods. Cartoony and Designated Hotness... not so much.
For these city kids, there's too much... Nature.
And for once, the overwhelmed artist sleeping while they should be working is not Tortured -- it's DH. (Okay, her cold made it hard for her to work. Whatever.)
After a little talk with God, Cartoony gets his groove back. He gathers gravel to be used as a drawing medium. Swanky has something interesting going on with acorns that has to do with her grandfather's Algonquin heritage and his love of the outdoors.
Tortured considers making mustard gas as part of his piece, but decides it's not a good idea to kill off the competition. The Mad Hatter's experience of nature is from San Francisco's parks. So after a conversation with Tortured about what her piece needs -- oh, that can't be good --
MH goes for the public-sex-in-the-park concept, throwing some risque drawings into the branches of her artwork. The stakes are actually, as advertised, pretty high. Two will be eliminated tonight. So it really is go time.
Unfortunately for Swanky, the homage to her Native American ancestry doesn't really come through. The judges get more of an alien dinosaur egg vibe from it, and most of them don't get why the artwork is relatively small. The judges like the bottom half of MH's piece, but not the top half with the sex cartoons. DH makes another cold, distant piece, since she doesn't have the faintest connection to nature or organic substances.
Oh wait, there's one of the rocks she picked up. There's the connection. Tortured makes something that makes sense to the judges. But how he got from the fungus he brought back from the woods...
... to the torture device he used to paint a random bleach pattern on paper... WTF?
After the last two artwork debacles, 'Toony is ready to go all out and take some risks. He creates a self-portrait of himself lying down, with a wash of the gravel/paint in a water line beneath. It's called "Baptism."
It practically levitates off the page with emotion. Winner winner chicken dinner! Not a surprise: DH goes home. Big surprise: Swanky, not the Mad Hatter, gets the boot.
MH is shocked too -- she all but says to the judges, "Oh no, you've made a mistake. I'm the one you're sending home." But let's face it... 'Toony kicked ass, DH had no clue, Swanky's point wasn't clear, and Tortured is the Drama.
Maybe because this second-to-last episode had some actual drama, the show didn't bother with the fake drama of watching Swanky and DH take their artwork home. I'm so ready to see the finale but I don't want any spoilers --  no tease clips! Name the winner yourself in the comments section.