The New York City in which the George Washington Bridge acts as the gateway to Soho owes me fifty trillion dollars in back pay from cab fares incurred anywhere between the two. We montage from that bridge -- named as such because of its powdery wig and inability to tell lies -- to the façade of the ZoLoft, which is probably, in fact, on an L.A. soundstage somewhere because the exteriors in this city we'll call "Newer York" aren't up to snuff with the actual city they're trying to portray. Actually, on second glance, that shot may well have been of the Williamsburg Bridge. Which is really quite close to Soho. Is that the Manhattan Bridge?
Up inside the ZoLoft, we join Xiomara in progress as she walks around the apartment in shorty shorty short shorts (or, as this garment would be known if worn by anyone else on Earth: pants), telling us, "We're so tired because we only had two hours of sleep from the night before." I don't have any idea why they've only gotten two hours of sleep and no explanation is immediately offered up, so I'll just guess it has something to do with "the volume and duration of Catie's continuing racking sobs," and we'll try for once to stick to the linear recapping thread. Xiomara tells us that she feels she has to "one-up everyone else with what [she's] doing because the last judging they told [her] that was [her] weakest week ever, and [she] will never allow that to happen again. Ever." Bugging her eyes out in the traditional fashion and shaking her head slowly, Xiomara is but a mere swinging stopwatch away from hypnotizing the entirety of the viewing audience into repeating "never. Ever. Ever" over and over and over again until we are entranced into believing her, while the confessional booth camera operator wakes up the morning and doesn't know why he can't stop clucking like a chicken.
Adorable mop-top superstar Catie Culkin, meanwhile, lies in bed too exhausted to cry or speak, her inner monologue instead left up to the wiles of that old reality-show staple, "sulky voice-over confessional." She tells us from the comfort of her angsty teen years, "I've never been under this much pressure. And I actually think I'm handling it very well." By lying in bed and crying weakly like she's afflicted with a disease so rare it exists entirely in the nineteenth century, like consumption or black bile. A quick edit shows Catie emerging from her room and consuming some cereal. I guess besides the backtalk, narcissism, and overall histrionics, she really is handling it pretty well. After all those weeks sequestered in her bed chambers, The Lady Catie finally feels strong enough to venture into the sitting room! Is it St. Swithin's Day already?
"I'm short and I don't care!" a voice from the very living floor of the Gelfling forest calls out. "Look how short I am!" Jenascia struts down the ZoLoft's runway, sashaying down its entirety in the amount of time it takes one of the other, human-legged girls to not eat. Jenascia is decked out in a white shirt with the numbers "206" splashed across the front, which is one mere digit away from another reality television icon filled with hometown pride, whereas Jenascia had better start thinking about walking straight off that runway and continuing on until she reaches her residence of Elimination-On-Avon, population: her.
If you're getting distracted from reading around right now, it's entirely possible that it's due to the distracting sounds of this show suddenly deciding to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on that most personal instrument known as...the heartstrings. Mercedes -- who up until now had achieved her zenith of character recognition in that niche face time genre known as "Girl Whose Name Might Be Sara Or April" -- kicks in with a confessional designed to make you think, make you worry, make you reconsider your own petty squabbles and vices, makes you question your life to the darkest core of musing on your own tenuous mortality, make you furrow your brow and wonder aloud, "Lupus? Really? They're hitting us with lupus? Huh."
"My hair has been falling out because of the high medication I take every day," Mercedes tells us. "I was diagnosed with lupus." Didn't see the lupus coming, I have to admit, but, y'know, play the card that's in your hand, as I always say when I'm pretending I'm a lost verse in "The Gambler." So, we've discovered the symptoms and are told its treatment. But for those fans of illness portrayed in the interest of a humanizing angle who don't watch this show with the latest edition of The Merck Manual sitting open on their laps...well, Mercedes, just what is lupus? "A chronic illness where it attacks your immune system about a year ago." It attacks your immune system a year ago? From her description, it sounds like lupus is most dangerous when it hits you in the place you're clearly least expecting: in the past. But Mercedes, what about the coping strategies you've designed for yourself in the face of this difficult if time-traveling disease? "It's best to keep it a secret, because I don't want to talk about, 'oh, how you feeling,' 'oh, this must be hard,' y'know, don't give me that, I don't need it." And remember, kids: it's not your fault you have lupus, and it doesn't mean god hates you for making fun of other kids who were sick when you were little. Just take your medication, keep a good attitude about it all, and together we'll beat this disease together with knowledge and power as we link hands and bask in the warm glow of the "The More You Know" star fall.
But first, we learn, we're on our way to work out with Martin, the gym guy. Xiomara does an impression of him that goes "yo yo, y'know, what's up, come to my gym" that makes me turn to the person to me and ask "What is that, a Grace Jones impersonation? Because they could just about pass as twins! Anyone who doesn't think so is crazy! Or her!" Sadly, I discovered only at that moment that I was, in fact, alone in my living room. Someone please come over. The girls crowd into the elevator, calling out that it's 8:30. Someone yells, "Camille, let's go!" But Camille is still inside the loft, elaborately braiding her hair and singing to herself that she should "see that pretty girl in the mirror, there," getting cut off by those bitches before the "response" part of her brain had time to check in with "What mirror, where?" She walks to the elevator, but alas the doors have already closed. In a confessional, she sneers, "Y'know, I've always, like, held the elevator for everyone." Not even in a world where she can fly into the past and stop lupus can Camille Butterfly Effect her way into pretending she's ever done anything nice for anyone who isn't Camille. Luckily, world-weary Camille is coming of age in the big, bad, vertically-built city, and she's come to realize, "If they want to cuddle up and be friends and get in the elevator, go ahead and do that." Which they certainly did. She concludes: "This is a competition. This is not a sorority. You're not here to be friends with anyone. The point is: win." That's always what the girl who everyone hates says until she's booted in a bloodless coup three weeks from the end. And I love the Fellini-esque dream logic that it was her decision to let them make her miss the elevator.
Martin "Welcome...To The Rocky" Snow welcomes the girls back into the gym, diving right in and gesturing madly with his leather-gloved hands in such a stereotypically Italian way that the only thing that may divert his attention is if he jumps high enough to catch a magic mushroom and suddenly finds himself running really fast underwater.
We learn that today there will be a competition that, according to Martin, "is not the Waitress Of The Year competition! It's the top model competition!" And I know I'll probably get the culottes sued off me for failing to capitalize the words "top" and "model," which are now fully owned and operated entities of TyraCo LLC, but to structure the language Schlocky Balboa is uttering would imply that it made so much as one lick of sense in this world or any other. A Waitress Of The Year competition? Do they have those? Do they require aptitude at boxing? Can we skip dessert and just take a check, please? Thanks.
But yes, this top model competition requires physical stamina, and so we undertake a big boxing match in which the girl who stops hitting a big-ass bag last is the winner. I think Catie falls first, but the traffic was so noisy that you could not hear me cry, I gave you my love in vain my body never knew such pleasure, my heart never knew such pai-yee-ai-yee-ain, you leave me so confused, now I'm all cried out, over you. I'm just saying that Catie cries a lot is all, and sometimes you need to let the poetry of Allure say it better than you ever could. The boxing match is quickly (well, in montage time) down to Camille and April, with the rest of the girls standing on the sidelines screaming variants of "Go, April!" and "April, woo!" and "I swear by the divine words of Eliot that I do not believe you are the cruelest month!" Schlocky Balboa counts down to zero, indicating that they are of equal boxing acumen, and a push-ups competition in the middle of the ring leaves April the winner. A round of applause ensues and no award is given out in this challenge except an honorary gold medal in the sporting art of "Not Being Camille."
Oh, yes! Wait a minute, Mr. Postman! Mr. Postman, look and see, is there a letter from Tyra Banks for me? There is? Wow. Wasn't expecting that. This week's first piece of Tyra Mail reads, "Your clothes tell the world who you truly are. You are what you wear." Oh, man. I've currently got on an outfit of jeans from the "Gap '92" denim collection and a Phish t-shirt WITH THE BAND'S NAME WRITTEN IN HEBREW that begs for that sentiment not to be true. Catie then mumbles the rest of the note, because she always cries at wedding and at Tyra Mail and at sunflower seeds and at computer paper and at tea bags and at tote bags and at bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. ["And when she does long division and has a remainder." -- Wing Chun] The end of the note demands, "Come ready at 2:00 PM. Wear what expresses you." Just hands off my Hebrew Phish. Borrowing it without asking simply would not be pareve.
Tyra "That's Really Super, Supergirl" Banks enters the ZoLoft with a man I'll guesstimate is, well, Jenascia's dad? Why? Because he's so wee! Tyra's own personal style seems to be typified by an adherence to her own favorite clothing designer, '80s luminary Z. Cavaricci, since she is decked out in a one-piece denim pantsuit that looks in fabric and waistline a leeetle too similar to the eponymous fashion classic and makes me have to plug up my TV speakers to stop the reckless smell of Drakkar Noir suddenly pouring out from them. Tyra tells the assembled girls, "Today you guys are going to be learning about personal style." She introduces her small friend Simon Doonon, who is the creative director of Barney's, the guy who invented windows ("But you must be mad! Glass is but a liquid," they all said before Simon), and the man that launched a thousand annoying and identically-sounding Randy Newman songs by having "no reason to live." Even at 4'6", though, like, eleven Jenascia's could fit inside one Simon Doonan. And why? Because conventional wisdom tells us that she is short.
Awwww! Even Simon's voice is widdle! No wonder he likes to spend so much time around the optical illusions windows so often provide. I guess "Funhouse Designer" wasn't a respectable enough career field for him to get into, even if he secretly thinks it was his calling. Simon introduces himself by saying, "In New York, you never know who [sic] you're going to run into. So you have to think about how you dress every single day." That may be the single most depressing sentiment I've ever heard expressed, actually, but Tyra echoes it and tells the girls they always need to be ready to be photographed. To that end, Tyra decides to show off some of photographs of her own "personal style gone wrong," when she's ended up on Worst Dressed lists. One is of her in a black dress and a bikini top. One was when she hosted the Oscar pre-show in 2000 in a purple wedding dress. One, if historical accuracy is a prized asset on this show, will be when she unsheathes a Polaroid camera and takes a photo of herself right now.
Tyra instructs each girl to stand up and tell the story about how her current outfit explains her personal style. April is first. She is wearing a shoulder-less white dress with a light-blue waist and a giant slit down the entire front of it. She explains that she likes to "show a lot of skin," and Simon warns her that she needs to find a balance between "groovy and hip" and "provocative." He'd call her a whore, but he's saving that ace for when it's his only card left. Mercedes wears fresh flowers in her hair, which Simon likes. Sara is a little too "street style." Shandi -- who I guess left her stylistically-appropriate "black sheep" costume to the Red Vines aisle at her former employer -- instead wears a red, off-the-shoulder shirt and a blue skirt. Simon praises her for having her "own thing going on," even though the uniquely personal style of her hair, her eyes and her makeup are all exactly fourteen seconds old and completely fashioned by someone else. Xiomara is wearing hoop earrings and a sports bra, which means she wouldn't even have to change her name before modeling the great fashions in an upcoming revival season of American Gladiators. Camille tells us that her family is from "Jamaica, West Indies," so she likes to wear the colors represented by their red, yellow, and green flag, explaining, "Red is for the blood that was shed, yellow is for the sunshine, and green is for the land." A quick, intercut confessional here finds Xiomara just going, "Camille: blah blah blah blah" in a way that needs no further explaining, and we hop back to Simon, who warns, "This might be a little too theoretical." Doesn't he mean that it is exactly the most literal thing we've ever seen? It would be like if said, "My personal style is represented in the fact that my name is Dan, so I'm wearing these giant felt letters with my head sticking through the 'A' and I've tethered a 'D' to my left arm and an 'N' to my right, and I will walk the streets singing a jaunty ditty entitled, 'Personally, My Style Is Dan" over and over again. In a bracing win for subtle stylistic decisions, however, I've gone with the far more expressionist Hebrew Phish t-shirt instead, which is just the thinking man's version of those letters. Jenascia wears something that she admits fits into her personal style of wanting to be taller, at which point she slips into a kind of paragraph-ending self-parody that exists on such a base, molecular level that it actually affects grammar. Amazing.
And, Catie. She stands up and reminds us that she's just gotten a haircut, and has decided to celebrate with black legwarmers, heels, a blue mini-skirt, and a yellow tank top. And purple eye shadow. In the awesomely calculated payoff of putting Catie last, Simon hits a perfect fever pitch to this evaluation by instructing Catie to "go down where the hookers hang out by the docks and see what they're wearing and then avoid it." Catie mutters a sarcastic "okay" and re-takes her perch, allowing for Simon to chastise the girls that they need to be a little more self-critical. Catie takes her cue off this, back-talking, "You called me a ho!" Simon fact-checks that he "would never say anybody was a ho. I would say that's ho style." Well, Simon, that depends on what you mean by the word "is." She's not cheese. She's "cheese-like product." She's the Combos of hookers, an imitation even more believable than the original. But the fight escalates, Catie starting to cry (and watch out for the reaction shots of the other girls cracking up at this latest predictable meltdown) and dictating policy, "If it was you and me talking, that's cool," and Simon tells her that she might have underestimated the seriousness of the competition, warning, "You knew when you entered into this competition that you're not going to sit there for three weeks with an umbrella drink with everybody telling you how fabulous you are." Ha! I love it. time he needs to add the term "chaise longue" to that snark and he's all set as my Mini-Me. And whether it's "ho" or "ho style," y'all take a look at Catie's outfit right now. Seriously, I just slipped that girl a five and she blew my TV's picture tube.
Emotionally appropriate rain falls down on New York City and makes me realize that one person's emotional journey is solely responsible for the winter we've been having and makes me want that person to just CHEER THE HELL UP ALREADY and maybe the snow that fell on Thanksgiving weekend finally get around to melting. Back in the dry, throw-pillowed sanctuary of the ZoLoft, Mercedes tells us that she's afraid people will judge her and not hire her were they to find out about her disease. On the phone (so this is why it's always busy whenever I call the LupusLine), Mercedes tells someone, "I want to push as hard as I can so I can get this." She wants to get this. She's already gotten lupus. The problem with the world is that some people are just takers, y'know?
I just moved last week, see, so my Tyra Mail keeps getting bounced back to my old post office, which isn't so much frustrating as it is completely made up. So I'll just have to live vicariously through the Tyra Mail of others, such as these here top model candidates, who receive a card reading, "Get ready for a wacky day with the wildest designer in New York City!" It's Betsey Johnson. You know it. I know it. The only person who may not know it is Betsey Johnson, whose own name seems to keep slipping her own crazy, crazy mind. Into her bright pink studio they march, and Ms. Johnson (if you're nasty) comes bounding into a room so brightly lit that sitcom characters on other, real networks with shows on during this timeslot start to instinctively shield their eyes from it. "Hi, hello!" she announces, decked in long, red shorts, a hat with the letter "H" (conveniently, in Betsey's language, "H" is the first letter of "crazy"!), and a black tank top announcing in bright pink letters, "Guys [heart] B.J." I'm sure there's some inside joke about that, and somewhere in Soho right now Betsey is sitting on a giant shag couch to her friend B.J. watching this episode, and he totally turns to her and is all, "I so can't believe you wore that shirt on TV," to which Betsey volleys effortlessly back, "Who the hell are you, and what's that glowing orb box with the crazy lady in it?" Shandi tells us in a confessional that her meeting with Betsey led her to "freak out," which means she doesn't know who she is because Shandi's last five years of wardrobe was procured with her 10% employee discount compliments of Kathie Lee's Malaysian Sewing Circle.
An example of Betsey's personal style, she tells them, was communicated from her last fashion show, which she takes us to watch clips of. Girls walking in crazy clothes. Lights in the background spell out the letters B.J. ("I so can't believe you put those lights on the back of the runway," he says, to which Betsey volleys effortlessly back, "Who the hell are you, and what's that glowing orb box with the crazy lady in it?"), and Betsey does a cartwheel. B.J. is all, "I can't believe you did that cartwheel at your own show," and I know I don't know as much about fashion as I probably could to really be an expert, but I've got to be honest and say B.J.'s opinion is kind of starting to piss me off.
Betsey pops up at the loft, where she tells the girls that their new challenge is, in ten minutes, to rummage through other people's clothes, and construct an outfit using their personal styles. She wants those styles, according to April's confessional, "to radiate so bright that it doesn't matter what kind of clothes we're wearing." She outlines the reward for the winner of this challenge in a way so inspiring I debate switching into my best Old Navy pocket T and see if I might just be a contender: "The big prize to the contest is a fabulous, fabulous dinner out in New York City with some fabulous, fabulous guest." Could there be more implied "TBD" in the ANTM production schedule at this point? But still. I mean, wow. Four times she says "fabulous." Fabulous to the fourth power. Okay, screw it, I'm convinced. Please hold the pause button while I find a real adult and learn how to tie a necktie.
Ready, set, go! Sara and April have planned a clothing switch in advance, because when you already possess the identical quality of "maybe being each other," a clothing swap is less Freaky Friday and more, like, Normal Friday. Yoanna makes for a skirt of Mercedes's she's had her eyes on (careful, now...that thing is dirty with lupus!), and Camille cons Xiomara into letting her borrow jewelry. Why would you let the house problem child have access to your breakable heirlooms? Why should they be allowed to rummage through each other's clothes at all? When I'm on this show, I say one thing and I mean it. Bitches? Stay outta my swag. ["Oh man, really? I was hoping I could let my personal style shine through while wearing your 'Dan' t-shirt." -- Wing Chun]
The girls prance back into the living room and take a trip down the runway. Sara gets the high compliment "Sara could've done my last runway show," while Xiomara takes home the I-am-not-impressed- with-your-booby-prize, "All riiiiiiighty!" Camille is starting to flag and is told she's looking "rough," while April gets thumbs-up and Yoanna kicks ass. "You're all knocking me out, here," Betsey says, and a little asterisk floats up to her sentiment that, if you look down at the bottom of Betsey's psyche, reads, "Except you, Krazy Eyes." Mercedes does fine even though she has lupus. Jenascia -- in a ripped red Flashdance shirt and a trucker hat -- causes Betsey to muse for a long time and finally come out with this: "I'm not one of these where unless you're six feet I can't work with you. I think that you're almost there. Just six months of modeling school...walking and all that junk." Jenascia reiterates in a confessional what Betsey has just told her and I hope there's open enrollment, because I think Jenascia will be in position where she'll be ready to start, like, right away. Catie doesn't have enough of "the real you," because she's not enough of a whore, I guess? Shandi tries to be a little sexy, but Betsey tells her not to be the sexpot "that the other girls are doing. Your strength is that you're not that." Now y'all know I love Shandi like the fraternal twin brother I've never had, but what it sounds like Betsey was saying is, "Don't try to be model-esque, because your unique and beguiling ugliness makes for far more compelling TV. But not for that much longer." And then she picks Shandi as the winner, allowing her to take two friends with her to dinner. The rest of the girls offer up a wan "Shaaaaaaaaaaandi," which she mentions in a confessional, saying, "I get that a lot." She chooses as her esteemed dinner companions Xiomara and Yoanna, and I get that swell of joy like the one when the white spy would finally win in Spy Vs. Spy because you know that the good people are finally in charge for a while.
"Camille, my earring is broken," Xiomara grouses, because why have an "A" story and a "B" story when there are twenty-four other perfectly usable letters vying for a chance to make an appearance this episode? Xiomara's special, unique, irreplaceable, fabulous, fabulous earrings are all whacked out and broken, and Camille complains in a confessional, "Oh, like this is all I freakin' need right now." Camille grabs the earrings out of Xiomara's hands (could such nimble hands possibly have crushed the delicate baubles? But it seems so impossible!) and tells her that she has a friend who's a jewelry designer, promising, "I'll fix it. But you'll just have to wait." She sighs and snorts and pulls down on her hair so much it's like she expects it to bring a hotel porter to come and take her bags out to the car.
Mood rain falls again on old Lupus Town. Poor Mercedes. She calls her mom and cries that she's not feeling well but that she's still gonna "do what she can to make it to the top." People, there is nothing funny about a disease that makes it rain outside.
A limo pulls up in front of the ZoLoft, and Shandi correctly infers that it's for her and her guests, and is not, in fact, on its way to the Starbucks on Varick and Spring to pick me up and drive me back to Park Slope. The door opens and our special, secret, fabulous, fabulous mystery guest is revealed to be...Adrienne, the winner of the first season of America's Top Model and friend of the forums and a wonderful person who loves children and puppies and singing. Hi, Adrienne! I'm sorry I didn't watch you win last season, but, see, I was probably recapping six other shows all about Nevada or something that have all already been cancelled but which allow me to keep blaming Ben Affleck for everything including not finding out about you earlier. We montage through Adrienne's triumphs last season, and then tramp through the Adrienne Curry Legitimization Video Résumé, where she explains what an amazing opportunity the show was and that she's working every day. We cut over to the VIP room at a French restaurant, where Xiomara bitches about Camille and does a walk like Catie.
Meanwhile, back at the ZoLoft, a voice calls out "someone do Xiomara," and Catie leaps onto the runway doing her Xiomara impression, which is perfectly juxtaposed against a split screen of Xiomara's walk. It's actually pretty uncanny, I have to say. On the way back, Catie does a Yoanna, and then nails a Camille on the dismount.
And, back at dinner, Adrienne drags the girls through pools thick with envy, as she tells them about her diamond campaign, which required her to spend the whole day in a pool covered in diamonds. She tells them that this is "the opportunity of a lifetime. Don't screw this up." By being too short.
Tyra Mail tells the girls that they'll be "shocked and amazed" by their photo shoot, and we cut over to Jay "What A Man What A Man What A Man What A Mighty Good" Manuel, who tells them that their new challenge is as follows: "As a top model, you guys need to learn how to take on the persona of someone else. So today we're gonna turn you girls into some of the world's most famous celebrities." He introduces the photographer, Andrew Eccles, who takes a Polaroid test shot of himself starfucking his client list, announcing his favorite people are to work with: "Tyra...." Dude, you've already got the job, okay? Dial down the ass-kissing before a stray camera catches you reading one of "best-selling author" Janice Dickinson's books during a lull in the shoot.
As part of discovering their own personal styles by becoming other people entirely, here's a who's who of tomorrow's Vegas impersonator acts: Catie is Marilyn Monroe; Mercedes is Billie Holliday; April is Catherine Zeta-Jones; Shandi is going to be an extremely unconvincing Nicole Kidman; Sara is going to be Angelina Jolie; Camille is Diana Ross; Jenascia is a shorter Salma Hayek; Yoanna is Audrey Hepburn; and Xiomara is going to be -- who? Grace Jones? Is it Grace Jones? Is it? It is, right? -- Grace Jones. I'm totally surprised.
And so is Xiomara. Sitting in a chair with her arms all angrily crossed, Xiomara grouses so much that Tyra has to come to the rescue by telling Xiomara what an exciting transformation it will be because of how much Xiomara doesn't look like Grace Jones at all! Andrew tells us that Jenascia didn't really carry her doppelganger star's confidence, and, at least according to the editing, it looks like she responds to one of Tyra's movement suggestions with a sarcastic "Do this! Do this!" that actually elicits a nasty glare from Tyra. Sara pulls off her Angelina, but Andrew thinks she's holding back just a bit. Shandi was nominated for as many Nicole Kidman impersonation Oscars as Nicole Kidman has recently been nominated for actual Oscars. To Andrew, April is "that unique find that turns up now and again." Meanwhile, back at Jackrabbit Slim's, Catie pulls off an okay Marilyn. And then there's Xiomara, who is painted head to toe and wearing what appears to be a garbage bag on her head in an outfit she got into facing the wrong way. So, yes, looking pretty much exactly like Grace Jones. "I didn't think I looked like her," Xiomara tells us afterward, "But now I know I do." Weirdest. One to grow on. Ever.
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 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 , 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.
Camille and Eric have a fight when she marches up and announces something about circles on her ring and her handbag. "All I'm saying is that it's not brain surgery," Eric says, and she shoots back, "I want to be right." Too bad she's actually good, because otherwise that would have been the last thing we ever heard her say.
Jenascia is wearing a hateful hat.
Catie's Marilyn shot pulls in the best line of the night when Janice tells her, "You look like a beautiful guy here." Catie flinches but doesn't cry. Whatever. I'm sure she'll cry later.
Eric has been given so few opportunities to string three words together that he goes for the money shot of "Nubian space goddess" when describing Xiomara's photo. Nigel notes, "Grace would be proud."
But then, when just the panel convenes, Janice doesn't like Yoanna's possessed eyes. Sara is seen as being "one-note with the face." Janice likes Camille's Diana but hates her attitude, and Jenascia is, according to Janice, "still too short." Betsey remembers where she is long enough to like Shandi. April is once again seen by Tyra as being "too analytical," because of all of the trigonometry lessons she keeps accidentally teaching during her photo shoots, I guess. Catie is "dead in front of the camera," and Betsey finally registers some real criticism in admitting, "I don't think she's strong enough to cut it." Mercedes has lupus. Tyra wasn't happy with Xiomara on set, noting, "Ethnic women never want to be darker...I was just a little insulted by that." Man, this has taken a turn for the serious. Race relations. Disease. Pestilence. Locusts. What's , slaying of the first-born Tyra Mail? (I have almost no idea what that means.)
And, here we go:
Mercedes, Tyra conveniently notes, doesn't seem to have the energy she used to, but she's still in the running to become America's Top Model. So are Xiomara, Shandi, Yoanna, Sara, April, and Camille. Tyra tells Camille that her picture is "absolutely gorgeous," but adds, "Another thing you have that Diana is known for is a diva attitude." And failing a DUI test outside of Tucson, which Camille also seems destined for when she finally snaps. Which is when you'll really get to see her chops -- when she's photographed pulling off just about the most convincing Nick Nolte in the history of modern law enforcement.
Jenascia gave a great Salma Hayek, Tyra says, but she needs to overcompensate. Catie's Marilyn Monroe was awesome, but is she strong enough to handle this business? Yes, yes she is. Jenascia is out, and the hat is still on. As she escapes the loft, she tells us, "I'm gonna go back to slinging chicken wings at Hooter's." They'll always have her back. They'll always have her back at the DQ.