I missed the first half. (Things come up, people.) The second half was where the drama was, anyway.

The challenge was to make a sculpture out of junk. In the judging process, the judges revealed that what is most important when making sculpture out of junk is to reveal something of yourself through the junk. Here's the gallery of what the contestants made. (A colleague of mine recently wrote me this about today's art world, which seems particularly applicable to the myths being perpetuated on this show: "Individuality is the false idol—and the immature artist's creed.")

The drama was based on Trong's fatal mistake of making an inside-art-world reference in his piece. He set three TV sets up to look as if they were watching one TV set, and each one had painted text on its monitor. One read "I hate reality TV," "WWTFD," which referred, Trong had to explain, to the artist Tom Friedman.

Was it smart for Trong to refer to conceptual sculptor Tom Friedman in his piece on national television? No, it certainly was not. And was Trong's work great? Nope. But the judges' scolding of him was disingenuous, considering that they take part every single day in the kind of insiderness they were condemning in the work. They know very well who Tom Friedman is, but the editing of the show made them look like they were acting out the posture of innocents. It takes a special kind of self-hating contemporary art lover to declare a minor instance of obscurity worse than a major instance of dullardliness (hello, Judith's fourth-grade electricity project, Erik's robot, and Ryan's "zebra"-painted Ab Ex rehash).

Meanwhile, a major display of basic human indecency went utterly uncommented-on. Miles made a great sculpture for this challenge, and the judges complimented him wildly but deservedly. It involved performance on a bed form, a false sunrise, and two objects in the shape of assholes. It really was good, and weird. And yet while Trong was being taken to task by the judges, Miles interrupted them to announce indignantly, "This piece is just distractingly boring." Miles, you're a jerk. And that doesn't even make sense. Jerks can make great art. But I really hope the takeaway message of this show doesn't turn out to be that the biggest jerk makes the best art. Spoiler alert: Miles has won both episodes's challenges so far.

I was surprised that a lot of the art this time around was good. I liked Peregrine's delicate mesh tunnel linking two TVs, one of which she discovered actually functioned, even though it had been sent to the junkyard. I liked Nao's mini-cityscape. Who'da thunk portraiture, in episode one, would produce such duds, and junk such gems? What'll it be next week...