OT: What happened to L.A. Ink & why is Mischa Barton in the psych ward?

[lazypadawan]

I don't have any tattoos and have no desire to mark myself up. Yet, I've found L.A. Ink and Miami Ink quite entertaining. I love Kat Von D's line for Sephora. So I tuned into the second or third show of the new season last night and was dismayed. WTH happened? Kim Saigh and Hannah Atchinson are gone and now there's a tribe of goofballs populating the program. I know every one of those "reality" shows are contrived, and L.A. Ink was no exception. For one thing, there never seemed to be anyone there besides the show's stars. Kim and Hannah were shipped in from Chicago just for filming. Corey has his own shop elsewhere in Southern California. What were the chances some celebrity was going to casually stroll in right when Kat had a free moment? But this is so contrived now not even a five-year-old could miss it. The irony is it looks like they're trying harder to make it appear like a working tattoo shop. For the first time you see lots of customers and the so-called B-team (the tattoo artists who work full time at High Voltage Tattoo, the real name of the shop, but aren't featured on the show) working away in the background. But the rest of it just seems fake, fake, fake. Who does Kat's goofy brother hire on his own to work as a receptionist? Why, it's Aubrey from VH-1's "Rock of Love!" I guess New York was too busy. (I only know this because of Twitter.) When Kat decides to bring in a fledgling artist on a trial basis, the cameras conveniently happen to be there when the artist gets the call. The artist, named Amy, turns out to be another goofball whose work is good enough but isn't on par with the stuff Kim or Hannah created on the show. I may not be a tattoo girl, but half the fun of the show is seeing the work these artists create. And boy would I be upset if I signed up to get a tattoo on the show and I find out they set me up with a noob nobody thinks is good enough! I wouldn't want anybody besides Corey or Kat coming near me, even if it's just a smiley face. To me, bringing in Aubrey and Amy is a set up to create "tension," so Kat would blow up like Gordon Ramsey. Hey, why not bring in the artist who did Hayden Panettiere's misspelled tattoo? Or the guy from Belgium who did the constellation on that girl's face? Wouldn't that be "rad?"

In other news, I hear that Mischa Barton is in the psych ward. Yikes.