Pick Up Artist 2: Mel Brooks versus Carl Reiner

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for: when two men come together in the competitive spirit of sportsmanship only to learn that they love each other best.

Friendship: the real prize.

I am sad to announce that this is the season finale of The Pick Up Artist. Let’s embrace and be each other’s best friends in the world to help us make it through the withdrawal that surely awaits us.

And now since we’re down to two fine man specimens, we’re going to have lots of gratuitous cutaway shots so as if we are visually debating each moment! Reiner! Brooks! Ladies and gents, we begin with a crotch-off! Each crotch comes with its own poignant message.

“My internal light has been turned on.”

“Picking up chicks is about being a better person.”

So once we soak up the gravitas of these reformed individuals, of course we have to relive the fact that the Ringer is gone, much to my chagrin. Simeon is all blah blah blah, Hutton-Reiner is totally the better competitor, of course he should be here. Or I just want to man-hug him harder. Whichever.

But as Hutton returns from the battlefield, they are still somber in their embrace out of respect for the fallen. Then they start chit-chatting about the challenges to come, the best man winning, etc and, wait a second, why are they subtitling this whole interaction? I’m just noticed that I’m reading it instead of listening to it, like this is some Bulgarian new wave film. (which I watch a TON of, btw.)

Май кум победа!

Still not clear why post-pro thought Simeon was difficult to understand, but we’ve moved on and are checking in with Hutton, who if you hadn’t noticed is now officially “cool and charming”.

“Now” in this instance is defined as “in a parallel universe”.

Hutton Reiner continues his chat in the bunkbed room with Simeon (suddenly not subtitled) about how he always thought it was “lights out” for him. But Simeon is like, no dude, you were always my number two. Too bad I’m gonna have to kick your ass! LOL!

Аз ще си пуша топки в този окончателен конкуренция!

Okay, I’ll stop now. As long as Vh1 stops with the subtitling. That’s my condition.

So the gang shows up next morning to discuss how proud they are of them, wow, lots of blah blah this go round. Stuff gets repeated so often and I can only type so many of the same words in the same formation before my fingers revolt. Finally he gets down to it and says that they’ll have two final challenges and both of them will be based on speed. No two hours of pacing around a suburban Phoenix club this go round!

Then Matador starts talking about kung fu and how you start slow and then you speed up, get graceful, it becomes second nature. Well, Maty, couldn’t that be like anything? Like playing an instrument or doing ballet? I think Matador just wanted us to subconsciously associate him with the martial arts and not knitting. Fair enough. Unconscious competence, he concludes! Always with the naming of bullshit, that one.

It should go into your motor response, says Mystery. You can’t NOT get the girl. Meh. I don’t know about that. I strongly believe there are plenty of girls not going this way.

Unless alll girls can be divided into two groups: burgundy polo or burgandy v-neck.

So the objective for tonight will be to suck face as quickly as possible. And also use good technique. (We’re looking at you, Simeon, with your sloppy embarrassing grocery store day game.)

So we get right down to business and send them out into the field. Actually, scratch that. We have several more minutes of whatevertheblah all around. The boys are nervous! We’re down to the final two! This is a race-again-st-time challenge! And here I thought Mystery wasn’t a big foreplay guy.

I will repeat myself until you all have embraced goggles and labrets.

Mystery does say something pretty awesome though when he goes, “The winner of this will not only get mad props from us, he will get a huge advantage in the field test”. Actually that last part of the sentence is not a direct quote as I couldn’t hear past the point of “mad props.” Mad props from Mystery and his coterie of ill-dressed wings is a quantifiable prize. I’d like to add that this quote erupted the viewing party into a giant fit of giggles.

Send them in already! Finally we get somewhere. They both go in together and we start trailing Simeon who enters with his Dirty Dancing line, otherwise known as The Groundhog Day for Pick Up Artists Routine. He’s also body-rocking to the point where it’s no longer body rocking, but technically, tweaking.

But crackheads are sexy, according to Matador, as he points out that Simeon has totally sexualized the set from the get-go. There’s no denying Sim’s raw, primal sexuality! he exclaims. Simeon’s primal sexuality and talk about “bad girls” versus “good girls” still can’t tear the target away from her friends though. He invites her to join his friends and she flat-out refuses. He has to start from scratch now.

No one has kissed in forty-two seconds? Amateurs!

And Hutton Reiner is up also reprazenting Groundhog Day for Pick Up Artists with his Ocean’s Eleven bit. The girls aren’t sold on the caper bullshit until he negs her. And then suddenly she wants to know his name. And that’s how it’s done. Although, coming out of three weekends of parties with boys throwing light negs all around, you become pretty immune. Yes, I know I’m a hot mess. Can we move on?

But Hutton’s in. At 3:13 Simeon is still lamely walking around until he finds some more girls that are charmed by baby being put in a corner. He immediately gives pinky love he’s so grateful she’s engaged him. He then grabs her hand and gives her a cliff-hanger of a palm reading by throwing out a thoughtful “interesting” before turning away, which of course has her just a-begging for a hack reading. So he gives her one. His divination: She needs to throw out some clothes. But before she can tell him what an asshat he is, he spins her around so she gets dizzy and forgets. Try it with any drunk blonde. Works like a charm!

He then asks to borrow her from her BFF who clearly matriculated from the same school of dumbassery.

Or as long as you want.

So her friend has shipped her off and he drags her off to the next locale. We check in with Hutton who is talking to a new set of girls, a “beautiful dark-haired girl”, according to Mystery, but who just looks like Aundrea from Danity Kane to me.

No. Aubrey O’Day does.

He then does an analysis of their drink choices saying that because the friend is drinking beer she’s the “real one” and she’s the high maintenance one because her drink would be a beverage of choice for a character on Sex and the City. Aundrea can’t believe it and acts all offended, but Tara can see “smiling in her eyes”. But maybe that bitch is just smiling in her eyes because she watches a lot of America’s Next Top Model.

But all that eye-smiling allows him to take it to the next level as he drags the girls off to a sit-down location. And he sits right next to Simeon! Way to put the pressure on, Mys. Two tandem reserved tables. I like.

So let’s change the channel back to Simeon who is lying to the blonde girl about how he wants to get to know “the real her”. Actually he just wants to know the girl who will make out with a guy in the first six minutes. The gang is in the background saying that he lucked out, stumbling upon a drunk girl willing to twirl away from her friends the first shitty palm reading she gets.

Hutton’s not having such a great time as Aundrea gets pulled away by an unidentified person.

She has to go figure out what to do now that Danity Kane is over.

The gang speculates that he’ll switch targets. Simeon’s palm reading, the gang’s psychic predictions. This is a group of soothsayers, y’all.

We get a Hutton confessional spliced in now where he discusses that he was in a tough spot, but he knew this was an important challenge to win so he just “plowed into the obstable”. Hutton is the only one never in on the joke. His new target has a sense of humor about being the less hot friend as she jokes about being a Victoria’s Secret Model, which Hutton totally riffs on. Is that technically a neg?

So now we go back and forth between Hutton and Simeon as they attempt to out kiss each other. Simeon is doing some hard kino, rubbing the girl’s back busting out the trust test, and Hutton, as if overhearing Simeon, follows suit. Thank god this is not a test of originality.

Just look behind me. I mean, just a guess or whatever. Did I mention I’m psychic?

But while Hutton Reiner is still dreaming of motor boating those heaving bosoms pictured above, sly Simeon is complimenting his target’s earrings with an inexplicable “classy” just so he can get close to her face and lock and load.

Please let me never have kissed someone within fifteen minutes and fifteen seconds of meeting them. This is certainly debatable.

We have a winner. But we knew that. He’s high on life! crows Tara several times, which I have no idea why she’s saying that right now or what he’s doing to indicate that. He’s high on the mad props to come, if anything.

And Hutton clocks in at 15:34 making him a loser by about twenty seconds. I don’t have a vested interest in either one, but that’s gotta burn. The gang starts to make notes on the boys and Matador throws in that when you get picked up by a Pick Up Artist, it’s a privilege. (My interview with Matador will be up SOON so stay tuned for an explanation of that.)

Getting insulted by a dude with a rune around his neck is an HONOR.

So it’s time to abandon the girls they just made out with like used pieces of meat and head out to the parking lot to announce how narrowly Brooks defeated Hutton Reiner. This is all just prepping Hutton for the rune ceremony.

So the gang gushes over how well they did and Brooks and Reiner are in awe of themselves too. But in the end Simeon did it faster. He wins. He’ll get an advantage in the field test, but it’s still anyone’s game, Mystery says. Not so much.

After the commercial break, we revisit Simeon’s journey through the show. He talks about how he came here with no confidence with women and now he changed his life and who he is as a person samesamesame. Hutton says the same thing, too.

But a real maverick with the new faces.

Before we find out what the elimination challenge is, we get some enjoyable banter about bench pressing and peak and valleys and other metaphors for success as they hang out at the house. Anyone miss MXC Brian and his salami makeouts? I could at least use some Ringer and his pretty blue eyes about now. Chuck?

Thank god Mystery is here to get the show on the road. And tonight at the house we’re going to have a Perfect 10 party! And the challenge will be to bring her back to the bedroom. Because Simeon won the challenge he’ll get the master bedroom which will be an obvious DHV spike for him. Does that mean Hutton is getting a room with bunk beds? Dare to dream.

So here’s some helpful infos for you mere mortals out there. If you have the gall to approach these fine specimens roaming the earth you must have a special arsenal with you reserved only for these rarefied creatures. Of course Mystery says it’s not “harder”, just different. Open with negs, use more negs, negs negs negs. It disqualifies you as a potential suitor and then you have tension to work with.

If you follow my negsnegsnegs logic, Ms. Internet Sensation has been gaming you hard for weeks now and thinks you’re all 10s and wants to isolate you all for a maximum kino sesh.

True, Mys. All true. Matador steps in to add that you can’t put her on a pedestal because you’ll lose all your power once you objectify her. Tara reiterates that sentiment in the hopes of contributing something meaningful, but regurgitated Matador speak doesn’t cut it.

Mystery says that in this gauntlet they’ll have three pit stops: the attraction location, the comfort location and the seduction location. This is actually kind of new material for the show, but I’ve been around the way so I’m familiar with the A1, C3 coding of things, just so you know. There’s specific signs that you escalate to each one, but for now all he’s really dropping is that you basically get the girl used to the bedroom so you comfort build there, leave and come back again. Nothing is left to chance. It’s all carefully orchestrated, by these boy geniuses.

Then he drops the bombshell that they’re going to get their rooms made over to look like bachelor pads so we don’t get to watch them seduce in bunk beds. Bummer. A true pick up artist could.

Tara and Matador do the honors and Tara yet again can’t contribute a provocative statement to save her denim diaper overalls.

Basically you need something she can lie down on. It should be fun because fun things should happen on beds. You know? Can I hear what Matador says first?

Hutton says he’ll have to work extra hard to overcome the bitch bedroom disadvantage. The master bedroom is not just figurative. Simeon is literally the master. They decide on a bedroom set fit for a middle-aged suburban couple with bad taste and Hutton says it’s great because it comes with a conversation piece: A globe! Maybe for a seven-year old. Let’s spin the globe and wherever our finger is when it stops that where we’ll live! YAY!! OMG? Indian Ocean!?!

Simeon does better with The ‘Dor finding the pickup artist’s ideal bedroom set. Black and animal print!

If only there could also be some tribal armband tattoo looking thing somewhere…

Simeon then says he thinks he’s the dark horse in this competition. What? I’m not sure where this new development came from. He’s won the last seventeen things and has said several times no one can beat him. I realize we need to have some editing red herrings in these things, but Suit beating Cowboy Hat just doesn’t go down in Mysteryzicstan.

Simeon is totally happy with his room though. He thinks it’s the kind of thing a girl is just gonna love.

Tribal armband tattoo wallpaper! Bring me my rune now.

Hutton’s room looks like the bedroom version of a stuffy library.

And now the party begins! Finally the BBQs girls have been getting invited to this whole time. The crowd pours in and Mystery reminds them what’s at stake: 50Gs AND an invitation to join their team. AND, last but not least, the red medallion! This also got LOLs from the party viewers. How dare one scoff the rune?

And of course Mystery adds that the Perfect 10s are all his friends, but the ladies have no idea that they’re his students. This isn’t about speed, he reminds, but solid safe game. They have two hours and then it’s all over. Someone will be the pick up artist.

We’ll just be waiting her plotting our Stevie Nicks cover band.

While the saunter out, Brooks confessionals that he wants this more than Reiner, but Reiner confesses that he didn’t come here to be second place. We have a showdown, people. Let the games begin.

And I’m just gonna say what we all are thinking, “10″ to Mystery means “blonde and fake tan and fake titties”

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Hutton comes out thinking that he’ll win this on his great storytelling ability. Emphasis on the word story. Maybe that one about the house burning down you came up with with Chuck. He thinks these are great DHV spikes because nothing shows your value like a big ol’ whopper.

He opens a two set of girls from Alaska and easily gets in rapport with them. He doesn’t appear to neg either of them, but he actually seems normal and unannoying which is possibly the best game of all, but clearly not the Mystery Method. Simeon is in another corner with his unfettered energy going on about house parties and how great this one is. Simeon knows house parties.

So now Reiner comes over and Simeon embraces him wing-style and even AIs him. The gang oohs and aahs over baby Mystery and his ability to AI. So Reiner leaves and Brooks now is exchanging massages with the girl and just watching his hyperactivity makes me anxious. I was just not born with that amount of energy. I consider writing all the emails on my to-do list each day a personal victory. And then I have to take a nap.

And massaging a pick up artist is an even bigger privilege than just getting hit on by one.

So while he’s getting compliance from a girl, he’s getting other girls interested in him. Including the girl adjacent to the massager who was raised on in Arizona on a cotton farm. Simeon does his good girl-bad girl routine with them and then innocuously offers to give them a tour of the house. The gang snickers knowing Simeon is no innocuous tour-giver! He’s a PUA, fools!

So of course he goes straight to the bedroom and pops champagne. Now that’s a tour I can get behind! Of course, careful, restrained Simeon almost kills one of the girls when he pops the cork off the bottle. He jokes that she would have been like the owl in Dumb and Dumber, and they both titter about how funny Simeon is. And going to these parties every weekend, I can officially say my conversations are only slightly better. I mainly argue with Matador that I don’t write for the tabloids. TVgasm’s not a tabloid, right? Or I dish about other pick up artists with Neil. Gossiping probably shouldn’t make me feel more evolved, but it does.

And seriously, Vh1. WTF? They’re all speaking English.

О, Боже мой, имах сърдечен пристъп!

Back outside Hutton is back to the Alaska girls and gets them back to the bedroom for a drink. He doesn’t masquerade that it’s a tour. And speaking of the tour, back with tour guide Simeon he’s asking which girl is the better kisser. And our Cotton Farmer does not like this. I don’t kiss on the first date, she announces. Oh, sister, you are dressing like a whore in the wrong place. You’re in the land of the five minute makeout. Concerned piano music plunks ominously in the background indicating things are not boding well for Brooks here.

She allows him to kiss her on the cheek, which he does and the set quickly spirals away from him. He asks the other one but there’s no way two girls are going to compete to impress him like this and the gang is in the background screaming for him to abort.

Maybe that didn’t work because he skipped about thirty steps between comfort and threesome.

I just thought that farmers liked cowboy hats and crack addict energy levels.

So in Hutton’s room he and his two set bonding and having a grand time throwing gang signs saying “stamp it” and other such lingo the kids say. And the gang is oohing and aahing over his slick style. Both the girls are IOIing and wanting to be there with him. Neither one seems to be leaving for her friend to take the reins. They both want to ride it. Sorry. We all wish I hadn’t gone there.

Mystery does wish Hutton hadn’t gone for the back hug, though, which looks totally dorky. He then gets dorkier as he talks about “K-town” LA’s Koreatown, which is extra super lame because the girls are Korean. Then it gets worse from there. He tells them to both “sit down” on the bed so he can tell them a story about Iraq. Iraq is the new Dirty Dancing of openers, in case you didn’t know.

Mystery is all groans. I mean, this doesn’t even look remotely like a seduction?

Sleepy cell.

Hutton says he got trapped in the comfort zone, but this doesn’t look like comfort either. It looks like “reluctant student”. Where is that on the chart? Hutton thought it was stimulating conversation for the girls to have, which misses the point, because you don’t have to talk about dumb things to seduce someone. You just have to infuse your heady topics with witty repartee and erudite banter. In fact, some girls do like that. But a pedantic lecture isn’t stimulating or a conversation and that’s where he gets confused. It’s annoying because he’s the kind of guy to just think girls are dumb because they don’t like to talk about the Middle East. No, it’s because you’re boring.



Back to the other PUA currently sucking, Simeon is back on track after he gets traffic stopped by a girl who needs her dress tied. She’s not a 10, but he takes those IOIs and runs with them. He compliments the earrings, shakes her hands with both of his and is generally pretty touchy.

This girl is buxom, notes Mystery from the back. Yes, it’s hard to tell chest size without someone telling me. I’d also like a subtitle so I can get it in writing. He then talks about how beautiful she is in the face. He’s saying all of this because he knows she’s not a 10. Trust.

She also has great fashion sense and a toned body. She’s a 10, I tell you, A TEN!!!!

He easily gets Sherry back to the room where he acts blown away that she knows about chakras. It’s not like a deeply hidden freemason ideology, dude. Anyone who’s been to a yoga class at their local gym has heard of a chakra. But whatevs. It allows Sims to feel entitled to keep his hand glued to her back which is causing Mys to rightfully cringe.

Would you like me to give your back chakra a psychic reading?

His hand is probably on there for a solid five minutes and Mystery even flat out says that it’s upsetting him. And if he’s saying that, I can only imagine the level of turmoil he’s actually feeling. Simeon will certainly be reamed on a separate occasion when the cameras aren’t rolling. That’s how they do it under Mystery rule.

Back to Hutton, he’s now out of the bedroom back by the pool befriending his target’s friends. Then the original target comes back over to flirt with him some more! Not even a lecture on the Middle East could shake her! She must be participating in her own Pick Up competition for women filming simultaneously. She wants to beat that skank that always wears a cowboy hat.

But they do seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. He begins to finally enter the Seduction phase. He talks about how good she smells and how he he has to try not to kiss her.

Simeon’s lady seems to be having less of a good time. They talk about him being vegetarian and his yoga class. Things I know bored the shit out of people when I was a vegetarian and talked about yoga class.

Camera guy also not listening.

Eventually he wises up and takes her back to the room to get champagne because now she associates the kitchen with excruciating conversation instead of the bedroom with its awkward back touching.

In the bedroom, he starts getting seductive by putting the hat on her head. She goes along with pretty much everything, though he’s not that interesting and he’s completely freaking me out my what a crack monkey he is crawling all over the bed with his nervous energy.

He starts giving her a back rub pulling her in and she asks if it’s like her foot getting her spine rubbed. Exactly says Simeon, like they’re the two most energetically sophisticated individuals at this party and they were so lucky to have found one another so they could talk like this. She asks him if the hat is turning him on, continually inexplicably attracted to him. And they make out. Good for him. Moving on.

Hutton now requests to take his target inside and she follows him easily. Once he gets to the room he doesn’t waste any time.

-I’ll be honest with you, I’m in this competition and I want to win.

-OMG. Me, too! Let’s go.

So they begin sucking face and the gang oohs and aahs over this romantic moment. In the master bedroom, Simeon is getting freaky and it looks like they’re about do maul each other. And by maul I mean take their clothes off. Let’s all look away. (Aside: I learned that a producer did come in and interrupted them because he saw it going the mauling way, too, and contractually there were certain lines they couldn’t cross. Ha.)

But now all of a sudden we’re in the elimination. I guess it’s been two hours, but why don’t we ever get to see any of the disengage strategies? I mean, pick up artists aren’t rude, are they? They don’t just say, I met my objective, peace, bitch. Do they?

Anyway, Mys is still all blah blah blah someone will get to travel the world with my team, selling Mystery Bibles door to door, won’t that be fun? And then just to remind us who the real star of the show is, he gives us a long talk about how there was a time when he was just plain old Eric Von Markatiwenvjdiat and he hadn’t yet learned to create an avatar with which to navigate the world, allowing him to participate in life instead of just watching it on TV like the rest of us.

I had no purpose and then I learned the two words that would change my life forever: “Mall Goth”.

Then he discovered his calling. He doesn’t actually elucidate what this purpose is, I think because “Vh1 reality star” sounds laughable, even if it is a valid purpose many have chosen to embrace. (Adrienne Curry, Bret Michaels, New York, et all)

Now it’s time for Matador to throw in his two cents. Unfortunately we don’t get to hear Matador’s backstory, which I’ve always been curious about. (Check it in the interview coming soon!) He tells Simeon that with his skills he’ll never be in danger of being alone, like he was. Tell us, Matador! How could a fine piece like you ever be alone?

Tara takes on Matt and says that he’s come so far in the looks department. He used to be a gap-toothed Lauren Hutton lookalike, now he looks like a bridge and tunnel professor.

Mystery nods earnestly that it’s been a privilege meeting both of them, but now it’s time to take them down a few pegs. Mystery takes him to task about never taking his hand off the girl’s shoulder.

The best neg is looking like you’re in physical pain when you touch her.

That said, he just loves that Simeon has fully chugged the PUA kool-aid. In fact, that’s really all he cares about. He brings up the embarrassing two set failure, but whatevs, he mauled that other girl, so that first part is glossed over.

Hutton Reiner also had a two set in his room that went nowhere, but he brought one of the girls from that set back and got some kissin’ in, but he’s still pretty weak. Matador lays into him that he just does not get sexy enough. He’s all, don’t apologize brah. Take it there.

Reveal the sexy. Harness the sexy. Even if the rest of my cover band doesn’t give a shit.

The boys now get to give their closing arguments and it’s all a variation of things they’ve said before. Simeon isn’t perfect but keeps improving or whatever. Hutton says break through, punch through, breaking through and other prepositional combinations about going through personal barriers.

But we all know that this is all Simeon and after what seems like forever, Mystery finally ends it.

Now we’ve just encouraged him.

Handshakes and hugs abound for the winner. Hutton bows out gracefully and gives us some line about how it’s all just beginning. He’ll be on Mystery’s team someday by hook or by crook.

And then we get a montage of Simeon kissing girls before everyone walks back into the party to pick up chicks with the gang so Mystery can still prove he’s better. All is right with the universe again. So what did you guys think? Obviously it wasn’t a surprise, but do you think it would have been a better finale with Greg? Do you think there’ll be a season three?

Thank you so so much for being the best, supportive readers I’ve had on a show yet. This is the first show that I wasn’t banging my head on a wall begging for it to just end already. And now I would also like to say that I finally got gamed by a cast member this weekend and it was by adorable favorite MXC Brian! He’s as salami delicious as he seems and I happily let him run his material. He’s even charmed me with a few texts this week. Maybe it is a privilege after all.

Visit me for the Scream Queens finale next week! My money’s on Michelle.

Love!

xoxo, La Internet Sensation