Episode Report Card Djb: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Lump In His Haute
By Djb | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 03.15.2004
Oh, hi Shandi. Didn't see you standing there behind that column of particularly dense air. "I miss my boyfriend." Muh-huh. "I really do." Well, well, well, the lady doth orgy too much, doth she not?
And, here they are. Four Italian men. They bring lasagna, they pour wine, they kiss the girls on one cheek and then on the other. One hot Italian man sits on another's lap and smokes a cigarette and I stop damning the scourge of Janet Jackson for getting this episode snipped because, well, that was all I really needed anyway. Yes. I am that easy. "It feels good to hang out and just chill out at the house," Shandi tells us in a confessional that's about to get a lot more weepy, "but my boyfriend's not here. What am I gonna do?" Besides not have sex with a stranger? How about a game of charades? Hint: if you make the old-timey camera hand-motion while singing the Tarantella, it means "Italian movie." And, sadly, the answer is always "Fellini."
Yoanna walks right across the room to a gentleman she identifies as "Nicolo," and goes in for the kill with this surefire pickup line: "Do you have an MP3 player?" Is there a follow-up line of the "because you've been running through my head all day" variety? Should we write one? Okay, I'll propose this: "Well then, how about we make your iPod into a wePod?" And so they do, when Nicolo accompanies Yoanna into her bedroom, where they listen to some tunes, Nicolo bites her arm, and, per Yoanna, "something clicked." They close the door and the cameras come hard-charging, which causes Yoanna to become embarrassed and be all death to smoochy. The whole damn group piles on the bed, and suddenly we're in a hot tub featuring everyone but one guy and April. Until...well, here comes April. And she's brought with her...a strained phallic metaphor: "These girls, self included, have been like monkeys in a cage. And you drop big bananas inside. Of course they're gonna tear the peels off." And you know who really looks like she can use some quick doses of potassium in her diet? That's right. Shandi.
So if Shandi's the one finally getting some action, why is it the ANTM producers who are having all the wet dreams? Because, man, this is some television right here. This is the moment that gives license for any story editor to stand up, step back, make that "I wipe my hands clean of the whole affair" stage direction, and let the rest of the sequence play out in real time. It's like found art. And it's gorgeous. Shandi is lying in the hot tub, her 20/20 hindsight confessional reminding her that this might not be the best idea in the world. But the wheels and the peels are in motion, and it's too late. April remembers that Shandi has a boyfriend. Mercedes remembers that Shandi has a boyfriend. Yoanna remembers that Shandi has a boyfriend. Shandi's boyfriend remembers that he wants a boyfriend. Wheels. Peels. In motion.