Props to Adam and Potes. I was rounding up, you guys.
New York City! Land of opportunity! Where the buildings rise tall, where the melting pot simmers, where the streets are paved with gold...lamé strappy sandals. Down in Soho and upstairs in the Zo-Loft, a hand secures said footwear to said foot, as ten remaining blondes-at-heart consider that at least their numbers have finally decreased to a figure the majority of them have been schooled to count up to. Welcome to the city, doe-eyed, clueless foreigners. Do you speak the language? HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING OUR COUNTRY SO FAR? What's wrong? You look lost. But don't worry. Those little shoes look perfect for walking around here.
The shoes, the hands, the confessional, and the "Charter Member Of The League Of Djb Doppelgangers" ID card all belong to young Shandi -- and I'm not saying that I'm any kind of supermodel, I'm just saying that she...isn't -- who we join in progress as she tries desperately to perfect walking without looking like she's trying to kick Fred Flinstone's car into neutral during a particularly grueling snowstorm. Turn into the skid, Shandi! Turn into the...crash! Well, this can only get worse before it gets better. In a confessional tricked out with soft, gauzy flashback effects that Tyra should add to her makeup kit to further soften her god-given alien qualities, Shandi relives the Rose Ceremony -- er, ah, the Headshot Hilarity of last week, remembering, "The last elimination, I seriously thought it was gonna be me. I keep thinking about how bad my walk was." A flashback shot of Shandi's walk in the elimination room makes you think she should have just kept walking when she reached the far end of the runway and left that room forever. She shatters linguistic records for the amount of syllables one could cram into the word "puh-leeeeeeze" from the viewing audience who think we know everything about the nuanced art of walking. Oh, wait. Here's something I remember learning at some point in my first sixteen months on Earth: right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Holy crap! I do know everything about walking! I would stop and bow, but I'm too busy loving walking!
We cut back to the inside of the Zo-Loft to find Shandi standing at the end of the runway (as I often am at mine) wearing a bandana, a t-shirt, and what looks like a long orange and silver tablecloth tied around her waist, like she's the lone competitor and therefore default victor of America's Top Slightly Stoop-Shouldered Homeless Lunatic Who Lives In A Bag In My Garbage Pile. Please can we do that show, Tyra? First name: "Shandi." Hometown: "Changes Daily, since shopping carts have wheels."
Shandi makes it down to the end of the runway and shifts her weight, which means her overstressed left half is now bearing the total cumulative weight of all fourteen of her pounds. I'm not sure the floor can handle it! And Catie is allegedly somewhat afraid of heights, I've heard! Since Shandi is too busy concentrating on the ins-and-outs of what the rest of us leave to our intuitively-named "involuntary muscles" to expound any further, let's run our opinions of her through The Bitch Filter and see if the scan runs clean. First let's hear it from Mercedes: "My initial reaction about Shandi is that she is this nerdy, kind of dork kind of girl." Scanning for bitchiness. Infected! Infected! Infected! But since she said that that was her "initial reaction," maybe she thought that back when she first met Shandi but now she's changed her mind. What about you, Sara? "I've seen a lot of unattractive models, and a lot of girls that are used in magazines, where I'm just, like, why the hell did they put these girls in this magazine?" Scanning for bitchiness. Infected! Infected! Infected! But since she never specifically said Shandi's name in that entire confessional, maybe she wasn't even talking about her at all. Or maybe she just didn't say her name because she was afraid crazy shopping cart Shandi would bite her and totally give her scabies.
But lo, the runway grows crowded with other vessels taxiing for takeoff on Conti-Mental Airlines. Catie mysteriously edits herself into the frame wearing the same tablecloth and inserting herself in line before Shandi. Does she really need practice walking after last week's drive in her fancy Carmen Marc Valvo and subsequent extremely ambiguous party? Maybe she mistook the tablecloth for the world's biggest tissue and she's planning its strategic future uses. It's impossible to know for sure. Whatever the circumstance, she takes over the runway, clomping down it in Shandi's CrazyDress, as Xiomara takes over confessional duties, noting, "Catie's behavior can be definitely attention-seeking." She then experiences that old saw that I've just made up known in the realty television world as "Confessor's Remorse," and she considers the unlikely possibility that this show might one day air anything that she does or says, so Xiomara quickly tacks on a repentant "But I love her!" She then laughs sheepishly, realizing sadly that she has just evened out the equation of one friend in that house per every one hundred teeth in her mouth.
Right in the middle of this merriment that suddenly includes a laughing Shandi, Jenascia, Catie, and the pariah-to-be- named-after- this-scene-airs Xiomara is Heather. Who? Exactly. Lying right to the runway on a purple shag pillow that the management of the Austin Powers Hotel chain is going to charge her for stealing is Catie 2.0, the other eighteen-year-old blonde who hasn't won a walking competition, who hasn't worn a ring at a fancily vague party for a man nine people have heard of, and who hasn't lived a day without a birthmark her well-meaning parents have convinced her gives her face "character" rather than "a Gorbachevian facial blemish that looks like a tattoo of Delaware." Did the producers not want to cut a real contestant this week so they crowbarred in some Cousin Oliver-type replacement and are going to just axe her instead? I tell you, it really makes you wish even one person in this country had seen the Clone High where they invent a character just to kill him off. You'd be with me the whole time. It makes you wonder why Ponce couldn't have three lives like Mario. But Ponce loved littering! Oh, fine. It's like when Dawn just appears on Buffy.
In maybe her first ever confessional, this so-called "Heather" shares with us the following: "They're not very sociable with me, even though I'm very sociable." Could it be the forlorn glares? And the glassy, vapid stare? And the fact that she might be a CGI hologram only the audience can see, like on-field sports advertising or that little guy from Lord of the Rings whose name, I think, might be "Schneider"? She goes on: "In the house, you do need someone. You can't just go through life not talking to anyone." Heather walks forlornly through a scene of sudden and explosive girl bonding in which everyone has laid down their slam books to do each other's hair and gently hit each other with soft, downy pillows. Cut to Heather on the phone with her mom, saying, "I feel like I'm in hell." Her mother sounds depressingly unsurprised, responding, "So, it's not that fun, huh?" Heather starts to tear up, and she's suddenly holding a big wad of tissues, out of which something falls that makes it look like she was crying something solid. But I don't know what it was. CGI really is the downfall of reality television.
A new day brings renewal, or at least a convenient forgetting of what made us sad and lonely under the cover of darkness last night. It's a bright, sunny day in whatever city this show takes place in -- it can't be New York, since New York has never had a day that is bright and/or sunny, at least as far back as my seasonally affected mind can recall. "Guys, there's Tyra mail!" a voice calls, and we cut to Heather not being ignored when she's the one reading it. Maybe instead of modeling she should go into the booming "Tyra Mail On Tape" industry. "If you think you're fine, if you think you're great, show me what you're made of at forty-five 'til 8." Which, we're told further, is 7:15. "Forty-five 'til 8"? "Forty-five 'til 8"? Was that couplet taken from a book of poems about early man discerning time from crude sundials and the length since the last harvest? Forty-five 'til 8 (not to mention the fact that the apostrophe is on the wrong side of the word "til" on the Tyra mail)? Who says that? Who measures time that way? Why not "If you think you're fine, if you think you're keen, show me what you're made of at the time of 7:15." Or, OR, if you like the original rhyme scheme: "If you think you're fine, if you think you're great, don't get here at 8 o'clock or you'll be forty-five minutes late." That last one could be a special Jenascia-centric card, to remind her that she's not out of the woods attitude-wise. And they should leave hers on the floor because of a repeatedly-noted inability for her to reach high surfaces like tables and steering wheels and her alarm clock "on" button. Or, for the love of god, schedule the damn thing at 8.
If you think you're fine, if you think you're great, go to the Warren-Tricomi Salon, eleven blocks down from 68th. Indeed, we're on 57th Street right to Bergdorf, on the 12th-floor-minus-eight. Once ensconced in Suite Four, they encounter Tyra "The Bold And The Bootyful" Banks, who introduces the owners of the salon and reads the last bit of copy that was written juuuuuuuuuust before the cameras were set to roll, after the story editors had already blown their collective creative loads on the translated-directly- from-the-Latin "forty-five 'til 8": "They are going to take you from ordinary to extraordinary." Tricomi and Warren are both hairstylists, clearly, but when Tyra introduces them, Tricomi (whose genetic makeup is that of a Steven Cojocaru cocktail with an Elliott Smith chaser) holds up his right pointer and middle fingers and does a "snip snip" scissor thing with his hand. Oooh, charades! I love charades! Okay, is it a movie? One word? Three syllables? Is it three syllables? Barbershop? Is it Barbershop? His partner Warren, meanwhile, is wearing a hat a little too close to a trucker hat to keep me from thinking I'm about to get punk'd.
And dammit, I'd held up "paper." You win this round, Tricomi!
"I really feel like I need to pinch myself every second of the day," a pre-op Catie tells us in a stand-alone confessional captured on the production's brand-new IronyCam. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I'm not gonna care what they do with my hair." That's enough confessional now. The camera works fine, guys.
Tyra then reintroduces her makeup guy Jay Manuel, he of the dyed blond hair and skin tone I thought only existed in early TBS colorizations of the most orange-y ornaments on the whole Bedford Falls town square Christmas tree. Tyra reminds us that Jay makes her pretty for her "photo shoots and personal appearances." Did Tyra just do a commercial for Tyra on a show executive-produced by Tyra? Jay ups the awkward banter ante by stumbling through what must have been a scripted "And I'll be really honest with you, it looks like we need the makeup police here today." The girls stare back at him with that perplexed look I always get when I tell people I sneeze when I stare into the sun.
Tyra takes a quick run-through of what the new hairstyles (or barbershop cuts, according to the Traveling Tricomi Shadow Puppets Theater) of each of the girls will be: Catie's is reminiscent of Twiggy, so her hair is coming off entirely. Judging from that earlier confessional, I have little doubt but that this will work out fine. Sara is going blonde; Yoanna gets a Mohawk; Mercedes gets extensions. Jenascia gets briefly chided about her height (apparently, they think she's too short) and told her hair has to be chopped. Xiomara is going to be "wavy and wild"; April is getting bangs; Camille is getting something that isn't her braids. Shandi's name is called, the announcement of which is followed by a chorus of sympathetic "awwww, Shandi," which sounds nice and filled with camaraderie at first but really means, "Awwww, we like you because of how little you threaten our own chances!" Tyra does a little imitation of Shandi's hair, which to her says, "I'm stocking the shelf at Walgreen's." I think she means "Wal-Mart," if I've been watching correctly, no? Maybe in crazy Tyra-math, you can come up with "Wal-Mart" if you say "Walgreen's" and then subtract forty-five. ["According to yourself, it is Walgreen's. Now you apologize to Miss Banks. I'll wait." -- Wing Chun] Anyway, she's going platinum blonde and getting contacts. And, finally, Heather is going "a little more blonde," which bothers her because she's the only person not getting a whole new look. Hey, Heather? If you think you're fine, if you think you're great, you're the only one who thinks we'll still be watching you week at the time of PM 17 minus eight.
Man, these girls are lucky! The one time I tried to get my hair cut in montage it went so fast my hair was completely ruined and I accidentally ended up in Topeka when it turned into a travel montage right in the middle. Catie complains gently throughout. Yoanna is all good vibes about everything. Mercedes -- her eyebrows with some sort of nasty cream on them -- tells us, "I'm just trying to control my pain of tolerance." Does she mean "tolerance of pain," or does she literally mean that accepting things causes some kind of physical anguish? Meanwhile, Jay takes the girls through makeup tips of how to create a "smoky eye," because it's going to be important later. Heather's hair looks exactly the same as it did in the "last" "episode," which she wasn't in because she's fake, and ergo the sarcastic quotes.
And now, good people, the reason Yoanna is going to win this thing. We join her in her gleeful post-haircut phase, and she is all smiles and looking foxy. Her hair is a choppy tousle of shortness, and she does a little "it could be a hat, a brooch, a pterodactyl" thing, showing us that it could be worn up, down, or as a pterodactyl. Very retro-Benatar, proving that Pat's look is never really out and that hell really is for children. And that's why children like Catie tell us, "I've never bleached my hair like this before, and I never want to ever, ever, ever, ever again." Jenascia complains that they "played the tall card" on her again, though I have to pull her off the bottom of my shoe and then shrink down to an Asimov-sized body traveler to be able to hear her from all the way down in Tinytown. Sara complains that she's sick of "these bitches" complaining about all that's being done for them, and says she digs her own radical transformation from "Mall Chick in New Jersey" to the higher tax bracket of "Mall Chick on Long Island."
Okay, Catie's done. And while the jury is still out among y'all, I will jump in and say I think it looks pretty great. I know, I know. She's a terror and an immature weasel and was born in nineteen-eighty-eleven-seconds-ago, but I still think she has a pretty face. And yes, she does look a little like a marshmallow. In a movie about a marshmallow. Where the role of "marshmallow" is being played by Rory Culkin. But trust me: I don't bother hating the hair, because as much as I could ever hate it, Catie sure as hell hates it more. So why agree when there's the option of being contrary? Tricomi tries to tell Catie that she just doesn't understand the concept, and she begs, "Help me understand." ["Ha! That's a great line. If your hair needs to be taught to you in a PowerPoint presentation followed by a quiz that tests your understanding of it, it's not good." -- Wing Chun] She makes faces and worries, "I feel bald." As she steps into the rest of the salon, there are gasps from the other girls, and even a quiet "That's exactly how I pictured it" from April, who really means, "I'm so glad you finally look bad." Jenascia takes a sip of spite from a cup she's holding (awww, she could sleep inside that cup if she wanted!), and tells us in a confessional, "She told me that she can cry at the drop of a hat." And then she does cry. To the wrong person entirely.
Cut to Tyra giving Catie a big hug, Catie spontaneously sobbing, "I look like a boy!" Maybe that's why I like it so much. Tyra doesn't so much console, saying "Right now it's a little Oliver Twist." Hey, why is there all this brimstone bubbling up from underneath my floorboards? Could it be because supermodel Tyra Banks just referenced 19th-Century British author Charles Dickens? Perhaps I've been underestimating the educational value of A Muppet Christmas Carol. Tyra says that it's going to look great when it's styled, but that "it's okay to cry, 'cause it's different." And it may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but whenever Catie doesn't win this thing -- which she won't -- this is going to be the moment why. Remembering that she's really cool and mod and street or whatever it's called when you pretend to be dumber than you are, Tyra promises, "You're not gonna look like a boy, girl. You got titties, you got booty, you gonna work it out." Now that's parenting. That's what my mom used to say to me whenever I used to get upset. And I'm not trying to throw my hat into the nature/nurture debate, but, I mean, some shit went wrong and I'm not trying to blame anyone for it, okay?
Heather: "I'm just kinda worried about my hair, 'cause I didn't have any kind of change done. In the end, they might look at me and say, 'Hey, you haven't had any kind of change. Can you change?'" Oh, cram it. No one will ever even emotionally invest in you enough to say anything like that to you. Leave, Heather. Here's some bus fare. Keep the change. Can you keep the change?
Contact fittings! Smoky eyes! Styling! Xiomara loves her new, girly look. Mercedes loves her new, edgy look. Shandi -- platinum blonde and accidentally falling more into the Extreme Makeover category -- tells us that she feels pretty. And sure enough, she took off her glasses and took down hair, and a gorgeous girl emerged out of that. And also the winner of America's '80s Teen Comedy Archetype.
Reclining on the phone chair at Zo-Loft and wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans and looking more like this guy I dated for a while than ever, Catie whines to her boyfriend (who, one can infer from some of his vocal inflections, might be a guy I could date for a while too, if you know what I mean and I think you do), "You're gonna be shocked when I come home." He asks, "Why?" Because of how soon it's going to be, if this attitude keeps up? He guesses out of nowhere that she cut her hair really short, asking, "Is it short, like boy short?" a little too hopefully if you want to ask me about it. Catie stops fingering her one remaining strand to actually put her hand over her eyes in southern belle anguish and start to sob. As if trained in the finely honed art of not giving a crap, her boyfriend whines, "You don't have to cry." He tells her he's sure it looks good, and asks her if she's getting compliments on it. "Yeah," she whimpers, her voice steadying a bit at the thought of being loved superficially. She tells us in a confessional that she has to get used to change and reinventing herself, because "models do that, like, every month." Every month? Ladies and gentlemen, you can add this information to your biology textbooks: for those remaining few of you who still believed that models were actual human beings, watch them sometime when they're molting.
Heather and Yoanna sit at the table in the kitchen, Heather just eating a pickle. Yoanna forces food on her, and Heather tells us, "I feel like she's the only person who actually cares." That is, until a homeless man smiles at her on her walk to the pickle store, and Heather runs home and places a hasty phone call that starts off with the excited sentiment, "Mom, I'm engaged!"
Tyra mail! Xiomara reads hesitantly, "Be ready at 2 o'clock" -- doesn't she mean 2:45 minus forty-five? -- "to beat your face and beat the clock." Beat your face? I'm sure that's just a modeling trade term.
Off we go to Jay's studio, I'm guessing, where Jay tells us that he taught the girls the day how to make "a glamorous, smoky eye." I'll just assume that happened, is what I'll do. We could have used one more shot of it and one less shot of fake-Heather and her blonde shambition tour. Jay tells the girls that this is the day to test their skill, and to that effect shows us two...oh, my god, WHAT THE LIVING HELL IS THAT??? Can't type. Too...cowed... by...raw...t-t-t-terror... to continue. What's behind Jay is a ph-ph-ph (sorry, I thought I was better but then they SHOWED IT AGAIN) photo of Tyra without makeup on. They must be going out of their way to get Jay some work this week by showing what a magician he is, because she is the executive producer and under any circumstances should have had that picture strapped to Superman's back to have it flown backwards around the world to the day before the invention of unrefined papyrus and its eventual application to film stock. Then, Earth should have been blown up. Just to be sure it was gone. It's really the scariest thing I've ever seen, with its dead-eyed fish stare and pesky combination skin. The other photo features Tyra with "a glamorous, smoky eye," which they're told they have fifteen minutes to achieve, during which time they all have to use the same mirror, one set of brushes ["goodbye, ocular hygiene" -- Wing Chun], one makeup palette, ten pairs of eyelashes, and ten sponges. The winner of the smokiest, most glamorous eye wins a dinner at the loft with three mystery guests. And. AND. The girls who don't win have to cook and serve the dinner! And I know no one there actually eats anything, but who cares, with a plot as delicious as this one? I'm rubbing my hands together with glee. When I'm not peeking out from between tightly bonded fingers as to avoid another run in with stills from the Night of the Living Tyra feature coming this segment from Alien Autopsy Films.
Julie Refern from Sephora pops in just before the gun goes off, and Camille (or "Cruella DeVil," as Yoanna calls her) slams over to the mirror and commandeers all of the brushes. The rest of the girls crowd around the mirror in a really awkward way that makes it look like Uma Thurman is about to pop up in the middle of them and yell, "I said goddamn," and a few of them are marooned to the outskirts to the really hot vanity lights while Camille takes her sweet time in front of the entirety of the mirror. Time's up, and Jay and our new friend Julie line the girls up and appear to be near singing the "Yes No No No No No No" song from History of the World as Jay walks up and down the line, surveying the glamour and smokeyness of it all. April gets props for coming so far; Shandi is told that she's good but not faded enough; but it's Yoanna who is told that her lips are the closest to Tyra's.
Jay and Julie retreat for a quick bit of "whisper whisper ruzzah ruzzah peas and carrots peas and carrots ruzzah ruzzah ruzzah," and quickly return to announce that the winner of the challenge is Yoanna. Yay! She's allowed to pick three friends, who I think are the mystery guests for just one second. She chooses Sara and Xiomara, before Jay has to step is and is like, "I said three." Math is hard and she's just a girl! And this really does happen: Yoanna puts her hand out toward Heather, and then pulls it back at the very last second and points it at April. Best moment ever. The girls circulate a menu among those who have to cook the meal, and we get an immediate flashback of Yoanna's point-and-switch. "No one's gonna be there for you, that's what I've learned," Heather moans, screaming out her growing pains and thinking how much good it would do her aching soul if she could go for a nice, long swim in the familiar waters of Lake Needy.
Suddenly, Shandi's lying on the floor in slow motion. Everyone runs over in stop-frame. Yoanna bails the room to go get her some food, which is totally nice and also sane, like this one time we had a fire at my house when I was ten and I ran door to get a fire extinguisher from the neighbors while everyone else ran around screaming. My favorite help Shandi is given is whoever's hand is trying to revive her by waving the menu for the dinner at her. Sadly, that appears to be the closest Shandi has gotten to food in a good long while. Poor Yoanna.
Shandi tells us that she needs to "make the time to get sleep and eat as much as [she] can" in a kind of whitewashing I Am Woman Hear Me Chew kind of way that means she's now apparently better. ["There's more to life than planning one's opportunities to sleep or eat? I simply won't believe it." -- Wing Chun] I guess that means she can peel her two-dimensional frame off the floor now and get back in her standard tablecloth for a night of practicing on the runway. I guess you do have to crawl before you can walk.
Shut up, Heather.
Yoanna and her guests enter the house, Yoanna remembering to tell her phalanx of chefs, "It smells good!" Smells like a nice mix of victory and spite in there, especially with arch-nemesis Camille standing at the stove donning a metaphoric "Ask Me About My...Self" apron and preparing a meal for Yoanna and her friends. Yoanna does cop to being "jazzed" in a confessional that Camille will have to wait on her tonight, and the subservience of this activity is, I have to admit, kind of brilliant. "I think it might do her some good," says Yoanna, finally taking the power dynamic back and forcing Camille to work off her community-service hours for the punishable crime of Bitch in the first degree.
Secret guests! Secret guests! It's Mike, Mike, and AJ, the three IMG models from the Adam and Eve photo shoot in the season premiere! Yay! And they all...I don't know, have a lot of clothes on. Boo! Yoanna immediately kicks in with questions about the modeling world, which are interspersed with her calling out for more vegetables and water. Mmmmm. Quite a dinner. Camille picks a fight with Catie for using her personal vegetables to serve at the dinner, telling us in a confessional, "It's a stinkin' tomato and six pieces of lettuce. Get over it." But Catie, when that's the entirety of one's eating regimen for the entire year, it does kind of raise the stakes maybe just a leeeeeetle bit?
Catie and the genetic DeVito to her own superior Schwarzenegger (oh, man. My spell check knows the word "Schwarzenegger." Why am I so dizzy when it's obvious the world just stopped spinning?) sit outside, Heather complaining, "I try to talk to some people and they don't even want to look at me when I'm talking to them." Catie responds with the inadvertently brilliant unsympathetic reply, "We all go through it. Want to start walking back?" And so they do, and in a confessional Heather tells us how close she feels to Catie and how relieved she is that other people feel the same way. Unless Cover Girl changes their corporate logo to "Needy, Breezy, Beautiful" by the time they're back in front of the judges, Heather doesn't even have a one-third of a chance of winning this thing.
Tyra mail! Tyra mail! Tyra mail! Since four of the girls take it upon themselves to prove that they can use their context clues and at least figure out this whole "reading" thing by the magical power of phonetics, they all crowd around the card and read it with overlapping "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" cacophony, so we're forced to read it for them when it's held in front of the camera. Here's what it says: "Venustraphobia: The fear of beautiful women. Ophidiophobia: The fear of snakes. Algophobia: The fear of pain. What are you afraid of? We'll find out tomorrow. Be ready at 7 in the morning." Hey, doesn't she mean...oh, never mind.
How about a really deep confessional to put waaaay too fine a point on it? Here's one now: "Tyra mail was talking about a photo shoot that has something to do with people's fears and phobias," Catie shares. "But my big fear is complete waste of emotions and time." And how best to confront the fear of wasting emotions and time than by experiencing those fears head-on. What would be the best way to experience a total waste of time and emotion? Someone -- and this is just a thought, here -- someone ought to make her a model.
We're at a burnt-out loft so far west of 12th Avenue it's fully in New Jersey. The building is (well, was) several floors high, but the middle floors have been replaced by enormous holes from which you can see from the top all the way down. The TV Guide blurb told me it was a drop of 100 feet, so that's how much it is, then. Now Catie's new fear is "falling to [her] death." Her death of emotions from wasting time, you mean? Jay explains that the point of today's shoot (well, I'm not sure there's ever really a point, per se, but go with me here, if you will) is "an action fashion editorial." But there's one twist: "We are going to suspend you from this ledge and shoot you guys hanging over this hole."
And so they do. The makeup is really bright and weird with lots of feathers on the eyes. Catie starts to cry on the phone to her father that she's scared of heights. April goes fearlessly into the thing and does a quick, kick-ass job. Shandi comes across really well and impresses the photographer in his confessional. Sara takes a while to focus and doesn't concentrate well. Yoanna was a little "scattered," Jay tells us. Heather's shoot is nothing special, and Jay keeps calling for her to close her mouth. Other than that, the photographer does yell out an encouraging number of "great"s and "cool"s" Jenascia? Well, she's too short for this, even when suspended in space. Camille "seemed to get worse the longer she was out there." Mercedes is looking good.
But what this really is is about Catie, who diva-ishly sits in a corner until Jay starts begging her to do one shot, cajoling, "We're running out of light." And he totally knows just what to say to her, because he must deal with this behavior all the time, but in those cases he's dealing with people who are already working models. This time, he can say whatever he wants to them and make them feel better, but it's ultimately going to mean that they're not taking this thing home with them. Anyway, Xiomara steps in and asks if she'd rather go she first. As Xiomara goes in, she tells us that she had "no attention," and we cut back to Jay babysitting Catie during Xiomara's entire shoot. And then Catie goes in, weeping all the way, her legs dangling. She pulls herself together in time for Jay to get a few quick photos in, and he pulls her up to the raucous applause of everyone around her. I still think this should be her doom. Heather elbows her way into this segment for no discernible reason, having learned, "We just have to be there for each other. I've very proud of myself. And I'm even more proud of Catie." Uh-uh. Cramming that shot in there just to make sure we knew who she was when she got booted is getting this episode docked a half-grade. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is in the cutthroat world of high-fashion recapping.
And back we go to the elimination room, Camille entering last for the nutritional want the absence of one tomato has resulted in, poor dear. "You all look like new people," Tyra notes, somewhat heavily made-up herself in penance for the crime of trying to kill me with naturalism. "Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow," cries Janice Dickinson at the girls' new look, sounding like she's whacked out on nine kinds of ecstasy and preferring the ease of repeating one slurred word over and over again rather than wandering around trying to figure out where she is with questions like, "Jay, do you think it's safe for me to eat your delicious cotton candy head?" or "Girls, do you think the color 'trashy' you're seeing is the same color 'trashy' I'm seeing?" The victory prizes are repeated and the judges reintroduced, tonight's hyperbolic presentation of Janice reaching a fever pitch of absurdity: "First, but not least, is Ms. Janice Dickinson, who is the first supermodel ever, in the world, in existence." Janice wears a bright red dress that scoops down in the middle almost to her shoes, forming the impression of an entire face that lacks only a nose. If you've figured out what the eyes are, we're on the same page here. up is Eric Nicholson, the senior fashion editor from Jane who is going to have a lot of explaining to do to his mom when she finds out that he's not at piano lessons after school like she thought. Then there's Nah-gel Bah-ker, whose role as guy-with-a-part- not-much-bigger- than-mine has dwindled considerably since he barked droll Britishisms in a time called The Past. And, finally this week, our guest judge is preeminent art director (and noted cotton candy head) Jay Manuel, who turns Tyra from a steaming pile of pig party into a beauuuutiful laaaaaaaaaaaadeeeee.
Before the Prada boot finds its way up one unlucky girl's ass this week, however, Jay has one more challenge to explain to them: "You girls are gonna have to recreate a specific look reminiscent of a certain era." Muh? "We have '50s glamour, '60s mod, '80s punk, a goth look, and a futuristic look." What about '70s prog rock? I feel like Mercedes has got it in her to pull off a kick-ass Rick Wakeman these judges won't soon forget. And since when was goth an "era"? They're each given a card and then rush through a dolling-up routine, and we montage back seconds. Does this count as futuristic because it's now technically in the future?
Shandi goes first, and Janice all but hiccups a cocktail onion when she announces, "Shandi is Shandified!" She painted black stripes from her lip to her chin and coming out of each eye, and she holds up a card that announces her as "goth." Oh, wouldn't it have been much more fun to have made the judges guess? So many opportunities for Janice to have been all, "Who are you, Janice Dickinson, circa '60s mod? Stop looking at me like that! Why, I oughtta...zzzzzzzzzzz." But alas, that is not the case, though they all agree that Shandi nailed the makeup test. Her photo shoot "way up in the sky, high, like Superman" (is Tyra speaking in code to her secret ops somewhere, because she has ceased to make any sense at all) turned out very Clockwork Orange, with her black bowler hat and white suit, and one of the panel members says that as well. She's a big A+ and she's not going anywhere this week. See what a little never eating will get you? Success!
Yoanna was supposed to be '80s punk, and they all hate it. "I was a model in the '80s, and I don't remember makeup like that," Janice snarls. I guess being in the '80s can make a person crotchety.
Mercedes has painted her green face green as a "futuristic" babe. It works for most of the panel, though Tyra would have like to see her "prettify" it a bit. Her photo brings a ringing endorsement of "you were great" from Jay, and Nigel compliments her "booty," because when it's in a British accent, even saying he liked her "arse" would have been adorably acceptable.
Oh, Heather. Heather Heather Heather Heather Heather. She does a really good '80s punk, Janice going to far as to observe, "I adore the fuchsia!" Maybe Janice means the cresting wave of red and orangey colors that appears in front of Janice's face when she waves her hand really fast. Heather's shoot wasn't "intense" enough, Jay says, and a little fight breaks out on the panel (except without the inclusion of the little boy, who doesn't seem to have much to say, thus far) when Jay says he only found two selects of Heather's that were up to snuff. Nigel argues that "you only need one," but the elegant oratory of executive producer Banks hard-charges in, adding, "That's bull-crap, doing twenty rolls and only finding one." Instead, she says, what should happen is that there should be several good pictures "and one crazy one that's like pow!" Pow! Bang! Snerf! Is she a Batman comic?
They like Sara's '80s look, and Tyra notes that these girls really feel it for the '80s "because that's the era when you came out yo mamas." Yeah, no, it's official. She is definitely trying to contact the mother ship with a complex series of words and clicks, because she is a babbling lunatic today. Besides which, some of them were definitely born in the '70s, right? And they all love Sara's picture. Bing! Bam! Smim!
Jenascia turns to them in profile to show them her futuristic look, but even in their cooing I'll bet you they think she's too short.
Camille is doing futuristic, but Janice terms it "LSD makeup." No comment, people, when she does it for us herself. Her face is a mess of random symbols and body art, like she's just come from the face-painting booth at a Marilyn Manson County Fair and we've stopped her on her way to the Dead Animal Petting Zoo. The picture doesn't work for them, and Jay says Camille lacked all "intensity." When will the rest of them pipe down for a minute and let that little boy talk?
Janice does not like April's futuristic makeup, but they all love her picture. Jay jams the pointy edge of a film canister in Heather's eye by announcing that he had "so many shots it was very hard to choose" with April's shoot, and Tyra piles on, "That's what I'm talking about." Except that he's speaking English, dear.
Xiomara looks "like a mime act," according to Nigel, and the picture doesn't work for anyone. And then, this is a problem: "I didn't really have much direction...because he was comforting Catie." No one likes a complainer, so they all tell her that it was her responsibility to call Jay back, which is kind of a gray area, if you ask me. Tyra predicts that Catie's shots are going to be much better, "because Catie was thinking about herself and you were thinking about Catie." And sure enough, Catie steps out just then and waves a finger in the face of the jury, saying, "He never said a word to me. He was directing Xiomara." Janice leaps in and screams, "Boarding school!" Catie's picture comes up and is deemed "fabulous" by all of the panel members, and as the girls leave so that the judges can deliberate, Janice huffs, "Oh, my god. Drama!" like the fabulous drag queen he is. Isn't it funny that I used to think she was a woman back in the first few episodes of this show?
A special shot to the waiting area shows Catie crying and fainting, and Xiomara brilliantly advises, "Pick a character. Either you're this scared crapless girl or you are this attitude-having diva. But don't try to be both." Xiomara rages that Catie sold her out and that she's sure she's going home today. And she would have, if Tyra's vast alien powers hadn't reached through the time-space continuum to create a girl everyone vaguely remembers having been there the whole time.
Back inside the deliberation room, Janice kicks things off by saying that Catie should be out for her frequent meltdowns. But never one to walk away from a one-liner, she retorts to Tyra's "Xiomara" with a yelled "Ah, see you later" that makes me thank the higher powers for her existence on this show. The planet she came from must miss her horribly. Mercedes and Shandi show great growth. Camille didn't do that well. Yoanna has "a lovely face" but, according to Nigel, "definitely has to work on her body." Thanks for driving the point home that "that's what you get for eating," Nigel. Props all around. Sara they loved, April they loved, Heather was a mess on the shoot. Jay thinks Heather's out, Janice says she's in. Janice also thinks Jenascia is -- wait for it -- "too short." Eric tries to play the Kate Moss card again, and Nigel finally puts an end to that, delivering some part of what was, I'm sure in its entirety, "I knew Kate Moss. Kate Moss was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Kate Moss." It's from politics. Look it up.
And back in they come. Ten ladies present, nine photos in Tyra's hand. And here we go: Shandi, April, Yoanna, Mercedes, Sara, Camille, Jenascia, and Catie are all granted immediate reprieve. Tyra gives Catie a quick speech about how her fears cannot wreck her future. I guess she hasn't seen that picture of herself yet.
Tyra calls Xiomara and Heather forward. Heather, she says, looks "a little too teen," but they don't know if it's because she is...well, a teenager, or if she really sucks. But what better way to figure it out than to keep her around for one more week, right? RIGHT? Xiomara, meanwhile, blew it when she let Catie take her focus away. "We think this was your weakest week since you've been here." So I guess that means she doesn't have the hunger necessary to..."Xiomara." Oh. What? Yay! She bursts into tears, and so does Tyra, as Heather accepts a hug from all of her five-minute-at-a-time-friends and retreats to the loft: "One man's trash is another man's treasure. Obviously, I'm trash here. I'll be a treasure somewhere else." Heather fades from the photo in the final frame, and the balance of the picture now looks awesomely like all of the girls have made a solemn pact to get as far away as possible from Camille.