New York, New York, a hell of a town/ Not plus-size up, but much sizier down/ You'll go to Hell if at Robin you frown/ New York, New York/ La la la la lee lee looooooo!
Just thought I'd start this week off with a song. I hope you liked it. Because if you don't, you're banned. Dee dee dee da da da hey! [Stage direction: Djb bows amidst cheering and roses, tipping his hat and spinning his cane.]
After a few scattered establishing shots of New York cribbed from Bette And Lily's 'Big Business' Guide To Madcap Manhattan Camera Angles, we cut to the exterior of the Flatotel, chosen as the ladies' lodgings on account of being the only thing about this whole modeling competition that can be vaguely depicted as "flat." With the exception of Elyse, of course. Oh, rim shot! Hi, Elyse! Just kidding! Don't come after me and bring me down with your secret weapon...of knowledge!
Up in St. Milan's-Of-The-Self-Righteous Church, Shannon shows a large Glamour Shots 8x10 glossy of her family to Robin, in which we can see that the Lord Himself invented fake nature backgrounds (it was on the fourteenth day. People don't like to talk about it much. But it's right there in the Book of...um, Jesus). The Fearsome (of the Lord's wrath that is) Foursome of Shannon's family smiles unforsakenly as, in the photo, Mr. Shannon mentally preps for Sunday's "I Moustache Trim For Jesus" charity luncheon, for which Mrs. Shannon has to finish that Jell-o mold among the clanging din of her kids praying and me making uncomfortable assumptions of the pedestrian activities of people of faith. Sorry, Lord. In a confessional, Shannon frets, "I really thought that I was gonna be leaving," and we hop back to last week's elimination ceremony, where Shannon inexplicably (except that god hates models) almost gets booted and Tessa inexplicably (except that producers hate boring models) goes in her stead. But all is now well, according to Shannon: "I have my confidence back right now." Ebony, meanwhile, regards the picture, which has clearly been inoculated with some anti-non-Christian, African-American lesbian spray and treated overnight so that she can handle it without fear that it might suddenly burst into hellfire. You might have thought it was sweat dripping from Pat Buchanan's forehead every time you saw him on television in the weeks after he won Florida, but no. It's just an extra helping of that spray, because really, those people can pop up out of the most unexpected places. Ebony tells Shannon that she's "beautiful" (lecher!) and gives her a hug (pervert!), confessionalizing to us, "The girls are great. And I'm definitely fitting in. So I'm excited." 10-9-8-7...
Last week, Elyse stole my haircut, and this week she's got a chokehold on my id. Sitting in a confessional booth from the red room in that episode of Twin Peaks the guy in the booth to you at The Museum Of Television And Radio is always watching (it used to be me, but I have them on DVD now), Elyse wears a holiday-themed sweater far more festive than her mood and vents so hard I can't believe that tiny space isn't filling up with steam: "I really just want to get away from everybody right now." Go for it, Elyse. Vent away. You're taking the wrinkles out of my clothes and saving me an hour of ironing that I wouldn't do anyway because I don't own an iron and also because my entire wardrobe is made up entirely of Glarkware t-shirts and one pair of jeans. Go go go for it: "The other girls are just at this high volume, high energy all the time." A shot of Robin shrieking incoherently about a dress confirms this. "I'm so tempted to just sit in here and be away from all the noise." Cut to Ebony shrieking incoherently about a thong, an article of clothing now doomed to its own fashion Hell after having had girl-thong contact with someone who might have enjoyed it too much. Back inside the confessional, we hear Ebony's rant continue, so it appears that the conversation that irked Elyse was actually going in on real time, which is genius. Sigh. Sometimes the very best trick editing is no trick editing at all. Elyse wraps up, inadvertently casting herself as an essential member of the wider framework of the house. How so? Well, every religion needs its martyr: "All right, I'm gonna stay in here with the door locked for just a couple more minutes." Poor Elyse. She should totally just go hide in the attic of the house. But for the love of all that's holy (and, in that house, EVERY damn thing is holy), just don't say Beetlejuice's name three times fast!
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! It's another New York morning of nine coddled loonies never seeing what the inside of a subway car looks like (we're going to leave out the part of this discussion where I've only been on a subway once this month, but it's only because there's no underground transportation that takes me from my apartment to the Starbucks on my block, but believe me, if there were I would take it, okay?). Adrianne, the winner, sits in a confessional, hunched over and butch and all decked out in a camouflage do-rag like she's about to run off and referee a paintball tournament at a lesbian commune, drawling, "As always, I was the first one to wake up this morning." She clomps her size elevens through the living room, leaving enormous indentations on the floor like she was strolling across the surface of the moon, in the process killing scores of innocent and educational ants and leaving the hotel guests on the fortieth floor yelling, "Hey, Yeti, they're called tube socks, okay? Look into it." Adrianne notes the Tyra Mail and announces to no other awake person, "Ladies, we've got Miss Tyra Mail." I like how she shows such deference to the mail by assigning it a title. And good thing, too, before Robin had a chance to christen it "Reverend Tyra Mail." Everyone rouses from several different mornings to depict a comprehensive "group wakeup" (what'd they do, have everyone wear the same pajamas every night for continuity?), and the girls stumble into the living room as Adrianne slurs, "You're about to meet your first fashion expert, who will help you on the way to become America's Top Model. Be ready at 11:30 AM." Since that must mean the very 11:30 AM that the New York (City Of Unrealistic Fashion Dreams) clock depicts on the kitschy wall of clocks that lets everyone know what time it is in her own bedroom, all of the girls scatter. From her perch on the couch where she had scant time to quietly celebrate sounding out all of those big words with an aplomb that even implied comprehension of the words she was saying, Adrianna PSAs, "Everybody don't exceed over fifteen minutes in the shower." So, don't exceed sixteen minutes, then?
"I'm very serious about this," Ebony tells us while wearing a poofy black skirt with fringe on the bottom and surrey on top, like she was all, "Fuck you, extras from the 'Safety Dance' video. Now give me all your clothes. That's right. And your safety." She vogues all the way down to the ground in front of a mirror and completes the thought, "We are in a competition, and my plan is to win. There is nothing but that." Ebony is already lapsing into readings from The Reality-Show Playbook, where she's just here to compete and she doesn't care what she has to do to win. She could start by being gracious enough to give all of them back their safety.
After a jag of listening to someone saying something typical, or dumb, this show is smart enough to turn it around so that we get to listen to someone say something atypical, or smart. In the case of Elyse, the smart thing that she says, is, well, "I am smart." And here it is verbatim: "There are times I've felt very uncomfortable, because I am an academic, and I love being an academic." I am so smart, S-M-R-T. "I love science." But math is hard! "I applied to medical school." And I applied to be the Pope. How is the acceptance part working out? "It's just been different being out of my natural environment." Your environment of "around people on your own academic level," you mean? How could anybody there not like you? Meh. I said the same exact thing when I was in prison. Now give me back my hair!
Robin and Shannon sit in the living room of Not-An-Ounce-Of-Fat-otel, reading the scriptures. No, I know. Totally. Robin has her copy of the Bible open directly and conveniently to The Book Of Proving Her Point, as she reads out loud, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." And, god bless it, I might not love it when people hand me flyers on the subway foretelling my own impending date in a red room with a hot poker (and I've already been on that date, and, well, not my thing), but at least her public reading offers Robin one of her rarest of opportunities to correctly pronounce our language's grammar. Not that the Bible is exactly a usage lesson in its own right, but it sure beats what's out of Robin, which even the helpful subtitle can only interpret, "I'm-a ask Miss Elyse to come here." Oh, don't do it. Please please please. Why do we believe everything we read? And even if we do, why do we have to convince everyone else of it? Because, again, beliefs are beliefs and it's awful nice to have them, but if someone else is going to try and convince me of those beliefs through her cunning powers of "I'm better than you are," you'd better believe my rebuttal passage is going to come in the form of the words, "Careful! The coffee you are about to enjoy is extremely hot!" from The Book Of Venti Starbucks Cup filled with scalding coffee. Death by latte. Even the Pope thinks it's fine, y'all. Because it was invented by Italy.
But first, what actually happens. Robin interrupts Elyse from putting on makeup (a scarlet "D" for "disagreement and how no one should ever do it," smeared right across her face) and calls Elyse into the living room, hading her the book and indicating the passage. Elyse tells us in a confessional (in which she totally gave me my hair back and replaced it with Pat Benatar's) that she found the whole exchange "offensive," and she tells Robin that she doesn't know what to say. Robin has her response at the ready: "When I read that, it made me think of you." Elyse slo-mos a face of dismay as Robin smiles really, really snidely in a Battle Of The Edited Facial Expressions That Never Actually Happened. But then, right here, it did happen. It's...a miiiiiiiiiiiiracle!
I love how only on The Reality-Show Expressway is crossing the Brooklyn Bridge a required part of getting from Manhattan to Manhattan. Because in my universe, that's actually not the case at all. A van pulls up to what appears to be a lower Manhattan loft of some kind, and in walks Tyra. She's wearing flare-cut jeans, a plain white tank top, and...oy, there's always something, isn't there? On her shoulder is a brown blob of what actually appears to be crinoline, fashioned into a poofy floral orb that's been affixed to the tank top on the right side. She looks like she ate a first-year ballet student. And wiped her lips with an ostrich.
The girls sit on and around a couch that faces a runway in the middle of the room. Tyra hops up on it and asks, "It's obvious what we're doing today, right?" Not to the Algonquin Rectangle Runway, who respond in a dirge-y unison, "Fashion show?" like no one's done the reading so they answer, "Who's the main character in Catcher in the Rye?" with, "Uh, the catcher?" This whole thing is the fashion show. They might just as well have responded, "We're...embarking on further activities that will nurture, aid, and guide us in our ultimate intent of becoming America's Top Model?" Well, you're cloooooooose. But Tyra, similarly, wants a bit more specificity, chiding, "Runway? Catwalk?" She explains that every model has a "personal style," and shows a quick video that appears on the wall at the front of the catwalk of her own "personal style." It's edited oddly, which we know because she introduces it by calling it "the last example of my personal style." The final one? What if she were like, "...because I'm dying." No, Tyra! We neeeeeeeeeeed you! Anyway, the clip reel mostly consists of shots of her walking down the runway wearing other people's clothing. And the eyes. It's always about the eyes. She tells the girls that they each have to find their own personal styles, with the added guidance of "a few runway don'ts." She does her impersonation of a girl who can't walk in heels, one who "thinks she's sexy but she ain't." She does a theatrically spinny one called "the church fashion show," after which you can see Robin being all, "Is that wrong? The fool has said in his heart there is no church fashion show." Tyra finishes her exhibition (and I kid you not that I could have watched that all day) and screams that all of those approaches to the finer nuances of catwalking are "WRONG," which segues into her introducing "J. Alexander," whom she calls "the one and the only runway trainer." J., who we all know well by now, looks sheepish for the first and last time ever in his diva-ass life.
To start, J. has each of the girls walk as Tyra voices over that runway work is like "silent theater," which I guess is just like a silent movie except for the part where it never existed. Adrianne tells us that her runway was "soooooooo baaaaaaaaad," and J. confirms this by saying that too many of the women are walking "too tight in the booty," doing a virtual impersonation...of Adrianne. Up and down and up and down they go again. J. tells us that Nicole has "a quiet confidence," which is weird, because with each step she takes, the only sound I hear, over and over and over again, is "tramp tramp tramp tramp tramp." J. writes off Robin's natural-born abilities in telling us, "She'll be great...in her end of the business," which means, basically, that she'll get by if she lies about her age and never thinks but to swim in the fat end of the pool. Shannon has a "pretty face" but seems "commercial," in that way that sank Mercedes. Great. I guess that means Shannon has lupus. See how the whole of Season 2 still didn't teach me anything about the disease? Meh. Probably my fault. Giselle wears sneakers so white you'd think she barely had time to dirty them on her short walk to the short bus (it's mean, I know, but they're that white, people, so technically this is really just the shoes' fault) as she dances down the runway. J. does an impersonation of her and everyone laughs, especially when he ends the impersonation by getting totally booted, which she's fated to do and soon. Because sister? You don't have a prayer. Kesse gets a little stiff in her walk, but I mean it when I say that I really don't think Kesse is just another pretty face. She is, in fact, not a pretty face at all. Ebony is trying a leeeeeeeeetle too hard. Katie looks like she's going to stroll directly into her client's darkened hotel room and not allow him to kiss her because it's just too intimate. Elyse, according to J., "has what it takes." Because there's a PhD in The Runway Arts up for grabs, and this walk is a pie chart in her larger doctoral thesis. She could be Dr. Model. Honestly, I'll bet she could. You can get a PhD in anything these days. Look at that movie Dr. T and the Women, and how well it worked out for Mr. T that he went back to school to get his advanced degree in Pitying The Fool. Anyway. Never tell anyone I wrote that.
"My motto is," J. continues, "walk like it's for sale and the rent is due tonight." When this show goes to Seasons 3, 4, and 11, J. is going to need himself another motto, because that one's been retired and printed on a jersey that hangs evermore in the rafters at the back of Top Model Stadium. How many times we gotta hear you say that, J.? What if I just started repeating myself in every recap instead of coming up with something new and fresh? Surely you'd desert me all at once, leaving me without a trace, packing your bags, y'all, and going to Milan. Oh. Sorry. Carry on, J. And carry on he does, coming out (well, that part is taken care of, but stick with me) in a wee black skirt and high heels. The girls laugh and cheer, with only Robin ducking out of the room to sketch a hastily written, grammatically hazy constitutional amendment banning J. Alexander from human existence on the back of a communion wafer.
"What do want to do after this?" J. asks the girls, while standing on the runway still wearing his black mini. Weirdest. Career counseling day. Ever. Katie says that she wants to pursue acting, but acting is all, "Yeah, we'll see about that." Ebony, who knew, is a singer and a comedian, and I sympathize with her on behalf of both of those career goals because (a) nothing rhymes with "militant lesbian," and (b) there's nothing funny about militant lesbianism, okay? Elyse shares that she's going to start medical school in August, and J. gets all tsk-y about it and warns, "That's a lotta work," adding the cautionary "My boyfriend's a doctor." Girls, J. Boys dates girls. Giselle, mysteriously, takes this moment to swipe some confessional time, telling us, "Her dream is to be a doctor," which she delivers in much the same cadence as she would if she were saying, "Her dream is to be a baby eater." I love how she says it like she just ate a rotten piece of doctor and is trying to spit it out as fast as possible. Giselle adds, "That really, really pisses me off." Does she not know what a doctor is? Because she seems to want fewer of them in the world, and for a moment it almost seems like Giselle doesn't even know who was responsible for giving her her titties.
The producers ingeniously decide to taunt the girls with carbs, and we cut over to a post-catwalk meal at Front Street Pizza. Well, I stand corrected! They totally dragged them to Brooklyn after all! Hi, you guys! Hiii-iiiiiii! Come over any time. I am always, seriously, always here. Always. Adrianne tells us of Elyse, "She doesn't really eat as much as I would care for her to," as we spy Elyse eating oatmeal, while an apple and a lollipop sit close by. To which an increasingly meddled-with Elyse would probably finally snap and be inclined to respond, "Well, Adrianne doesn't really smoke as much as I would care for her to," pausing before smiling and adding, "because it means that she won't be dead as quickly as I would prefer her to be" before smashing the closest camera with one of her pointy shoulder blades and curling up to sleep in the private darkness of the nearest confessional.
Back at the No-Fat-otel, Nicole comments to Elyse that she was the only person J. didn't give any negative feedback to, but nevertheless Elyse is still going for the correlate in Non Sequitur Self-Deprecation. In a confessional, she tells us, "I think I performed really, really poorly, and I'm not used to being incapable at anything." Man, you'd think that of all the girls in the house, Elyse wouldn't be the one most comfortable in a space called a "confessional." As the girls stride up and down on the runway in the living room, she comes to a realization, "I do not have the will to walk on the catwalk like I give a damn. I don't want to be a model. I don't. I can't. Eliminate me." A beat. "Do it." No, Elyse! But you're so cuuuuuuute! There. You happy now?
"There's going to be a little challenge called X-treme Runway," J. tells the ladies the day, exhausted as they are by their trip back to foreign parts called "Brooklyn." I have decided autonomously that when J. said the word "extreme," he intended it for it to be spelled "X-treme," because whenever J. talks he wants to spray it in yo face and slam it. And he wants to totally initial article seven. Anyway, said X-treme Runway will take the form of a totally legit-ass fashion show. Each of the girls has three looks they have to get into in the correct order, and the winner of the competition will get a totally freak-ass night in a recording studio with Wyclef Jean. One time? Two times! Okay, actually only one time.
And, go! Giselle is out first, and Adrianne appears confident, but she's totally just wearing underwear, so she must have forgotten something. Like, her outfit. Shannon pins closed a red shirt she was supposed to keep open, Robin preens in a mirror and runs late for each of her turns, and they finish with a round of applause from J., who is back in his black mini. Don't screw with us...he didn't actually wear that thing two days in a row, did he? With the would-be models standing in a line now, J. compliments Elyse's dress, which is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life, including the wardrobe from every Little House episode I've never seen and every Ren Fair wedding I've never attended. J. goes through each of the girls, and I'm reminded that they must have told him to become bitchier before the second season, because his feedback here really is overwhelmingly positive. Kesse was late a lot, Robin was late (and is now mysteriously twenty-seven), Shannon buttoned a shirt that she was supposed to leave open (because the swimsuit photo shoot from last week was completely Christian), Ebony was somehow late and early, Giselle was fine, Adrianne was fine, Katie was fine but too porny, and Nicole was fine. And Giselle wins the prize, but Adrianne snarks backstage that she thinks Giselle doesn't have much confidence. Rather than the false modesty that cloaked Elyse and tangled up her own walk.
Elyse is in freak-out mode again. She tells us of the "vapid" nature of all of the conversations in the house, because I'm sure she expected lot more quoting of the lesser works of Virgil and eating camembert whilst playing chamber music in the drawing room, because that's what people in America do. Like, I work with smart people, but when we get together in a group we...talk about television. And we don't deconstruct its basic nature as a medium, either. We quote lines from NewsRadio, so the only time we say something vaguely politically intriguing, it occurs because we're quoting Phil Hartman from the episode where he becomes Mark Russell. Then we talk trash not about television, but about the people who critique television. Meaning, each other. So, alls I'm saying is that when Katie tells Giselle she thinks she'd be a good makeup model, they're actually talking industry. Again, they're dumb. Of course they are. I just don't know why Elyse would have expected anything different, and I don't know if she would come away from a weekend with me and my friends with a much different view of me than she does of them. Because she's very, very intelligent. And she wanted you to know. Twinkle twinkle, Kenneth Starr. Special Whitewater prosecu-tar.
Not that her meltdown isn't absolutely fucking genius: "Adrianne, stop interrupting me. Stop quoting Jay and Silent Bob right in my ear. Robin, how [bleeped word, probably "god-love"]-ing dare you show me the 'foolish is the atheist' Bible verse this morning." But this is the best: "Giselle, you [bleep]-ing, worthless [bleep]. You are so wasteful, bitchy, stupid...you're worthless. Your parents must be ashamed of you." Brilliant! And I love "wasteful," like she totally hates Giselle because she doesn't recycle her plastics or something. More. I demand MORE! People...there IS MORE. "J..." Well, wasn't expecting this, but hey, as long as she's snarking on the girls in her life: "You offended me today." And then so many words are bleeped that I have no idea what she says about him. But if I had to guess, it really does sound like she called him a "shit slice." Whatever it is, it is definitely not a request to solicit career counseling advice from J.'s boyfriend. Who's totally, like, an acupuncturist or a life coach or something anyway, I'll bet. She ends on a high note: "Dammit. Let me [bleep]-ing die. You bitches." Cancel television forever. Its high-water mark has officially been reached.
Worthless, worthless Giselle, Nicole (who has no idea what a "Wyclef Jean" is anyway, and probably said more than once on the way over that she didn't know anything about French music), Adrianne, and Katie prep to go to see Wyclef, and Katie is all, "We were like, kinda the runners-up," even though Giselle just picked them so that's kind of not true. The four girls take off and Ebony immediately finds a piece of Tyra Mail. She yells from off-camera, "Girls! Emergency letter. Come and read it" in such a mangled edit cobbled from other statements that it's like that Simpsons I always talk about where the clock keeps changing behind Homer's head when he's talking about his babysitter's sweet, sweet can. Y'all. It's fine. Just let the show breeeeeeathe. The drama will come to you. Anyway, the rest of the girls come running, and Elyse, natch, cracks open the Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! and starts reading it: "Ladies, you'll be undertaking your photo shoot with Stuff magazine..." But she's cut off by Shannon, who's been reading over her shoulder, who abruptly shouts, "7:30!" Elyse seethes and takes a reeeeeally long pause before starting again. Robin and Shannon run downstairs to the lobby to read the Tyra Mail to the other girls, which Ebony tells us in a confessional she would not have done. ["This is preposterous. She would have stolen the Tyra Mail and concealed its contents from like half the people in the competiton? Resulting in their not showing up for a challenge, due entirely to her sabotage? And...has she thought this through far enough to figure out that fucking up the process would have surely gotten her booted immediately? I mean, sure, it is a competition, and she doesn't actively have to offer to paint anyone's toenails or do their laundry in order to help them out, but explicitly hindering them most assuredly would have done her more harm than it would anyone else." -- Wing Chun] This looks like it's going to balloon into much more of an issue than it really is. The other ladies will be back home from their reward night with Wyclef well before 7:30 AM. The man simply isn't that smooth a talker.
Look, y'all. He's not. The four girls take a car to a music studio called Platinum Sound, where they meet Wyclef, star of that one Fugees album we totally all had in college and a lot of other amorphous hip-hop projects he's not ever becoming as famous for, ever, ever again. We cut immediately to a windowless, airless sound booth in the studio, where he has each of the four sing a note and hold a chord. And, okay, I don't mean to go all solfege on your asses here, but, here's what he does. He has Katie hold out a note that he calls "do," which is fine. But then -- THEN -- he piles onto it with Nicole's "re," but has her sing it a full major third higher. Now, if you know your Sound of Music like I do (shut up), you'll agree, no doubt, that "re" always follows "do" in an ascending scale. However, the reason for that is because Julie Andrews knows everything, so when she sings the scale, "do" and "re" are one whole step apart. "Mi," the note up, is two whole steps from "do" (which can be any note in the scale as the first note). So, technically, Nicole should be singing the major third (which she does with full-throated confidence, to her credit) on "mi." And Adrianne, who warbles but lands on the fifth, should not be singing "mi," but instead should be singing...anyone? Anyone? Sol! That's right! Giselle doesn't land on a note or a syllable I can understand because Giselle is fucking useless.
"I feel so bad for the girls at home," Katie tells us, and we cut to Robin, Kesse, and Shannon looking through a copy of Stuff and having a non Wyclef-y time of it all. Elyse has leapt through a window and done herself forty-five stories' worth of in, but no one noticed because she only left a pinprick in the glass when she went through it because she's very, very small.
Wyclef is totally coming across like the guy who plays guitar, the guy that everyone in high school thought was dreamy, until he finally invites you over to his house on a night that his parents aren't going to be home, and all he does is...sit and play the guitar. Wyclef even writes a song, while the oxygen depletes in that tiny room like in that Alfred Hitchcock Presents with the jailed woman escaping in the coffin. He strums away and sings, "And it was on key, man, like the pretty face/ I see her saying 'Oh, my god,' so I got no time to waste." He then has them sing, "Do, re, mi," and this time they're part of the song and on the correct notes of the scale that represent "do," "re," and "mi." Good. Tonic note? Let's never fight again. Wyclef then adds, as part of the song, that they're kicking it in "Platinum Studio, Brooklyn." Even I don't travel interborough that many times in a day. That's why they look so tired. Until Wyclef breaks out the turntable and they do some serious dancing into the night, which Adrianne tells us was "frickin' cool." Back at home right afterward, Adrianne asks Ebony if they have to be somewhere at 7:30 AM, and Adrianne tells us in a confessional that Ebony wasn't going to tell her about it, which "would have completely ruined my chances." I still don't understand how. Which will bring us back to "do."
House meeting, y'all! Robin holds court in the living room of the No-Fat-otel, explaining in a way that makes no sense that Ebony didn't want to tell the girls about the competition, but that "the competitive person did not come down there. The Christian person came down there." It's light out. Which means, according to the timeframe we're supposed to be understanding here, this conversation is going on before 7:30 in the morning on the day of the Stuff photo shoot. Which, not. Robin screams to Ebony about "demons you have within yourself," as Ebony just yells and yells, to the giggly delight of pretty much everyone else there. Robin starts belting out some Christian song about excellence to drown Ebony out, which is the only thing that gets Elyse to look up from the book she's reading. The big book of devil magic, no doubt. Robin makes everyone get up and hold hands. And close their eyes. And listen as she speaks this prayer: "People are taking the word 'competitiveness' and turning its definition around, Lord. And Lord, I ask that you remove any negative thing that is not like you. That is not of you. And Lord, only one person can win. And the awesome thing about it is that you already know who that is." We all know. It's Adrianne. Why be godlike when you can be actual God? Oddly, Elyse is moved to tears by this, and she tells us in a confessional that it's because she was "uncomfortable with the entire situation." Then leave the room. I can't believe she didn't. ["Between her rage yesterday, her tears today, and her calm tomorrow after a cup of peppermint tea, perhaps Elyse's problem was that she was on the rag? Just a theory." -- Wing Chun] Ebony hates God, too, so she opens her eyes and stares sardonically into one of the cameras during the closed-eyed, silent prayer. I totally knew her feelings just because of what she told us with her eyes! Maybe she is that good.
Katie tells us that it's her dream to be in Stuff, which I find weird not because she isn't totally trashy (she is), but that because this shoot shouldn't even be in this show because of ANTM's high-fashion aspirations. Isn't Stuff, like, the height of commercial? Tyra attempts to smooth over this disjunction with the pre-shoot note that it's not about being sexy, telling the girls, "The body will follow the eyes." Tyra goes first and "energizes" it, according to Barry Hollywood, the fake-named photographer with the fake British accent. And, bikinis. And not full ones, neither. Katie goes and is all Playboy, Adrianne "moved like a snake," Elyse is "much more androgynous" according to Barry Hollywood, and "silly" according to her. Tyra asks Robin why she needs to cover up all the time, and she starts to cry because she feels all fat, so Tyra has to lie that, on Victoria's Secret shoots, she's "the biggest one there." ["Bigger than the tranny, even? Gosh." -- Wing Chun] Nicole is "gorgeous," according to Joe Hollywood, and Shannon was similarly "great." Giselle was "beautifully present," which might make her ashamed parents invite her back into the house, maybe.
Back at No-Fat-otel, Katie reads the Tyra Mail about tomorrow's elimination. Elyse confides in Adrianne that she thought the prayer was "so inappropriate," and now that she's got Adrianne's attention, wonders aloud if Kesse is going to win because she looks like Tyra: "Because then it would be like Tyra just choosing another Tyra." Good thing no one there is the spitting image of Marie Claire's Beau Qullian, because not a top model would that kind of self-loving partisanship make. Not to mention the fact that Kesse doesn't really look anything like Tyra. Elyse wraps us her Loose Ends Confessional Tour by telling us that, though the other girls think she's not taking the competition seriously, "what the other girls don't know is that I'm starting to take the competition more seriously than I'm letting on." Totally! I don't get it.
So much prayer in that house! Adrianne is "scared" going into the elimination ceremony, Robin is deep in prayer, and, per Giselle, "if I get eliminated, I'm gonna be really pissed off." Please note this sentiment is the completion of a thought from a confessional we saw earlier, and I'll bet you one shiny nickel that it comes right off of the statement, "Her dream is to be a doctor. That really, really pisses me off."
And into the elimination room we go, where the judges' table is so crowded my screen practically becomes letterboxed just to get them all in. Four judges at that enormous dais was a good, good call for Season 2, y'all. The challenge this week is a runway walk while holding a jacket. Tyra thinks Robin took it off too early, and Baby Phat girl thinks Robin could use a bit less eye contact. Robin rationalizes that she does that because she's used to looking at her audience from her days in pageants, and Baby Phat girl sneers like pageants give you cancer. They love Robin's picture, and Marie Claire (whatever, that's his name from now on. The "q" is ten points and, quite frankly, I'm not sure he deserves them all) notes, "That face does not say twenty-six." That's because, according to an earlier confessional, Robin is now twenty-seven. Janice hears for the first time that Robin is twenty-six and thinks out loud, "That's a little old." Poor thing, Janice actually knows this information as a statistic, because when she was twenty-six years old, twenty-six was the age of the average human lifespan.
Nicole's picture was too breast-y but her walk was good. Giselle was too dancer-y for a change, and Janice hates what she did with the coat. Shannon can't close her mouth, which J. calls "catching flies," and Janice loves the photograph. Adrianne was a little too sexy in her walk but they love her photo. Ebony is a little too "catalogue" in her pose, and her photograph, according to Janice, is "perfect." It is not. Elyse's walk is "perfection," and the photographer said she took direction really well, even though Elyse notes, "I don't really like it." Katie walks like a dime-store hooker, and Tyra think the picture "cheapens" her, which means that were she to get any cheaper, she would be equivalent to one dollar in devalued Argentinean currency. Kesse is a little uncomfortable with her walk, which "didn't flow," according to Janice. Kesse starts to cry, and Janice tells her she should "take another job" if she can't stand the criticism. Baby Phat tells her that she looks like Tyra, which is the reason she's not back on the panel this year.
Marie Claire doesn't trust Kesse's confidence, and Tyra doesn't trust Giselle's "wide ass." No, really. Elyse can't walk, according to someone, but Janice loves the skinny. Katie splits the jury, so does Nicole, Shannon does the same, and they shouldn't show this part because it doesn't provide any information. Baby Phat wants Adrianne out, because she's on the wrong side of history.
And back in they come. Nine of them left, eight pictures in Tyra's hand. At least two of the girls privately celebrate, "Well, then, no one gets eliminated!"
Congratulations, Shannon! You're still in the running to become America's Top Model. As is Nicole. And as are Giselle, Robin, Adrianne, Ebony, and Elyse. Tyra tells Elyse to take her clunky red coat off, and she lets it drop off her back and it flumps to the ground and it gets a big laugh from the panel that just bought her another week. No, you guys. She actually is that mad.
Will Kesse and Katie please come forward? Sure, they will. But only Kesse can get a photo, and Katie gives hugs to the rest of the girls and takes her non-teary farewell. "My goal is to get into Victoria's Secret," she tells us, predicting through her sadness that she'll succeed regardless. Her photo fades from the Model Mosaic, and Victoria's Secret is all, "Yeah, we'll see about that."