America's Next Top Model

Adrianne's Season-Long Victory Lap

Okay, quick programming note: I have absolutely no idea what order the girls went down in, so there will be no spoilers in these recaps on account of my not having watched Season 1, because I was on the wrong side of history and I thank UPN (I know!) for steering me right in all of my entertainment-related decisions since that early error. Thanking UPN! I know! So, that said, no spoilers and no advance knowledge of anything from me. Except that the winner is Adrianne. But come on. Everyone knew that. Right? RIGHT? Hey, come back here! Or at least remember that I prefer my hate mail proofread. Thanks.

Cycle 12 is full of sad stories and crazies, per usual. We have Sandra who is from Kenya and is totally a stealth bitch; London, who loves Jesus so much that she's compelled to preach on the street wearing crazy headbands; Jessica from Puerto Rico; burn survivor Tahlia who reminds us why it's a bad idea to leave your kid alone with a full coffee pot; gun-toting crazy conspiracy theorist Monique (who sadly doesn't even make it through the first cut); rich-ass Natalie; very tall Aminat; anxiety-riddled Kathryn, who somehow determines that the best way to impress the judges is to bring them samples from her pen collection; Alex the super-street white girl; epileptic Isabella; Nijah the prom queen; Fo(licia) with the freckles who refers to herself as "Blaxican"; Grandma Celia who has the audacity to be 25; plus-sized Kortnie who dated Dale Earnhardt, Jr.; Allison of the crazy eyes and blood fetish; tomboy Teyona; and Angelea, who had a daughter who died and has no business being a model.

And now...pack your bags, y'all, we're going to Season 1. Sorry. Last time. Yeah. RIGHT.

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The Gospel According To Elyse

New York, New York, a hell of a town/ Not plus-size up, but much sizier down/ You'll go to Hell if at Robin you frown/ New York, New York/ La la la la lee lee looooooo!

Just thought I'd start this week off with a song. I hope you liked it. Because if you don't, you're banned. Dee dee dee da da da hey! [Stage direction: Djb bows amidst cheering and roses, tipping his hat and spinning his cane.]

After a few scattered establishing shots of New York cribbed from Bette And Lily's 'Big Business' Guide To Madcap Manhattan Camera Angles, we cut to the exterior of the Flatotel, chosen as the ladies' lodgings on account of being the only thing about this whole modeling competition that can be vaguely depicted as "flat." With the exception of Elyse, of course. Oh, rim shot! Hi, Elyse! Just kidding! Don't come after me and bring me down with your secret weapon...of knowledge!

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Makeover, Makeover, Makeover: The Makeover Episode

Slow fade up on the Implantotel, where we turn up in the bathroom to find Adrianne and Elyse, appropriately, talking shit. They speak of Katie's elimination last week, Adrianne lighting a cigarette and noting, "That is one person I did not expect to go, did you?" Elyse sucks on what looks like a piece of black shoelace licorice, nodding her head vigorously in reply primarily to burn off the one correlating calorie that she's recently allowed to enter her body, but also to confirm that yes, Elyse did know that Katie was going to be voted off because she's smart enough to fill out a med-school application which means she figured out Katie's impending ouster by using magic.

But Adrianne, for one (or lower, if she runs into trouble counting that high), had no idea, and we kick it to a confessional, where she continues on, "Last Judgment Day, it was really hard on me." She wears her camouflage headband -- oh, my god, where is Adrianne's HEAD? Oh, there it is -- because the whole world has to answer right now when I tell you once again who's bad. The whole outfit conspires to make her look, in fact, as if she's auditioning for the lead role in Last Judgment Day, the biopic story of Adrianne in which, for reasons of marble-mouthed vocal cadence and sheer width of shoulder blades, Adrianne would probably be played by Vin Diesel. Which makes Judi Dench be all, "Well, then, I guess that means I'm playing Elyse" before bidding "Cheerio" to her stately manor's manservants and packing a bag for L.A.

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It Puts The Lotion On The Basket Case

Props to Potes and Adam.

New York City! Where the streets, according to a brief opening montage scored by the most offensively inoffensive lite-techno-jam since that John Tesh cover of "Everybody Dance Now," are paved with vermin. Raccoons and pigeons crawl on park benches, flocking together in herds and feasting on the tiny crumbs of the stale breads that those of us with civilized, human appetites leave behind. I would kick off this recap in the meanest way possible by straining the metaphor and suggesting that this subtle aesthetic stamp refers back to the mere crumbs a top-model-in-training would deign to eat. But I won't. And you know why? Because everybody knows that a bite of park bench would be absolutely dirty with carbs.

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Anorexia, Anorexia/Intimate, Obstinate/Anorexia

Props to Potes and Adam.

New York City! Where the streets are paved with slanderously unfounded rumors. We open up this week inside of the Tit-For-Tat-otel, where Elyse lies on her bed among the debris of clothing, bedding, and...oh my god, what the hell is that? I don't want to get too close -- if we've learned one thing on this show it's that secular literature is The Devil's Eye Test -- but it appears to be some kind of a "book." Anytime there's a volume of bound pages in that apartment that doesn't feature page after page of automatically capitalized instances of the word "He," it's going to make you ask the important questions. Such as Adrianne's question, which she asks of Elyse when she enters the room: "Do you like it better with more chicks, or no?" Elyse, lying in just a sports bra, exposes a stomach so devoid of nourishment it actually achieves a trough in the middle, and local extreme sports enthusiasts entertain themselves by riding eensy skateboards up and down and drowning out Adrianne's expository dialogue with muffled cries of "Wheee!" It's convex. No, wait. It's concave. It's...crap. It's whichever one hangs down from the top of the cave. Elyse deduces through the magical power of math (The Devil's Sport, with its pagan symbols and its unofficial mascot of The Count, clearly a stand-in for Satan, because open your eyes, people) that it's better in the house with "fewer chicks," and Adrianne copies some answers off of Elyse's skill drill in figuring out, "The fewer chicks, the closer we are to winning." Also, money can be exchanged for goods and services. Thank you, math!

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Pick Up The Francophone

Cars jet by in supah-fast motion on the street in front of the Prat-otel, ostensibly in an attempt to underscore the wild, undulating pulse of the city, but instead acting as a stark reminder that, working with a UPN-devised seasonal production budget commensurate with roughly fifteen minutes of Survivor's, even the best-laid attempts at some camera jazz are reminiscent less of pulse-pounding gritty urban drama than olde time-y shots of Babe Ruth running a little too fast after a homerun because that was the longest sentence...ever.

Up in the Tokyo Room, Adrianne combs her weave and sits, lost in translation, slurring, "Even though Giselle could be annoying sometimes, when she wasn't, she was actually cool." Straightaway and we're already discovering that Adrianne's pliant mind allowed her to get conned into thinking that Giselle was anything less than eighteen, pubescing right before our very eyes, and jam-packed with gooey gobs of creamy, nougat-y Giselle. She's brainwashed. Giselle ate all the cereal but it was our fault we drove her away! Giselle never helped clean up but she always apologized later! Giselle wouldn't have taken advantage of me after the prom if I hadn't been wearing that totally short skirt and been totally asking for it! Poor Adrianne. Date raped by the ghost of Giselle's annoying tendencies.

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Further Teachings From The Book Of Robin

Anyone know the French word for "montage"? Well, look it up in your English To English, French To French Dictionary, people (no, not the Bible. The one next to the...no, not that bible, either. The one with the...okay, that's actually also a Bible. Oh, good, that's a copy of Women's Wear Daily, so that's...which you ripped the pages out of so you could conceal the fact that you were actually reading...the Bible? Okay. Y'know what? Forget it. Look, I just said FORGET IT, so can we not fight here, because you're really just embarrassing yourself. No, why don't YOU shut up? Look Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again. There's just no stopping in a white zone. Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion), because that's...sigh. Actually, y'know what? I can't pretend that fight with my internal monologue didn't totally make me lose my train of thought. Let's start over. Sorry. Just forget this paragraph ever happened. Don't look at me. I'm hideous. Shut up, Robin.

Anyone know the French word for montage? Well, look it up in your English To English, French To French Dictionary, people, because that's how we'll be reintroducing ourselves to Paris at the beginning of this week's episode. The top of the Eiffel Tower! The base of the Eiffel Tower! The entire Eiffel Tower! A concert by '70s funk visionaries, Tower of Power! A full-on serenade of "Power of Love," by Huey Lewis and the News. What a beautiful day it is here in the city of Free-Association-on-Seine.

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Adrianne Wins!

I like New York in montage. How about you? I like an hour-long recap barrage. How about you? I love a fireside when a storm is due. How about you? I like potato chips, moonlight, and motor trips. How about you?

I'm getting nervous about the increasing volume of Burton Lane rolling over in his grave. How about you?

Upstairs for the last time at the Combatotel, we find Elyse take a sip of water in drinking her USDA maximum of "bloating agents" for the day, because someone with her frame would not be able to take another sip, bite, or sharp intake of breath lest her weight crack into the double digits or she accidentally get herself some titties. Looking out the window, she tells a nearby Adrianne forlornly, "I miss Robin," because the road to hell is paved with cleverly elitist sarcasm. Adrianne bends over and shows pretty much all of a red g-string to the viewing public that she's wearing just in case Elyse is all, "That's so weird, Mrs. Plumber, but the sink really wasn't working just before you got here" and the two of them finally get some actual work as a result of those nude shoots. But instead, Adrianne just laughs and laughs, telling us in a confessional, "I'm really happy Robin's gone. I'm gonna be able to do whatever the f@$# I want and not get in trouble for it." Yes, yes. Gone are the days when a formerly demure, declining Adrianne would make her presence known only as she tiptoed on stocking feet over to Robin's couture collection hat to drop in a token of tithe. Now she's going to let her true, red-thonged colors fly high and proud, becoming the overbearing hag we always knew she had buried deep down. She'd like to get started right away. Someone crank that Hagometer up to 11.

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