A subtitle reminding us we're in "Milan, Italy" accompanies shots of carefree, mint-loving Milanos who find it just as weird as the rest of the civilized world does that there's actually an "orange" flavor. They make up a Milan street scene, doing Milano things: they talk animatedly with their hands, they ride bicycles that the cinema of their youths told them are always mere moments from getting stolen, they cruise around on scooters and go, "Ciao!" But up in Il ZoLofto, things are somewhat less "Italy between the hours of 12 and 3 every day and also all day during the entire month of August" and somewhat more "Italy when it was feverishly trying to figure out how to strip Roberto Benigni of his citizenship because of that one year he clomped all over the collective heads of the Academy." A clanging alarm clock rings through the apartmenti, and Yoanna somehow manages to negotiate herself over rolls and rolls of unsightly, excess flab (send your hate mail and dissenting opinions to nigel.barker@antm.com) to turn it off, all the while removing a breakfast Twinkie from her internal monologue and voicing over, "Whoever said modeling was easy...it is not." Whoever did say modeling was easy? Probably neurosurgeons. And professional snipers. And inner-city junior high school teachers. But they are not here to learn. Because they are too busy. Working.
April, meanwhile, sits up in bed, conveniently reminding us through the elegant power of voice-over, "I'm tired." Heh. Maybe if this whole top model gig doesn't work out for her (and...well, just call it a hunch), April can clone her already robotic likeness with a series of talking dolls called "Intuitively Edited April." When sitting up groggily in bed, Intuitively Edited April voices over, "I'm tired." When drinking a glass of water, Intuitively Edited April voices over, "I'm thirsty." When cutting her clothing sheer off her body during an elimination ceremony until she looks like a whorish extra in a Samantha Fox video from, like, ninety-eighty pi, Intuitively Edited April voices over, "I'm booted." She continues talking. That string is much longer than it looks when I pulled it! "Every day that passes by here is another day that we're closer to our dreams." April, you share our collective dream of a show without April? Mommy, can we return this Intuitively Edited April toy? I find it much too technical.
Posta di Tyra! Posta di Tyra! With an elegant Italian accent that subtly tells you that "the best part of Roman Holiday is that I was in it, when I go to my crazy place," Yoanna reads the Tyra Mail: "Fiducia, Sensualita, Beliezza, e Eleganza. Find out what these words mean today." Or, according to my trusty Alta Vista translator and in absolutely no particular order, right now: Confidence Sensualita, Elegance, and, well, "Beliezza." Yeah. I feel Beliezza a lot these days. "Be ready to leave at 12:15." But with the time difference, Jenascia will have forgotten to set her watch, and now she's sure not to get there until 7:15! Those other girls...they can be so Greenwich Mean. (Sorry. Never gets old.)
Look! Camille left a note. I'll bet it was entirely improvised. We're treated to a delightful shot of her timely departure in the last real episode, followed by a confessional in which Yoanna sings a song that goes, "Camille is gone, the witch left home," followed by a laugh that lies on the emotional see-saw somewhere just between "unsuccessfully medicated" and "strenuously avoided on the subway." And, I mean, she seems to have a lovely voice, but sister can't stick to the rhythm! And damned if that song doesn't need a little more to it, no? Camille was Yoanna's backstabbing archenemy from the first moment; it's at dramatic high points like this where the songs are actually supposed to come. Oh, very well. Since you asked: "Camille is gone, the witch left home/She's gone to hell or maybe Rome/The show can start now that she's gone/Pack your bags, y'all, you're goin' to Milan." The songwriting credit for that verse will read "Blau/Banks," for any ASCAP certification professionals out there. I didn't know I was going to need her collaborative inspiration just at that moment. That Tyra. She's like the Noel Coward of downmarket crap.
Speaking of musical numbers, we're in the living room of Il ZoLofto, where we're reminded of Mercedes and her overall adorableness when we find her singing a song entitled, "Have you seen my boots?" Yes, she's very cute. Stop hitting me over the head with a high-fashion boot about it. When the did world buy wholesale into the reality that every time someone thinks a bad thought about Mercedes, an angel dies in heaven? We see her almost get booted last week, and back in a confessional she lapses into a wee bit of realitybabble with the realization, "I've gotta step up the pace." In last week's competition, it's true she was pretty wan/Pack your bags, y'all, we're goin' to Milan.
"My challenge is to tone my tummy," Yoanna tells us, quoting a Suzanne Somers infomercial playing in a loop in her head because of the chip Nigel had inserted in her brain. April, meanwhile, wanders in front of passing camera, and after wondering if she's perhaps related to it (she's mechanical, see), she stops to let it know, "I want this so bad. I want to be a model. But I overanalyze. I know that's my weakness." If this show were the cast of Soul Man, you'd be the forgotten-by-time Rae Dawn Chong/Pack your bags, y'all, we're goin' to Milan. This joke is almost over. I swear it.
Shandi, meanwhile, mopes around the house, telling us, "I miss being home and seeing my boyfriend. But then, at the same time, a huge part of me wants to become America's Top Model." She's turned from ugly duckling into a long-necked swan/Pack your bags, y'all, you're goin' to Milan. And, we're done.
And, we're out on the street, where the four cani dal serbatoio walk toward the cameras in a threatening, ear-slicing way. They montage through Milan -- which is actually exceedingly difficult to do on the torturous Italian streets, which is why you have to have a special stamp in your passport if you intend on to partake in more than five montages during your travels abroad -- and they end up at the showroom of one Stephen Fairchild. Wearing his own name on his clothing (which I haven't done since I last wore the novelty party favor t-shirt reading "I Had A Ball At Daniel's Bar Mitzvah" that we gave away at my baseball-themed thirteenth birthday, and no, I'm not kidding), he welcomes the girls into the room, telling a thrilled Yoanna, "I'm going to give you a kiss." I tried to use that intro for a while when I met new people, but the resulting "Well, then, I'm going to give you an incredulous glare, freak" offered a real this-only-works-in-Italy feeling to the proceedings. Mercedes celebrates the fact that he's so famous that even she's heard of him, opening a plot thread that never got enough traction to make that as awesomely funny as I would have liked. Good thing, then, that they got the extra-credit question right: "It's my style, if I could, dress, you know, hote catoh [sic], but, I mean, duh). Or whatever." Adorable! And don't you forget it. Or heaven will be missing an angel. And it will be your fault.
Stephen explains that he's here to teach them the ins and outs of Italian fashion: "The sensuality of it, the sexuality of it." He wants to make sure he uses the best qualities of each girl, accentuating the best qualities of each girl and hiding what's not quite as good. Unlike, say, in the fashion world of the sovereign nation of IronyTopia, which would feature a spread made up entirely of Yoanna's midriff, Mercedes's brains, April's demeanor, and Shandi's fidelity. A hot shoot, that one.
Stephen sets them loose on pretty much one rack in his showroom, and I get that feeling watching them that I get when I'm choosing a bowling ball. Initial excitement gives way to the bullshit minutiae of the chore: one's the right weight, but the holes are too small. One looks good from afar, but some dink gets to it before you have a chance. One's completely perfect in every way other than it being pink, which makes your friends deem you a faggotty bowler. Whatever. This happened to a friend of mine. The four girls take a montage (getting awfully close to your limit there, ladies), and turn back to the camera wearing the outfits they find themselves most sexy in. April goes first. She is wearing a long, white trench coat a lot like the one the guy who sold candy outside the gates of my elementary school sold until one day he opened his trench coat and didn't come around to sell candy anymore because he must have gone to work for another school. I guess he was hired by the district or something. I never really thought too much about it. Stephen deems the raincoat "completely wrong," which is just what the attending officer told the guy at my school. See? This is why I always go poncho.
Shandi is looking awfully sticklike in a black tank top and gray pants. I think she looks fab, but Stephen believes the pants are skewing a little too big, even though the cut of the pants still seems to reside squarely in the negative integers. He tells her that she has better legs than she thinks she does. Mercedes, on the other hand, needs to be elongated. Yoanna steps out in an all-black ensemble, which works just fine until the jacket comes off and we find her in a shirt that doesn't cover her stomach. One, two, three close-ups on it later, Stephen narrates from the sizable deck of the U.S.S. Backfat, "Yoanna has one problem. And it's the midriff." But Yoanna -- rested and supplicating herself before St. LaLanne, The Patron Saint Of Reshaping Womenly Curves -- reminds herself that Tyra told them that no model is perfect. As thanks for their ability to fail so grandly wearing clothes of his own design, Mr. Fairchild, Patron Saint Of Surprise-Ending Heterosexuality (more to come on this), reoutfits all of the women in his own image. Mercedes, surveying her black suit and black-and-white checkered pageboy hat, tells us, "It's about clothes fitting to your body properly and having a little pizzazz." Awwwww, look who Googled "Italian fashion"! Mercedes then takes off her hat, calling its designer "gov'nah," and begins administering the best shoeshine the town's ever seen, without even knowing she was doing it. That's how powerful that hat is.
The competition for this week, we learn, is that Stephen Fairchild is going to give each of the girls two hundred Euro (which I remembered incorrectly as being "two hundred lire," which, even when the currency actually, y'know, existed, still equaled between a hapenny and a shaving of wampum) to go to the flea market in an attempt to "depict Italian sensuality." The winner spends a night with Fairchild at his villa having an "amazing night." The rest get to have an orgy. Or they can all just do both. Italy. Land of hedonistic dualities.
Back at It ZoLofto, Yoanna dials a cell phone and tells an "Andrea" to come meet them that night at the apartmenti. We learn that he was one of the guys from the Vespas, and that he's going to bring his friends. Mercedes, for one, couldn't be happier: "I've been so testosterone-deprived, it's so not fair." Mostly, it's men who are afflicted with that problem, and when they go for the pink bowling ball, someone just gives them a pill and fixes them right up. But for the sake of argument, I'll pretend I know exactly what she's talking about. Yoanna, too, wants "to get some smooches on." Which is totally orgy talk. When you're five and you make your stuffed animals kiss each other and then giggle because kissing is gross.
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.
The bell literally tolls for she, as we hear a clanging bell tower announce the death knell of innocence. The guys leave the house and leave their numbers that no one's even going to use (you can see the look of "what the hell is 011?" splashed across Yoanna's face, here in the sane light of sobriety). My friend and I turn to each other and ask somewhat quizzically though not actually angrily, "Was that it?" as we take the walk of shame from the dining-room table to the bottle of red wine, stumbling once as we go and glad we decided to stick with charades instead. (My answer was "Fellini.") You know who's not happy? Shandi. She tells us in a confessional that she was unable to control herself, and in real time she sits on her bed, wailing. WAILING. Unable to speak. Except to say "I want to die." The other models all climb onto the bed with her, April's nightie mooning itself toward the camera, making her accidentally cheat on her boyfriend with me.
Shandi is still sleeping at 7:56 AM, Harlot Standard Time. I hope her splashy fashion Italian black-and-whites don't clash with the big-ass scarlet "A" on her forehead. She tells us that she just wants to go home. Though she wears her kicky "Shantrax" shirt that reminds us of better days when the destruction she unleashed on those around her was relegated to terrorist tools on a punny t-shirt, she speaks in the quiet, chastened voice of one who's about to get in a lot of trouble on TV, which, from the way people often react to it in such histrionic terms, isn't really that good a feeling.
But shopping at an Italian flea market is. Off they to the Italian flea market, to spend their two hundred Euro in an attempt to embody Italian sensuality. Just speak with an accent and rent a Vespa. I know it sounds elementary, but it just just just worked. Shandi stumbles the streets by herself in a huge, black puffy coat, handing one article of clothing back to an Italian street merchant with the complaint that it's "too big." But she says it in an Italian accent, so he must understand what she's saying. All she needs to do now is bring all five of the fingers on one hand together, point the tips at the sky, and wave it a few times, and everyone will know what she's talking about. And all the free salad and breadsticks she can eat.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but they edited out something I think was probably a huge joke. Which would be a shame. Riding in a van and listening to her famed aphrodisiac MP3 player, Yoanna voices over, "After the flea market, we found out that we were going to a place called Lake Como." And I know Yoanna generally has a tendency to overenunciate anyway, but she did this one on purpose, I think, to make a really clear distinction between the end of the word "Lake" and the beginning of the word "Como," lest the two become elided. Lake Como says what? Lake Como says what? Lake Homo (sorry, my finger slipped), we learn, is about thirty to forty-five minutes outside of Milan. On the way there, we learn more about Shandi's mental state. That of: sad. Luckily, the Aprilbot puts it all in perspective: "Girls cheat. It happens." Yoanna and Mercedes whoop it up in the front of the van, relieved mostly that they're not the ones feeling shitty about an ill-advised hookup? That was such a familiar feeling in college, where you would be all hungover at breakfast but in a super-good mood because you didn't have a whole lot of explaining to do to anyone. Shandi knows just how we feel: "I finally have someone that's, like, proud of me. For once. And then look at what I go and do." Yes. ["On TV." -- Wing Chun]
They pull up to Fairchild's pink villa, where he meets and kisses them. He turns to a blonde woman and offers, "I would like to introduce you to my wife," and the cut from that moment is so severe you really get the feeling that they left it in there to create that vacuum moment where we could hold the line through a montage-y moment, catch our breaths, and collectively scream, "WHAT?" Because, I mean, what? It's not even that I'm stereotyping a fashion magnate. Which I could. And it's not even like I'm saying that the only thing vague about his effeminacy is how much the word "vague" sounds like the word "faygeleh." No, I'm not saying either of those things. I'm saying that the man, quite literally, inasmuch as such a thing can be literal anywhere in the world, actually lives his life overlooking Lake Homo. So I'm not trying to make any libelous implications, because I want people to like me and give me a lot of money. But I am saying that Stephen's wife should avoid going swimming. Because it's getting on dinnertime. And he wouldn't want his beard to get wet. But he doesn't have a beard, you say? Look again. Look again.
Out on the lanai of the house, the ladies enjoy some champagne, because that's clearly what they need right now. For their challenge, they each try on their street-bought outfits and show themselves outside. April strides out first. She's wearing a dead goat collected from the countryside around her neck, and knee-high boots that aren't so much "whore" as they are "whore-like." Stephen moves right on to Yoanna, who doesn't think she did as good a job as she thinks she should. Shandi wears a skirt cut at a forty-five degree angle at the bottom, and Steven thinks it's great she's showing her legs. With absolutely zero fanfare, he picks Shandi as the winner. Yoanna cops to feeling disappointed, but Shandi chooses Yoanna to share her glare in the winner's circle. And Shandi -- who feels as La Traviata as the soundtrack suddenly becomes -- leads the way into the dining room. Shandi and Yoanna are placed at a grand table in the middle of room with the rest of the guests, and Mercedes and April are hilariously relegated to a kids' table with two wooden chairs in the room. There are about eight people around the table that we never get to meet, so let's cut over to the other table, where Mercedes swats at her face and complains, "I have, like, a bug in my eye or something." The bug continues to torment Mercedes, who leaps up to the pearl-clutching horror of the people in the juxtaposition, who speak of their favorite models. Kate Moss. Christy Turlington. Shandi can't think of one. She's thinking of later tonight, when she has to swim the Como Channel and tell Eric before they go. Before they leave, though, Fairchild hands Shandi the Tyra Mail, which she reads aloud: "You've gotten to know each other very well. Tomorrow, you'll get to know each other even better." April wonders if the personal nature of that note indicates that Tyra knows what happened the night, and my answer remains staunchly the same: Stephen Fairchild's wife is one very unhappy woman.
Oy. On the lanai. Shandi holds a cell phone and stands outside Il Zolofti, sounding genuinely terrified. Eric (I think she hit the wrong Eric on her speed dial, because that guy who picked up sounds a lot like Eric Nicholson) offers a two-note "Hey-ay." He's super. Thanks for asking. But not for long. Shandi volleys back in a much quieter voice, telling him, "I don't know how to start this." Panic grows in Eric's voice. "Just please tell me what you did." And then, an actual, pained, animal-with- tire-tracks- across-its-hide whine: "Tell me." Shandi does it Twenty Questions style, hinting, "The worst possible thing I could do." Hoo boy. She f'ed him. And I guess this could have been edited all wonkily, but I really don't think it was. Eric asks, "You had sex?" Shandi says, "Yeah." Well, that's pretty clear, isn't it? Let's see if there's more! She's pretty much hunched over in a fetal position as Eric tells her that she's changed, screeching that he can't be with someone who cheated on him. And, well. Yeah. Eric: "You think about how we wanted to be together forever?" Well, yeah. "You stupid bitch!" Well, no need to make it personal. And then he hangs up, while Shandi lies on the porch wailing with guilt and grief. I guess she won't mind much now if he goes to the movies with Lauren.
Back on the well-tended shores of Lake Homo, the girls return to Stephen's back porch to find Jay "I'll Give You Fish, I'll Give You Candy, I'll Give You Everything I Have In My Hand, Give Me, Give Back My" Manuel there to tell them about their photo shoots: two teams, with April and Mercedes on one team, and Yoanna and Shandi on the other. "This is no piece of cake, girls," he says, tangentially chastising Yoanna's midriff. "It's difficult, because you can't outshine the other...we're going to do very long, Italian, straight weaves." Hair montage. They all are given exactly the same hair that they had before they received their makeovers. Anyway. And, apparently, the hair is the only accessory, and the photo shoot is nude. April is excited about it, noting, "[Mercedes and I] might not be as high-fashion as [Shandi and Yoanna], but when I think of the boys back home, who they'd rather see naked on top of each other, I have a feeling it might be us." Totally the point. Which is neither here nor there. Because Jay has to call his wife.
"Yoanna is definitely paying attention," Jay tells us, impressed that she was able to hide certain parts of herself behind Shandi's finger. Oh, no, I'm sorry. That's actually all of Shandi. Jay, meanwhile, seems unimpressed that Shandi doesn't seem to be paying attention. Meanwhile, Mercedes and April pose in a door frame, April "trying to take over my job," according to poor, put-upon Jay, as he notes that she's trying to art-direct her own shoot. Jay says that Mercedes seemed lost and didn't like how April was bossing her around. Mercedes looks like a deer trapped in her own headlights, and celebrates when the thing is over, while April can't wipe the control-freak sneer off of her face. The one saving grace is that it will be much, much easier for her to pack if none of her belongings are on her back at the exact moment the judges decide it's time for her to go.
A van (or is it called a "vanspa"?) carries the girls to an outdoor café, and I suddenly can't wait to leave Milan. When they arrive there, they meet a waiting Tyra "Is That 'Shake Ya Body' On Your MP3 Playa, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me" Banks, who offers hugs and pretends she speaks Italian. I think this night is supposed to be a "girls night out" kind of thing, because we cut around to them being really dishy, as introduced by Yoanna asking, "What did we not talk about that evening?" Arctic drilling. Well, you didn't. Stop looking at me like that.
April: "You know how you guys think I'm tense in that room? That's sexual tension!" They whoop and holler because Tyra is Carrie, Yoanna is Miranda, Mercedes is Charlotte, Shandi is Samantha, and April is the show itself. Tyra asks if they want advice on anything specific, and Shandi all sheepishly pipes up, "I have a personal question. Have you ever cheated on anyone?" Tyra fixes her with a very incredulous death glare and responds that she's never cheated on anyone, but that she's been cheated on. But, see, she's learned a lesson. From a box of dirty fortune cookies from Spencer Gifts: "I always tell my man: Flirt so much with a girl, then come home and do me." What fun is it to add "in bed" if the whole thing is already in bed? Shandi starts to tear up, and Tyra asks with genuine curiosity if Shandi's boyfriend cheated on her. Wrong victim. Tyra: "You cheated on him?" Oh, she doesn't seem happy. She seems almost judge-y enough to deliver this small speech, using illogic so circular and dreamlike I looked up at the end of it and was naked in class. Fine. Here it is: "Everybody's messed up, Shandi. I'm not judging you. I think that we need to fight against our carnal desires, and sometimes they slip, but I don't see it as the end of the world. I understand that people do become attracted to other people, y'know, in the moment. And it's all about your relationship, and how open your relationship is and how honest you can be with one another." In other words: buy my single.
Il Zolofto. Tomorrow is another elimination. But first, it's time for Shandi's nightly ego smash, as she calls Eric. He sounds a little more subdued, his vocal register having returned from "British royalty greeting each other" (Helloooooooo!) and has settled into a more manageable "British royalty offering one another tea." (Would you like some tea?) He asks her, "Do you want to stay in this relationship?" She does. He tells her to bust her ass to get a contract: "I'm mad at you, but it's subsiding, okay? I don't want you to give up." "It's subsiding"? "IT'S SUBSIDING"? Now, look. I realize I can't be in every relationship. In fact, recent statistics on the matter would support the fact that I can't be in any relationship. But this I know: Shandi went to Italy and f'ed a dude on a Vespa. Well, I mean, he wasn't technically operating the Vespa at the time of the f'ing, but the point is the same: buy Tyra's single.
Cereminato Eliminato. IMG. Jane. Sephora. Try the eye cream. It's amazing. Judges. Stephen Fairchild is the guest, and he administers the individual evaluations this week: "What we'd like to do is pretend you just got off a plane in Italy." Are there heads Photoshopped onto construction paper? Because that, they might be able to imagine. "All you have is the pants you're wearing, some shoes, and a t-shirt. From the plane, immediately you're gonna go to a wicked party." Along with the t-shirts, we're told, they also have scissors, ribbon, safety pins, and pens. I'm sorry, did their carry-on luggage get accidentally switched with MacGyver's? But never mind, as they are all given blue shirts that they have to reimagine. As blue shirts with dry-erase marks on them.
Shandi goes first, explaining that she cut off one of the shoulders to show some skin, but not in a penetrative sex kind of way. She also tied a black ribbon around her neck. Tyra digs it, Nigel calls her "inspirational," Janice compliments her shoulders, and Eric is going to go to a movie with Lauren.
Yoanna is up , and she explains that she wanted something "simple and classic," so to that end ties a ribbon around her left shoulder like she's campaigning to raise awareness for midriff rights or something. Janice thinks it looks like a straitjacket. Nigel wants Yoanna to take it somewhere "sexual." No, he doesn't. He wants her in a potato sack. But he doesn't want her to be allowed to eat potatoes.
April has made what looks like two shirts into a top and a bottom and has cut a wide swath of fabric out of one side of the shirt. Janice thinks it's more of a nightclub look. Weren't they going to a party? I forgot the plot of the challenge. Does Shandi totally f MacGyver? Drawing a blank, here.
Mercedes gets a Janice "A+" for her shirt, which Mercedes made into a plunging neckline jobby with shoulder straps. It does look pretty good, I have to say. Tyra thinks it looks like a real designer did it. Stephen wants Mercedes to come work for him. ["But to come cut for him, he is careful to say, not model. Because he doesn't want her as a model." -- Wing Chun] Mercedes offers what I think she thinks sounds like "grazie," I think.
Tyra reintroduces us to the lovely pictures they took on Lake Como, and I swear you can hear the laughter from the panel. Someone please tell me I'm right? Shandi and Yoanna step forward first, and are shown their best picture. Nigel calls it "very Helmut Newton-esque," and if you don't know what that means, I remember five minutes ago when I didn't really, either. Janice thinks Yoanna looks fantastic, but there is a consensus that Shandi's face looks a little pained. Mercedes and April look like "sisters," but Tyra worries that April overdirected the shoot. Janice warns not to do that, because "they don't like it." Janice? Have you ever cheated on anyone?
Janice frets about Yoanna's "rolls of skin," but says that in her nude shot, she doesn't even see it. ["No waistband = no back fat. Ladies, take a note." -- Wing Chun] Tyra says that it's because she's a "good model," so she knows how to position herself correctly and make the best of her assets. Shandi's legs look great, according to Janice, and Nigel reiterates that she's "Helmut Newton-esque." Jesus. Get off it. Some ladies are naked without being "Helmut Newton-esque." And dammit, Janice, where are you for the follow-up quip: "Better than Yoanna, who's a bit more Fig Newton-esque." But she didn't say that. And I haven't been hired for the panel yet why, exactly?
April thinks too much. But Stephen's never been here before, so he came to that conclusion completely on his own. But he does make the fantastic observation, "She's trying to depict a model how she's seen it in a movie." Nigel thinks she's gone "from strength to strength," but Tyra accuses him, "You just like that ass." And Mercedes, according to Stephen, has too-short legs. Nigel thinks that Mercedes was great in the commercial and the music video, but that "the fashion industry's not gonna get it." Which causes Janice to hear a non-contextual, "You're crazy, Nigel." Which I will start saying indiscriminately to everyone I know.
Four girls. Three pictures. You see the problem here? I sure don't. Yoanna is first up -- "the epitome of Italian sexiness" -- but she still needs to work on that sexiness in person. Shandi is . She gives hope "to young girls who are hiding behind glasses." But they want to know if she really wants it. Mercedes and April please step forward. Awww, they're holding hands. Tyra tells Mercedes that she's gotten very high-fashion, but that they're still not sure. April poses better than all the other girls, but, y'know, she's too mechanical. Which is why she's off on a big mechanical plane, back to Non-Model-Ville. Tears and hugs abound, and April tells us in a teary confessional, "I don't understand. I always win everything." Way to ingratiate yourself. "I'm gonna be a top model anyway," she tells us petulantly. "It's my calling." No disassemble, Stephanie.