Props to Potes and Adam.
New York City! Where the streets, according to a brief opening montage scored by the most offensively inoffensive lite-techno-jam since that John Tesh cover of "Everybody Dance Now," are paved with vermin. Raccoons and pigeons crawl on park benches, flocking together in herds and feasting on the tiny crumbs of the stale breads that those of us with civilized, human appetites leave behind. I would kick off this recap in the meanest way possible by straining the metaphor and suggesting that this subtle aesthetic stamp refers back to the mere crumbs a top-model-in-training would deign to eat. But I won't. And you know why? Because everybody knows that a bite of park bench would be absolutely dirty with carbs.
Up in the loftier confines of the Bratotel, the seven remaining ladies sleep the sleep of finely edited slumber, as visions of sugarplums fattening up their competition and forcing them to have to model muumuus and Mom Jeans for the rest of their lives dance in their heads. But alas, b-roll of The Skinny Seven sound asleep cannot engage us for that long -- though I wish they could have held on to at least show us one token shot of Elyse gnawing on her pillow, even though she explicitly gave up dream-eating for Lent because she doesn't want to have that nightmare where she shows up at school naked and find herself standing there looking all hippy -- and soon their trip to the REM show is interrupted by the arrival of Jon "Dumbbell" Silverman, personal trainer to the stars and also to The Skinny Seven. He runs from room to room, though he knows he could run from the actual Tokyo to the actual Miami in the same period of time if called upon to do so because he is fit, people. Jon claps his hands and yells for the ladies to "wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" Again, with the surprise exercise session! Look, Jon. Two things. Thing one: get an "h." Your name deserves one, even if it makes the spelling of it 25% more difficult for you. Thing two: why is every training session on this show depicted as The Surprise Party Of The Damned? They'll be more inclined to exercise if you'd quit dropping fifty-pound Plot Conflict Weights on their sleepy heads. Skinny bitches like being skinny and they're only bitches because...well, think of what happens to your blood sugar when you're hungry. And then replace it with "blood Sweet 'n' Low" or "blood Equal."
"The last elimination was the worst for me," confesses Giselle, as we hop into the sepia-toned not-too-distant-past to find Tyra telling an on-the-bubble Giselle, "If you don't think you're fierce, if you don't think you're hot, if you don't think you're great, then I won't." Tyra shakes her head slightly and her enormous chandelearrings sway back and forth, the Phantom of the Opera yelling "GO!" and Christine getting trapped underneath them as we approach the organ-soaked ending of Act I. Giselle nods slowly in response to Tyra's words as if in agreement, but back in a confessional lets her Riverside County flag (it reads "In Chino we trust" in Latin) fly high and trashy, confiding to us, "Constructive criticism? H'yeah, right." In fairness to Giselle, though, I can't believe Tyra totally schooled her using the old "if you don't look good we don't look good" approach. You don't want your deepest life's lessons being taught to you in the jargon of catchphrases from '80s commercials, although Giselle has clearly already bought into that as a life plan, what with her adherence to her nasty mole and her obvious feeling of "don't leave home without it." Because yes, I am a supermodel myself, thanks, and my skin is a glowing paean of shimmering clarity and my pores are so clear you can receive cable channels by facing me in a southwesterly direction.
It's 8:56 AM at the New York Health & Racquet Club at the corner of Broadway and I've-Never-Been- Anywhere-Near-It Street. The girls are in the middle of a step class, which is where you climb up and down a step because you want to be really fit and in shape (Adrianne) or shake off the one calorie from accidentally swallowing a drop of your own sweat (Elyse) or step up so you can be just that one inspired step closing to your Lord (everybody else). "I bust my balls here every week," Adrianne tells us, standing in the back of the class decked out in her camouflage headband -- oh, my god, where is Adrianne's HEAD? Oh, there it is -- and not understanding the actual origin of "balls" from her statement. Eh. Who am I to say Adrianne doesn't actually have balls? Tee hee. "Balls." Nevertheless, she's flagging just a bit today, and she's unable to complete successfully the aerobic activities of either the Twirly Twirly Twirly Arms (fly up to heaven, Robin! Flyyyyyyyyyyyy!) or the Giant Lead Pipe Shoulder Lift. Craziest. Clue weapon. Ever. Jo(h)n explains that Adrianne had "issues with stomach poisoning" (like the issue of making it up to explain her way out of what was really the tail end of a bender of her anti-drawl drugs, which clearly were a placebo anyway, considering the results) that inhibited her ability to perform at her best. But, Jo(h)n adds, "Her level of commitment, just being there, was impressive." You should've seen how much she was giving it her all when she was lifting the Giant Gun, the Giant Knife, and the Giant Candlestick. But they didn't show that. Because she had taken the secret passageway to the conservatory.
The girls walk (or, in Ebony's case, box -- check it out, it's the weirdest thing) down the steps of the H&RC and out onto the icy, depressing, New York street and back to the Elyse-otel (geddit? Because she's so...oh, never mind). Once we're back upstairs, the attention turns to Ebony, who is standing in front of a bathroom mirror, rubbing her face and yelling, "I'm supposed to make my skin faaaaaaaaaaabulous!" In a confessional, wee land rovers drive around the surface of Ebony's face as she mindlessly brushes away a tiny American flag jammed into her cheek and speaks loudly enough to drown out the sound of a tiny voice radioing back to Ebony's Face Houston that it's one small step for Ebony's Face but a giant leap for Ebony's Face-kind. Amidst this ruckus, she is still able to tell us with all confidence, "I'll work on it. It will be flawless." She might even go so far as to adopt the lexicon of the city she's in, because it's not passé for her to say her skin will be "like buttah," because she's marinating herself so much that one shot of direct sunlight would cook her straight through and make her tastier than a Thanksgiving turkey. Elyse can't even look at Ebony because she's already full from the Centrum she had for breakfast.
The plot bastes. Giselle checks in from across the room, lying in bed and thinking about how tired she is and how at home she gets her servants to come and lie in her bed for her. From there, she smirks at Ebony, who is wearing a white bathrobe and rubbing some serious lotion on her legs. Giselle hires a rickshaw to carry her over to the nearest confessional, where she laughingly tells of us of Ebony, "She uses so much grease on herself that, like, her grease gets on the doorknob of the bathroom." And now, after a thoughtful beat: "She's so loud." And, sure as hell, we cut back to the bedroom, where Giselle eats some cereal that I'm sure is a delicious bowl of Honey Bunches Of Proof Of My Last Confessional while Ebony rubs some kind of moisturizer shit all over her and screams nonsensically to anyone (though no one will) listen, "You get up on your booty and you move it!" She's like one of those subway preachers who shouts abstractly to no one about how Vietnam made her realize that the government was putting mind-control drugs inside aspirin and that the advent of rock and roll was a governmentally-sanctioned plan to make people take more aspirin and be more controlled in the mind. And that's why we have Ted Nugent.
Wait. Didn't that girl get booted last week? Security! With Nicole gone, you'd think that I'd be able to identify Shannon with no trouble, but alas...she still looks like Heather. She tells us, apropos of nothing, "Some may excel in this area and some may excel in that area, so things can change most definitely." I guess they just wanted to make sure that, if you have absolutely no information to disseminate at a given time, you give it to the spokesperson who will be able to deliver it with the greatest rasp of swallowed-knife smoothness.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Giselle tells us that they were simply told to meet in the lobby, but that they didn't know where they were going. Oh, I'm sure they were told, but they must have said it in some arcane, confusing language that Giselle wouldn't know, like English or American. We cut to the girls walking up the steps of a New York-ish building (i.e. covered in snow), and inside a black box theater where Tyra "Supermodel II: Zooooooooooooooooood!" Banks also just happens to be. She stands on the stage and asks them, "You guys know where you are today?" I do! I do! Is it the Kraine Theater? I know all black box theaters look more or less identical, but I can swear I've been in that exact room before, where I had the "privi" "lege" of seeing this musical that the South Park guys wrote about a cannibal. Called -- wait for it -- Cannibal. And yet I languish in obscurity. But, luckily, we're in a theater, so I get to call my acting chops into play and act like I'm not bitter.
Tyra tells the girls that she's brought in an acting coach named "Alice Spivak," who "has taught a lot of different models. She's taught Claudia Schiffer" -- whose genius training has allowed her to really stretch and play the role of "Herself" in thirteen films and numerous television appearances -- "Cindy Crawford" -- who has played "Herself" in seventeen films and in countless television and radio appearances -- "and Jaime King." And the awesome thing about the "Jaime King" addition is that, when Tyra says her name they slap up a big-ass headshot of Jaime to obscure the fact that Tyra never, ever said her name during this speech the first time and she had to dub it in, like, over the phone from her Caribbean vacation because if you're legit enough to have taught the artiste who played "Bad Girl" in Bulletproof Monk how to be bad, well, you're totally legit-ass in this town. Tyra continues by telling girls that they're not there to learn how to act as in act, but rather to "incorporate it into modeling. I think acting is very important with modeling, especially with selling products." But I thought they really loved the toothpaste the models were telling me to buy! That's why I want to buy it, too! I mean, it wasn't exactly a mandate with only four out of five dentists and all that, so somebody has to tell me what to do. Oh, this business is so cold.
And wouldn't you know it that the premiere acting coach for models (which is kind of like being the premier wrestling coach at a nursery school) is, herself, also an actress! But not a model, except to model the art of acting. And act Alice Spivak has, playing heralded roles ranging from Elegant Middle-Aged Woman (If Lucy Fell, 1996) to Woman Applicant (Deadly Illusion, 1987) to one memorable meta-turn in which she seems to have played absolutely no character at all (Fun and Games, 1973). What she does seem to have is the market cornered on guest appearances on 100 Centre Street, which is a show I think that A&E made up to see if anyone was watching their network. They'd go out on the street and be like, "So, what did you think of last night's 100 Centre Street, and people would be like, "I've heard it's good...wait, is that the same thing as The Wire?" I mean, she never even crossed over into Law & Order territory. So what's with the big-ass round of applause?
Oh, I'm sure she's a lovely person. She seems like kind of a mom type. And she's wearing a cardigan sweater, and will doubtless be the only person who will ever do so on this show. No wonder she wasn't back for Season 2. Anyway, she tells the girls that their first acting lesson will begin with "an imaginary little scene, maybe wrapped around an object. An object in acting is a prop." And in real life it's what women are. Just like in modeling.
Man, if I could have montaged through all of my dumb-ass acting classes in high school I'd be goddamn Harrison Ford by now. Please don't make me pass you the imaginary ball again. Please don't make me turn my head really quickly and yell "zoom!" Please please please please please. And so they montage, each of the ladies dancing, spinning, jumping, and leaping around on stage. One girl, who I thought was Kesse, wipes the hell out, but that would mean Kesse is both on stage and watching herself wipe out blankly at the same time. Put some spirit into them eyes, Kesse! Meanwhile, Elyse confessionalizes, "I've never done any acting, except for the fabulous production, Black Elk Speaks, in seventh grade." Heh. Ever read that book? I'll bet she played Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy Horse. But in fairness to Elyse, I totally get the urge to tout one's formative acting opportunities, and I speak nostalgically and with moist eyes about my very earliest role as "Servant #1" in my fourth-grade production of Cinderella and the Prince of Pollution, which I would literally kill -- KILL -- to get my hands on. So I could DESTROY IT. But don't be fooled, y'all. Servant #1 was actually a pretty big damn part. If there were a film version made of C&tPoP, you know what acting luminary I bet they'd get to play Servant #1? That's right, America. Alice Spivak.
I would, however, love it if you would all come over so I could sing you the closing (and only) musical number of the show, which all of the kids sang from where we stood at the front of the classroom. Without accompaniment. Entitled "Flowers Won't Grow." Here's how it went:
Flowers won't grow
If we throw
Stuff on the ground
And junk all around
The flowers won't grow
The flowers won't grow
Birds go away
If we stay
And throw stuff on the ground
And junk all around
The birds go away
The birds go away
Mrs. Karpen? Wherever you are? I'll bet you two bits you wrote that song yourself. And I will collect on the money. Unless of course you are dead.
A second person is added to the montage-y mix. Shannon runs into an exercise that finds Adrianne brandishing a stool at her, which I'm afraid I don't think is called "acting." Ebony screams at Kesse, "You're not using the Colgate strips that I got for you, honey." I...never mind. Elyse deadpans a brilliant, "Sit down Giselle," as Giselle stands on her chair and informs the room, "I'm seein' mice." Also, not acting. I've been in that theater. They climbed out of Matt Stone's hair, and there they have made their home.
Possibly the only establishing shot of a subway ever used on this show, ever, cuts to a shot of the Soho neighborhood where the second-season loft was located, and then shoots us up to the exterior of the Not!otel. I'm dizzy and my Metrocard is totally out of money, y'all. Tyra explains in a confessional, "For models first starting out, living space is at a premium. So with three girls already gone, I had the girls from the Miami room into the Tokyo room to keep it real." To keep it real? Just say "to shake shit up." It's reality television. We know that's what's going on, and that's why we like it. It's fine. But if you say "keep it real" and then keep these "models first starting out" on the penthouse floor of a luxury hotel in the middle of midtown Manhattan, I'm missing the reality of this reality. Here. Let me tweak it for you: "For models first starting out, living space is at a premium. So with three girls already gone, I had the Miami room filled with a family of aggressive hobos who are totally dirty with scabies."
Robin, meanwhile, checks in from the packyourbagsy'allwe'regoin'to-Milan Room, from which she has the raging gall to report, "We [Robin, Shannon, and Kesse] have this whole side to ourselves now. It's wonderful. God is good." She then looks smugly down toward the licking fires of hell that shall consume all but her one goodly day. Y'know, Robin, when people thank the Lord for "small favors," I think they mean, like, not having cancer.
Giselle, you're just shitty TV is all. You might well even be a nice person. I really don't know. She tells us that she was excited that Adrianne was moving into her room, and that it was "okay that Ebony was moving in because we hadn't had any kind of problems...yet." She then pauses and sighs elaborately, an exhale so strong that, as soon as they cut, you could hear Elyse's voice echoing from out in the hallway, "How the hell did I end up all the way over here?"
Okay, now it's night. The girls are in their pj's getting ready to hit each other lightly and playfully with soft and downy pillows when -- dun nun nun NA nuh NA! Charge! -- J. Alexander appears in the middle of the penthouse's living room. He's come from shopping in the future, because how else do you get to be as trendy as J., y'all? Robin and Shannon go flying to meet him, and Shannon confessionalizes, "He is the runway expert, totally...He can work that runway!" She loves him like a homophobic puppy adores its flamingly gay master. She will fetch him his pipe and Pride flag. I'm sorry, but she ADORES him. Adrianne -- whose makeover has just made her over into an older, more cracked-out Scarlett Johansson, and I'm glad that I at least finally figured that shit OUT -- agrees that J. is "the bomb." And she's wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt, so she can say alt-metal words like "the bomb."
And, walk the runway. Walk it, I say! J. tells Ebony that she needs to take longer steps, but when he takes her arm to instruct her, his hand slides right off her and everyone starts laughing (except Giselle, who has no idea where she is) when he holds his hands up to the nearest camera, chiding, "You have got to be fried!" but I don't know what that means. She tells him that she's experiencing "issues," and he responds, "What kind of issues are you going through?" He cannot be made to understand, so Robin abruptly edits herself into a new conversation, asking J. if he'll judge a contest of "badonka-donk." Are you like me, folks? Was this where you were watching and all of a sudden you were like, "This is really amusing," and then much more quietly out of one side of your mouth, "I have no idea what is going on"? So some music kicks up and six of the seven girls shake it like a Polaroid picture, while Elyse tells us how horrified she is that people are shaking their "donk donks," and she spits the word out because doing the donk donk is clearly illegal in her state. Kesse wins the contest, to the amusement of Elyse, who has trouble reconciling that someone would be a member of the "holy room" but would still enjoy the dirty dancing. I'm sure there's more to this scene, but every time I hit pause it just lands on a shot of Adrianne's flannel-covered ass. Dear flannel: Thanks for everything.
Back in their bedrooms, Elyse sits on her floor and whispers to a passing Adrianne, "Giselle is gonna have a little discussion with her about her greasy hands." Adrianne sits down on a nearby bed and asks what exactly she's going to say. Elyse responds that she's not sure, but in a confessional she confides, "I can't wait for the Giselle vs. Ebony anti-grease showdown. I sincerely hope to be there for it." The only thing that could even to think to block you would be this enormous foreshadow that shows up and falls over everything at the most inconvenient of times.
Dirrty! That's what that house is, y'all. Clothes strewn, beds unmade. Robin tells us that the house is "nasty" and that there are people who don't clean up after themselves, because the Lord isn't going to do it for them because he's too busy being asked to look after Robin's modeling career. Giselle "really set the precedent for laziness," Elyse reports on this topic, as Giselle lies on her stomach with one leg bent up at the knee (and people say she's not doing anything! Look at that knee pivot!). Elyse and Kesse have to be made to agree only across the span of confessional editing, as the latter of those two agrees, "I don't think she's used to pulling her weight." She's more used to pulling Elyse's weight. Otherwise known as the approximate weight of the bowl of cereal she seems to have on hand at all times. Ebony puts the greasiest point on it, telling the truth: "She can be a little annoying. But she's eighteen. What do you expect?" For Giselle, an upcoming full fashion spread in Barely Legal. If that's actually the name of a publication. Hell knows I've never heard of such a thing.
Back at Madame Spivak's International House Of Acting! we drop in on challenge day at the Kraine Theater. If that's where it is. I really don't know. Email me, one of the contestants from Season 1! Just go back and sound it out. And remember that the letter "k" and the letter "c" can sometimes made the same sound. But not always! Ech. I ask them to do what I think is a simple favor and I inadvertently drive them right into the arms of an elephant word. Actually, they're still at the penthouse. Could they not get the space again? Theater rental sucks in New York.
"Alice came over again," Ebony says, which means I've been sleeping or they've been editing, because in my estimation she's never been there before. We don't know what the challenge is, but the reward is "a spa treatment," which is finally a great reward challenge and something everyone might actually be interested in having, particularly because the four non-winners have to clean the apartment, which is why they just went through such pains to spend a while showing us how dirty it was. Got it. But, spa! Very cool reward. Sucks for you, Nicole, for turning down a crappy reward and getting an axe in your back. I hope your boyfriend's BMX career has taken off and that his rage at your attempting to have a career doesn't see him fly off the handle and get him demoted to the Girls' Bike Club. You guys? Take a break from this recap and go read that shit. Both of them. You won't be sorry. I'll see you in a few minutes.
You're back, and the challenge has begun in the form of a cold reading. You know what that is, right? You get the pages and you read? Giselle goes first, reading coldly, which, despite the plainness of the expression, is wrong, all wrong. Shannon is similarly abysmal, praying the words "I hate crying! I refuse to cry!" Adrianne jumps in to slur, "I wish I could cry the way Audrey Hepburn did in Breakfast at Tiffany's. That was so cute." It was so cute. But the one time I tried to offer a little speech about how much I adore Audrey Hepburn, the response from the person I was talking to was, "Wow. This is quite honestly the gayest you've ever been, ever." Also, someone needs to adjust the FM tuner when Adrianne talks, because I think the biggest problem I have with her voice is that there's this crazy undercurrent of static at the low register of everything she says. So, Adrianne, keep Audrey's name out of your mouth. Kesse just screams. Ebony bellows. Robin tells us she has to bleach her yellow teeth. What the HELL is this reading from? Robin wins in a walk, and her two guests are...can you guess? No, can you? I'll give you a hint. The names rhyme with (a) "Yogurt of Dannon" and (b) either "pissy" or "sleazy."
At the pre-cleaning party, everyone is sitting around the Grease-otel (what's wrong? I'm out of nicknames and that's where I decided to go with it. I'd make a list of things you could do about it, but there is nothing), and Giselle finally decides to jump into the big tub of buttah and have it out with Ebony, who has officially become that house's fifth food group: "After you put the, your stuff on, can you make sure you thoroughly clean your hands?" Awkward. Giselle asks so apologetically that you can't even be mad at her, because I would totally have done the same thing if someone were walking around my house making a Slip 'n' Slide out of all of my surfaces. But Ebony goes the faux-diplomatic route, responding thoughtfully, "Uuuuuum...okay, I'll try to concentrate on that." Giselle tells her that she didn't mean it "in a bad way. At all. Like, at all." But you know what? Ebony should be washing her hands anyway, because the world is dirty.
The spa comes to the house, and we cut cleverly back and forth between the massages and the toilet scrubbing, the nail painting and dishwashing. Giselle, meanwhile, sits on the couch holding some Windex and not doing much of anything. And maybe it's just me, but...unfamiliar hands laying themselves on my naked body in a familiar way versus making my home space delightfully bright and shiny? There is no contest. Which out-gays the Audrey Hepburn observation, I realize, but I just really enjoy cleaning. That's why I was so averse to the policies of the Prince of Pollution that it drove me to work as a servant to Cinderella herself. And not just any servant. Servant #1.
No one agrees. Ebony, Adrianne, and Elyse look positively pained by their scrubbing, never more so than when Giselle walks over to the masseuse and asks him if he can give her a quickie in between the other girls. When the masseuse responds that he can, Giselle celebrates with a loud "Oh!" Ebony, fed up because she's ready for a massage on account of her many exotic oils having been somewhat liberally applied, snarks loudly enough for Giselle to hear, "You have to be kidding me." Fight! Fight! Fight! Giselle calls her on her sniping comment, and Ebony starts screaming back, "I cannot help your immaturity!" Giselle tells her that she's doing "the stupid age thing again," and Ebony tells her that it's her own problem and doesn't want to talk about it, and then storms out of the room. But she does want to talk about it. To Adrianne. Who tells her that she doesn't care. So Ebony takes it back to Giselle and screams three times, "It's a competition! It's a competition! It's a competition!" Well, she doesn't say that three times, because that would mean she said "it's a competition" nine total times. And, um: now that she's referred to her this way in a confessional three times, it has become amply clear that Ebony believes the name of the girl she was having a bit of a row with to be "Ginselle."
Also? Sometimes? On this show? They model and stuff. But that was a long, long time ago. We're kicking to a house meeting that happened at some point in this season, but there's no telling when that was because right now it's Ebony O'Clock everywhere in New York City. "So," she kicks it off, cognizant for the first time ever that not all words needs to be elided together in one crazy megasentence that usually amounts to nothing more than "Please pass the milk, please." Anyway, here's what else she says: "I wanted to know if it was okay for my girlfriend to come over for a few hours." Uh. Oh. Hear that thunder? It's just God bowling. And using the head of a lesbian as his ball. Robin makes straight (very, very, heterosexually straight) for the nearest confessional, where she tells us, "Ebony's a lesbian. And I find this offensive. But I cannot pass judgment on her. I just know that some people that proclaim that, y'know, they love the Lord and are Christians, y'know, are not always, y'know, cut the right way." I would parse all of the ways in which that sentence is in itself an abomination to the lord ("I cannot pass judgment," but I find her "offensive"), but we're all on the same side here already, right? Shannon asks where they'll "be at" -- and let the record show that I find shitty grammar an abomination to the Lord -- and when Ebony responds "my bedroom," Shannon literally closes her eyes in unconcealed disgust. In her own confessional, Shannon shares with us that homosexuality is "wrong," and that she finds it "an abomination to the Lord." ["She...does know that her beloved J. Alexander is gay, right?" -- Wing Chun] Adrianne, I have to say, hits the three-pointer from mid-court in a game of Obviousball, but y'know what? No one else was going to say it, so we have to give her some props right here: "They're so innocent...what are you gonna see in this industry? Are you gonna sit there and preach to these people and tell them they're going to burn in the fiery pits of Hell because they have a gay lover?" Awesome. Now let's just work on the expression "gay lover," which sounds like the name of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera about something very, very different. But really, at the end of the day, it's Robin who's the accepting one: "I can't stop her from having someone over. Everybody has to deal with their own sins." She's just on TV. She's just on TV. She can't hurt me from the TV. She's just on TV.
Her name is Ka? Ebony's lady friend, who has dreads and is shorter than Ebony and who will burn in Hel, enters the penthouse. The other girls hide her as a hilarious joke, and when she reveals herself, Ebony and Ka hug chastely and banter about Ebony's-treme baldness. But, Ka? Well, her name is "Ka." I want to say one-thousand things about this, but they've all been said. By me. And my friend Tracie. Over IM, during the episode. Here's pretty much how it went:
Dan: "Ebony's a lesbian, and I found this offensive."
Tracie: Oh, Robin. She just doesn't like it when people sin.
Dan: The girlfriend's name is "Ka"?
Tracie: Yes. Yes, it is.
Dan: THAT is the sin, right there.
Tracie: I believe her last name is "Pow."
Dan: I think it's "Boom."
Tracie: Perhaps.
Dan: We've made her full name into the sound of something exploding on screen in a Batman cartoon.
Tracie: Well then, maybe it's "Flooey."
Dan: Don't you mean "Blooey"?
Tracie: Maybe "Blooey."
Dan: No. You know what it totally is?
Tracie: What?
Dan: "Bbalah."
Tracie: Madonna would accept her instantly.
Dan: Then let us make her first name "Esther."
Tracie: Esther Bahlah doesn't work at all.
Dan: Good point.
Tracie: This is nowhere near as funny as Girls' Bike Club.
Dan: Yeah. Welcome to my life.
Robin and Shannon don't even come out (heh) to introduce themselves. Adrianne has a lot of gay friends. Elyse tells us how much she liked Ka because, if anything, hyper-educated atheists will change Robin's mind.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! They're to meet the following morning at 8 AM without makeup on. "Because of the acting lessons that we took," Elyse exposits, "I knew there was gonna be some kind of acting involved." Who are you, Perry Mason? Amazing! We're a quick cut later at a locale called Pier 59 Studios. They meet Tyra in a large studio space, and we learn that they'll be shooting a commercial today. For a commercial shoot, there is a "constant motion" that makes things much harder than doing a standard photo shoot. They meet their director, Loren Haynes, and he gets them going by telling them that the shoot will be for contact lenses. They're given copy and choreography, and they rehearse through the lines "color is power" and "color is emotion" until the fact that they don't make any sense becomes completely blurred. Adrianne marches up to a booby-padded Elyse and asks, "Are those silicone?" and then proceeds to poke her and poke her and poke her for, like, a full minute. One might say Adrianne was "pokin' atcha, pokin' atcha." Ah. Never mind. Ask Ebony what it means.
Kesse walks through her routine, and Loren agrees that she killed. Elyse kicks ass and then undercuts her own performance by making fun of the whole shoot in a confessional. Shannon cannot nail the line "Fresh Look is color for your eyes," Giselle knows that she kicked ass, and Adrianne gets roundly reamed for her pronunciation of "passion." Loren complains to us that Adrianne couldn't "lose the homeboy attitude." Robin has cleaned up the diva routine, and Loren calls her "virtually a pro." Ebony tells us that she's not going to have any trouble at all because she's been in retail since she was nineteen. And it's not like I think being a supermodel is the hardest thing in the world, but it certainly does seem to be more of a multimedia enterprise than "would you like to try a different size in the classic fit, ma'am?" ["But when would she have time to do that amid being a standup comic and a makeup artist?" -- Wing Chun] Yeah, she blows it big. Then all of the women repeat the words "Fresh Look, beautiful eyes." Anyone hungry? I was just thinking of running out for a bag of Rollitos.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Ooooh, and we actually get to see what it looks like. I never imagined Courier New was a Tyra font, but that's what we learn during the course of the average day, I guess. The note reads, "Tomorrow, six of you will continue on to become America's Top Model. One of you will be eliminated..." The ellipses. So dire. So '50s B-movie. The...end?
And back to the judgment day we go, where we discover Tyra among The Introduction Of The Judges and The Recitation Of The Prizes. Loren Hayes, who looks like Colin Quinn if Colin Quinn were talented enough for UPN, sits in as the guest judge. The first thing they do is show the television commercial, which is basically a simple commercial with the girls walking around in front of a white screen telling us that Fresh Look contact lenses are color for every part of you. They're lenses that make you feel "intrigue," "adventure," and "passion." And, of course, they have Mike Ditka herself, Adrianne, take the word "passion." Which is so mean I could eat some Rollitos.
For their individual evaluations, each girl is subjected to a cold reading. Because Colin Quinn does not understand the nature of the cold reading, each girl is given the pages and then has a few minutes to look them over. Warmer reading. Go. "Hey, c'mon. Yes, you! See this super-sexy smile? Know how I keep it looking so great? Water!" It's a commercial for...water? Shannon gets props for her overall look. Janice tells her that she has so many teeth she looks as though she "fell from another planet," which I adore. Kesse gets props for how much she worked the camera. Janice tells Robin, "The commercial was great. You've got a killer style." Robin responds, "Yes, ma'am." Janice continues, "Loosen up and don't be so pageanty." Robin responds, "Yes, ma'am." Oh, this isn't going well. "I don't like when you call me 'ma'am,'" Janice barks, adding that she finds it "condescending." Janice warns Robin that she needs to "pull back," but we sing along with Colin when he busts in and tells Robin, "You can call me 'ma'am' any time." Kimora Lee says to Adrianne, "When you talk, it makes me want to grit my teeth." Colin agrees that his biggest problem with her was the one word "passion," and Tyra speaks the word "passion" three different times to show how many readings of one word can exist. Not if it's Adrianne and the word is "passion," in which case the only reading of the word is "flatter than a pancake serves on the Great Plains on National Flat Day." But Colin also adds that, just when he was afraid Adrianne couldn't pull it off, they got to the close-up and "boy did your face and your eyes carry it." Giselle has "self-confidence" issues, according to Colin. Ebony gave "the worst readings I've ever heard" according to Janice, and she adds, "You sucked. I'm sorry." She did. Don't apologize.
The evaluations are leveled. Tyra finds Elyse awkward, and Kimora (who I've mentioned twice today, for some reason) thinks Elyse is unimpressive (dolt). Kesse is "pedestrian" but Tyra thought she was beautiful in the commercial. Robin, to Tyra, "represents America" (god help America), and just as strangely she believes that Shannon could be "America's sweetheart." Janice is "waning" on Ebony, but everyone else thinks she's been all over the map. Giselle is seen by all five of them as a self-confidence basket case that they don't think she'll be able to break away from. And also, she sucked at cleaning.
And, we're back. There are seven left and six photos. And you know who's getting one? Kesse. And Elyse. And Adrianne. Tyra lockjaws an imitation, "We think you're gorgeous...half the time we don't know what you're saying. So open your mouth." Robin? "This is not Miss America...top models hate beauty queens, because we're constantly being compared to them. And I ain't no beauty queen." Isn't it always weird to find out the different castes that exists within certain industries that you never knew were there? Like, when you find out that a toll booth collector on the Interstate is like, "A toll booth collector at a Water Gap? Ka! They are not fit to make the change of my butler!" And you're all, "I did not know that." Shannon is also on her way to becoming America's Top Model, but she needs to relax and learn the hell how to smile like a non-freak. Will Giselle and Ebony please step forward? Indeed, they shall. Tyra tells Giselle a lovely parable about going to a club and seeing a girl that's not the most attractive girl in the club, "but all the guys want her and you're like 'Why?'" Because she PUTS OUT. "Because she believes she is that finest girl in that club." Oh. And because she's got the blowjob lips and you can see them from space. Otherwise, no one's talking to her. Ebony, Tyra says, is too "hard," and that she pushes herself. Which is why Ebony won't be winning the competition. Ebony turns without saying goodbye and marches from the room without a word. She packs her bags and tells us that she's sad that Tyra "couldn't see how happy she was to be there." But I mean, c'mon. Who the hell else's fault is it that she slipped through their fingers?