Episode Report Card Potes: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Blue Hawaii
By Potes | Season 13 | Episode 8 | Aired on 10.28.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The episode begins with Tyra and some guys in hazmat suits coming to the models' house to quarantine it on account of extreme nastiness. There are dirty dishes and clothes everywhere and ants, and Tyra tells the models that it's condemned and they can't live there anymore. But this is okay, because they're going to be moving to the fashion capital of… Hawaii? In some ways it's kind of refreshing that they're not even trying to appear legitimate anymore. It also seems like this all might just be an excuse for Tyra to show off her new bikini body in a backyard luau.
Once in Hawaii, the girls move into yet another amazing house. Newsflash: Erin is incredibly annoying. This of course must come as a shock to you. The girls head to the beach to meet surfers/models Sofia Beschen and Buzzy Kerbox. They will get surfing lessons, which ostensibly will help them with balance and body awareness. They manage to ride some waves fairly capably, and sadly there are no sharks in sight. As the models ruminate on their beachy fun, Jay shows up to remind them that they're not on vacation. It's time for a photo shoot challenge. The girls will have to surf in tandem with a couple of hot dudes, and must try to work it on the waves. Poor Laura burns to a crisp like a piglet in a skillet (her own words! Who fries a piglet?) before our eyes, despite wearing SPF 80. Generally, this challenge is a very wobbly affair, and it is Erin who deservedly wins. She gets a helicopter tour of the island of Maui, and chooses Brittany and Nicole to accompany her despite hating both of them. The tour looks pretty awesome, but Erin is disappointed that she hasn't won "a thing." She annoys everyone by saying this, because of course she comes off as a spoiled brat. Nonetheless, she maintains that she'd rather have jewelry.
And then there's this. The girls head to a sugarcane field for their photo shoot, and learn that Tyra is their photographer yet again. She and Jay explain that there are a lot of biracial kids in Hawaii -- known as "hapa" -- and for this week's shoot the girls will have to portray a blending of two very different and distinct races. Laura is Mexican and Greek; Erin is Tibetan and Egyptian; Sundai is Moroccan and Russian; Brittany is Native American and East Indian; Jennifer is Botswanan and Polynesian; Nicole is Malagasy and Japanese. Basically, the models are in blackface. And the styling involves, for example, Brittany wearing a giant headdress and a bindi. And, um… is this okay? Really? In any event, Nicole is once again perfect, and Jennifer also does well. Laura picked a good week to get sunburned since she's covered in brown makeup. She does just fine. Sundai looks like a fierce 12-year old in a Gap Kids ad, but manages to squeak by. Erin and Brittany are in the bottom two. Despite Erin being an insecure pill, she manages to hang on for another week as Brittany gets sent back to nerd world.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: There was teleprompter trickery and madness galore at an Insider interview challenge, while the Cover Girl commercial had the girls going from stiff (Rae) to stressed out (Erin). In the end, we knew that Rae's no personality edit had doomed her from the start. Six bitches remain!
In the post-elimination limo, Jennifer tells Erin that she knew she'd be in the bottom two but wouldn't be sent home. It's this type of passive-aggressive camaraderie that the vile Erin truly deserves. To her credit, however, she agrees and says that her commercial was horrible. She tells us that she got stressed and frustrated, and we flash back to Nigel giving her the what-for at judging. Erin interviews that she's only eighteen, but needs to get better at shutting off her negative emotions and getting down to business. Meanwhile, Brittany tells us that she thinks of Erin as a whiny sixteen year old. This differs from reality only in that Erin is eighteen. Brittany, a wizened twenty-one, says that she's different from everyone in the house -- she knows herself, feels confident, and is more well-rounded. She also differentiates herself from the rest of the models by being able to add.
The girls return home to find their house covered in red tape with the words "danger" and "do not enter." Girl-on-girl crime scene? Perhaps. Two guys in Hazmat suits sort through crusty underwear next to signs that say "condemned." The girls are freaked out but, as always, plucky enough to barge through the tape. Inside they find Tyra pretending to paint a condemned sign on the wall. She wears a couture Hazmat suit with no mask, perhaps because she can smize away any truly toxic airborne substances. Tyra tells the girls that this is the most disgusting Top Model house she's ever seen. And you know how grimy these girls can get. Because the house is so disgusting, Tyra had to bring the Hazmat guys in to quarantine it. And then, much like Tabatha on one of her salon takeovers, Tyra gives a tour of the grossness. There are dirty dishes -- and perhaps a file folder? -- in the sink, and a pan with crusted-on egg bits sits on the stove. Gigantic cinnamon rolls loom near, glazed with nefarious intent. Tyra tells the girls that if you soak a pan in water, nasty egg bits will come off with ease. Life lesson: learned.
They move on from the kitchen into one of the bedrooms, where Sundai's clothes have exploded from her suitcase next to all manner of empty shelves and drawers. Tyra says that the pile of clothes is like home for a rat, then lays rat-like in the pile. She tells the girls that she's lived in models' apartments in Paris and New York, with eight girls at a pop, and they were never this bad. That's because the other models got freaked out about Tyra wiggling rat-like through all their belongings and so put them away on the regular. There are clumps of hair and dirty tissues on the floor, and a little coterie of ants in the shower. Ants in the shower is pretty intense. I can't even imagine what things were really like when Toccara kept that rotisserie chicken by her bed.