The Girl Whose Lips Swelled Up

Visions of Splenda-made sugarplums dance in sleeping models' heads as night falls over Manhattan. However, up inside the ZoLoft, Camille and Catie -- possessing a cumulative thirty years, ninety pounds, and almost limitless capacity for very different forms of soul-sucking evil -- sit awake in a ludicrously small room that I can only guess is the physical manifestation of Camille's humanity rendered spatially. Because we've never seen them have a conversation, it makes absolute sense that we'd find them exchanging conversation in the tones of the eighth-grade sleepover (look for Catie to ask the situationally appropriate "What do you think it feels like to kiss a boy?" and then put her hands on her cheeks and wait politely for someone to tell her what it's like to act like a grown-up), Catie whispering, "Did you think she was going home or you were going home?" We cut to last week's tiny-dog-sponsored hideous miscarriage of justice that sent Xiomara packing her extra rows of teeth and taking the PATH train of shame back to her old life selling Amway or licking bedpans clean or wearing lots of buttons (er, sorry..."pieces of flair") while serving mozzarella sticks to unruly suburbanites who are thankful of their chosen deity that it is, in fact, Friday. All of these girls have such desperate lives to return to I can hardly even remember which one Xiomara is heading back to. Wherever she's going, it isn't one step in the direction of becoming America's Top Model.

Camille responds that she was "just chillin'," thus admitting to us that, at least on the subconscious level of ironic rhyme, she perceives herself to be somewhat "like a villain." In a confessional, Catie further explains that Camille is "an incredibly strong woman." And it's true that to lift that ego every day without assistance would be almost impossible for a hill of ants going ego-lifting on the moon, so that kind of brute strength is practically unknown on a planet with this particular center of gravity such as Earth. But Catie continues her one-woman Camille begrudging-respect-fest: "She has no vulnerability and shows no emotions, happy or sad. She's just medium." Hoo-boy, but if only the two of them could get trapped inside The Fly chamber for but a flash together, the mutant animal that would emerge from the other side would be -- dun-DUN-duuuuuuuun -- an emotionally even-keeled person. It's a monster! A MOOOONSTER!

In a different conversation in a different room on what seems to be an entirely different day, Catie sits on her bed and asks a suddenly faraway Camille, "Be honest. What one did you like better: long hair or short hair?" It's no wonder Catie deems Camille's reactions as being generally unresponsive, what with the topics of conversation meant to invigorate her being mostly of the "HairGate 2004" variety. Camille thinks about how she liked Catie's long hair better because it at least gave her a greater surface area of a nearby flat, shiny object, the better for her to see her own reflection in, and she mumbles in response something about being able to do "funky things" with it now that it's short. Like, for instance, making it a central enough character that it's had more of a plot arc than many of the girls living in that house. Which do you know more about: Sara or Catie's hair? Exactly. Does anyone else smell spinoff? Called -- oh, fine -- America's Top Culkin Impersonator Haircut. Clunky title. Culkin-y hair!

The Second Avenue Deli is where the girls...aren't. An amusingly misleading establishing shot of that very famous kosher locale (often referred to, as a result of the klezmer font on the outside awning, "The Zecond Avenue Deli) cuts over to a twee Village tavern where salads take the place of pastrami, and empty wine racks take the place of any other food. For some reason, in public, April and Mercedes compare the size of their stomachs, which they puff out to enormous proportions in a way that makes them almost resemble real-sized people. Poor Mercedes. Not even able to scratch the surface of her maladies in last week's hour-long special, Lupus: The Sleepy Killer, we never got to learn what else this tormenting disease causes you to lose: your inhibitions.

Meanwhile, down at the other end of the table, a sudden cry of "Ew, Camille puts ketchup on her pickles!" refocuses the attention on the central conflict this week and proves to me that all you need to write a children's book is the title. Sure enough, the troublingly random foursome of Camille, Catie, Yoanna, and Shandi sit at a corner of the table, and Camille constructs her "lunch" out of six pickles with a pool of ketchup dumped right in the middle. Yoanna tells Catie that it's kind of rude to point at someone's lunch and yell, "Ew." Yoanna defending the actions of Camille? Thursday night and Friday will be on Tuesday night instead! And yes, it was rude of Catie to just decry another person's "meal" right in front of the rest of the group, which is why I support Yoanna's decision to jump down her throat and Mercedes's subsequent confessional in which she vicariously-through-us tells Catie to "SHUT UP." And yes, it's not like pickles and ketchup never meet on some meals which contain both ingredients. And yes, the most annoying thing someone can do with ketchup is to spell or pronounce it "catsup," and in fact has nothing to do with the consumption of the product in question. But I mean, still, all considered, you have to admit that's kind of the eating disorder special. We knew a girl in high school who we used to refer to simply as "mustard bagel," because she would eat the same thing -- a sesame bagel with light mustard -- for lunch every single day. Little did we know that that mustard bagel was the only thing she was consuming, and boy did that nickname stop in a hurry when she was hospitalized. Anyway, ketchup and pickles is the Atkins-age version of that story I just told you.

"Guys, there's Tyra Mail," Yoanna calls out from the front room, a sure sign that the producers are slowly rescuing her from two week's worth of quiet holding pattern to begin the final drive toward her inevitable victory (pleeeeeeeeeeeease?). Suddenly flanked by Shandi, Yoanna gamely reads, "The world is full of color, but sometimes it's seen best in black and white." This means they will be doing a black and white photo shoot. Or it means that lupus makes you colorblind.

Two girls sit on stage and quietly whisper what the other person says. Sara weeps about her crappy, model-y father, Shandi screams "I hate you" to her dad, here understudied by Mercedes, I think. Everyone cries. There's an actual crying montage, which Shandi does a bit too well when she's caught mid-nose-drool without a tissue. Meanwhile, Camille sits in the empty room, her eyes fixed toward the top of her head and the intellectual part of her making a strong mental look, "Remember to look up 'bemused.' Because I think that's probably exactly what I am right now."

A brilliant and fittingly used page from the ANTM playbook comes in the form of Yoanna and Camille sitting across from one another on stage, Tasha Smith-Arqese presiding over the inevitable emotional outpouring. The one that doesn't come. "Mom, you are my strength," Camille starts, smiling. Tasha Smith-Arqese steps in and tells her to deal with "things that are not so easy," asking if she's angry at anyone. She says she's not, but a weird cut later Tasha Smith-Arqese deduces that Camille's not that thrilled with Yoanna. Tasha Smith-Arqese notes to Camille -- whom she's already pretty damn sour on -- "And you obviously did something to her, too," insisting that they just get it all out now. Yoanna smirks with a self-righteous "okay," and we're off. Camille says calmly and evenly that she feels hurt by the judgments of her that people level in the house, which causes Tasha Smith-Arqese to scream, "You're sucking right now!" Camille insists that she's trying, and Tasha Smith-Arqese shoots back that she feels like Camille is wearing "a mask" (nah, just some novelty Halloween KrazyLips is all), finishing, "God bless you and your career, but you're just boring." Tasha Smith-Arqese then hands out a scene they have to act out the following day, and sends them home. Camille notes in a confessional that acting might be her "downfall." Now might not be the time to get lippy with the..oh, sorry.

Back at the ZoLoft, the girls practice their scene, Sara noticing a somewhat juicy stage direction that reads, "They embrace and engage in a passionate kiss." Mercedes pulls off the nasty but brilliant editorial comment that she hopes she can go first: "So I don't have to taste any of you other hos." Shandi and Yoanna point out the cheesiness of the script, and Catie sneers that it's so like a "soap opera." This sudden media elitism from the girl whose profile on the UPN website lists her favorite television show as Jimmy Neutron. It may be a kids' show, she'd argue. But at least he's still a genius.

Back at the headquarters of The Tasha Smith-Arqese Players, Tasha Smith-Arqese kicks it off by telling the ladies that the winner of today's acting competition will win a shopping spree at a jewelry store. It doesn't appeal to me personally, but then again I freelance for a company that employs only women, and I was rewarded for my efforts this year with an enormous gift certificate...to Sephora. Now I know you're all thinking that they have a men's section and eye creams and hand creams and shampoos that smell like Thanksgiving Dinner In Heaven for $47, but seriously? I wanted something else.

Here's Mark Collier (you can pronounce the "r." He's not, like, French or anything) of As the World Turns, who will be acting out the scenes with the ladies. Shandi gives an excited little titter when he comes out, I guess because she knows him from the television mounted above the security camera in the store, and because she has to ask him how he found his long-lost sister who they thought had drowned, because she missed it when a fairly long price check drowned it out.

A montage of all of the women best explaining what the scene is about still doesn't make it make any more sense, but here it is, transcribed, told by the six-head demigod of Camille Didn't Memorize Her Script: "The scene is about a woman named Laura, whose husband was in the military. She thinks he's dead so she moves on, but he comes back." No less ludicrous than your average soap-opera plot, and I'll just bet it's one from As the World Turns, which they don't have to worry about snarking on because it's on a different network and Mark Collier is to busy figuring out what his last name is the French verb infinitive for to notice.

April is very good. Sara is trying the hell out of it, but sucks anyway. Yoanna is quiet. Mercedes has lupus. April "cried herself to sleep! Every night! For six months!" Catie can't even fake it, to the stern looks of Tasha Smith-Arqese. Okay, now the line is "I cried myself to sleep for six months." We've already heard it, and they show it to us twice more before we move onto Camille's rendition: "I cried, Colin. Not for one, not for two, but I cried for six months." Even Collier gets a confessional to tell us how this kind of improvisation (meaning "bad" improvisation?) "shouldn't happen." Tasha Smith-Arqese flips comically through her script as Camille continues on: "I focused my energy onto sculpting. I even gave some away to charity." She gave her sculpting away to charity? To what charitable organization, Habitat for Rodin-ity?

And then, passionate kiss. April digs right in after the line, "I love you. I always have, I always will," and Shandi follows suit and so does Yoanna. Catie does a closed-mouth Spin The Bottle kiss and tells Tasha Smith-Arqese, "I can't! I have a boyfriend!" Tasha Smith-Arqese tells her that she needs to be committed to the scene. Camille uses the cue line, "Why'd you have to leave me, baby?" because if you're going to challenge the cheese factor of a soap-opera script, what better way to do it than by becoming the single-handed embodiment of fifty Luther Vandross songs? Her passionate kiss is a wan hug. Tasha Smith-Arqese sits stunned, throwing it off to Collier to comment: "You do something for David Mamet or somebody like that and you change their words, you won't have that job anymore, I promise you that." Camille smirks ever so slightly, because I think we're all in on the joke that the only thing this guy knows about David Mamet is that his last name is not pronounced "mam-May." Tasha Smith-Arqese picks up from that, calling Camille's performance "horrible," and telling us in a confessional, "Poor Camille. She's clueless." Well then, GET RID OF HER. Sigh. And yet another unrequited opinion from the ineffective open mouth of jazz scat-singer All Talk No Action Smith-Arqese.

And the ladies are invited back out onto the stage, while Collier and Tasha Smith-Arqese sit side by side in the empty audience in that total "I hope I get it god I hope I get it how many people does he need" kind of way. "Camille," she starts off. "You were not effective. And you refuse to be effective." Catie, she is told, gave up before it was over. April and Shandi were the best, according to Collier, and the winner is April. The prize, we learn for the third time, I think, is a shopping spree at a jewelry store, and she picks Catie to go with her. "We'll get her some bling," Catie confessionalizes, and white people are all, "It's our word now! For it has been spoken by she who is the whitest."

Camille is on the phone with her father, and Catie interrupts right away and takes the phone away, telling him that he should have cried in front of his daughter. The only words you hear coming through the other end of the phone is Camille's ambushed father responding, "Okay, then." "Show me some emotion!" Catie yells. Over in the kitchen, Camille tells Mercedes that she feels the criticism she received was "positive" ("You were terrible"), saying that, "If I wanted to do the acting thing, I'll do the acting thing." Cutting madly now until she's over by the stove, she vents, "I was good," and then holds up both of her middle fingers in a way I think should probably have been eliminated or otherwise not aired. But that's what's so great about America.

I had lunch with my parents on Monday in New York, because they came into the city for a few days to go to shows and not be home and whatever it is the aged do when they're alone. Anyway, they stayed at the Waldorf because they have worked very hard all of their lives and deserve every happiness, and in the hotel are a number of very high-end stores. One of them is the high-fashion jewelers, H. Stern, which caused my mother to observe, "You'd never think a jewelry line made by Howard Stern could be so beautiful." But she was just kidding. I think. Nevertheless, don't try to pretend that didn't fly through your mind at the sight of April and Catie stepping out of their car and into the eponymous locale. They shop in montage, April noting that she feels like "a little girl in a candy store." Because now boys hate not only spangly things and Sephora, but candy as well. Stupid, stupid Y-chromosome.

The road to hell is paved with Tyra Mail, and there's Yoanna working up to the Silver box of her SRAs as she's once again there to try the reading-comprehension exercise behind these words: "Tomorrow we'll see who will fight the best fight to become America's Top Model." Conspiracy theories abound: "Are we gonna box?" "Are we gonna fight her?" Yeah, like she ever loved her craft enough to become famed jazz flautist Crooked-Nose Banks.

Early, early, early the morning, the ladies plod onto the set of the show De La Guarda, where they discover Jay decked out in the outfit of the film in a world where the Matrix franchise hadn't petered out on account of the movies' sucking so hard. We learn that they'll be doing a television commercial for something called Rollitos Chips, a product no one in that room would deign to consume even if it actually existed, which I just don't think it actually does. The director of the commercial is a James Gay, and I certainly wouldn't have kicked him around in middle school for obvious reasons, but I have no choice but to deem his last name inveterately unfortunate and just move on in an I'm-so-glad-it-wasn't-me way. Two actors from the show, I guess, do a little demonstration of what they'll be up against this week as, suspended from wires, they run around across the back wall of the theater. Catie experiences an unfortunate flashback to three weeks ago, when she also didn't die as a result of being suspended. In a confessional, Sara expresses exhaustion with Catie's bullshit, and outside Jay tells her that it takes longer to shoot film than it does to shoot a photograph so, basically, shut up.

Upstairs, the girls are outfitted in black leather and sunglasses and things, and off the ground they go among strobe lights and techno music. Camille and April score, while Catie tells us that she thinks she's going to fall to her death. "Her behavior toward everything right now -- people are gonna get fed up with it. It's gonna catch up with you in the end," Sara tells us of Catie, and anyone who doesn't have to watch this show with 10% of his god-given digits plunged constantly into the pause button can hear time just ticking away.

Dialogue about chips and top models (er, "Top Models") ensues, Camille speaking in something of a British accent, I think. She tells us that she thinks she did very well. Maybe Catie's flat delivery would be good for delivering the side effects of Rolittos Chips and remind us that it caused some people to be prone to dry mouth, big lips, and cast-iron self-delusion.

Back at the ZoLoft, Mercedes muses on who might be the one out of The Cutting Room: "It is Yoanna?" NO! It most certainly is NOT. "Is it Camille, because of her attitude? It could be Catie, 'cause she seems, like, immature." Catie tells us that the competition is tight, and that none of them can be confident about being there anymore. Blah bleedee blah State The Obvious Anderson.

Cutting Room Floor (oooh, I liked that one! At least until I wondered whether or not it was better than "Catwalk...Into Hell!). Tyra welcomes her pretty, pretty pets back, and after the prizes, we re-meet our jury: Janice Dickinson has brought her double-stick tape and two coast's worth of American's Twelve Top Boob Jobs to bear on her slinky black dress. Eric Nicholson is wearing a skinny tie and looking like he's on his way to audition for a Kajagoogoo cover band. Good luck, Eric! Don't be too shy shy! Nigel Barker used to be a lot more exciting when he did stuff. And then there's Kyle Hagler (who? Exactly), who spent twelve seconds in this episode and was consumed by personalities more alluring. Where's Tasha Smith-Arqese? Maybe she has a part in something. Yeah. RIGHT.

First, we watch the final edit of the commercial they shot, which is very Matrix-y and everyone's excited. I take the time to Google and discover that Rollitos are, apparently, an actual product. With an ingenious fucking product-placement department.

April is first for her individual evaluation. Oh, there's Tasha Smith-Arqese, but she's only administering a test and doesn't get to vote. The test is on how well they take direction. Tasha Smith-Arqese gives her one spoken line -- "I've never wanted anything more than this, and if I don't get it, I'm going to die" -- which April has to use to make Tasha Smith-Arqese "want [her] sexually." Oy. With this crowd, don't expect much. And when you address the men, you might want the word "this" to modify "three bottles of bourbon, a blindfold, and the latest issue of Freshman" and see if they're taking it more seriously then.

Shandi is supposed to use the same line to make the panel laugh, and it doesn't work. April works the crowd with humor, and Sara, smelling blood in the water, resorts to guerilla tactics and runs onto the platform containing the judges' table, screaming her line. Everyone seems to enjoy it, but Janice recoils a bit, barely containing a shout of "Not too close or they'll know I'm made of pinecones!" I don't know what that means. She's just kind of pointy, is all.

"Convince me that you're funny! Just once!" Janice screams out to Yoanna, which causes her to turn to the panel and lift up her skirt. Everyone applauds. I'm singing the no-lives-on-Pac-Man music again because the game is over.

And now, to the photo shoot. Yoanna's photo is deemed everything from "fabulous" to "beautiful," but Nigel decries her uneven posture, which is pretty amazing find in a black and white photo that only features her face. Shandi's photo comes across as "bland," and Janice makes Tyra do the thing where she goes from dead eyes to, like, not dead eyes. Everyone laughs, and I think I remember this being the only thing I heard about last season of this show. April is an all-around winnah. Mercedes is "so pretty," according to Janice. Camille sucks and has to work on her diction, and the photo comes across as an actor's headshot with no neck. Camille, of course, answers back. Sara has a "nice" look in her eye, but it's not enough. Catie looks like Peter Pan, and Nigel is all, "it looks very Peter Pan." Janice calls it "child prostitute," and I love her for doing my work for me.

And now, to the closed-door sniping. April is "ooooh"ed and "aaaaah"ed over for both her television commercial and her photo. Janice liked Sara in the acting exercise. Shandi can do "high fashion," according to Tyra, but Janice isn't into her "Paris Hilton wannabe." Well, then, help her out of it by not returning her to the hilarious sticks of backwater America, won't you? Nigel has to get off of Yoanna's body type, and he says he wouldn't want to see her in a bathing suit. Well, just flip through the Freshman during her swimsuit competition then, sir. Tyra -- who clearly likes Yoanna -- shoots back, "Isn't it weird with models? It's like a house. Like, damn it's gorgeous, but the kitchen sucks. Everybody's got something. I've got something." Hee. Nigel doesn't like Yoanna's kitchen. Everyone likes Mercedes. Nobody likes Catie. Janice doesn't want to work with Camille. Nigel thinks she's "rude and aggressive," and Manager Guy thinks her drive can take her far. I'm not so into Camille's attic. But her family room is the only one out of all of these girls that doesn't make her cry.

The ladies are called back to the Cutting Room. April, congratulations. You're still in the running towards becoming America's Top Model. As is Yoanna. And Merecedes. And Shandi. And Sara.

Camille and Catie step forward. We already know the story: Catie is a basket case, Camille is too in control. "Even right now, Camille, hard as nails," Tyra continues. Anyway, Camille gets the photo and Catie is done. Are there tears? Good god, yes. And background tracks that sound like a Journey song.

Alone at the ZoLoft, Catie cries and packs, packs and cries. She snipes at a mirror, "I [bleep]ing cut off all my hair for this [bleep]," which I want to find hilarious but can't on account of the time I screamed in the face of someone breaking up with me, "I cut my hair for you. I fucking cut my HAIR for you." That would make an excellent line of a play as a character descends into madness. Perhaps a play about nineteenth-century France, where the hair could even have made her some money. Catie chips a nail and blames it on god, and tells us she'll return to L.A. "and make it on my own." Honey, seriously, don't do it on your own. Take a plane, for Chrissakes. Oh, yeah. That's right. Afraid of heights.