By Potes
This music(ish)-filled episode begins with teddy bear wars, as Sophie grabs a very sentimental stuffed animal belonging to Laura. It was given to her by her friend who recently died, and so Laura does not react well to Sophie threatening to throw it in the pool. Somehow, though, Kyle gets blamed when the stuffed animal's ear gets ripped off. Not because she ripped it off, and not because she threw it in the pool, but because she kind of stirred up the pool water where the ear was floating, leading it to go further into the pool. I don't know, you guys. It is into this context that Lisa D'Amato enters, and challenges the girls to record and tape their own music video as competing girl groups. They have girl group mentors, the very difficult to understand Nadine Coye from Girls Aloud, and Jessica Sutta from the Pussycat Dolls, who Laura calls, "The best mentor you could possibly hope for." Somewhere, Joni Mitchell does not give a shit.
So, the songs appear to be already written this time, possibly excluding a little series of raps that the girls have to do, each expounding on their name in rhyming couplets. Pot Ledom is involved, I'm sorry to say. The Brits seem to have an edge at least in the recording, in part because Azmarie takes on a really weird "stylized" voice, and Kyle is a complete dullard. Before they can shoot a video, though, there is a very important lesson in booty tooching, taught by Tyra herself. Tyra introduces a "training tooch" string, like a training bra except it's padded underwear. Azmarie, being a self-professed grown-ass woman, is not having it and tells Tyra she's not putting on the butt pad. This is less noble in the context of all the other stupid shit she's already done, and I think we all can agree that no wannabe model is going to get away with making a stand for dignity to the Great and Terrible Tyra Banks. Tyra asks her to leave, because she "can't do this teach" without the training tooch.
So, the tooching lesson. There are good tooches and bad tooches. Hoochie tooches and poochie toochies and smoochie tooches and dookie tooches and goochie tooches and juicy tooches. It's like Tyra is rendering the whole English language meaningless in less than five minutes, isn't it? And then there's a smize dance, including a universal hand size for smizing. At this point in my viewing of this episode, I just slumped into a fetal position on my couch, basically.
Azmarie reintegrates with the U.S. girls later as they work on choreography, and then everyone heads to Playhouse Nightclub to shoot the videos. Again the Brits seem to pull ahead in their performance. Also, Kyle has crazy eyes and Azmarie's ego is getting on Jay's nerves. At panel, we see the two full videos. The song by the upcoming band "Fiercely British" is called "We'll Mash You Up," and basically everyone gets high praise for their performance and artful 15-second raps. The song by the new American sensation "United Sirens of America" is called "Stop, Drop, and Tooch." It sounds like a song written by machines and sung by undead zombies. Catchy, though. And it might be because I viewed this episode after working a 14-hour day, but at this point my notes actually say, "I am getting so much dumber right now."
The Brits are all called first, with Alisha being singled out for best performance of the week. Though Azmarie offers a half-hearted (read: not at all groveling) apology to Tyra for not wearing the training tooch, she is put in the bottom two along with Kyle. And in a bit of a shocker, it's Azmarie who is eliminated! This teaches us all a very important lesson: when in doubt, wear the butt pads.