Cars jet by in supah-fast motion on the street in front of the Prat-otel, ostensibly in an attempt to underscore the wild, undulating pulse of the city, but instead acting as a stark reminder that, working with a UPN-devised seasonal production budget commensurate with roughly fifteen minutes of Survivor's, even the best-laid attempts at some camera jazz are reminiscent less of pulse-pounding gritty urban drama than olde time-y shots of Babe Ruth running a little too fast after a homerun because that was the longest sentence...ever.
Up in the Tokyo Room, Adrianne combs her weave and sits, lost in translation, slurring, "Even though Giselle could be annoying sometimes, when she wasn't, she was actually cool." Straightaway and we're already discovering that Adrianne's pliant mind allowed her to get conned into thinking that Giselle was anything less than eighteen, pubescing right before our very eyes, and jam-packed with gooey gobs of creamy, nougat-y Giselle. She's brainwashed. Giselle ate all the cereal but it was our fault we drove her away! Giselle never helped clean up but she always apologized later! Giselle wouldn't have taken advantage of me after the prom if I hadn't been wearing that totally short skirt and been totally asking for it! Poor Adrianne. Date raped by the ghost of Giselle's annoying tendencies.
Elyse joins everyone in the universe, from you to me to the Sunshine Band's KC, in tossing back a look of sheer incredulity. Instead of favoring Adrianne with a response, Elyse picks a morsel of food out of a plastic container -- all of which must have been added in post. Did you people not see last week's episode? The girl has a problem. What does the evidence think it is, messing with the editing in this insubordinate way -- and kicks it to a confessional. "I think I want the prize a little bit more now than I did at the beginning of the competition," Elyse shares over a shot of her very nearly getting eliminated. One last shot of Giselle serves as her final seeping from our collective memory, as she fades from the public consciousness like Marty McFly in the photograph while he tries to finger his way through the chord changes in "Earth Angel."
"Oh, my God," Adrianne muses from the bed, her alacrity indicating that she's finally had another breakthrough in her scholarship on the philosophies espoused in the lesser works of Proust: "If they move people in here, who's gonna wanna sleep in the bed that got farted on constantly?" From a deep chamber in the research room of the New York Public Library, the word "rhetorical" leaps from the OED and through the window of the No-Fat-otel, pinning that sentence against the nearby shag rug before the world has a chance to ponder the true, answerable horrible-osity of the question. Meanwhile, Honey Bunches of Oats issues a brief press release apologizing for failing to list its side effects on the sides of its boxes. Because Giselle ate a lot of cereal.
Pack your bags, y'all. Over in the Milan Room, it's Prayer O'Clock, which I noticed it was not in the Tokyo Room, clearly owing to the time difference between the two cities and not some narrative juxtaposition we're supposed to be noting right about now. Robin sits self-lovingly on her bed and reads from The Book Of One-Dimensional Characterizations, which is actually part of the Nouveau Testament, and which all the models are reading now ever since the Christian fashionistas deemed the New Testament to be "so five minutes ago." After a few seconds of snuggling up with the Lord -- and Snuggling Up With The Lord is totally going to be the name of my slim volume of self-penned religious homilies, coming this fall from Mighty Big Press -- Robin kicks it over to a confessional, telling us for no as-yet apparent reason, "Miss Shannon is eighteen years old. She's still a virgin. Believes in the Lord." Yup. Shannon. Tight bod. Blonde hair. Never banged anything besides a Bible. Totally remember who she is. With you all the way. Especially since they got rid of that Heather.
Because the expression "too fine a point on it" has joined Reagan and Brando in a land called The Heaven Of The Long-Ago Obsolete, Elyse keeps sawing away, reminding us, "The separation between the two rooms has a lot to do with religion. The house has been divided into 'us and them.'" Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts! Explain how! Money can be exchanged for goods and services! Back in Tokyo, Elyse tells Adrianne, "I was laughing at your ugly tits." Perhaps they're playing another spirited round of "The Janice Dickinson Drinking Game," which is where you say something really mean that Janice might say, secure in the knowledge that Janice, wherever she may be at that exact moment, is getting effing wasted on Black House. ["And why not -- now that Mullen's been fired from EW, we need a new game." -- Wing Chun] Voilà...The Janice Dickinson Drinking Game! "I have beautiful tits," Adrianne shoots back, adding, "Almost everyone that [sic] looks at my boobs are [sic] like, 'God, they're so jiggly and beautiful.'" While everyone who looks at Elyse's boobs, meanwhile, is like, "God, remember when we were five and mom took that picture of us standing up against the closet door wearing our new Superman Underoos?" Because you guys? It's underwear that's fun to wear.
East meets West in an historic summit that followed such a prolonged period of fighting between the two known enemies Tokyo and Milan. Kesse enters the room wearing an exceedingly tight blue sweater and sporting her own pair of beautiful jigglies. (Y'all, I'm just quoting Elyse.) Adrianne suggests that she and Elyse "clean up [their] language," but a quick cut later, Adrianne is asking Kesse, "Would you go to a sex shop?" and Kesse responds, "I've been to sex shops before!" Adrianne high-fives her because dirty girls must cancel each other out and therefore they don't have to worry about catching weird sex shop scabies from one another, while Adrianne chants, "Miss Kesse is down!" Elyse similarly finds her new ad hoc roommate to be so-called "down," as she shares with us, "[Miss] Kesse is hilarious. She's part of the holy room and she's part of the Bible time, and yet I think she's so funny." A funny Christian? Maybe Elyse is learning a little something too! Maybe that there really is a God. And that he's HILARIOUS!
"Wilhelmina" is the most difficult word to spell in modeling. Right after "Sorry." And "sorry I threw that curling iron at your head." And "over twenty-five." Anyway, a piece of Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! informs the models that they will be heading over to Wilhelmina Models the morning, and Elyse firms up her role in this episode as "Greek Chorus For What I Imagine Must Be Some Insanely Slow Greeks" by reminding us, "Wilhelmina is the agency that we will receive a contact from if we win the contest." It IS? And I haven't even combed my hair. Eh. I'm sure it's also partly about what's on the inside.
"Hey, everybody," Drew Carey says when...oh, that's totally not Drew Carey. Is it possible, finally, in this blessed year, that the last traces of Drew Carey have finally been expunged from our bruised pop culture? And, if so, does it mean he took that "Mimi" with him? Please say so. Anyway, "Drew" "Carey" turns out, in fact, to be a man named Pink -- and A Man Named Pink is totally going to be the name of my sociology tome about growing up as a gay Drew Carey impersonator in turn-of-the-century America, coming this fall from Mighty Big Press -- who is the director of the women's division here at Wilhelmina. He toes the line (modeling is hard! Models are pretty!) that, after you're signed, modeling is hard. Two or three thousand girls can be vying for one or two spots, and the time girls don't spend working, they spend on "Go Sees," which the helpful subtitle definition alert (SDA) feature that we've never seen before tells us is an "interview with a prospective client." Pink adds that, in a minute and a half, they need to impress on the client that they're the girl, noting, "If you can get four or five clients that are booking you once a month, you'll make twenty, twenty-five thousand a month." Five total days of working a month. Modeling is hard. Modeling is hard. Don't forget. Modeling is hard.
Pink also goes through each of the girls' photo shoot results from the show thus far. Elyse tells us that they "made their first portfolio," which, to my eyes, means that Pink slid the photos into plastic sleeves and slipped them into a black binder. Genius! For all of your modeling packaging needs, go to Staples, where the tagline is "That was easy," which makes me wish Shandi were on the show this season because that joke would have been Goddamn easier than anything.
Pink sits down with each of the ladies and points out various hair don'ts and blackheads and autographed photos of Ryan Stiles (the ladies are all, "Er, no thanks, bud") he has access to as a working industry professional. He notes the photograph of Elyse with the snake and tells her, "This is amazing. Like, I could send you out with this picture right now." Which, really, was when I started to think that Elyse was just going to take this thing and run away with it. Pink (I'm sorry...I just can't call him that) asks Adrianne if they're going to see her hair all made up and lovely or if they're going to see it the way it is now, all tied back in a ponytail. Tough talk for the world's second most famous person named after the gayest of the Crayola 64. If you're named Pink and you didn't record, "Get the Party Started," shut up, Pink. Also, if you're the Pink who did? Shut up, Pink.
More from Pink. He tells Robin, "People love accents in this business." No, they don't. He certainly didn't seem to mention that to Adrianne, even though she's clearly the one with the stronger regional flair. "So don't feel bad if you have an accent from...wherever you come from." That's okay, Pink. We don't know where she's from either. Though I suspect it's in or right near the sovereign nation of "Foreignia," where people hail from when they don't seem to come from any one place in particular. Really, isn't it odd that Pink told Robin that accents were okay, even after the repeated beatings Adrianne has taken for her Chicagoan brogue? I guess it's because "accent" to Pink means "small dialect quirks" and not "the constant, grating low moaning of a eulogy at a teamster funeral."
Pink likes Shannon's body and thinks Kesse could use more confidence. The end. Kesse and Shannon got the shaft. Elyse and Robin got the big bonus.
"I hope you guys learned something today," Eeeew Carey tells them, "Because today we're sending you off to Paris." I...yaaaay? That's it? That's the whole thing? That's the whole approach? The razzle and the dazzle? Because "I hope you guys learned something today" to "today we're sending you off to Paris" is just about the least effective segue I've seen since "the German passenger airship Hindenburg is the largest aircraft ever to fly" to "Oh, the humanity." No wonder they set the entirety of the season's annoucment to music. Would you like me to sing it now? Pink (no songster himself, it would ironically seem) continues on, "The intelligent model traveler packs one bag." So it was "pack your bag, y'all"? Sigh. I don't like this version of history. It hardly even rhymes.
Plinky videogame music plays as Robin quietly swears on a stack of Bibles (and she's got 'em, y'all) as she tries to fit all of her earthly goods (because her heavenly goods have already been shipped guaranteed overnight delivery to the afterworld, y'all) into one small suitcase. Robin insists that they all take a rest from packing, and everyone does so at this moment in order to call their boyfriends before departing. Everyone. Except for Sweet Shannon, The Girl Who Dates The Lord. She confessionalizes, "I've never had a serious boyfriend...So I'm just, like, 'please, Lord, send me somebody sometime.'" Meanwhile, the Lord is all, "Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanoooooooooon, it's meeeeeeeeeee, the Looooooooord!" in an echo-y God voice. "If you waaaaaaaaant a boooooooooyfriend, why not try puuuuuuuuuuuuutting ooooooooooooooout?" What? Stop looking at me like that. Hello. It was the Lord who said those words, not me. Just be glad that I left out the part where He originally said, "Boy, I sure did waste a good pair of tits on you, eh?"
Elyse, Adrianne, and Robin juxtapose some calls to their manloves, and we're back with Shannon, who tells us that Brad Pinkert is going to be her boyfriend because she saw him in a magazine and his favorite book is the Bible. We already knew all of this from when we saw it the first time. But this time we're quickly shown the rest of the page, where we also learn that Brad enjoyed his first kiss at age twelve, which is also when Shannon was having her first kiss, except that that kiss was between two Care Bears she had mashed together while giggling helplessly. Oh, the humanity. They each carry a bag to the front door of the house while Adrianne tells us that this is "the best day of [her] life," which is, in all honesty, probably from a confessional taped right after she won the thing. But right now I guess she's equally as happy at the foreshadowed concept of Shannon meeting her two-dimensional magazine crush Brad Pinkert. Wow. That Adrianne is a really caring friend.
Because the War On Terror has been hard on all of us, there are no cameras of any kind inside of airports ever, because if you have a photograph of me standing in front of the window at the American Airlines terminal making wings with my arms like I too am an airplane in flight, you automatically possess the ability to blow shit up. Except on The Amazing Race, a show I think must be a production of the Department of Homeland Security. Anyway, that right there is why some Frenchy music plays over a shot of an airplane graphic flying from New York to Paris and then they're all just in France. The girls montage through their first look of Paris, taking in the sights. No wonder they're so tired! Jet lag and a montage. French flag! Arc de Triomphe! Champs Elysée! Moulin Rouge! French People's list of Top 50 Most Beautiful People, on which David Hasselhoff ranks nine separate times in the first thirty-seven. And that was my one Hasselhoff/France joke. I swear. Just be glad it wasn't Jerry Lewis. ["Sweetie, it's Germany that loves Hasselhoff, as you would know had you seen Dodgeball. I'm very disappointed in you that you haven't." -- Wing Chun]
Courrier du Tyra! Courrier du Tyra! Elyse takes the honors, right there on the street: "Welcome to Paris. Here is the address of your hotel: It is located on 28 Rue de l'Arc de Triomphe. Tell your driver to take you there. Note: your driver does not speak English." Note: neither does Elyse. You can't just paint on a Pepe la Pew stripe and gesture boldly with your right hand in a European fashion. There are grammar rules to speaking the language as well, or didn't they teach you that back in Smart School?
Robin is unconscionably rude to the driver ("Me keep-y this-a," she grandly and charmingly informs him in "French" when he tries to carry her bag), but Shannon actually ends up giving him the direction he can understand. Adrianne tells us how "awe-struck" she was by the beauty of Europe, and Kesse agrees that it's nicer than Arkansas because once there was a town called Hope but everyone's gone from there now. Robin wonders, "I expected to see people on boats with the violins" because she thought, I guess, that they were going to Venice. Elyse had already been in Paris once when she was fifteen. Oh, of course she had.
Hotel des Deux Acacias. It's not that nice. Adrianne is the only person I know who can call the hotel "a hole in the wall" and mean it in a good way. They navigate their own suitcases up a narrow staircase and enter their room: bare walls, three beds, and the only piece of flair a piece of Tyra Mail reading, "Hi, girls. This is where you'll be living in Paris. Find a place to put your things and select a bed." Elyse suggests that they draw straws to see who's on the floor, and we cut to each of them pulling names out of a hat. That's not "drawing straws." Has any of these girls seen Clue? Kids today. Kesse chooses her own name, and Shannon, Elyse, and Adrianne each get a bed as well. Wait. I thought there were three beds. So Robin has to sleep on an air mattress by one account and the floor by another. Continuity be damned, Robin wants us to know how damn flexible she is: "Miss Kesse did offer to share her bed with me, but I'm not so special where I can't sleep on the air mattress." You are, Robin. And you just said that so I would say that.
Courrier du Tyra! Courrier du Tyra! Again. The French postal service...is there anything it can't do? "Tonight, I will join you for dinner. Join me in the lobby at 7 PM." Adrianne notes that she's been wearing the same underwear for forty-eight hours, and changes in front of the other girls with the enormous non sequitur, "You don't have to be a lesbian to change in front of your friend." Thank you, Adrianne, for this logic culled from a page ripped from a word-a-day calendar floating in the debris piles after a Pride Parade. Elyse sits on her bed reading a French For Dummies (Though Not Really Dummies, Elyse, As We've Heard You're Very Smart, And We Should Really Consider Shortening The Title Of This Language Primer Book If We Wanted To Sell More Copies) book, as Adrianne asks her how to say "Adrianne has enormous cha-chas" and "Elyse, how bad does your cooch smell?" And, no. Sorry, but I have tremendous tolerance for, y'know, gruff talk, but I myself had written a very long joke about French cheese and its relation to Adrianne's forty-right-hour-long wardrobe, and then I deleted it wholesale because, apparently, I am far more of a lady than she will ever be. Robin agrees, telling us that she looks like a reproving teacher at Adrianne when she says crass things, and Elyse laughs and tells us that Adrianne deliberately tries to piss off Robin and that it's "great for [Elyse] to watch." Except Robin doesn't use the word "reproving." Ever.
Tyra meets the girls at a French restaurant and tells them that she loves this town more than any town else. She regales them with a story about what it was like to come here for the first time, adding that she's sorry about the size of their room, but that the rest of the hotel was completely taken up with Jay Manuel's Napoleon complex.
Courrier du Tyra! Courrier du Tyra! They deliver constantly! And there's never a day off because they don't have to close on Sundays because the French hate religion! They do. I read it in Vanity Fair. Just kidding. I skipped it in Vanity Fair. Anyway, for some reason they let Kesse read the Tyra Mail, and she does. Sort of: "Tomorrow morning will be your first...what?" Awwww. Kesse doesn't know the word "Parisian." She finds it to be a -- how do you say -- mot d'éléphant. And so it continues: "Photo shoot." That night, everyone lies in bed, except for Robin, and Elyse tells us that everyone was very tired when they finally got back to the hotel. After the other girls are all in bed, Robin grabs a hairdryer and sets to task, but I guess the girls know they can blame Tyra because Tyra said it was her fault. ["I seriously don't know how Robin managed to escape that night without getting that blow dryer shoved up her ass. Sideways. I mean, sure, she took a shower, but they're going to a shoot tomorrow where they'll presumably do her hair, so she couldn't just sleep on it wet when four other people were trying to sleep? What an asshole." -- Wing Chun]
And, in full-on torture mode, the show makes them go to the Hilton for the photo shoot. Inside of a room, the girls come face to face with a close-up view of the Eiffel Tower right across the street, and for some reason I can't stop thinking about how different it would be if Ebony were still there, because I have this whole mental image of her walking in and being all, "This is something! This is amazing! I had a moment of religious epiphanosity" and so on until I climbed into the TV myself and dived-bombed out the window in order to impale myself on a hundred and fifteen years' worth of French history to just. Make. Her. Stop. Talking.
As they ready themselves for the shoot, we're given a Shannon revisiting primer. We'll let Adrianne take this one, what with her faultless oratory skills and all: "I have no idea what it is Shannon is holding inside. She's just so crazy because she's never done anything. She's never touched herself. She's never watched a porn." Y'know what? This is now none of my business. While applying her makeup, a suddenly emergent Jay "Jay/ What you been doin'/ You say your car broke down/ The thing just isn't movin'/ J.J./ Don't you know/ When you're down there's just one way to go" Manuel asks Shannon if she thinks it's okay to masturbate. Shannon, typically and one-dimensionally naïve, gives the money shot answer: "I knew a guy who did it, but I didn't know we could do it to ourselves." She then makes a horrified face at the notion of getting acquainted with one's lady parts that I remember making only once in public right before it turned into the worst prom night ever.
The photographer, Michel Haddi, walks into a room at the Hilton and tells the ladies he hopes they're ready for the shoot. The big surprise of the day is that there will be a male model posing with them, and in the empty room at the Hilton, Shannon enters first, where she discovers a gentleman wearing blue boxer briefs, waxed musculature built for porn of any kind, and an insipid look of general dimness. Shannon freaks out because her magazine wet dream -- and Magazine Wet Dream is totally going to be the name of the first album from my band that totally does punk covers of XTC songs, coming this fall from Mighty Big Records -- has come to life. And that must be a strange and interesting feeling, down in the parts of her that she doesn't understand, finally to meet the person she's been convinced all her life she's supposed to be with, leaping from his two-dimensional prison like the villains in Superman II and standing there before her in exceedingly tight undergarments. I would probably react in the same terrified fashion if I met that person. But to you, I say: Danny Pintauro? If you're out there? Don't even worry about the boxers.
Shannon asks him if he's the model, and he responds in what I think is an accent. I mean, you know how much this business loves accents. Although his "accent" sounds like he's -- I don't know -- deaf? Either way, Shannon is decked out in a white bra and panties, and she puts her arms around Pinkert, who glazes over and thinks about white. Really dumb people can think about white.
Michel Haddi tells us that he thinks Shannon has a pretty face but, overall, he finds her "just a bit lost." Elyse really looks like a porcelain boy child, and she tells us that posing with Brad is like posing with "a statue." But dumber. Michel Haddi puts Kesse right on top of the guy, and then bemoans the fact that she's "not confident." Adrianne bites his ear and Haddi tells us, "She's got it." And Robin, of course, tells us that she didn't "get it" when she first got I there, and Haddi worries, "She didn't trust her own body." In another room at the Hilton, after the shoot, Adrianne asks Shannon if she was nervous, and a knock on the door reveals Monsieur Pinkert in a white bathrobe. His accent is kind of gone, replaced by a sheer cloud of, just, void, that follows him wherever he goes. Even the void is smarter than he is. He asks if they want to go out to dinner later, and then gets the hell back into the hallway where about eight members of the production team can be spotted in the background waiting to get this lump of coal off the damn television set before viewers remember that there's something called "news."
And...montage! Boxes of girls reading maps! Elyse looking at a map and looking for help. She hits her first Go See just as Robin hands her list of Go Sees to a Frenchman and tells him, "I have money. I'm gonna give you some money at the end! That's how we do it in America." Go, capitalism! Shannon hits a Go See and starts to explain that she did a little modeling in high school, but the woman she is meeting with shushes her, which is kind of hilarious. Kesse asks for directions, but the person asks her to come in and look around his store first. Adrianne crashes a subway without playing. Elyse makes it to her Go See. Kesse thinks she'll try the Go See biz out after all. Elyse walks at a Go See. A woman checks out Robin's portfolio. Adrianne stands looking clueless. Just then, according to her: "This man walked up to me on the street and brushed my leg like there was something on my knee. So I thought, oh, there might have been something on my knee. Then he proceeded to try to shove his hand up my skirt, toward my crotch." In front of about a hundred camera crews. In broad daylight. On a busy street in Paris. In front of about a hundred camera crews. ["Where doe that dude think he is, Italy?" -- Wing Chun] And I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm watching him do it. But I'm just saying that something might have intervened, like Adrianne's own hand smacking it away with her typical tough-as-nails demeanor kicking in, with an additional swift kick to any area on this man capable of making him think he could do that to a women in broad daylight on a busy street in Paris in front of about a hundred camera crews. But instead...tears. "So I was really upset," Adrianne continues. "I mean, I was right there by the agency. But I couldn't even go in." And, not that I lack sympathy or anything, but...that's it? The title of this episode might as well have been, "The Girl Meets A Guy Who Liked Boogie Nights," as that is thus far a more significant development in the action of this episode. Shannon, meanwhile, made it to all of the agencies because she wasn't knee molested.
Robin parts ways with her new boyfriend, giving him one million francs (Euros?) or love before taking off. ["My sister recognized the bill as €10. That's less than $20 USD. Robin sucks." -- Wing Chun] Everyone convenes back in a room much fancier than their hotel, and Shannon reads the Tyra Mail: "Welcome to your final Go See: a meeting with the judges. Please wait here until further notice." Pained staring commences, as Kesse tells us that no matter who gets booted, it's going to be "shocking." Robin tells us that she doesn't get nervous because her religion teaches otherwise. No, she actually says that. Adrianne announces to Elyse, "You better to pretend to miss me if I leave. I'll pretend to miss you." That scene was filled with so much filler no one will be hungry for weeks. Especially Elyse. But it's because she has an eating disorder.
Tyra welcomes the ladies to Le Room De La Elimination Du France (man, I really have learned a lot this week!). The judges sit in their usual places -- man, the amount of dry ice it must have taken to pack Janice up for that international flight -- including this week's guest judge, Marilyn Gauthier. Why? Elyse is up first for her individual evaluation, and Emma sits nearby reading the reactions to Elyse's Go Sees: "Nice, open, friendly." They show Elyse her photo from the shoot, which she deems "awkward," because it is. Janice yells at her that she shouldn't put herself down, but Tyra thanks Elyse for her honesty. Shannon similarly made it all four of her Go Sees, though she was described as "too obvious." Tyra explains that that means that she's "too pretty." Tyra's favorite book is The Book of Lies! Janice reminds her that she needs to have "the edge," which Janice knows something about herself, seeing as she looks like the pointiest thing going since Helen Hunt entered a dart competition.
Adrianne has never been on a subway in her life, and tries to use that as an excuse for only making it to three of her Go Sees. Tyra gives a little speechy-speech about lateness, and lateness in the professional realm is literally, I think, my biggest pet peeve ever, so I'm with her here all the way. Good thing they followed through on it and dinged Adrianne right out of the competition, eh? I say, eh? We learn that the feedback from Adrianne's Go Sees was, "Styling bad. Would look better in jeans." Adrianne goes back to her "but I'm a tomboy" excuse, and Tyra makes her pull her bangs back with her headband, which elicits a "Good call, Tyra!" from Janice, thus displaying the reason she was able to get back on this show for its triumphant second season. Adrianne's photo shoot was "semi-porn" according to Janice, and Baby Phat thinks something bad, but really she's no prize either.
Kesse also only made it to three Go Sees, saying that she "lost track of time." We learn that the clients thought that Kesse had a "great smile, nice skin, but not right for fashion." I think her skin was so nice because it was a skin care store she got sucked into while asking for directions. Too bad she didn't buy some damn fashion. Janice doesn't love the photograph and bemoans that her neck and her face were hidden. Then Janice makes an erection joke and rather than think about Janice, Brad Pinkert, and erections, I think I'd rather recant most of my statements and just go back to musing as to whether or not Elyse's cooch smells. Sorry, Elyse.
The lovely Emma, mouthpiece and facepiece of the horrible Marilyn Gauthier, says to Robin, "Somebody told me that you had a little secret method...would you like to tell the judges what you did?" Robin cops to the fact that she basically went to a Sherpa For Hire booth and picked up a friend to cart her around for the day, and Marilyn tsk-tsks, "I would never advise a new, young model to do what you did today." Even in France -- where everyone gets to be five years younger and blame it on the time difference -- Robin will never be a "new, young model." She can take care of herself. She can drive a car. She can rent a car. Emma tells Robin that the clients said she could only work on special shoots, and Robin's at the ready with a plus-size retort, "I guess they're just gonna have to create some more special shoots, then." Janice finds Robin's photo "angry," and Robin snips, "Yeah, I guess we didn't have a good time." Tyra thanks Robin and dismisses her, and the look on Janice's face makes her look like she's about to thank Robin right out of France with her three-inch stiletto bondage heels. No, I know she sits behind a table whenever we see her. No, I don't know for sure she's got them. But you just kind of know when you know, right?
"I don't know what she's doing in Paris," Janice says, seemingly the second Robin is out of the room. Marilyn says that there is no plus-size market in France. Tyra finally finds an in to complain about something else on Robin besides her general, overall rump-ishness, worrying about the man who Robin subcontracted to help her out. Adrianne most people want out, Shannon isn't looking after her extensions, and Elyse looks like a little boy.
"There are five of you standing before me, but I only have four pictures in my hand," Tyra says, and at least one girl is all quietly thinking, "So that means that two of us are getting eliminated this week?" But you know who won't be getting eliminated? Elyse. Because she "took Paris by storm." Go, unironic weather metaphors! She's The Top Model After Tomorrow. You know who else isn't going anywhere? Shannon. But she needs to look different than she does, somehow. Robin is also sticking around, but Tyra cautions her, "Use this." Tyra points at her head. I think she intends to mean, "Use your brains," but I think we all know it means, "I am the only damn reason you're still here." Would Kesse and Adrianne please step forward? They will. Kesse is beautiful and photographs well, but she isn't exactly setting the world on fire. Adrianne, meanwhile, has to stop hiding behind her hair. That's the whole complaint? No wonder Kesse gets the boot. Tyra cries as she hands the photo to Adrianne, and a rare Tyra confessional finds her telling us that all of the judges cried that night about Kesse's outster. The girls tear up as the judges ready an upcoming speech for Adrianne in future weeks that includes the incredulous shrugging of shoulders and the repeated use of the words "waterproof mascara.