Okay, quick programming note: I have absolutely no idea what order the girls went down in, so there will be no spoilers in these recaps on account of my not having watched Season 1, because I was on the wrong side of history and I thank UPN (I know!) for steering me right in all of my entertainment-related decisions since that early error. Thanking UPN! I know! So, that said, no spoilers and no advance knowledge of anything from me. Except that the winner is Adrianne. But come on. Everyone knew that. Right? RIGHT? Hey, come back here! Or at least remember that I prefer my hate mail proofread. Thanks.
And now...pack your bags, y'all, we're going to Season 1. Sorry. Last time. Yeah. RIGHT.
"I constantly have people coming up to me asking me how can they get into the field of modeling," goes the syntactically-challenged introduction of Tyra "The 'S' Is For Super And The 'U' Is For Unique" Banks. During this heartfelt introduction to her "Tyra Banks: Saving The World From Wal-Mart Brand Apparel, One Misguided Skort At A Time" PSA, we, the entirely female and/or gay viewing audience are treated to smokin' shots of Tyra frolicking in a skimpy bathing suit in the water wearing only said skimpy bathing suit, what the lord gave her, and a thought bubble that appears just above her head reading, "But what I really want to do is executive produce." Back at the intro, Tyra thinks on her comment from above, finishing the thought, "That's one reason why I started this show" -- the other reason, of course, as a means of working off the community-service hours from the time no one likes to talk about when she tried to have Naomi Campbell killed with an errantly-hurled set of hot rollers -- "America's Top Model." With the title spoken and branding efforts fully in place, some faux-techno rabble kicks up and the screen is filled with images of Tyra. Tyra on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Tyra in lingerie. Two Tyras posing together. Three Tyras and a Baby. Jason Robards and Martin Balsam in the classic 1970 Pearl Harbor film Tyra! Tyra! Tyra!. Take heart, future supermodels of the world. It may be a long road ahead, but from the look of it, your industry competition is limited entirely to one person. So show some damn deference, unless a meeting with the business end of some hot rollers sounds like your idea of a good day on the catwalk.
"I launched a nationwide search," Tyra continues. And, y'know, I thought that was her with the flyers and the scotch tape affixing a flyer to the bulletin board at my local coffee shop, but I was walking really quickly because people with flyers in my neighborhood are to be stringently avoided as a general rule because no, I'm sorry, but I still do not have a moment to spare for you, Greenpeace, so stop asking me that every day before I divest you of one of your twee Earth-circle button and use the pointy end of it to poke a baby dolphin. But it's not Tyra's fault, when she's the one out there day in and day out, campaigning for the prettification of upper thighs and skin complexions, rather than some dumb forest I'll only get eaten by a bear if I bother to go to, anyway. So let's allow her to continue, please? "People sent tapes from all over the country." In a white, plain-text font I'll just politely refer to as "Default" (and impolitely refer to as "High School Video Yearbook"), city names come Star Wars-ing at me, accompanied by shots of one girl in each of the highlighted cities: a low-slung-jeans-wearing skank (is that Nicole?) struts out in LA, which isn't surprising, what with the fact that "City Of Low-Slung-Jeans-Wearing Skanks" is etched onto the Los Angeles crest in Latin. And you thought it was a dead language. Somnium, balatro! A girl who won't win gets smiley in Compton; a belly-shirted spitfire gives us her signature walk in Dallas; a Yale student failing all of her classes shoots for something other than ending up on the pole in New Haven, a girl walks toward the camera in Chicago. And Hartford. And Los Angeles. Ah, yes. From L.A. to L.A., unbridled talent abounds. Two shots (Hi, Margie!) turn into four (Hi, Alice!) turn into sixteen (tell me quick about Hugo and Kim!) turn into thirty-six, as a "with additional directing by" credit appears somewhere far down on Mike Figgis's IMDb entry. The action tops out at eight rows across and eight rows down of audition footage, and if I've ever been glad for math, it was for teaching me the short cuts to know how many The Top Model Bunch squares there were on my television without my having to count each of them individually. And you always say the math you learned in school has no bearing on your actual life. Well, you do. Dear multiplication tables in my Trapper Keeper folder: let's never fight again. Over the whole of this geometric melee appear the words "Thousands of Tapes were Submitted," because, when in doubt on a title, capitalize every other word. Look at how well it worked for The bible. Or America's Top model.
"You are like an angel," Adrianne tells Tessa as they sit in a corner of the house and do some serious smoking. "As soon as I heard, 'Does anyone else smoke,' I was like, 'Aaaaaah!'" It looks in print like she's yelling, but the actual stage direction is "as if the heavens were opening up to bring them closer to their god after they died from smoking-related illnesses." And, I mean, I love smokers. And though I haven't actually inhaled from the end of a (lit, and long story) cigarette in over two years, I still walk outside after dinner with the smokers because, well, smokers are cooler. Oh, come on! You were thinking it! But as Adrianne and Tessa enjoy some friendly conversation, Robin walks to the smoking corner and is like, "Y'all, you know, I don't mind y'all killin' y'all selves, but mama wanna live!" Shannon stands by her den mother with a goofy grin on her face, knowing that she can just fan the smoke away with her latest copy of Non-Threatening Boys magazine and think about her wonderfully intact hymen.
"We had a couple of special visitors," Elyse tells us. "One of whom was a personal trainer." The great Jon Silverman, personal trainer to, well, them, enters the premises carrying his own big-ass scale just because he can. And though from his name alone the great Mr. Silverman sounds like he may be more adept at bowing low over my gefilte fish and telling me that they are now "pareve" in honor of the holy day, instead he is a tough-talkin', square-jawed, America-lovin' (the flag patch on his vest indicates he'd be a total ringer at the -- wait for it -- Presidential Fitness Test) guy. Who shows his machismo. By critiquing flaws on women. Weigh-in! Giselle (who? Exactly) tells us that she felt awfully self-conscious when Jon announced everyone's weight out loud, including her self-conscious 136. Adrianne, the winner, clocks in at two pounds fewer. Elyse is 5'10" and 114, which causes her to ask, "Am I the lightest one?" Lighter than Robin, who feels "a bit awkward" at landing a 165. She and I could totally pudding-wrestle! I have no idea what that means.
, a specialist in the fine art of bikini waxing speaks with a clipped, Germanic accent as we're treated to incredibly detailed shots of twelve girls having hot wax ripped from their coochies. Robin confesses that only her husband and her gynecologist had ever been "down there" before, but she submits to it anyway because it says it's fine in the always overriding Book of Tyra.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Elyse takes over proctoring duties again, and I become doubly dubious of anyone in that Flatotel's ability to get past the lowly Blue Level of SRAs. Because you can't hide from how hard the Silver Level is, but first you've got to get there, see. "You have a photo shoot for J.Lo Swimwear tomorrow morning. Be in the hotel lobby at 7:45 AM sharp." Adrianne screams a very loud "Holy shit" that is not edited out or compromised in any way, because she rocks the J.Lo Swimwear. The girls all scream because they think they know what J.Lo Swimwear is, because that is the power of branding.
The montage continues as Tyra tells us that her criteria for individually selecting each of the girls were "originality, creativity, I'm looking for humor. All colors, all shapes, all sizes." Except, of course, for the fatties. We cut to Tyra sitting in a white bathrobe telling someone, "[Pack your bags, y'all] You're comin' to L.A.!" as if she sat down with her coffee and scone after a long soak and was all, "Now, to call each of the girls individually" before engaging someone else from the production team's help and admitting, "I've never actually seen one of these things used when it wasn't being picked up by one of my esteemed colleagues and thrown at her assistant's head, so...little help?" But nothing to fret, as whoever is the one giving the good news elicits a series of shrieks and screams from the girls who are headed westward. Fonty The Intro Font shares the uncontextualized information of "20 Semi-finalists," which must be the number of girls going to Los Angeles. "What I'm looking for is a star," Tyra finishes up. "That's all." Totally. With you all the way. No fatties.
An establishing shot of the Los Angeles smogline cuts over to the Mondrian Hotel (8440 Sunset Blvd., but it doesn't matter, because you can't afford it anyway), where we find the twenty semi-finalists (er, sorry: "20 Semi-finalists") emerging from a large white van that might inspire film fans to ask if you're a size fourteen, but chances are, if you're stepping out of that van, you're totally not. Since this season had no cooperation from Mother Nature helping it to an auspicious start, it is pissing down rain in L.A., which is so weird, because if God didn't love models, why on earth would He have made them so dern purdy? So each of the girls steps out of the van, as a white-suited gentleman holds an umbrella over each of their heads. But, as is so typical of this country's approach to our fair blue-collar toilers, the gentlemen's face is blurred out, this episode clearly having been produced before Farnsworth Bentley, the Rosa Parks of personal valets, liberated the hearts and minds of all those who have guarded the rich or powerful or semi-final against the terrible condition of rain or not rain.
"I couldn't sleep last night," says Nicole, age twenty-two, from Murietta, California, a tall blonde with ringlet-y curls and a physique built for the pole. Christina, age eighteen, Little Falls, Minnesota, proclaims herself "just a small-town girl," and I mentally eliminate her right off the bat for her misguided wont to represent herself through the lyrical prowess of Steve Perry. No matter how long you end up staying, Christina, you always shoulda been gone. Knowin' how you made me feel. Well, you shoulda been gone. And so on.
Luckily, Kesse, age twenty-one, from North Little Rock, Arkansas, does not portray herself like the rest of the streetlight people living just to find emotion, except that she totally does: "small-town girl" is how she introduces herself as well. Ebony, age eighteen, from Cumberland, Maryland, tells us that this is her "first time anywhere west of Maryland." Which has pretty much restricted her movement since her mid-'80s birth to a lovely rest stop off of I-95 called Maryland House (a place so sharply remembered in my road-trippin' family's collective memory that, according to my mother, it was the first place she was glad would be spared when she found out that half of Delaware and southward would be safe from scaaaaaaary weeeeeeeather in The Day After Tomorrow) and, maybe, I guess, like, Poland.
The competition doesn't accept men, so let's just face it when we say that Justine doesn't have a prayer.
America's Last Top Model Adrianne, age twenty, is a tall, competition-winning brunette from Joliet, Illinois, and she does endear us to her immediately by nasally drawling (you'll decide it's cute too right now if you like the feeling that comes from being on the right side of history), "I'm with my kind. A bunch of Amazon women with big feet, and I feel like I finally fit in for once." The same sentiment with opposite humility is offered by Natalie, age twenty-one, from Riverside, California, who shares with us her hopes that all of the girls were going to be "short and fat and ugly." Which would always happen in a modeling competition. This fall on UPN: Pig Party. Twenty-five frat guys woo one wiener dog to the [insert Greek letters, here...at the college I went to, coed a cappella groups were the fraternities] formal, only to taunt and harass her once she's arrived. Steal my idea and I'll have your fucking head, Fleiss. And stop self-Googling in the middle of the night. It's embarrassing.
Nighttime in L.A., which is exactly like daytime except cooler by exactly one degree. A casting director named Michelle Mock (which I won't do, because I'm certain she's lovely) sits at the head of a long banquet table in what I think we're being told is still the Mondrian. She tells the 20 Semi-finalists how special they are, seeing as she and her esteemed colleagues "watched so many tapes. I mean, thousands." Do they really have to watch every one? Because it's really mean of those girls who secretly, deep down inside know they won't win to send in a tape. I mean, carp on all I want after a particularly boozy karaoke rendition of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" that I'm a natural for American Idol, I'm...not. But I am pretty freakin' good. I even remember to throw in the wry but forceful "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elton John!" from the far superior George Michael live version, even if I'm singing it by myself. ["Which is why you're not a natural for American Idol: you're too good." -- Wing Chun] Michelle reminds us of the rules at this point in the game: "But remember. There's only room for ten in the house. So that means ten of you guys will be going with us to New York and ten will be returning home." Ooooh. Bad cop.
Ooooh. Good cop! Bedecked in a skintight, light brown unitard like she's going for a Halloween costume of the milk chocolate Hershey's Miniature but forgot the label, the logo, and her pride, Tyra walks in and takes over the room with a wave and a smile and a flip of her ample bangs. The girls scream in nine-octaves-above-middle-C unison, a confessional by the debate-club champ (because of how well she uses the language) Kesse letting us know, "She's even more beautiful in person than she is on the pictures [sic], I think." A twenty-six-year-old named Karen from Memphis tells us that it was "amazing" to see Tyra because they weren't expecting her, while I think it's amazing that I'm typing so quickly considering my unformed digits and lack of a word processing tool here in the amniotic fluid because if Karen is twenty-six, I'm still in utero.
Tyra has remembered one significant detail of each girl's audition tape, from one girl's whorish "motorcycle" to another girl writhing on the floor to one girl's "sexual alphabet," which is just like sex, except instead it's spelling. Tyra counsels the 20 Semi-finalists to be "gorgeous" and "great" in their upcoming interviews, and takes her leave while kicking a dance move even the greats dare not attempt without proper padding. Ladies and gentlemen: I give you...Tyra Banks doing the Roger Rabbit. Dear TiVo: Do it again! Love, Djb.
Fonty The Intro Font welcomes us to "Audition Day One." Four people sit at a table, including Tyra in the middle, and welcome their first Semi-finalist into the room: Elyse, age twenty, Albuquerque. She's a pixie-ish little thing, and...well, if you've ever wondered what my hair looks like (and, really, you haven't, but go with me here because I love Rudy's on Sunset and they don't need my help but I want to get them as much business as possible), I just got it cut on Saturday and it looks exactly like that. Down to the strand. It's like she stole it directly off my head. Which brings me to the part of the recap in which I pretend not to draw any correlation between wanton style theft and the fact that Elyse is totally the gelfling Middle-Earth Winona Ryder. She's totally the kind of girl I would have loved in junior high, because of the whole part of things where she looks like a boy. And she'd want to play doctor. Because she wants to be a doctor! She tells Tyra she doesn't think modeling is something she can do for her entire life, "whereas medicine is." She states the fortune-cookie logic that "medical school can be deferred indefinitely, whereas being twenty years old cannot." Everyone laughs uproariously at the existential foibles Father Time has inflicted upon the human race, while the Faust-like nature of Tyra's non-aging body puts into motion the ways in which she'd like to executive produce Dr. Smarty right on back to New Mexico.
Ebony is twenty-four years old and forty feet tall, with a shiny shaved head astronauts use to locate New York from space with only the help of the naked eye. She's also a tall, bald, African-American lesbian, and on a reality television show, that's as far as the characterizations go. She's not randomly also allowed to be an heiress to a lollipop fortune or really love the music of Neil Young. Lesbian. Black. Defiant. Gotcha. Tyra asks her how she feels about expressing her lesbianism on television, and Ebony tells us a story about how when she was in high school, the girls wouldn't change with her in the locker room, so she went and changed with the boys. Because the moral of this story is that high-school boys love alternate sexualities. Thus the theater department/football team co-sponsored parties I always found myself attending after we wrapped rehearsal for Carousel. Er, I mean, "after tackling practice." My god. What am I even talking about? "Tackling practice"? Never mind. Ebony was right. They didn't need me. Those boys had no problem being totally gay all on their own.
"Hi, everyone, my name is Katie," says Katie, age twenty-one, also from that town in Illinois with the Waffle House and the Motel Six and the proximity to the interstate highway system specifically designed to take you somewhere else. She fears that the world sees her as a priss, but she takes pains to let us know that there's a softer side to Katie. A softer, more verbatim side than I could even do justice to meddling in the glory of the words: "People don't know the side of me, like, I love animals. No one knows that I'm an animal activist, that I'm with PETA. I do help them and email Congress. And, like, the wolves, and, like, trying to save them. Like, I just saved five polar bears." Just now? Like in one of those emails where you make money just sitting perfectly still? We cut to Katie's audition tape, where she shows us pillows slipcovered in zebra and leopard prints, and even if it's not actually their hides she's used (and who's to say that's not her version of saving them?), she's still keeping warm sleeping under a big ol' pile of irony. Eco-friendly or not, that bedroom still looks like a brothel from the set of the ill-advised trilogy capper, Babe III: Hit Me, Babe, One More Time. Her audition tape declines to show us her personal computer, the nerve center of her activism where she's all, "To: Congress, Re: Wolves." But we know it's there.
Oy, Natalie. Her mom was on drugs and she has forty siblings and she spent so much time in foster care that they probably legally changed her last name to "Foster" and she wants to be a supermodel because, and I quote, "I have these people who are looking up to me, and if I don't succeed, what are they gonna do?" Eat...bugs? I don't know the answer. Is that the answer? Seriously.
Shannon is eighteen and she's from Franklin, Ohio, and the music changes abruptly to a song I'll call "La La Lee Lee, Everybody Loves The Lord" in a way that makes you believe she could win the whole thing, if we didn't all already know that the whole thing was won by Adrianne Curry. Oh, come ON! She came to dinner during the second season! You had to know! Shannon tells us she was "saved" at the age of ten, before which she had a rap sheet taller than she was. No, not really. She's also a virgin. So she says. But no. Not really.
If we averaged the distance between Justine's eyes and the distance between Shandi's eyes together, we would have as a result the perfect distance between two human eyes. Not that I know who Shandi is yet. Because we're in The Past.
Kesse is "not here to make friends." Too bad that means all of her new housemates won't be honored with the same story about how her mom got shot, then.
Adrianne Curry is the winner, Nicole is a professional Shannon impersonator, and Robin went to high school with my great-grandmother. At Prussia High School. Where they learned under the auspices of their teacher. Named Jesus.
Auditions a thing of the past, the girls walk and fret and pray and fret and cry and worry about whether they'll be heading for New York. They crowd together against the wall of a nondescript room as we take quick stock of the twenty girls, including one who we never saw speak or wear anything other than enormous sunglasses, a black beret, and a pink fringe-y scarf, and who will be eliminated by default when the producers discover that she's Janice from the Muppets and can't be a Top Model on account of being made entirely of felt. Tyra enters and lets them know the bad, confusing news: Tyra and the producers could only agree on eight girls, so they'll only be bringing eight to New York. Weird. And here they are. First up is Nicole. Followed by Nicole, Kesse, Elyse, Katie, Ebony, Adrianne (because how else would she win?), and Shannon. We celebrate the future by looking back to the only person of significance who did not get chosen, as Justine tells us, "I just kinda wanna go, y'know?" Well, hooray for the rarity we call universal consensus.
Because she's the only one who has proven leadership skills in the "being able to read" arena, Elyse holds their first piece of not-as-yet-named Tyra Mail, and reads, "Welcome to New York. Congratulations on your arrival." Shouldn't such umbrella flattery be reserved for an airline pilot somewhere? "Enclosed are the keys to your penthouse. Head on upstairs, find your beds, claim your space, and explore your new home." The girls cheer for midtown architecture, and we montage up forty some-odd flights to the penthouse of the Flatotel, a word that should be at least two words that I hate almost as much as I dislike the word Swissotel, which originated in Switzerland instead of, er, Flatonia. What the hell do I know? Ask Winona. Each room has its own fancy aesthetic style based on the look of a major-market city, including Paris (City of High Fashion), Milan (City of New Faces), Tokyo (City of Avant Garde Fashion), London (City of Trendy Fashion), and Miami (City of Sexy Fashion). And while I agree with precious few of those denotations (you show me one sustaining, sexy thing that's ever come out of Miami that doesn't have a seedy undercurrent of drugs and button-less sportsjackets and I'll say "Cunanan" a hundred times fast without stopping), it's probably best they went with these recognizable cities rather than any of those myriad fringe cities where fashion also arguably lives, but really doesn't. And really, no one wants to live in a room named after Amsterdam (City of Red-Light-Matching Fashion) or Berlin (City of Completely Politically-Free Fashion, Because They're Feeling Guilty Enough About The Last Fifty Or So Years Already, Thank You Very Much) or Bangkok (The Crème De La Crème Of The Chess World In A Show With Everything But Yul Brynner). Elyse bunks up with Nicole and Katie in the Tokyo room, whereas Kesse, Robin, and Shannon end up together in Milan (where they can unpack their bags, y'all) on account of their good Christian beliefs. "We'll read The Bible together," Shannon chirps, while Robin notes how "ironic" it is that they're all Christian and all in the same room. Totally, totally ironic. Elyse notes that there's a huge divide between the two rooms, due entirely to religion. She tells us she has no interest in quiet time for reading The Bible, noting for character development that she is "a militant atheist." The other girls regard her with casual enjoy-your-trip- to-the-City- Of-Burning-With-Brimstone- Fashion-known- as-The-Hell-Room because religion totally always brings people together.
Shannon introduces her Sisters Christian to a magazine cutout of one Brad Pinkert, a model she looooooooves. She announces that his favorite book is The Bible, but when I Googled him, I discovered that, besides about a million drooly girl blogs where his name often appears on Top Ten Cutest Boy lists surrounded by every imaginable spelling of "Andy Roddick," one of the only other links (which I did not click on, because my computer is Christian) on which his name is featured is entitled, "Hot Young Stars in the Nude." So unless that's a scandalous fake that besmirches his good Christian name, my contention is that the only book other than the Good Book Mr. Pinkert enjoys might just be the checkbook. But I've been wrong before. Anyway, Shannon loves him because he's just like the Lord but with washboard abs.
Noting that godliness is to boringliness, the cameras whisk us back into the room of heathens, where Elyse finds a pullout bed underneath her bed, which she hopes can be used "for boyfriends." But as we've quickly learned from two seasons of this show, (a) clucking hens in testosterone-deprived isolation makes for the best television ever, and (b) if your boyfriend can't be blue-tacked to the wall above your bed, you're not going to see him again until the clip show. Instead, the girls are shepherded into the living room, where Tyra shows up to congratulate them once more and explain, "You guys are the eight finalists. But I like very round numbers." Eight is round. "So what I did was, I did a nationwide search for two more." Eight is just two big circles. It's the roundest number there is. Nobody skates a Figure Ten. Nuh-uh. No point. Not round enough. Elyse confessionalizes, "What?" And, indeed...what? If there were twenty girls to choose from and the producers needed to boot twelve, where did these two other girls come from? It stirs the gumbo in strange, sinful ways. Tyra tries to stir up some excitement as she introduces "Giselle" who, Tyra tells us, is Latina, and Tessa who, Tyra thinks, represents "an exotic variation on a classic blonde look," up to and including the exoticism that comes from being a blonde who has, according to my television's interpretation of it, red hair. ["And a face like a frying pan. A real ugly frying pan." -- Wing Chun] Tyra gives a quickie speech welcoming them again, telling them that they'll be evaluated every week and that one of them will be eliminated. But, to the winner goes the slightly-variant-from-last-season spoils: a modeling contract with Revlon, a fashion spread in Marie Claire, and a contract with "major modeling agency Wilhemina." Everyone claps because noise is pretty.
"You are like an angel," Adrianne tells Tessa as they sit in a corner of the house and do some serious smoking. "As soon as I heard, 'Does anyone else smoke,' I was like, 'Aaaaaah!'" It looks in print like she's yelling, but the actual stage direction is "as if the heavens were opening up to bring them closer to their god after they died from smoking-related illnesses." And, I mean, I love smokers. And though I haven't actually inhaled from the end of a (lit, and long story) cigarette in over two years, I still walk outside after dinner with the smokers because, well, smokers are cooler. Oh, come on! You were thinking it! But as Adrianne and Tessa enjoy some friendly conversation, Robin walks to the smoking corner and is like, "Y'all, you know, I don't mind y'all killin' y'all selves, but mama wanna live!" Shannon stands by her den mother with a goofy grin on her face, knowing that she can just fan the smoke away with her latest copy of Non-Threatening Boys magazine and think about her wonderfully intact hymen.
"We had a couple of special visitors," Elyse tells us. "One of whom was a personal trainer." The great Jon Silverman, personal trainer to, well, them, enters the premises carrying his own big-ass scale just because he can. And though from his name alone the great Mr. Silverman sounds like he may be more adept at bowing low over my gefilte fish and telling me that they are now "pareve" in honor of the holy day, instead he is a tough-talkin', square-jawed, America-lovin' (the flag patch on his vest indicates he'd be a total ringer at the -- wait for it -- Presidential Fitness Test) guy. Who shows his machismo. By critiquing flaws on women. Weigh-in! Giselle (who? Exactly) tells us that she felt awfully self-conscious when Jon announced everyone's weight out loud, including her self-conscious 136. Adrianne, the winner, clocks in at two pounds fewer. Elyse is 5'10" and 114, which causes her to ask, "Am I the lightest one?" Lighter than Robin, who feels "a bit awkward" at landing a 165. She and I could totally pudding-wrestle! I have no idea what that means.
, a specialist in the fine art of bikini waxing speaks with a clipped, Germanic accent as we're treated to incredibly detailed shots of twelve girls having hot wax ripped from their coochies. Robin confesses that only her husband and her gynecologist had ever been "down there" before, but she submits to it anyway because it says it's fine in the always overriding Book of Tyra.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Elyse takes over proctoring duties again, and I become doubly dubious of anyone in that Flatotel's ability to get past the lowly Blue Level of SRAs. Because you can't hide from how hard the Silver Level is, but first you've got to get there, see. "You have a photo shoot for J.Lo Swimwear tomorrow morning. Be in the hotel lobby at 7:45 AM sharp." Adrianne screams a very loud "Holy shit" that is not edited out or compromised in any way, because she rocks the J.Lo Swimwear. The girls all scream because they think they know what J.Lo Swimwear is, because that is the power of branding.
At 7:45, a car leaves the hotel not carrying Shannon, Robin, Ebony, and probably some Christian. The four of them are forced into a taxi while Adrianne tells us that those on time got to go to hair and makeup first, while those who are tardy do not get fruit cup. Man, but these girls have a keen ability to brick on the time for the first photo shoot. Not that I've seen the second season yet, because it's still last year.
Up on a rooftop, the girls stand wrapped in towels on what looks like a bitter winter day in New York. Tyra emerges in a white coat and hat, lording her Stay Puft Marshmallow Model style over the chilled and un-Gortexed. Without wasting time, she calls forward Robin, Kesse, Ebony, and Shannon, chastising them for their lateness and telling them how "upset" that makes her. As punishment, they will be forced to look at Douglas Bizarro, their photographer for the day, who 100% of elementary school children would be able to identify in a photograph, according to a recent screening of Super-Size Me I attended. Bizarro, whose name needs no further explanation, tells the women that "swimwear is shot the season before" and that they'll be doing the rooftop shot on a cold day in New York because challenging challenges are very, very amusing to watch. Tyra cautions them with a little pre-shoot wisdom: "The one most common mistake that new models make is 'the sexier I move, the sexier the picture is going to be.'" She tells them that, instead, it's "all about the face," which is probably why Yoanna was sentenced to six months' worth of rigorous face-training when she won her crown. Tyra continues, "You have to always be thinking about something." She shows the difference between a dead eye, staring off into space, and "an eye that just has some fire," which she demonstrates by...staring off into space. She notes that they must create a character, "kind of like silent movies." She wishes them luck on their first shoot, but the overall sentiment is drowned out by the screeching of New York sirens and the crashing din of Mary Pickford doing ab crunches in her grave until she's strong enough to bust the hell out of there and school Tyra on "kind of like silent movies."
"This happens to be the coldest day in New York City," Bizarro tells us. Adrianne goes first and rocks a yellow bikini. Nicole listens to Bizarro, which is not too hard because she's had speakers installed on the front. Tessa does everything wrong. Robin keeps herself covered until the last possible moment, while Giselle stands off-camera and says that twenty-six is too old. So, basically, fuck you, Giselle. Wait, who the hell is Giselle? Elyse has the depth of a Wheat Thin, so her body heat plummets and she cries. Giselle rips off her blanket and thinks she's all kinds of kick-ass. Katie "couldn't seem to get everything right," according to Team Bizarro, and Shannon believes the Christ ordained her to be a model. Kesse found the whole thing "a learning experience," and Bizarro finds her one of the only ones able to "work the face."
Post-hypothermia dinner at "The Palm," where Elyse tells us she was "dragged from the atheism closet." We find her admitting her lack in a belief of a Higher Power, and Robin tells us in a confessional that this gives her "extreme reservations about [Elyse]," because religion always, always, always brings people together. Elyse fears that she might be alienating herself from a lot of the other girls, but promises, "I'm not going to pretend I don't believe in evolution just so I can be friends with Robin." This is deeply theological chatter for twelve girls in lobster bibs.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! "Tomorrow, nine of you will continue on to become America's Top Model. One of you will be eliminated." Kesse actually does the reading honors, which is nice, but her pronunciation leads me to the understanding that, in fact, "none of you" will be eliminated, which is troubling. It also sounds like, due to no fault of their own, that the remaining nine of them will cumulatively become America's Top Model. A pearl-clutching gasp resonates around the table, ladies-in-waiting faint and are revived by fans, and men lower their monocles to see what could be all the commotion!
Elyse thinks she'll be eliminated because of her poor performance. Tessa worries she's going down for reasons, it turns out, she knows a lot better than I do right now. Er, spoiler. Adrianne doesn't want to go, either. Robin is "anxious and nervous," because she doesn't want to catch a case of atheism, whatever that is.
"I have a panel of supermodels who I totally respect," Tyra tells us while welcoming the twelve ladies into the Model Home. She introduces Janice first, though she clearly she needs no introduction. Her logline identifies her as a "70s supermodel," so the language of "world's first supermodel" hadn't been cemented, capitalized, and cemented at this point, I guess. up is Beau Qullian (Beau WHOllian?), the fashion editor at Marie Claire. To his left is Tyra, and then Kimora Lee Simmons, a former child model who escaped a stint on The Surreal Life by becoming the creative director of Baby Phat, which is a sexy, sexy clothing line that has the word "baby" in it, which makes me ookily, Bible-lovingly nervous. ["She also kept herself in the public eye by marrying rap mogul Russell Simmons and becoming extremely rich and extremely tacky." -- Wing Chun] And, finally, our guest judge this week is Douglas Bizarro, who is also available to entertain at your child's birthday party. Give to his House, y'all. There are sick kids out there who don't have no french fries. Or so is my unclear understanding of the exact nature of what the Ronald McDonald house actually does.
First up for the individual evaluation is Katie. Janice wastes no time before becoming...well, Janice, asking Katie why she had hooked her fingers into her bikini. Tyra and Janice go at it (cat fight! Wheeee!), Tyra arguing that her hands were in that exact position on the cover of Sports Illustrated which, sure as heck, they were. They show it. I don't have it or anything. The thing about the football team from above was a lie. To my infinite sadness.
Kesse loves her picture, which is awfully titty and wouldn't have flown if Bethany had given it, let me just say. Bizarro tells us that is was her "second shot," which means that becoming a model is actually totally easy. Er, NOT easy. It's actually not easy.
Qullian, whose name makes him sound like the school-owning villain of the first third of a Thomas Hardy novel, asks Adrianne what size her foot is. A thousand. Her foot size is a thousand. "Face is good, foot bad," Janice snarks, in a direct quote from her dog-eared copy of Tarzan-esque Insults For Tenderizing Fresh Meat.
Bizarro felt that Nicole "hit it," Janice doesn't like Ebony's "booty," Giselle impressed, Shannon "glows," and Tessa doesn't like to be in little clothes, which leads Janice to the conclusion that she's "choosing the wrong profession." Robin brings to mind the problem, according to Tyra, that "on the top she's not plus-size and on the bottom she is." Ouch. Elyse is too thin. That table is tiny for the five of them.
Janice thinks Robin should be booted straight away, and everyone immediately disagrees. Elyse is too skinny. Kesse is in. Shannon is meh. Nicole is in. Tessa "doesn't have a dominant personality." Katie is a little porny. That's what took me out of the top model game.
And back in they go. In Tyra's hands are nine photos are will go onto the round. Ebony is first. Elyse is . Kesse is still in the running toward becoming America's Top Model. As is Adrianne. And Katie. And Nicole. And Giselle. And Robin. Will Tessa and Shannon please step forward. And, with absolutely no explanation, Tessa is eliminated and she cries to the strains of "A Heart in New York." Which is totally an Art Garfunkel song. Tessa cries and tells us that "everything happens for a reason" as I'm just glad it isn't his cover of "When a Man Loves a Woman." You haven't? Count your blessing and don't buy Fate for Breakfast. Ever.