“ Oh, television. I thought your reality shows represented reality. But alas, your promises are as much a fantasy as life would be if America's Top Model were hosted by a unicorn. You're not real. You only serve to break me down. One montage at a time. ”
Oh, television, you adorable, fickle, rosy-cheeked, bitch-goddess, you. Just a week ago, you gave us the glory of a size 43 (because we're in faaaaaaaahncy Europe and the sizes are, like, translated into lira or something) boot right up le natiche di Camille, and gave us the previews for an upcoming episode where we'd get to watch Shandi get her so-called "freak on" in a way even white people from the Midwest wouldn't feel threatened by. Oh, television. You promised me the moon, and you gave me a clip show. Oh, television. I thought your reality shows represented reality. But alas, your promises are as much a fantasy as life would be if America's Top Model were hosted by a unicorn. You're not real. You only serve to break me down. One montage at a time.
So, with the unfortunate development of this episode's stop-the-show-I-wanna-get-off retread of what's come before, we here at TWOP-LLC have absorbed the shock, brushed ourselves off, stopped crying after UPN cut our hair and made us look like The Fourth Hanson Brother Who Did Not Even Get To Play The Triangle, and regrouped. Did this week's episode need a recap? Certainly no! But an episode it was, and a recap it shall have. But I couldn't very well make you sit through a series of observations about the action that would be merely the second best I was able to come up with, the first, of course, being the glimmering gold from the recaps that already exist. On this very site! So we're going to patch the action together much as they did, and I'm going to excavate (or as we call it in anthropology, "raise from the dead," or as we call it in court, "plagiarize") my old recaps from this season and string them together, per the action I see on screen. In such moments where new footage is aired, I will faithfully recap said moment, and if I believe something should be added to the old information, I shall editorialize upon my old writing in a recapping-the-recapped-recap meta kind of way that will plunge us into a murky wormhole in the attic of the time-space continuum, through which we will fall and fall and fall until we come out bruised, afraid, but finally understanding the temporal theories set forth by the incomprehensible Back to the Future II. And, as always in a well-organized business status report, all changes and additions to the developments will be indicated in bold. So rev up your recap DeLoreans to 88 miles per hour, because where we're going...we don't need roads.
The voice-over punditry of Tyra "Singer? I Won't Even Catwalk With Her!" Banks introduces us to the beginning of the season of ANTM with her assertion that, this season, there were "thousands and thousands of applicants. This time we chose twelve." Ah, what a break with a longstanding tradition. As opposed to, say, the 1943 edition of America's Top Model, when war rations insisted they only choose eleven, and the 1603 edition of America's Top Model, when those who were still in the running to become America's Top Model did number twelve but, according to societal strictures at the time, were all played by young boys.
The Girl Who Is Afraid Of Snakes
“ Heather tells us, 'I just turned eighteen three days ago.' Her run for top model may be long gone, but her days vying for America's Top Webcam Spam Subject Line place her in very good standing. ”
Shandi's audition video kicks off a rock block of unaired footage. We find her standing against a solid-black, never-altering hellscape of a background -- and for those of you who have never been there: yes, that is exactly what Missouri looks like -- wearing a shirt the exact same shade as her shrimp-y colored skin, her hair in pigtails, holding a microphone like she's about to ask us what the deal is with airplane peanuts. She tells us, "The reason I want to be the top model is because I am tired of working at Walgreen's!" Good thing that the America in which she hopes to be a top model has a never-ending attention span that just can't hear that enough times.
"My flavor would be that I'm sassy!" Mercedes sasses sassfully. In the recipe of Mercedes, the secret ingredient...is sass! Or, as the French would say...sasse!
Heather sits on an I-get-no-loveseat in front of trashy shades and tells us, "I just turned eighteen three days ago." Her run for top model may be long gone, but her days vying for America's Top Webcam Spam Subject Line place her in very good standing.
Jenascia tells us we can get a "college diploma, fast like now." Just kidding. She really doesn't. I just wanted to underscore the point that invisi-Heather can't win at anything, even at being a good spam subject line. In fact, Jenascia is standing just outside her shower, indicating a small, mesh, novelty basketball hoop and continuing on her lifelong tour of the numerous vocational opportunities at which Jenascia is too short to excel.
Anna exhumes herself from The Sonja Christopher Tomb Of Inconsequential First Bootees, pimping her poor child with her as she takes a tour of her house. Those homemaker plus-sizes with their children and their ideals and their adorable cellulite! Let's boot them first and prove that reality-show tokenism isn't just limited to black men on The Bachelor!
Xiomara wants us to roll the "r" in her name. In fact, she doesn't want us to say it unless we can "really say it." No one wanted that too badly, I guess.
Bethany does some karate moves. Though these are just the audition videos, somehow you know she's not going to win. Maybe it's the "Not Likely" response she got from shaking her Magic-8 Breasts.
Yoanna grouses about not having a great department store in Jacksonville, in a canny close-up shot that highlights her face and not her crooked shoulders.
The Girl Who Is Afraid Of Snakes
“ Sara kisses the camera in a not-at-all- whoreish way. I'm just saying, it would be best to make sure that tape didn't get mixed up with the one labeled 'Dad at the Hajj,' because I've heard this is something he wouldn't want to see. ”
Catie tells us that she's different from all of the other girls because she "hates models." Hilariously, Camille's video is , and we'd hate models too in the highly unlikely event that she was ever going to become one.
April is "a fighter to the death," begging, "let the games begin." Meh. Too clinical.
Sara lies on her stomach, face buried in the camera, all but moaning, "I have what it takes, of course," then kissing the camera in a not-at-all-whoreish way. I'm just saying, it would be best to make sure that tape didn't get mixed up with the one labeled "Dad at the Hajj," because I've heard this is something he wouldn't want to see.
New York! Home of the bravest, finest, rudest, fastest, richest, me-ist, and top model-iest. The skyline looms as public transportation not one of these women would dare buy a designer Metrocard for zooms by. Meanwhile, twelve skinny girls wander the streets. The screen splits itself into four frames because these Mike Figgis-directed reality shows always have the auteur's personal stamp on them someplace, don't they? One of the women, possessing a southern accent and an "ask my about my children...SERIOUSLY, DO IT" t-shirt stashed away in her luggage, asks a passerby where she might find Broad Street. Wherever you are, keep going south. Unless you find yourself being Anna. And then keep going home.
Hey, what's this monkey wrench doing here? The girls, thinking they were on their way to their housing, were dead wrong. Instead, they pull up to a giant military-looking ship of some kind, replete with men in military-looking dress. This show. Something for everyone. "I decided to do something totally different this year," Tyra reminds us in a voice-over. "I just wanted to shake it up and shock the girls." Tyra's gonna surprise ya. "I'm not wasting any time. I'm throwing you straight on a runway. No training, no nothing." Onto the deck of the U.S.S. Intrepid they go. It was a ship in World War II. I went on a school trip there in eighth grade. It was boring and gray then, and it's boring and gray now. And the view from the deck sucks a lot more now than it did in the early '90s. And there's a runway set up in front of thousands of uniformed men. J. Alexander takes the ladies into a makeshift back room with what look like many expensive pieces of clothing. He adds that they all have to do their own hair and makeup in thirty minutes, and that they have three different outfits that they have to wear in the right order. They primp and change and change and primp, a countdown clock ticking down in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, like zero will be the New Year, and The Year Of The Shallow Drama Queen will commence. And one person who won't be dressed to enjoy the celebration is poor, befuddled April, who has one boot and one silver high-heeled shoe on with a minute and twenty-eight seconds to go. Jenascia tells us that she's got everything in the wrong order, and leaps in to help her new, er, "friend." Jenascia confessionalizes some time later, "I'm not really that nice of [sic] a person. I don't know what's come over me." Don't worry, Jenascia. I can't imagine it will take long for yourself to shine through. Here in this Year Of The Shallow Drama Queen, you'll be apt to forget auld acquaintances in no time, I'm sure.