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 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.
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...sasseé!
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.
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.
"That runway show exposed them as amateurs, and it showed them just how far they had to go," Tyra reminds us. And...go! Military-themed phat beats play on in the background, and the girls cluelessly vamp out. Oh, how I wish it were slightly more humiliating. Tyra curls a lip. Don't you love how everyone thinks his or her job is really hard? The men clap. J. tells the girls, "Personally, I think you all sucked." Seriously, this is the most contrived "tough guy" act I've ever seen. The most contrived tough-guy act since Alan Thicke tried to play a real father. The most contrived tough-guy act since we were supposed to buy Anthony Hopkins as a sitting President. The most contrived tough-guy act since "...and, starring Noah Taylor as Adolf Hitler." Paint, Hilter! Paint!
An alarm clock buzzes (and freaks me out anew every time I rewind back into it) at 5:10 AM. Everyone piles into the elevator, and it's not until they're in a slightly more downmarket minivan that someone asks, "Where's Jenascia?" She's inside, still sleeping. April stands outside, asking if she can go wake Jenascia up, but all the girls say they'll just leave if April walks away. Wow. April hops in, feels slightly bad, and that's that. Double-stuffed wow. But seriously, how does anyone sleep through eleven girls getting ready to leave the house? April, dude. Hit the buzzer. HIT THE BU...well, very little we can do from here in the future, I guess.
Eleven strong, they show up at Industria Studios (775 Washington Street) and meet Nigel Barker, a British photographer who, with every word he speaks, thinks, "I am a British photographer." He loves being a British photographer, people. We learn that the shoot they'll be doing is for color contact lenses, the theme of which is "The Garden of Eden." The girls' bodies will be covered in jewels and paint, and other than that, they're calendar girls all the way. Looks are exchanged among the girls, and Nigels tells them, "You are going to be nude." Anna stares at her sketch drawing, a tousled set of vines entitled "Eve of the Sea." Are they stealing her outfit from the dance theme in Back to the Future? "I see we only have eleven," Nigel Barker is coached to say, and, sure enough, we kick it to Jenascia still asleep. Ring, ring, ring. No wakey-wakey for Jenascia. At 7:49, Jenascia rouses from her slumber, stumbles toward a still-ringing phone in the loft, applies aftershave, slaps her hands on the sides of her face, makes nine sequels, marries and divorces Rachel Miner, tries to get stage work, and tanks in Party Monster. Actually, what happens is this: she bawls. Some guy on the other end of the phone (a producer? A shoot coordinator? Jesus? Who is this guy?) tells her to get there "ASAP," but he pronounces it "AY-sap" in that way that makes me want to kill.
New! New! New! If you haven't seen it, it's new to you! This certainly seems to qualify. Jenascia and Camille sit at a table near the attending Craft Services For The Wildly Undernourished Catering Co. "I just didn't know that some people were that threatened by me," Jenascia confides in Camille. "Yeah," Camille's eyes seem to say. "Neither did I." Say, I didn't know Camille was allowed to talk to people on this show.
The four judges burn through all of the candidates, narrowing it down to who sucks because she was late and who sucks because she didn't do a photo shoot. No one much likes Anna's attitude, and Eric doesn't think Anna has a real idea of why she even refused to do it. The final work is from Nigel, who says that it's much more damaging to be late than to be prudish. Nigel has no freakin' say at all. Tyra gives a headshot to each of the girls who are to continue, and the final battle comes down to between Jenascia and Anna. Tyra berates Jenascia again and tells Anna she supports her decision. Then she chooses Jenascia. Bitches! Bitches all! I wonder why I was so mad about that. I think I remember some highly rational motivation like thinking "Jenascia" was harder to spell, or something of the sort. Also, because Jenascia called all of the other girls "bitches." Maybe that's what it was. Maybe I was just understudying for the role of Jenascia in the TV movie about her entitled A Short Life. Well then, I'd better take off my shoes. And my feet. And my legs, up to my knees.
End of Episode 1. Please enjoy this break, and stick around for punch and pie.
The phat beats kick up, and through a curtain, J. strides out wearing nothing but a t-shirt emblazoned with a woman's body in a bikini on the front and the back! Oh, and high heels. Oh. And nothing else. His parents? Just flipped to Fox.
"On the runway, the girls had different strengths and weaknesses," Tyra pipes up as Heather falls down. The girls don wildly unflattering bodysuits and high heels and have to do a runway walk. Shandi is first. And if the first rule of a catwalk is, as we've learned, "walk like it's for sale and the rent is due tonight," Shandi better get J. one of those big, fake handlebar moustaches and tie herself like a damsel in distress to some nearby train tracks because, well, she must pay the rent but she can NOT pay the rent. Her walk. So clompy and halting and less "look at the simple elegance of those shoes/that dress/that suit" and more, like, "Aaaaaaah. Monsters. They're coming. Monsters." In a confessional, Shandi reminds us, "I'm completely different from everyone else." Oh, that's not true. There are plenty of other girls who can't hack it, either. Why aren't they clearing the decks, y'all? Monsters. Are coming. And they're collecting the rent.
Camille is wearing a yellow leather jacket, and when she hits the end of the runway, she unzips it. J. gets all incredulous and cries out, "Black girls always have to give that extra." Says the black girl in the lingerie t-shirt and heels. Reaction shot of Yoanna. Big turn by Camille. Eye-roll, all parties. J. then tells Yoanna that her walk "as useless as a flashlight with no batteries in the dark," and then likens her body language to that of a horse. Camille laughs the loudest, because she does not get the joke. Back at the ZoLoft, tensions explode, Camille yelling, "If I have things to say, I will say them to your face." To the house meeting we go, where Yoanna experiences a small psychotic break and screams, "I'm not finished!" when no one is reeeeeally trying to interrupt her. Camille wants to know where that anger comes from, and then they're wearing different outfits in what seems like yet another setting, Camille once again promising to say whatever it is she has to say to Yoanna's face. Just don't say them to her shoulders, because you'll make yourself blind trying to view them on a logical horizontal plane.
And now, a visit from Tyra "She's Super, Thanks For Asking" Banks, who arrives at the house to have some one-on-one rap time with each of the girls. Bethany wants "something to work on," explaining, "I can't do anything about my chest." Tyra contradicts with a quickie "Yes, you can," and I half-expect a plastic surgeon and an anesthesiologist to leap out from behind what we had thought was a brick wall and immediately start prepping her for some Moon-Frye Magic. But alas, no. The advice is based emotionally, not invasively, as Tyra counsels, "You're not the only model that has a big chest." Breastany again reissues her press release about people needing to look past the tits to the talent, and Tyra calls her on her attitude, reminding her, "No model is perfect." And then, the voice-over returns: "In the end, the judges decided that Bethany wasn't versatile enough for fashion modeling," Tyra tells us in that way that totally means "You've got the hair for Supercuts and the tits for porn. Go make your millions elsewhere."
End of Episode 2. Please take the time to walk to the lobby and stretch your legs. If, perchance, you happen to have the Blur song "Intermission" from their underappreciated "Modern Life is Rubbish" album, well, that officially makes you the coolest person I know.
According to Tyra, "I felt that a lot of the girls needed a drastic makeover, so I sent them to the salon for a major overhaul." 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. 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 nineteenth-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 bawls also, more out of frustration from our lack of recognition as to who she is than anything. "But little did we know," Tyra teases, "she had a little freak in her, too!" I did not know that she was filled with so much, as you say, "freak." Is that like being afflicted with black bile? If so, Heather is way too replete with the bodily humor known as "invisibility," because I was completely unable to remember her ever having been on this show. Which is why they showcase her one moment in the sun (well, moon) right now, during which she 1) drinks an ambiguous beverage out of a pot, 2) lies on the floor and burps, and 3) runs around the house without anything covering up her naughty bottom bits. Sara offers Heather five dollars -- that's one dollar for every hundred innocent virgins now burning in hell as a result of Sara's latest bout with indecency -- to run around the house all starkers, and Heather does so in an exaggerated, speeded-up clip akin to the homerun-hitting splendor of old, black-and-white films of Babe Ruth rounding the bases. With no pants on.
Tyra mail! Tyra mail! Tyra mail! Since four of the girls (Heather, Camille, Xiomara, and someone who is way too short to see between the rest of the girls' gangly, angly shoulder blades, so really, it's anyone's guess) 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." Tyra voices over, "April went into a panic when she thought there would be snakes at the shoot!" And, sure as man walks upright with the exception of Sara during her totally respectable audition tape, we cut to April wearing a blue hoodie pulled tight around her face, leaning against Jenascia for support (what kind of support can she offer from all the way down there? Arch support?) as they walk into the shoot. "I need to know where they are. They can't sneak up on me!" she mutters, and the man who lives on the bench at my subway station who thinks I'm the Ayatollah looks up and is all, "Ssssh! Man, that girl is crazy!" I guess they didn't air this in a real episode because it would have undone the whole Jenascia and April bitterness thread. And also because there weren't actually any snakes at the shoot. And also because it struck the producers how great it would have been at this moment if they really had done a Fear Factor-y photo shoot that took place inside of what people's darkest fears were. Like, Catie's is the one where she's suspended. And April's is with a million snakes. And Sara is clothed in a burka and denied education.
Catie starts to cry on the phone to her father that she's scared of heights. She 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 Catie would rather that Xiomara go 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. Xiomara's 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 [Xiomara was] 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?
Speaking of judges, it's important for Tyra to let us know, "Sometimes the judges had...well, a difference of opinion." I love it that when the girls fight, it's played for drama, and when the judges fight, it's played for camp. And aired to me alone. Come back, everybody! Janice and Jay sit at opposite sides of The Dais Of Arbitrary Reasoning And Sometimes Comically Small Dogs, Jay telling the group in regard to Heather, "She looks like a porno star." Janice is incredulous (and, according to her, the first ever to be so, I'm sure, ever), shooting back, "No, she does not," quickly adding, "So do you." With no provocation other than the fact that they seem to have had this fight sixteen times before, Jay shoehorns in a joke he's been dying to try out, pointing to Janice and calling her "Silicone Valley, over there." Oh, at least engage your imagination and call her by a human name like "Silicone Alli," so that we could go ahead and make a Janice Dickinson Garbage Pail Kid out of it, one with comically large fake breasts. We could even call the B-card "Tittie Politti." Or "Bethany."
Catie apologizes to a tearful Xiomara, saying that she fears no one's shoot was a hundred percent. But it doesn't matter anyway, because Heather leaves, and she tells us in her final confessional, "I'm prettier than a lot of the girls." Well, Janice. And, okay, Jay. Anyone else?
End of Episode 3. Thank you, Red Rocks! We'll be back in exactly fifteen minutes!
And, Simon Doonan! All we ever wanted was exactly what happened when Simon -- or, as I call him "Jenascia XY," for short -- was on, except with an eight-inch extended megamix. So here's one now! He tells the girls that in order to develop a personal style, "we have to play the branding game." He indicates a large, random post in the middle of the room with a selection of words ("laid back," "addicted to black") and gives them one minute to grab a word that best pertains to them. Sara thinks she's "exotic," and Simon asks, "As in dancer?" Mercedes is "coquettish" because it sounds like a side effect of lupus. Catie stands up and reminds us that she's just gotten a haircut, and has decided to celebrate with black legwarmers, heels, a blue mini-skirt, and a yellow tank top. And purple eye shadow. In the awesomely calculated payoff of putting Catie last, Simon hits a perfect fever pitch to this evaluation by instructing Catie to "go down where the hookers hang out by the docks and see what they're wearing and then avoid it." Catie mutters a sarcastic "okay" and re-takes her perch, allowing for Simon to chastise the girls that they need to be a little more self-critical. Catie takes her cue off this, back-talking, "You called me a ho!" Simon fact-checks that he "would never say anybody was a ho. I would say that's ho style." Well, Simon, that depends on what you mean by the word "is." She's not cheese. She's "cheese-like product." She's the Combos of hookers, an imitation even more believable than the original. But the fight escalates, Catie starting to cry (and watch out for the reaction shots of the other girls cracking up at this latest predictable meltdown) and dictating policy, "If it was you and me talking, that's cool," and Simon tells her that she might have underestimated the seriousness of the competition, warning, "You knew when you entered into this competition that you're not going to sit there for three weeks with an umbrella drink with everybody telling you how fabulous you are." Ha! I love it. time he needs to add the term "chaise longue" to that snark and he's all set as my Mini-Me. And whether it's "ho" or "ho style," y'all take a look at Catie's outfit right now. Seriously, I just slipped that girl a five and she blew my TV's picture tube.
"My hair has been falling out because of the high medication I take every day," Mercedes tells us. "I was diagnosed with lupus." Didn't see the lupus coming, I have to admit, but, y'know, play the card that's in your hand, as I always say when I'm pretending I'm a lost verse in "The Gambler." So, we've discovered the symptoms and are told its treatment. But for those fans of illness portrayed in the interest of a humanizing angle who don't watch this show with the latest edition of The Merck Manual sitting open on their laps...well, Mercedes, just what is lupus? "A chronic illness where it attacks your immune system about a year ago." It attacks your immune system a year ago? From her description, it sounds like lupus is most dangerous when it hits you in the place you're clearly least expecting: in the past. ["Third time's a charm." -- Wing Chun] But Mercedes, what about the coping strategies you've designed for yourself in the face of this difficult if time-traveling disease? "It's best to keep it a secret, because I don't want to talk about, 'oh, how you feeling,' 'oh, this must be hard,' y'know, don't give me that, I don't need it." And remember, kids: it's not your fault you have lupus, and it doesn't mean god hates you for making fun of other kids who were sick when you were little. Just take your medication, keep a good attitude about it all, and together we'll beat this disease together with knowledge and power as we link hands and bask in the warm glow of the "The More You Know" star fall.
As part of discovering their own personal styles by becoming other people entirely, here's a who's who of tomorrow's Vegas impersonator acts: Catie is Marilyn Monroe; Mercedes is Billie Holliday; April is Catherine Zeta-Jones; Shandi is going to be an extremely unconvincing Nicole Kidman; Sara is going to be Angelina Jolie; Camille is Diana Ross; Jenascia is a shorter Salma Hayek; Yoanna is Audrey Hepburn; and Xiomara is going to be -- who? Grace Jones? Is it Grace Jones? Is it? It is, right? -- Grace Jones. I'm totally surprised. After being a bitch to her bosses at the photo shoot, J. Alexander shows up at the ZoLoft for a quick runway-walking brush-up, and he tells Jenascia to pull her shoulders back. She gets all mad, noting in a confessional that if he wanted her to stick out her boobs, he should have just told her that on the first day. Jenascia gave a great Salma Hayek, Tyra says, but she needs to overcompensate. Catie's Marilyn Monroe was awesome, but is she strong enough to handle this business? Yes, yes she is. Jenascia is out, and the hat is still on. As she escapes the loft, she tells us, "I'm gonna go back to slinging chicken wings at Hooter's." They'll always have her back. They'll always have her back at the DQ.
During this latest break in the linearly-structured action, let us share a moment of silence for those Season 2 luminaries who should have made the clip package episode, but did not. Please don't applaud until the end. It's tacky. First, Betsey Johnson. Then that guy who teaches them boxing. And, third, me, on the panel, where I should be a sitting jury member for Season 3. People. It just makes sense.
Enter "Suzannah Galland," a self-styled "intuitive advisor." Ooooh, a psychic! And while I never gave that much credence to the horoscopes or any other ostensibly spiritual art one could find broken down by star sign into blurbs appearing below "The Family Circus" on a page marked "FUN!" in my local Newsday, it'll be worth it for the "it's like you've known me all my life!" reaction the girls will give to her platitudes about being themselves no matter what happens. ["No matter what others might think, I'm sure that this gifted professional wasn't given dossiers on each of the girls in advance. Though others might consider that a distinct possibility. Which I do not." -- Wing Chun] I went to a Halloween party with a psychic at it once, and she took one look at my costume -- which included a significant amount of white paint and black lipstick, but no, I wasn't a mime -- and gathered, "You aren't like all of the other boys." I was like, "Gee, what gave it away?" It was no Sydney Omarr telling me to cultivate my desire for romance by wearing shades of green and mauve, but it was still pretty good. And so is the good and great Suzannah, who takes Mercedes's birthday (8/24/81) and immediately busts out, "Your body's tired. Your mind isn't. Sometimes you want to do more than you physically can." All this and without one word from the producers! ["Exactly!" -- Wing Chun] "Camille...you put people off." All this and without one word from the producers! ["I'm saying!" -- Wing Chun] And now, suddenly, Yoanna loved her dead, fashionable grandma.. Sara asks her how her father is going to react to her becoming a model, and Suzannah responds, "He's gonna hate it, but he's gonna secretly love it." When he figures out that the part of Muslim religious doctrine about which parts of the woman's body are never to be seen in public is...what, a typo?
The Janice interviews started off differently, with Janice asking the provocative "If a photographer offered you guaranteed fame" if the models slept with him, would they do it? Yes. Except for the virgins. Those girls are good girls.
April: "Is he attractive?" Exactly.
Yoanna: "Um, no thank you, ." You wouldn't even have to, you delicate flower.
Camille: "Do I like him?" Too late. He already gave the job to Yoanna. Suckah!
Janice seems to think that Camille is intimidated by her, but Camille promises that it is not so: "People may call you, y'know, the bitch or whatever." Janice asks if people are calling her that, and we cut to a Janice confessional (which is what the whole show -- nay the whole world -- should be made up of) where she opens up, "That was really offensive to me. I'm a member of the PTA." And god bless that woman I have no idea what that means, but if you don't see me for a while it's because I'm in my parents' garage silk screening t-shirts with the ANTM logo on the front and their new corporate branding tagline written in quotes across the back. That tagline? "That was really offensive to me. I'm a member of the PTA." If you see me wearing that shirt, it's me. Until they take over the world.
Sara and Mercedes find out that they get another present as a result of their challenge win, and the elevator door to the loft opens and Sara's and Mercedes's moms walk out. And there's Tyra! And she brought her mom, too! And here's my mom! 'Cause I'm still in the garage making these t-shirts! Tyra's mom crowds everyone around her in that "Oh, look, an old man is talking" kind of way, and explains that when you're a model you're going to get rejected a lot in a business that's insane. Last time they got to meet their moms after the underwater shoot. That's the only thing that hasn't gone in the same order as the first time it aired.
Jay "Woman! Whoa, Man! Whooooooooa" Manuel greets the ladies at a studio, standing in front of a big enclosed tank filled with fish. He tells them that it's "a fish theme," and he introduces us to the photographer, George Holtz, and celebrity stylist Nolé Marin, whose name I had to arrive at on Microsoft Word by spelling the word "résumé" incorrectly, autocorrecting it to make the two accents appear (fuck you, keycaps, I still don't know what or where you are), copying one of the é's, and pasting it on at the end of the letters "Nol." So we're just going to call him Dr. Evil from now on, because he's a sinister-looking squat bald man who totes a tiny dog that he pets incessantly, and it's not like it's a dated reference because when I first began the process of copying out the accent it was, in fact, 1999. Xiomara is out, and the world cries blood.
Intermission. If you've just cooled down momentarily by kicking back and downloading the "Shake Ya Body" MP3 off of the UPN website, well, then, you're the one.
Camille removes that sun-blocking eye-guard thing she sleeps with because she's a nineteenth-century grande dame of some kind, and voices over, "I woke up this morning and I don't know what's going on, but my mouth is, like, super, super-swollen and it hurts." Ooooh, a mouth stuffed with karma. Sounds painful. So that's the taste of having your cake and trying to eat it, too. Tyra brilliantly steps in to build a narrative bridge, voicing over in the nick of time, "Even though Camille was the one with the crisis, when it came to acting class, she was the only one to hold back her emotions." 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." Then Camille rewrites the script in acting class, and this time they've cleverly decided to toss up on screen the lines that she was supposed to say, which would be a lot funnier if we hadn't heard the other girls say them correctly last time. Because still and all, they're not even close. But since it's in the canon of amazingly funny lines that should be engraved in Latin across the top of the America's Top Model family crest, here it is again for those of you who haven't changed channels to, well, I don't have any idea what airs opposite this: "I focused my energy into sculpting. I even gave some away to charity." Awesome. Anyone for Rollitos?
After a dance lesson with Tony Michaels in which he pronounces Camille "illegal," Tyra pounds into the loft with four of "New York's most divalicious drag queens." Except one of them is wearing a skinny '80s tie and a fedora, so that doesn't even qualify him for drag queen status, does it? Another guy is also dressed in clothes that '80s glam rockers would have coveted but, mysteriously, he's not wearing any makeup. He looks like this guy who started a band called "Tangible Savages" when we were in junior high and sold t-shirts out of the back of his (brother's) Camaro for $6.66. Y'know. Because of Satan. And, okay, fine. The other two are drag queens. One of them -- Kevin Aviance -- watches two other guys (or, er, not? I don't know) on the runway and comments on their "eyes" and their "shoulders." Truly, they work it. The girls are then called to walk, and they don't do nearly as good a job as their male counterparts. Monsieur Aviance comments on Tyra's walk, calling it "a symphony." Oh, aren't they so superfabulous? Except for the part where they weren't even able to vogue themselves sideways into a real episode, and instead got themselves relegated to the bold print in an episode even this website is unable to determine if it's an actual episode or not? They weren't kidding when they said disco was dead.
Shandi gets on the phone her boyfriend Eric, who unwisely kicks off the conversation by asking, "You remember a girl named Lauren?" He tells Shandi that he's going to the movies with said Lauren, "because her husband works at AMC as a general manager, so he's getting us free tickets." Suddenly, big fight. Like, in a troublesome, confusingly edited way, where all of a sudden he's screaming that this so-called Lauren has "a husband and a kid," which causes Shandi to be all je t'accuse! in her response, "So people never cheat on their husbands?" Eric unwisely takes the route of most ignorance, insisting, "No! They don't!" World-weary from the miles she has walked (back and forth on the runway always to end right back at the beginning, but she has WALKED! In heels!), Shandi asserts, "Yes, they do." Yes. They do. She starts bawling and stage-whispers, "I hate you," and she confides in us -- US!: "Going to the movies. That's like, our secret thing that we share." Yeah, well. Sister's got to start keeping some better secrets.
I won't even recap the recapping of the recapped recap with this video again. Y'all deserve better than that. Except they do have to some freestyle dancing at the elimination that I cannot believe they didn't air. April kicks into a robot groove that makes me want to thank her very much, oh, April Roboto, but Janice lands a far more well-timed, "What the hell was that?" It's a human body moving without the assistance of saline and collagen. Such a thing must be unrecognizable to Janice by now. But what's awesome is that the first time this episode aired, that identical moment of Janice's was directed at Yoanna's fall. I know. Reality television was steeped in artifice all along just as much as ornate opera or American politics. Don't cry. Seriously. Catie. Don't cry.
What, Tyra? "Top models are called upon to do all sorts of things. Luckily, one thing they don't have to do is rap freestyle." They're called upon to "do all sorts of things"? When did supermodels become the Chamber of Commerce of the fashion world?
Tyra's point, I guess, is that they (all supermodels, so maybe including her?) suck at rapping. Apparently, at lunch in Little Italy, Tyra had told them that they were going to be taking a trip, which really clears up the confusion I felt when Tyra belted out her euphoric "Pack your bags, y'all, you're goin' to Milan!" Which I sing. Out loud. All the time. Like, say, right now. Because that shit really gets stuck in your head. Like, to the point of, say, encroaching insanity. Good thing she didn't rap the lyrics to "Helter Skelter," or my neighbors would be bleeding and my cat would be in the microwave.
Go666Sees. Crying. Milan. Jay runs the high-fashion shoot. Yoanna is up first, and she's decked out real pretty-like in Dior glasses. Jay tells her to stand in a way he described to us as "deconstructed poses," which is totally just shorthand fashion for "early man." It's so hunchy! Yoanna rocks the pose. But that night at dinner, Yoanna is soon to depart for the restroom, and Jay asks in her absence, "She always disappears to the bathroom at dinner?" Tyra gets her concerned, like, "I run Camp Tyra" look, and says that eating disorders are, well, disorderly and something to be taken seriously. Even if they're completely fabricated by a former nemesis and unconvincing friend whose personal credo seems to have just morphed into "and if you can't kill them with kindness, kill them with bulimia." Far more effective. Yoanna comes back with a book of matches, so I guess she doesn't have bulimia so much as she, like, plays pick-up-sticks with Our Gang? She wasn't smoking. Tyra is soon to be off, and suddenly Mercedes is telling Yoanna what Camille had said. Yoanna pointedly asks, "And you said this in front of Tyra Banks?" And watch out, y'all. She's unzipping her hoodie. She means it, big-time. Mercedes and Camille have words about this, and Camille defends herself by saying, "The question was if she disappears a lot. And, yes, she doesn't disappear a lot." Kreskin? You're still in the running toward becoming America's Top Model. But Camille won't.
"Now, four girls remain!" Tyra tells us, distilling each of the remaining girls' central personality characteristics down to its exceedingly well-edited core: "The nerdy Walgreen's clerk. The slimmed-down fashion fanatic. The analytical businesswoman. And the spunky spitfire. Tune in week to see who will be eliminated ." Oh, man. I am so totally jealous of the me of the future.