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.
“ Giselle finally decides to jump into the big tub of buttah and have it out with Ebony: 'After you put the, your stuff on, can you make sure you thoroughly clean your hands?' Awkward. ”
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.
“ '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. ”
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.
“ '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! ”
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.
“ '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? ”
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.
“ 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. ”
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?