The First Annual New York City Stock Footage Film Festival shows its classic entry Bad Moon Setting, as light spreads over the city skyline and sets our scene, approximately, appropriately, as "Somewhere out there/ If love can see us through/ Then we'll be together/ Somewhere out there/ Out where dreams come true." Cut to the more direct location setting of the faade -- which I guess it's only putting up because Simon Doonan told it to look more like itself -- of the ZoLoft. Inside and upstairs, we discover Catie jumping on a couch that Sara is lying on because, I guess, the couch told her that her haircut made her look like a little boy and she decided to exact her cumulative sixty-seven pounds of revenge on it. You show it, Catie. Jump until your hair looks bad! Jump until you can't stop crying! Give that stuffy piece of furniture the Culkin Death Grip you know it so deserves!
But first, cry me a confessional! "The past eliminations," Catie tells us over a clip of last week's Elimination Ceremony Thingymahoosy Vaguely Named Wingding Bimbot, "I'm feeling relieved, I'm feeling disappointed that I've let myself slip down the rankings." And sure enough, there's Catie in flashback standing to...no one, no one at all! Oh, wait. Pan down, would you? There's a little weensy little girl to her who, having been shrunk to what I can only guess is a microscopic fraction of her original size, must be prepping for her upcoming trip into a sick man's carotid artery to destroy a blood clot in his brain. Should you fail, brave bloodstream warrior, the entire world will be doomed! Wait! Stop! It's just Jenascia getting eliminated, downcast and dour and hiding under the wide brim of her fashion-forward Mushmouth hat as she skulks back to the DQ. Hey hey hey! Try out the new Blizzard!
Camille, meanwhile, has actually found someone to talk to (well, at, actually) at this late date. She sits in the kitchen giving those "like, couldn't we turn this room into a walk-in 'shoes and elaborate scarves' closet?" eyes that all the girls give when confronted by the wasted space this room presents. I guess she's only talking to April because Camille thinks she's the new girl in the house, which would be the only explanation for why anyone would talk to Camille, and also why none of us has actually ever seen that other girl before. Camille declares, "They can choose, like, a million blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls to walk down a runway. But black women in a show are far and few between." Well, wherever they are, they're not in the back, memorizing their idioms. First of all, it's "few and far between." And, second, no one's asked you to be the token anything on a runway yet, so don't go counting your hatch before they chickens. Syntax, Camille. It's the crop of the cream of spoken grammar skills.
“ April: 'C'mon, what percentage of magazine covers do you see an Asian on?' Is that a rhetorical question? Because you know who they say is really good at math. ”
April, meanwhile, has her own downtrodden response at the ready, arguing, "C'mon, what percentage of magazine covers do you see an Asian on?" Is that a rhetorical question? Because you know who they say is really good at math. I'm kidding. I'M KIDDING. I'm being ironic. And, also, I can say it, because I'm Asian. And I'm also Jewish, French, Southern, a lesbian, a fierce Whig loyalist, and I have a mysterious third nipple. So I'm in the clear. Forever. April continues on, "Tyra has told me right up front..." and we kick it to what a label on the screen tells us are "auditions," where we find April standing before a preachy Tyra, who says, "If you're entering into this fashion world, you would be an underdog." I'm also a dog. Who talks. In French. And, back at the kitchen table, April finishes up in the second person (just like what Camille is quickly coming to learn is a required entity for this actual "conversation" they seem to be having), learning us all real good: she reminds us that, if you're Asian, "There's less [sic] slots for you in any runway show, editorial, or fashion magazine than any single other race you can even think of." I'd point out what a bold statement that is, but I'm too busy filling out my renewal subscription card for another year's worth of Prussian Fashion Weekly, because April's language on the matter was so strong I'm to assume that even cultures of nation's that no longer exist produce more supermodels than poor Asians. And if you're looking for up-and-comers who truly kick ass on an underwater shoot, look no further than the spread in the new Pangaea Wear Daily.
"I've never done anything that made me associate myself as Asian," April tells us, and on the knotty matter of race relations in America at the turn of the millennium, thank goodness we have a learned pundit of Camille's opinion on the matter to confessionalize: "I don't know how much April lives out her Japanese culture in her life, but her Japanese heritage might be that one thing that's gonna give her the edge." Oh, yeah? If you think that's enough to get her the pitying "disadvantaged youth" vote, y'all don't know there's a sick girl afoot.
Oh, there she is now. Sara is still lying stomach-down on the couch like she's the one losing hair and energy and dimensions to her ever one-note characterization of "sick girl," and Mercedes approaches and asks after a bracelet on Sara's arm. We learn that it is "from Iran," and we learn soon after that Sara's position on the couch must be known as the "juxtaposition," as she immediately picks up April's renouncing of her own thrillingly exotic plurality by countering, "I'm so proud of my Persian culture." But, proud or no, we are reminded that Sara's Muslim father would not prefer this particular vocational option for her, since it equates her with a whore. Don't ascribe such sinister intents to her career path, good Iranian citizen. She's not a whore. She's only a whore once a poll is introduced. Until then, she's merely a "talentless actress."