"Milan, Italy," the introductory subtitle helpfully alerts us, as if we haven't been ensconced in Milan, Italy or its hilariously named double-entendred environs (but it sounds like Lake Homo, and it's funny if you're twelve or me) for the past three weeks. The three remaining girls who are to be congratulated for still being in the running toward becoming America's Top Model -- the cheater, the eater, and the drip-with- cyclophosphamide- and-in-extreme-cases- for-this-condition- the-dialysis-needer -- trudge slowly back to Il Zolofti. Physically spent as a result of the long walk home from the end of last week's episode, they amble back into the house to find a handwritten note from April sticking out of the refrigerator, which is the perfect place to place it if she wanted it found and subsequently read by Yoanna. Utilizing the exceedingly declarative font known to word-processing fans worldwide as I Am Woman Hear Me Capitalize (Sans Serif), the writer -- or should I say "scrawler" -- has scrawled, "Strong! Glorious!" Those two words are underlined -- twice -- and each punctuated by exclamation points. I guess the double underline is covering up the squiggly green lines indicating that this is a fragment and that whoever wrote this should consider revising. Thanks for having my back, Microsoft Word. Now I have to give dual recapping credit to "Djb & AutoCorrect." Below this clarion cry homage to words that would appropriately fill the "adjective" blank in a Mad Libs entitled "A Day At The Drag Queen's," there's more: "Woman kick ass for me!" "Woman kick ass for me"? I don't know exactly where to fault the collapsing grammar in that sentence, but I do know that, in its sheer, nonsensical totality, it makes me sic just looking at it. And after the word "woman," April's written something so egregious it wasn't even worthy of sharing paper-space with the rest of these linguistic pearls, so she crossed it our fourteen thousand times until it was little more than a smudge-y looking Rorschach drawing of April futiley attempting to smile or poo. Because the pained look on her face frequently suggested she was trying and failing at either or both. Oh, and more: "I am here in spirit for you all!" Wow. That was nice of her. Yoanna reads the note aloud with a self-satisfied smirk that says, "That's right. In spirit. A spirit that can't be photographed in designer sunglasses. Perhaps in her spiritual godliness, I can ask my clergy to anoint her The Patron Saint Of Being My Inferior and we can just fit me so the tiara already and go home." Anyway, that's what Yoanna was thinking.
"I wasn't expecting April to be eliminated," Yoanna tells us in a pink-scarf-clad (I know! I barely recognized her) confessional. "At any given time, someone could leave." Except for right now. And now. And whenever April is learning that the plural of "woman" isn't "woman."
Upstairs at Il Zolofti, Mercedes places a phone call to her mom, a somewhat low-voiced woman who pauses when she hears Mercedes's voice as if to say, "Am I on speaker-to-America phone? Take me off that thing." She sounds more familiar to us than Mercedes sounds to her, and at this late point in a very long season, I can't remember if we once met her or not. Oh, wait. We did. And we were all very moved. Trust me. Y Tu Mama Tambien asks her daughter how she's doing, and Mercedes -- bedecked in the finest hatwear that Hooray Beret Haberdashery has to offer -- says something in response that I can't give my undivided attention to on account of still being somewhat distracted by that hat. I know our poor Colgate girl is trying to be more high-fashion, but the only "high" locale in which that hat works is "out of reach of human grasp, preferably in deep space or heaven." Unless it's Jenascia reaching for it. And then it only needs to be on top of a matchbox. Mercedes tells her mom she's "feeling good," and then reminds us through the helpful advertising power of dizzying repetition why she might not have been feeling good: because ugly hats are the scourge of the well. Oh, and also because Mercedes has lupus. No. I know. Return your Dropped Chin Of Shock to its proper locale just under your Pursed Lips Of Incredulity. She's sorry she didn't tell you. She just didn't want to make a big deal out of it, is all. Because it's the final episode, the girls are speaking in broader, reflective terms, as if they all joined a recovery group and have to frame everything in terms of the higher power. Before Mercedes moves on to "Step Nine: Apologies For The Ways In Which My Hat Has Hurt The People I Love," she wants to share with us what she's learned about the so-called "three L's" we learn so much about growing up: life, love, and lupus. And here's what she says: "What I've learned the most from being in this competition and dealing with lupus is that it's about maintaining my disease." Once, I was in a pizza place in Brooklyn with my brother, and a guy walked into the place wearing that exact hat, and much more loudly than I had intended, I sarcastically barked the words, "Oh, la la! Un belle chapeau, monsieur!" And the guy turned around? And it was totally John Turturro. So the lesson I've learned this season is that if you're going to make fun of someone's gaylord hat, just make sure they're on TV where they can't hear you or hurt you.
Yoanna, meanwhile, is also on a cell phone, barking in a single breath to whoever it is on the other end: "Hey Mama I got a chance to call you I haven't talked to you in so looooooooooong!" Yoanna's mother hops upward to the conversational perch of "edgewise," discovering on her ascent that she still can't get a word in from that approach either, and we're right back to Yoanna chirping in a confessional, "I'm very close with my mom, so it's really been hard being away from her." She then utters those magical words all mothers long to hear, continuing on, "I miss you, but..." But?
But wait. Why on earth is Shandi on the phone with Mercedes's mother? I don't...ooooooh. Never mind. Put me in a dunce beret and shove me in a corner. It's Shandi's boyfriend, High-Pitched Eric, who tells her over the soundtrack of some easy-reader piano-sheet music (which, were it Eric playing it, he would doubtlessly choose easy-reader piano luminary "Agay"), "I'm not mad, okay? I just care about you right now." Man. Way to let her off easy when he didn't get off at all because some tall Italian stud named Michelangelo or Italiano was getting off in his stead. "It's a really horrible thing that I did," Shandi tells us, beginning a statement that shouldn't come replete with any other "but" than the one Shandi sexed her hands all over before her boyfriend dumped her, "[but] it seems like we're close enough and we care enough about each other that we're willing to work through it." Wow, Shandi. That you'd have the emotional fortitude to work through something like this. After all he's put you through. Vis à vis Lauren. And the movies. You brave, lone survivor, you.
The She-Slightly-Resembles-A-Pony-Express drops off some Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Downstairs, the three girls discover it, Shandi reading in her best if-you-average- our-voices-together- my-boyfriend-is- almost-a-boy low growl, "Now that that there are only three of you left, cozy up into one room." What? Why? To have a bedroom and an orgy room in case High-Pitched Eric should ever find himself getting too forgiving?
Having adequately installed that Tyra Mail Spam Filter after last night's wonky message (not to mention that one that got edited out asking them to leave Milan and come save a kidnapped Tyra in the United Arab Emirates), today's Tyra Mail (Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail!) is a bit more plot-driven, telling the girls that it's time for another beauty shoot. For those of you who don't remember what a beauty shoot is, you can relive the glories of its first description here. For those of you who are maybe reading this using outdated copies of the Bank Street Writer or perhaps prefer listening to your recaps on the radio and don't have advanced linking technology so en vogue with the "hypertext" crowd, basically, here's what you're missing: a beauty shot is a picture of the face. So you better damn well be beautiful, or you'll be heading to an ugly shoot. C'mon! Y'all don't want that highly refined level of criticism on the jury? I'm right here! Anyway, Mercedes frets in a confessional that she feels she doesn't look good. Shandi notes that she feels Yoanna is her "biggest competition," fretting that Yoanna knows everything about the industry, while she doesn't even know the difference between the colors "Make Mine Mauve" and "Red Sky At Night, Sailor's Delight" at the Cover Girl counter at Walgreen's. You can remember it this way, Shandi. If the three of you are a Cover Girl beauty shot, and Mercedes is "breezy" and Yoanna is "beautiful," that would make you...what? That would make you "easy," wouldn't it? Exactly.
Yoanna thinks Mercedes might win because she would make "a great role model and top model," while Mercedes thinks Shandi is her biggest competition, having seen her transform "from a caterpillar to a butterfly." Yep. Mercedes is gracious as surely as an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Eesh. Even her metaphors are too commercial.
Jay "The Dye Said It Would Only Lighten His Hair A Shade, So I Guess He Didn't Read The" Manuel is predictably awaiting the girls' arrival, flanked by his frequent partner Nolé "L'il Arch-y" Marin. Rationalizing the judge's panel's decisions to date, Jay rhapsodizes, "All three of you standing here look completely different, but you're all so beautiful in your own way [sic]." To that end, each of the girls will be made over for a high-style beauty ad under the helpful watch of Nolé, who has apparently stolen Mercedes's hat because it was accidentally left in a place where he or Jenascia could retrieve it. Like, on a low rung of a hat rack. FOR ANTS. Oh, look. I'm completely creatively depleted of "Jenascia is short" jokes. And not a moment too soon.
"As a model, your smile is so important," Jay tells us, espousing a somewhat unchallenging maxim of the modeling world, akin to saying something like, "As a model, you don't want me to pass the Goobers" or "As a model, I'm for some reason implicitly convinced of your innate love for the lesser works of Virgil." Well, actually, not so much on the last one. Jay then continues, "I just want to give you your Brite Smile whitening pen!" Oh, no they di'int, with the product placement! So Shandi's high-fashion look is non-scurvy teeth. Yoanna's look, meanwhile, is being shot wearing a giant black helmet which, based on this new product-placement direction we seem to be traveling in, makes me less curious now as to why Nigel recently went so far out of his way to make those repeated references to Helmut Newton. Mercedes, meanwhile, whitens her teeth as well, while her hair is, according to her own assessment, "Buckwheat from The Little Rascals." As opposed to the Buckwheat from The Bible. Yoanna puts on her helmet and discovers some stray hairs coming out the back of it, so she grabs a pair of scissors and retires to an adjoining room, where she cuts a whole chunk out of the middle. Jay notes it and chides her for "butchering" and "ruining" it, and Yoanna tears up while Jay tells us, "Yoanna might be breaking down inside. She needs to get it together." But they know she's about to win. And so the editing stops her from breaking down for us.
Mercedes looks crazy. They've styled her in what she describes as an "Aztec warrior Zulu African thing" because all exotic cultures are entirely interchangeable. If I wrote that as a description of what she looked like, I'd have to create an entire email folder to catch any emails that came to me including the words "to hell with you, you racist pig-fucker" in the subject line. But Mercedes doesn't have to attend cultural literacy school for her advanced degree in Anthro-Apology, because her head is wrapped in wire and her job tells her she's allowed to be kind of stupid.
Shandi is wearing something shoulderless, and two giant flowers in her hair. They're like a "snapdragon gladiolus dahlia alstroemeria" thing.
Yoanna is wearing a giant helmet.
Il Zolofti. More Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! "You'll be meeting the brothers behind the major fashion house DSquared." Who? Oh, look! It's Tyra "Man, I Feel Like A Woman" Banks to explain further: "DSquared are the newest, hottest, hippest fashion designers of the moment right now." ["And they're Canadian!" -- Wing Chun] Lucky for them, the number of "this language has got short-lived hand-stitched all over it" adjectives Tyra used is slightly bettered by the fact that, in Milan, "fifteen minutes" translates to something like "forty billion lire." So they're okay for a while. Tyra is sending the girls to be in an audition to be in the DSquared final fashion show. Final? Man, that career arc really was pretty fast. Forty billion lire and yet another "lira currency exchange" joke just don't go nearly as far as they used to, huh?
In front of a big cathedral whose ostensible symbolism is to remind us that white teeth are to godliness, we come across the waiting...but what's this? I think I'm seein' double! Two gentlemen of identical physicality and remarkably fruity fashion sense pose posingly while a Vatican-issued edict floats mysteriously down from the heaven banning the wearing of a jean jacket on the grounds of a Duomo. In an accent I'm going to go ahead and guess is from that hybrid dialect of "Canadian/Recoded-Backwards- And-Played-Forward," they introduce themselves as "Dean and Dan," the twin brothers behind DSquared, which is spelled, in accordance The ANTM Department Of Subtitled Redundancies, "DSquared2." Know what that equation equals? Forty billion lire.
"Dean and Dan kind of remind me of little chipmunks," Shandi notes, and Mercedes notes their resemblance to "Chip and Dale," themselves chipmunks or male dancers whose cummerbunds are kept on with Velcro, and not for long, either! They stand with their arms crossed, awfully close to one another and wearing pouty, constantly pose-y faces, and continue on, "We're going to start with you, Mercedes." Uh oh. When she comes back wearing a jean jacket and preening in French-Canadian while a new label called "DCubed3" is unveiled with the Mercedes-intoned tagline "ONE OF US! ONE OF US!" we'll know they've gotten to her, too.
Over at a nearby table in the shadow of declining religious doctrine, Dean and/or Dan asks why they should book Mercedes instead of the other girls. She responds that it's because she is "fun and funky" and they are "pod people." Er, I mean "fun and funky." Shandi draws a somewhat specious comparison between their clothing -- which she notes comes "from real life" -- and her "realness and originality." Yoanna loves fashion and says some things about it I don't understand, which means she is a quick study and has learned the language that twins teach each other, which is apparently what Dean and Dan have been speaking. They then ask each of the girls who their favorite designer is. Yoanna shoots back, "Marc Jacobs," because that's what everyone was saying because he was able to make Sofia Coppola look like she wasn't twelve until she showed up in those flats and then no one said Marc Jacobs anymore. Mercedes says the name Betsey Johnson because she'd never heard of any designers besides the ones she met on this show and god help her if she can remember the name "Carmen Marc Valvo" without flashcards. Ditto Shandi, who invokes the good name of Betsey as well. Dean and Dan correct all three of them: "If a designer ever asks you...learn to lie." Shandi responds that she thought they really wanted to know, and Dean and/or Dan shoots back, "No one ever really want to know anything." Either that, or he says "Mealy-mouthed jean jacket lovers never have to explain themselves with everything." You decide which one you think makes more sense. I know I have.
At the DSqaured2 showroom, each of the girls is outfitted in some of their clothing, and even Mercedes believes that all of the clothes look better on her than on either of the other girls. Shandi concurs, but Yoanna pulls off the most random trucker's hat that makes me believe she is either being Punk'd or is the host of Punk'd.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor the girls from The Shining with their genders reassigned (sort of) all grown up and working as fashion designers can keep away the Tyra Mail. This one explains, "You have a very big day ahead of you. Today you will meet with the judges and only two of you will continue on with the hope of becoming America's Top Model." Okay, and can I say something? In this episode, they have to go from three to two and then pick a winner. And, say what you will about him inventing a genre, if this show were in the plodding hands of Mark Burnett right now, this episode would have been two hours long, filled with thoughtful reminders of the weeks gone by, lots of sitting around musing, lots of reminding their gentle audience of the stakes, lots of "if I win, that means little Timmy can get his facial reattachment surgery after my misguided, overly rough game of 'Got Your Nose.'" But here? Oh, no. Here we're wasting no time, and even Shandi seems to have one eye on the editing, noting, "I didn't expect the elimination to come so soon." We didn't expect your elimination to come so soon either, Shandi. But you know what they say about cheaters...they're not invited to the movies with Lauren.
Tyra welcomes all of the ladies to Rhythm ElimiNation. We are introduced to the panel of judges: Janice "Chick With A" Dickinson, Eric "The Little Boy In The Blue Suit" Nicholson, Nigel "PaparNazi" Barker, and our special guest judges, The Wonder Twins. Hey, that's cheating! "Tonight's a very special elimination," Tyra tells us, because the two girls who remain will star in a DSquared2 fashion show. But first, individual evaluations! Mercedes is first. She strides down the blue carpet. Tyra worries that she needs to pick up her feet a bit more. Her Aztec Zulu Pangaean Aberdeenian Bermudian towering hair-ferno photographed incredibly well, and Janice notes, "Never touch your face, girl, or I will come after you. You are beautiful." Or someone else might deplete the daily store of collagen she uses to keep her face on.
Shandi is up. Janice loves the way she looks and again reminds us of the light years she's traveled. Eric still think her walk needs work, and Tyra isn't seeing "tonight" those things they've come to love about Shandi. On her walk down the runway? What else were we not invited to in there? We packed our bags. We went to Milan. Clue an audience in, people.
And, Yoanna. She strides with confidence down the runway, which Dan and/or Dean calls "not good, not bad." Nigel thinks it's "a little stiff" because he thinks her troublesome midriff is getting in the way. Her "Helmet Newton" photo, however, gets raves from all. Tyra says Yoanna's photo is amazing, but that she needs to be a clutch player, someone who won't fail "when it's the championship and there's five seconds left." Which sport is she describing now, exactly? Modelball?
Aw, crap. Dan and/or Dean actually do invoke the power of the Wonder Twins, which makes me find them a little less terrifying and foreign. Nigel takes the reins, explaining, "I did the casting...for something completely different, and any one of these girls would have been better than any of the girls that I saw here." But he worries that Yoanna is just the head being depicted in the photo and nothing more. Tyra isn't impressed by her inconsistency. Janice points out the Mercedes "won the walking competition this evening." There was a walking competition? Was my passport stolen? Am I stuck at Customs? I PACKED MY BAGS. I AM GOIN' TO MILAN. JUST LIKE THE SONG TOLD ME TO. Eric likes Mercedes's "life experiences." Shandi is Nigel's favorite, but Eric worries that something has "stalled." Tyra notes that up-and-coming models don't look like Tyra anymore, because now they look like ladies. Janice complains that Shandi still can't walk. Tyra asks each of them which of the girls they think should be sent home, and Janice throws her head down on the dais because the '70s have come back for revenge and her vision has blurred so much she's seeing two of those creepy guys and both of them are made entirely of denim.
And back in they walk. Tyra taunts that there are three beautiful girls left but that there are only two photos. And the first one goes to Mercedes, defying many expectations that it would be a head-to-head match-up between the other two. Tyra dramaturges: "This picture right here saved your ass, girl. 'Cause if you had a hint of a smile in your eyes, you'd probably be going home tonight." Shandi and Yoanna will please step forward, eyes down. Tyra tells Yoanna that she started off strong and Shandi started off pretty weak, and that they both "fell apart in this room." Just like the camera operators hired to capture the action that is determining who is about to be one of the finalists. And that finalist is Yoanna. ["And that sound you hear is my sister and me shrieking our relief." -- Wing Chun] Shandi takes her leave of the room and, in a confessional that seems to take place immediately, tells us that she's come so far and won't feel lost and insecure when she goes back home. And that she feels really good about her boyfriend being together in the future. And that's it. Gone. Our little flower. Little bird. Little Chavala. No. I'm fine. It's just some dust or something. Go away. I'll be right out. Jesus. I'm fine, okay?
Mercedes and Yoanna return to the house to find a delightfully decorated piece of "Shandi Mail" (Shandi Mail! Shandi Mail!), which Shandi has left behind in an actual envelope, rather than the scrawled Manson mash note that advised them to be "strong!" and "glorious!" and arrange beauty shoots involving close-up shots of the severed head of Sharon Tate.
Tyra takes Yoanna and Mercedes to a big-ass galleria where the fashion shoot is to take place. They walk in mid-prep, and Mercedes admits that she's getting a little nervous. Yoanna, on the other hand, is excited, and says that she has to get past this last obstacle and then the prize will be hers. Jay is suddenly there, reminding them that this is an actual fashion show, rather than an actual public hanging or an actual visit to the gastroenterologist, either option of which currently appears as if it would suit Mercedes better.
Suddenly it's twenty minutes until the show, Mercedes telling us that other girls she talked to at the show have been "doing this since they were twelve." And, showtime. The rows of seats become all speedy-motion filled with people, and Janice Dickinson swoops in looking like she drove to the show in a car fashioned out of The Fly chamber filled with bats and a Botox doctor. Awwww, and she brought her grandson, L'il Eric Nicholson! It's so weird to see them out of their prescribed element, like when you were in third grade and you saw your teacher at the movies and it was freaky.
The music kicks up and the applause starts. Yoanna hits the runway via a hardly-navigable revolving door, wearing a "Pepsi Cola burned him up, now he's drinking 7-Up"-Era Michael Jackson hat. Tyra goes wild. Mercedes strides out , walking a little more casually, I have to say. And then Yoanna is back, wearing a fur coat off the shoulder. Mercedes, showing some confessional sass, notes that she passed Yoanna on the runway and thought, "That bitch!" I think she's just kidding. I mean, she's adorable! Backstage, Yoanna's heel breaks and tragedy ensues. Mercedes is back out on the runway to a different beat while someone tries to track down a pair of shoes for Yoanna, but she has to go back out wearing a pair of old purple shoes Mercedes had apparently been wearing earlier. I missed another plot thread. Yoanna and Mercedes hug at the end and clap. Because at heart? Just girls at heart.
Tyra Mail! Tyra Mail! Tomorrow night, one of you will be eliminated. They agree that they'll have a big breakfast the following morning (I don't know if that's such a...ah, we're almost done. Never mind), and then, according to Yoanna, "What the hell were you thinking? You stupid girl! We're creating top models, not clowns on the runway!" I think she's doing an impression of "Generic Angry Judge," because she doesn't seem to be embodying any one of them in particular. In other news, Clowns on the Runway is officially the working title of my dream diary or an upcoming blog entry about that one time I flew on AirTran, bless my mortal soul.
Yoanna thinks Mercedes is "a beautiful person," but that Yoanna would be, by her own admission, "heartbroken" if Mercedes won. Mercedes thinks Yoanna is "a great person," but notes that if Yoanna wins, she'll pull out her hair and yell, "It wasn't meant to be!" Or you can just give her the scissors and the script and I'll bet she's juuuuust self-destructive enough to take care of the whole passion play for you.
They load their luggage into a van and hop in behind it, turning up at The Courthouse Of Exterior Beauty, this hilarious exterior shot of where Il Room Of Eliminato takes place. It's just like a regular court. Except the statue of justice doesn't have a blindfold on, and is cattily judging your muscle tone. And she thinks you're too short. She doesn't care. She'll just say it. It doesn't matter to her. She's made of stone. People. She is actually made of stone.
Okay. That's it. I'm exhausted.
Were we just here? Tyra welcomes Yoanna and Mercedes back and tells them that it's time for them to graduate to the real world of modeling. And then she introduces the panel of judges. Again. Janice, Eric, Nigel, and no guest judge. The individual evaluation is first. Janice says that Mercedes has the attitude of a top model, adding, "Your ass is so cute!" Eric thinks Yoanna was great "at the end." Yoanna likens the experience to being on drugs. To pretend that there's some sort of balance and that we don't know who is going to win, Tyra offers a bit of critique for each of them: Yoanna stayed too much on the beat when she walked, and Mercedes over-posed at the end of the runway. And Janice signed most of her autographs, "Best wishes, Anne Rice." So really, no model is perfect.
Oh, a recap! Great. Always love it when they take care of those for us. Tyra wants to time-travel through all of the photo shoots. First, we're back at Nigel's photo shoot in the Garden of Eden. They are both loved. we revisit the first beauty shoot, where Janice loves Mercedes's shot, but really Yoanna's picture is better. Audrey Hepburn and Billie Holliday. High-fashion in Italy. Naked. Nigel had worried before that shoot that Yoanna wasn't exuding enough sex appeal, and Yoanna chimes in, "I thought of you!" which brings gales of laughter to the room and a spirited "I love her!" from Eric. And, this week. Janice is "crazy" about Mercedes's picture. Nigel thinks it all came together, all of what they learned until this point. And now it's time for the girls to go with the promise of learning who America's Top Model is upon their return. All in an hour. With two eliminations. And five full minutes of previouslys. I will miss this show. When The Bachelor premieres in two weeks -- AGAIN -- and we spend the first six-hour, Roots-length, Ken-Burns-sponsored episode learning about what it's like to work in pharmaceutical sales in Wisconsin -- and more importantly, how that makes you feeeeeeeeeel -- I will really miss this show.
Alone again, the panel gets started. Janice, for once, speaks in the black-and-white of her outfit against her patented formula, triple-action, overnight-brightening, Brite Smile Whitening Pen: "I see Mercedes working in every country on Earth. She was the strongest in the runway competition." Eric thinks Yoanna is more exciting. Tyra thinks that Yoanna's face is more striking, and that she knows so much more about the fashion industry. Nigel thinks Mercedes can move really well and that she has a personality that people will want to book. Volleying back to Eric, Yoanna thinks that she has an "x-factor," which he apparently thinks is a good thing. Because she's spontaneous and sassy. Rather than maybe slightly unbalanced. Mercedes has "a top model personality," according to Tyra, and Janice agrees that she's "a survivor," she's not gon' give up. Nigel thinks she was one of the best girls on the runway, but wonders if she's got the face for the job. Janice asks who he enjoyed watching better on the runway, and Nigel offers a "no doubt about it" in favor of Mercedes. "Thank you!" Janice snarks. Nigel thinks it's "very tough." Tougher than lupus? That's why Janice's mind is made up.
Tyra asks the two girls if the wait was difficult. No, no. I'm sure it was very pleasant. Tyra directs their attention to a television screen that had previously showed them on a runway, them at a photo shoot, them naked with another girl while April makes weird, naked demands. Tyra tells them that if they stare long enough at the screen, they will quite soon discover who will be America's Top Model. Don't they have to keep saying "bloody Mary bloody Mary bloody Mary" over and over and over again, too? Tyra once more takes the time to offer her Across The Span Of Time retrospective, telling Yoanna that she was weird and quirky at first, but that a face like hers doesn't come along that often. Mercedes was commercial! And now she's not commercial! And America's Top Model is...Yoanna! She cries and they hug, Tyra stepping out to offer her hugs as well, just as a Tyra voice-over authoritatively tells us, "Yoanna's about to rock your world!" Mercedes briefly cries that it didn't work out, but that this is about the winner. Who is suddenly southern! She tells us in a final confessional, "Never was a cheerleader, never made the squad!" But now she's America's Top Model and it's all very exciting. And me? Well, then there's me. Me, I'm going to pick up a big bag of Rollitos and I'm off to the movies. And I'm going with my girl Lauren.