The opening credits of America's Top Model: The Runway Ahead reveal the gritty reality of New York: the "W" train I don't live at anymore. The heartbreak of being the second through eleventh girl not fit to dry-clean the hem of Yoanna's couture Zac Posen dress. The trials and tribulations of living with the unpredictably edited scourge that is TV-lupus. I missed it all so terribly. I still marvel at the way it always managed to make me feel so happy and so fat at exactly the same time. Good times. Good times.
"Our twelve finalists came from all over the country," the enormous, teetering bobble-headed likeness of Tyra "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" Banks barks into the camera, a statement so banal and generally uninformative that I'm actually relieved to play this sequence backwards and discover that she's actually saying, "Download my single from iTunes already or your kid isn't getting into T-Zone. Face it, America: I own the media." That's right. I'm saying I do prefer encoded subliminal devil messages to lamely-written copy. Which means I won't be happy with this continuing sentiment, either: the girls, Tyra says, came "from all different kinds of racial backgrounds" -- which is accompanied by a shot of April, herself apparently the human encapsulation of "all racial backgrounds"; "ethnic backgrounds" -- served up with a shot of wee Jenascia, because I guess when you grow up in a country as branded and marketed as ours, "Hooters Girl" becomes its own ethnicity; "and all shapes and sizes," Tyra concludes, a line accompanied by a shot of alleged "plus-size" Anna, whom we might have seen in her plus-size glory one day had she not gotten her tits stuck in a Bible and gotten Blahniked back to the backwater. "They all had something in common." They all think Canada is a state? "They all wanted to be America's Top Model." Oh. But also the one about Canada. Because models are all really dumb. And I'm the first person ever, ever to think so. Ever.
But if this show is about one thing, it's about the mysterious thirteenth model and her tough time, Tyra Banks. Hijacking a confessional booth and filibustering the episode away until someone meets her demand to download her single or else, Tyra all but crashes into an oncoming episode of Rock Me Baby when she continues continuing on, "Voting a girl off every week is really, really difficult." Clips of April with her boyfriend and Shandi with her mom are accompanied by Tyra telling us, "I really bond with the girls. I learn about their personal lives. Their boyfriends, their moms, their insecurities, their fears." She adds that choosing between the final two girls sure was hard, since they were all fighting for one girl or another, adding, "One moment I'm actually pulling for Yoanna and then five minutes later, I'm pulling for Mercedes." So who'd you settle on? No, just kidding. We all know that you have the final say and that the rest of the jury is made up of holograms culled from your own Sybil-esque imagination. Hint: we like you better as Janice. You're just more -- what's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes -- drunker.
So here's what we're doing, I guess: we'll go through each of the twelve girls and do a little "Where Are They Now, And Who Did They Think They Were, Then, Anyway?" segment on each of them, beginning with Mercedes. But I'll try to keep the footage of what we saw on the show to a minimum and just concentrate on the new stuff, because (a) we already had a clip show that took so little mental energy to watch that I recapped while in line at the supermarket and (b) it takes kind of a long time to comb through my old recaps to pull the links for the episodes I'm referring to. So let's try to avoid that if we may, and let's look forward as a means of being way too lazy to turn all the way around. My neck has kind of been hurting anyway.
Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz?
So, right. Mercedes. In a confessional shot in a shoebox on a camera with a broken "Pan Out" button, Mercedes's nose and lips catch us up on how she's been doing...when she was six: "I always used to put on shows for my mom and sing and dance in the living room," she tells us, over a shot of little Mercedes in a purple tutu. Oh, that is a highlight of young life, isn't it? My friend Debbie and I used to make my mom sit down on the couch in our den (it's different than the living room and if you don't know why you'll never understand the suburbs so just forget it) while we serenaded her with our spot-on rendition of "The Girl is Mine," with me in the Paul role that continues to grace countless international karaoke bars too numerous to mention. Debbie and I really wanted the girl in that song. And this I tell you: wherever she is today, the girl in that song is one lonely girl, because time passed and Debbie got engaged and not to me and we just stopped fighting over that girl, poor thing.
John Sakalis -- a reputed fashion designer who has never, not once, appeared on this show before this moment on account of the constant maintenance required of his Joker-tribute facial hair -- chimes in with his opinion of Mercedes: "She's a great girl. She's got a lot of charisma." A shot of her wearing a white dress and running in accelerated, Babe-Ruth-knocks- one-outta-the-park camera speed (my least favorite eyesore of an effect, second only to CGI making animals and babies look like they can talk) cuts to a confessional featuring Mary Scelba, Mercedes's mother, who wants us to know that "Mercedes is a fun girl. She's silly. She likes to play with her brother. They love to have a good time together." A shot of Mercedes, having trouble locating an onramp to the alleged "runway ahead," is seen bored-ly playing the xylophone with a younger male child who must be her brother. The finely honed "mystery oldie" portion of my brain tells me I can name this tune of "Twinkle Twinkle" in seven notes.
Mercedes takes us through her troubled past, noting that she grew up as "the rudest girl ever" in New Jersey, where the dress code required that she wear "the baggy pants, the hoop earrings, the bangs." Oh, just say the word "hoochie," for Christ's sake. It's allowed in New Jersey, like how you're allowed to call someone a Jap when you live on Long Island or the N-word if you live in a Quentin Tarantino movie. No one's saying it's right...everyone's just saying you lose about 50% of your linguistic faculties without access to such words. So my honorary New Jersey citizenship allows met to speak out on her: Mercedes was a hoochie. It's fine. They're not all bad. Rumor has it they have enormous talent at the xylophone and other assorted instruments in the glockenspiel family.
But the hoochie life was too much for our sweet naïf, and when funding for treatment from the HLA (Hoochies for Lupus Awareness) dried up, Mercedes and her family departed for parts westward. "Moving to Valencia, California was a good neighborhood." She thinks that made her a better person overall, as hopping one class level up often does to people. Look at all of those delightful, carefree rich people out there, jamming on their xylophones and generally making the world a more delightful place for all. And if this modeling thing works out, maybe they'll let her sing her own theme song on the upcoming sitcom pilot, The Fresh Princess of Bel-Air.
In West New Jersey, she was born and raised/ On the xylophone where she spent most of her days/ Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool/ And shooting some hoochie-ball outside of the school/ When a couple of girls said "your outfit's no good"/ Started making trouble in her neighborhood/ She got in one little fight and her mom got scared/ And said "we're moving our multi-cultural family kinda near Bel-Air. And so on.
Go, Mercedes! Now do "Parents Just Don't Understand." Because I love that song. And because they don't, y'know?
Mercedes has lupus. Side effects include rampant opportunism.
Yoanna is announced as the winner, and Mercedes is sad. But "the competition has not yet ended, folks," she tells us from behind the wheel of her car, from which she announces, "Yoanna, I heard, is in a show this week for Fashion Week. But I got the best show. I opened up with Lloyd Klein, thank you very much." She points at road going more perpendicular to her than she'd like and announces, "I'm supposed to be going that way." Ah, the adorable, spunky foible of turning your driver's seat into a confessional booth. Being on a cell phone is illegal, and this isn't. Mercedes continues that her "hopes and goals" include: "I want to at least grace the cover on a Vogue." On a Vogue? Is that like using the word "Xerox" to connote all copy machines or "Kleenex" to stand for all tissues? She does know that Vogue is just one magazine? Oh, you know what? Maybe she means one of the many Vogues published around the world like American Vogue or Italian Vogue or Gorlox-8 Vogue (it's new -- the Earth-conquering robots are hoping it will drop during Resort season in '14). Oh, you know what else? For an Extra, I really feel like I might be overthinking things.
Oh! And Mercedes's other career goals: "I would like to pursue acting." Totally mad sidebar: Tyra Banks starred in the original Fresh Prince of Bel-Air series as character Jackie Ames in the show's 1993-1994 season! Hello, franchise! Oh, and also: "I would like to help people with lupus." You already have, Mercedes. You already have.
"Mercedes just signed with New Model Management in Los Angeles," Tyra adds from a confessional space containing a lot of extra overhead room, just in case. "She has an ad coming out in Seventeen magazine. And she's starring in an independent film called Love Nest." Yeah, who isn't?
Sarasponda, Sarasponda, Sarasponda Ret Set Set
"People recognize me on the street!" Sara celebrates, because that is the greatest most affirming thing in the world. Like when my brother and his girlfriend recently spotted Catie on the "street" that was her working the checkout line at Ikea and maybe it really wasn't that great after all. I told him to ask her how to say "No, I said it's whore-like" in Swedish, but she didn't seem that chit-chatty outside of the basic pleasantries of "in line" and "Manager to the front, I need a price check on meatballs" and "Why would a furniture store sell meatballs?" before breaking into racking sobs. Anyway, Sara is half-Persian. And she's proud of it. Her Iranian family is not proud of her. Sara's mother, Laura Bonney -- who I think shares motherly DNA with the lovely Mary Scelba -- tells us how unfortunate it is that Sara and her father see the world in such different ways. "My mom raised me from when I was a little baby," Sara tells us, explaining, "Same story a lot of people have." Being raised by parents? Indeed, a frequent story.
"Today I'm at the Maxim shoot," Sara tells us. She's wearing a flesh-colored bikini that might, in fact, just be flesh. She reminds us, "I want to be in Sports Illustrated," taking this opportunity to stare into the camera and yell, "Put me in there!" Right after you pick up a sport, babe. Sara takes part in a runway show for "Rock & Republic," and we cut back to Tyra, who wraps things up for Sara telling us that "just snagged a meeting with the head of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, so her dream may just come true." The head of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? Dude. That's a whole job? Brother's got a lot of vacation time.
"There's a big difference between being a model and a Top Model," Tyra schools us. For one, there's the punctuation and trademark symbol. But there are also other things, including that a Top Model "has to know how to dance, has to know how to speak, has to know how to...relate to the public, where they like her and they want to be her friend." And then there's someone gifted in the fine art of not being able to do any of those things. But at least Tom Jones likes her, per the following pun-intensive section title.
She's A Catie. Whoa Whoa Whoa, She's a Catie
A resolutely Minnesotan accent tells us, "Tim and Todd with Catie Anderson, Wilmar's own." Oh, god. Local radio. The cheesy post-prom cruise ship cluttering up the visible entertainment horizon. You know who could fill air time on local radio? You. And me. And anyone with a whoopee cushion sound-effects tape and a talent for saying the words "traffic and weather together" every ten minutes on the ones. I'm just saying, Catie's appearance on Big Q102 or whatever doesn't exactly represent the vaunt to fame they're trying to convey it as. Let's get to the truth of the matter.
Tim and/or Todd -- I swear I can usually tell them apart, but I think I'm just getting really weak-kneed in the presence of fame -- tells Catie, "You must get recognized everywhere you go now." Yes. But she has not left downtown Wilmar in exactly as many minutes as it's been since she packed her bags and went home. Save for the moment when she was waiting on my brother and his girlfriend at an IKEA in Burbank. But people love their local heroes, which is why not one Massapequan will say their favorite Seinfeld isn't that which enshrined the great Coach Bevilacqua, and also why we rock out to Twisted Sister every night. A staged photo op shows a girl asking Catie for her autograph. And another. And another. A woman opens an elementary-school classroom door and screams, "This is my friend, Catie Anderson, who was on Top Model!" The eight year-olds wish that she were something more distracting and relevant to their lives. Like, say, a fire drill or the Challenger exploding. What? Those are the only two things I can remember interrupting my formative education, ever. The assistant principal of Wilmar High School (WHS! Go, Fighting Milkers!), Mark Miley, tells us that Catie "made it...big-time." But not enough to have gotten a quote from the actual principal, even.
I can't believe it escaped the producers' notice that, during her audition video, Catie delivers the following deadpan line: "If they said, 'Catie, to make it, you're gonna have to shave your head,' my hair's gone." Oooooh. Cleanup in Irony Five.
Ah, the Louis Verdad show. Just where I always hoped Catie would end up. And there she is. On the carpet at the Top Model party -- and let me tell you, if that's the only place they can get an interview for her, she's not doing that well -- she tells a reporter from The B-Roll Times, "I would obviously love to model, act, and I would love to do TV hosting." Is that really a job? Sigh. Sadly, I guess it is. Her parting shot is, "Now is, like, the real competition...the show was completely just a warmup." That's what people always say when they lose. Tyra takes this time to add absolutely nothing to this.
Anna (Go To Him)
Back in the burg of what town did that did brung her, Anna chills with her husband and her son, whose name was something like Mythachius or something, right? After Anna's inglorious removal from the show, we're back in LaGrange, Georgia. She's on a swing. She's walking in the park. "When I do step into modeling full-time," she tells us...ah, that'll never happen. But she does tell us that she got herself down to a size 6, and that she's "looking over a contract" and, she hopes, will be able to shake off her 9 to 5 job real, real soon. This can only end well.
Shand On The Run, Shand On The Ru-un-un
"My mom always thought that I looked like a boy," Shandi tells us. She's back at Walgreen's, and we just happen to be watching when she gets recognized! They rehash Shandi's whole literary Bildungsroman thing, and the only reason I'm even mentioning it is because we get what we came to this episode for, which is Tyra's announcement to "Pack your bags, y'all, we're goin' to Milan!" What is so great about that transcendent moment? When I figure it out, I'll write a reaction rap about it and make it Tyra's second single. I think I shall entitle it "Sorry About My First Single (That Was Really Wrong Of Me)."
Rehash. Recap. Sex with guys whose names end with fourteen "I's."
Eric is cute and looks like Beck. And someday he shall be mine. No, really. He will actually be mine. He wears humiliation and H&M knock-offs well.
"After the show, I had to go back to Walgreen's," Shandi tells us. She's reconciled with her boyfriend, sort of, and he tells us, "What she did was wrong, but I have been able to forgive her." Shandi gives her mom and big bear hug, and tells us while sitting to her, "I don't necessarily feel closer to my mom, but I think a lot of feelings have been resolved." Shandi tells us that she's off to New York to meet with eight agencies, and that she's saving enough money to move there. She must be the biggest bitch on staff at that Walgreen's right now. But if she gets the Tyra stamp of approval, she must be doing something right: "Shandi's shooting a big magazine spread in Glamour and Cosmo Girl." I'm glad. But what I asked was, "Are there any more of the family size Rold Golds?"
So Long As He's The Life In Her, She'll Be The Bethany
"I hope to get some modeling jobs," Bethany says on the carpet at the Top Model party. She adds, "I was thinking of moving out here to L.A." Glacial pause in which you can choke back down the lies you know you're telling yourself. "Probably in a month or two." On the lunar calendar. Of the third moon. Of Jupiter. Yes. Bethany's segment really was that short.
They Got Little Baby Legs/ And They Stand So Low/ You Got To Pick 'Em Up/Just To Say Hello
"What's up, people? I'm Jenascia!" The camera pans down, down, down, past the earthen-dwelling ants and grubs who can lift ten times their body weight. There she is! Awwww, I almost stepped on her by accident! She's back, and hoo boy if she ain't just the wackiest thing you ever did see! "That's right, still slinging chicken wings!" She's in full Hooters regalia, walking through the front door of her job at a Seattle branch of the famed eatery. Ladies walk in a titty fashion, men loiter at the bar, wives back at home ask their trusted member of the clergy if this means their husbands are cheating on them, and a vague sense of all-encompassing desperation is always on tap. She asks the men at the bar if they need anything else at this time, and they respond with stony silence, which inspires her to quip "Good, because I didn't want to get it anyways [sic]!" Ha! Such ironic subversion, what with her vocational requirement being all about getting things for people. She's like Noel Coward! In a Hooters! And much, much shorter! And if you thought that was good, you won't believe what this latter-day political gadfly -- seriously, she should make a polemical documentary about labor abuses at Hooters and name it Fahrenheit Preheat To 450 -- does ! She pulls out a stuffed chicken -- prop work! -- which dances when wound up. She puts it on the counter and announces, "There's [sic] your [sic] guys' [sic] entertainment for the day. I'm gonna be doing my crossword puzzle. Enjoy." I will! I WILL enjoy!
Short short short, bippity boppity short. Blah.
In a post-short confessional, Jenascia wants us to understand, "To be totally honest with you, I've always wanted to act. And I felt like maybe modeling would be a good step into it. I'm very interested in comedy. Saturday Night Live, call me!" And really, it's not my place to step all over her dreams as I have so frequently (albeit accidentally) trampled her actual head, but doesn't a job on Saturday Night Live require being a writer? Or an actor? Or a performer of some kind? Again, not to dance all over her dreams. But I just can't help it. They're so small and the grass is so high!
"Yay, Jenascia, you shoud've won!" cries a chorus drunken boozehounds at the bar, with one following up, "You're not too short!" Were the panel only to have included Tyra, Janice, Eric, and any card-carrying member of the Hooters Itty Bitty Titty Committee Drink Card. Which may or may not be a real thing. Because I've never been inside a Hooters. Because the doggone girl is not mine.
April Showers Bring Gay Boyfriends
"Before the show, I was working in Miami Beach as an account executive for Airborne Express." Interesting factoid. Not exactly the runway ahead, but I'm glad to see she's doing well. We meet April's boyfriend Patrick, who explains that he was the one who found the application for her to appear on the show to begin with. She was competitive on the show. But too technical. Too clinical. She felt misunderstood by the judges, who didn't understand that she really embraced her Asian heritage. She cried "for thirty minutes" when she got eliminated, and then went home and whored for Stuff magazine. She wants to be a model because she wants to "create art with [her] body." Tyra pops in to update us that April "just signed with New York Models, and the owner of the agency is so impressed with her that he's managing her himself." Go, April! Sorry about your gay boyfriend.
Xiomara, Wherever You Are, I Believe That The Heart Does Go On
Xiomara feels she's improved "physically, mentally, emotionally" since the end of the show. She's still working as a nightclub bartender, where she can work "two nights a week and make a grand," a comment that made three people sitting on my couch do some quick math and mentally quit the fourteen jobs that we somehow hold between us. Lucky for us, we popped in on Xiomara just as she's signing with a personal manager named Marianne Leone, who has the exact same computer I have and a personality that screams, "Somehow, make me famous enough to seep into popular culture because Rachel Dratch is one redhead wig away from perfecting me." Or maybe Jenascia could do it! Marianne tells Xiomara that her "plan" is "to make [Xiomara] a star." As opposed to her other clients, whom she's made into auto mechanics, longshoremen, and once, by accident, a long, distressed Coke bottle just perfect for sand art. She finishes her pronouncement by announcing, "You are going to be my top...girl!" Not what I thought she was going to say, but at least someone around here recognizes the trademark law of not just calling anyone and everyone a Top Model. Also, Xiomara got signed to Boss Models. "Right now, who's making moves? Who's booking work? Who's not?" Tyra tells us who: "Xiomara has had requests from three major cosmetics lines, and she just did a spread for FHM magazine." Maxim? Stuff? FHM? Where are the real skin mags already? Those other ones are like the Hooters of actually being famous!
Everywhere You Go, You Always Take The Heather With You
Heather is auditioning for a UPN series, in which she animatedly says the line, "I wanted to bake a cake, but I can't find my non-stick sunflower cake pan!" My god, but UPN writes the way people talk. But there's Catie sitting right to her at the table, so I get the feeling that this wasn't exactly Heather's big shot at fame. Besides the fact that one of the women tells her that she really has a good shot at this whole acting game if she just keeps "taking the classes." Shut up, Heather.
What You Find, Ah/ What You Feel Now/ What You Know, Ah/ To Be Camille
Got to be Camille, it's got to be Camille. Got to be Camille, it's got to be Camille. "Believe it or not, Camille was super-sweet on her audition," Tyra tells us, unaware that every reality show requires one pariah and that she lucked out big-time. Camille tells us that appearing on the show put her in a "highly stressful environment." She reminds us that she got along none too well with Yoanna, still convinced that it's just her self-confidence that alienated all of the other girls. "I think she needs to be somewhere telling people what to do, rather than taking advice," Tyra tells us of Camille. Cut to an irony-montage of Washington D.C., because that's where...people tell us what to do? I think there's a visual connection we're meant to make in that juxtaposition, but all I can think about is that this very same montage was totally used on the Bachelor episode I just had to watch and I feel like I'm caught in some weird D.C. meta-loop that's going to make me remember the name of the three branches of government and the name of the junior senator from New Jersey.
"I can't really go places like I used to without people recognizing me," Camille laments on a jaunt through downtown D.C. Yeah. An attending camera crew like the one you have now almost always tends to have that effect on passersby. We montage through Howard University, where Camille attends college. She goes through an extensive grooming routine and goes out with her posse to a few clubs, in which VIP access is "typical" for them. "As far as the bodyguards are concerned," she continues, "because of my popularity now, I have to look out for my own safety." I'm sorry, she'll have to repeat that last comment, drowned out as it was by the giant flapping wings of a delusion so primal and ugly it manifests itself in a form that's almost insectoid in nature.
Over in Mamaroneck, New York, we meet Camille's mom. Her father appears in a disco picture from the '70s. She attempts to perform her "signature walk" through her bedroom. This didn't seem to result in any actual work for Camille.
Yoaaaaaaaaaana/ I Love You/ You're The One/ The One For Me/ Doo Doo Doooooooo
One more flashback to Yoanna winning, and we're in New York City. The day after the winner is announced, Yoanna has an entourage waiting to ferry her into an attending town car to take her to her first appearance, on the CBS Morning Show. Well, at least the show's publicist wasn't deranged enough to try to grow the network by insisting that she only do UPN's morning programming (i.e. there is none), but CBS? No one on staff has ever heard of Today or GMA? They're going on right now, at this very time, on the stations that people are actually watching. Not to bring down the big winner. Remember when she was excited? Let's revisit that. And now, over to the weather, and Al.
Hey, she's staying at the Regency, at 61st and Park! A lovely hotel. Her CBS appearance then takes her to Regis & Kelly, which is a very impressive booking. I'm sure her appearance was nice, and I'm also sure ABC didn't give the show the rights to air it. Which is fine. Because I don't care about Regis's golf game at ALL. A shopping spree at Sephora, a shoot at Jane, and a meeting at IMG all appear to happen on the same day, which they actually might have. A staff of people watches as Yoanna learns she's on her way to L.A., where she appears on On Air With Ryan Seacrest. You guys? Call me. I could run this publicity campaign from my house. What's your print buzz? In Touch ONLY? Call me. I won't like it. But I'm really, really good at it.
Yoanna celebrates her twenty-fourth birthday at home in Florida. We fly back in time to watch some photographs of Yoanna decrease in size and scope. Yoga with her sister. "I can't wait to get to work." On the runway still too far ahead to see.