Episode Report Card Djb: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Stopping Short
By Djb | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.02.2004
Tyra Mail wants us to know that it's elimination day tomorrow, and that only eight more girls will continue on their way to becoming America's Next Top Model. This seems like a good time for ruminating: Xiomara is "nervous," Catie is "nervous," and Jenascia has to bail from her strict Atkins regimen on account of her being so obviously toast.
Back in the elimination room, the girls enter in simple black dresses, which Tyra tells us reminds of her of "sexified Catholic school," even though what they really are is "Robert Palmer video gone...right?" She reintroduces the panel of "crazy" judges, which this week includes Crazy Betsey Johnson. The girls are then sent to stand in front of a table holding accessories of all kinds, with which they have sixty seconds to doll up the little black dress for a night out on the town. Yoanna is first up, and she wears only the pearls and is told she's nailed the look totally. Her Audrey shot appears in black & white on the cover of a fake (well, I HOPE it's fake, but whoever designed it hasn't worked since he mocked up those fake TV covers for Just Shoot Me) magazine entitled ANTM, and Nigel deems the eyes "fantastic." Betsey hops in with her own opinion: "Yeah! Boom!" It's amazing that this woman has come so far in her career when the sum total of her verbal communication skills seems to derive from sound effects in Batman and Robin battle sequences.
April is next, wearing a pink scarf around her neck that Janice deems "a little K-Mart." Shandi's all quietly, "Yeah, they suck! We beat their softball team every season!" April pulls the scarf around her waist and it's deemed better. Tyra tells April that they wanted to challenge her in her photo shoot, which is why they didn't go with the more obvious choice (of...Grace Jones?) of Lucy Liu, instead choosing to challenge her to be a woman so talented and diverse enough to carry off the triple threat of winning an Oscar, hawking anytime minutes, and pretending to be in any way erotically inclined toward The World's First Upright Mammal.
Mercedes goes up with a clip, a purse, and the pink scarf. Janice tells her it's "bad prom," and she fixes it by throwing a piece of fishnet over her chest and quietly maintaining, "Don't freak out, you guys. It's accessorizing, okay? It's not like we're searching for a cure for...." Well, never mind.
Shandi strips all the way back to her little black dress and is deemed acceptable, and Sara is, amazingly, still kicking around somewhere back there.