America's Next Top Model

Model Behavior

"America's Next Top Model is about dreams, plain and simple," the voice-over punditry of Tyra "Tyra, Pants On Fyra" Banks shares with us from its disembodied, godlike perch. "And it's about accomplishing these dreams through hard work, talent, and passion." And sheer, mind-blowing bitchcakes, flame-broiled on high and tossed back up in the restaurant's bathroom stall with a carefully placed finger at the back of the soft palate. A career retrospective's worth of Tyra headshots and b-roll fly before our eyes as she continues introducing herself through the fine art of hiring herself as her own publicist, informing us, "I worked my butt off to get to the top of the modeling industry." Oh, is that what informs the frequently-noted butt-free quality of the average model's body? See, because I thought it was a thirty million pack of Diet Coke and a big Hoover-looking thing that sucks the offending cellulite right outta said butt. But it's just the work. And now we know. And all my teachers said UPN wasn't educational television.

Now, let me preface by saying this: I didn't watch so much as one minute of last season. But let me also say that, having watched one episode of this season...well, I get it. Tyra agrees that past is past, regaling us with the one-sentence glory that was the fifteen minutes of first-season winner Adrienne's fame, adding, "But this business moves fast, and fashion waits for no one." After a "nationwide search" (and I'm just saying, but no one came to my door) that we see in a millisecond montage of skinny girls picking up telephones, Tyra discovered twelve fresh faces: from all "ethnicities" (shot of an African-American girl) "figures" (shot of a girl who owes her doctor a sizable chunk of change, not to mention Dupont's entire supply of saline products), including "edgy" (girl in a ripped shirt); "waif" (girl who got lost on her way to audition for American Juniors); "plus-size" (girl who's really skinny); and "petite" (girl who's really skinny). Tyra all but sneers that each of these girls believes that she has "it," which she signifies with giant hand-quotes, because everyone knows that the correct grammatical purpose of quotes is always to signal emphasis, such as in the sentiments "Please Do Not 'Smoke' Here or I Know Your Breasts Are 'Fake.'"

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Trash Compactor

Night falls on Manhattan. The potholes smoke. The models...smoke. A title from the cinematic canon of Andy Garcia is mentioned in print for the first time in nearly a decade. Outside of the loft that houses Tyra's Tykes (it's kind of like a Ronald McDonald House thing, but at this one, their security and food are removed rather than supplied), Jenascia sits (or maybe she stands...people, she's short and she wants you to know that she knows) smoking. We kick to a confessional in which she tells us, "Last week I was almost cut." Hey, hey, hey. Do me a favor and keep it to the "previously"s that I refuse to recap, if you know what's good for you. "I don't want to do that again," Jenascia adds. "It wasn't fun." That scene was really short. What it needs to do is learn to walk like it's taller.

A car makes its way down Broadway, montaging between Times Square and Penn Station for maximum, Mapquesting confusion. I'm guessing it's on its way to carry the girls to a calorie-shedding, detoxifying steam in the giant Cup of Noodles cup in the middle of 42nd Street. Sitting next to Breastany and Lara Klingon Boyle, Camille sounds like she's in the middle of a public reading of her Artist's Way morning pages, rambling on without the pesky deterrent of implied verbal punctuation, "The model industry it's not it's not it's not easy trust me you're getting there early in the morning you're waiting all day into night even at Howard University when we do a fashion show and you're confined in like y'know the auditorium...see that right there I worked on that ad campaign see that that is my campaign right there!" Whoa! Who had a second slice of Pop Rocks Pie with dinner back at the loft? That's right! Nobody! Because dessert is a disease, and you can't spell "disease" without "dessert." Or something. What I mean is that at least eight of those eleven girls probably aren't real adept at spelling either of those words.

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Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

Props to Adam and Potes. I was rounding up, you guys.

New York City! Land of opportunity! Where the buildings rise tall, where the melting pot simmers, where the streets are paved with gold...lam strappy sandals. Down in Soho and upstairs in the Zo-Loft, a hand secures said footwear to said foot, as ten remaining blondes-at-heart consider that at least their numbers have finally decreased to a figure the majority of them have been schooled to count up to. Welcome to the city, doe-eyed, clueless foreigners. Do you speak the language? HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING OUR COUNTRY SO FAR? What's wrong? You look lost. But don't worry. Those little shoes look perfect for walking around here.

The shoes, the hands, the confessional, and the "Charter Member Of The League Of Djb Doppelgangers" ID card all belong to young Shandi -- and I'm not saying that I'm any kind of supermodel, I'm just saying that she...isn't -- who we join in progress as she tries desperately to perfect walking without looking like she's trying to kick Fred Flinstone's car into neutral during a particularly grueling snowstorm. Turn into the skid, Shandi! Turn into the...crash! Well, this can only get worse before it gets better. In a confessional tricked out with soft, gauzy flashback effects that Tyra should add to her makeup kit to further soften her god-given alien qualities, Shandi relives the Rose Ceremony -- er, ah, the Headshot Hilarity of last week, remembering, "The last elimination, I seriously thought it was gonna be me. I keep thinking about how bad my walk was." A flashback shot of Shandi's walk in the elimination room makes you think she should have just kept walking when she reached the far end of the runway and left that room forever. She shatters linguistic records for the amount of syllables one could cram into the word "puh-leeeeeeze" from the viewing audience who think we know everything about the nuanced art of walking. Oh, wait. Here's something I remember learning at some point in my first sixteen months on Earth: right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Holy crap! I do know everything about walking! I would stop and bow, but I'm too busy loving walking!

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Stopping Short

The New York City in which the George Washington Bridge acts as the gateway to Soho owes me fifty trillion dollars in back pay from cab fares incurred anywhere between the two. We montage from that bridge -- named as such because of its powdery wig and inability to tell lies -- to the faade of the ZoLoft, which is probably, in fact, on an L.A. soundstage somewhere because the exteriors in this city we'll call "Newer York" aren't up to snuff with the actual city they're trying to portray. Actually, on second glance, that shot may well have been of the Williamsburg Bridge. Which is really quite close to Soho. Is that the Manhattan Bridge?

Up inside the ZoLoft, we join Xiomara in progress as she walks around the apartment in shorty shorty short shorts (or, as this garment would be known if worn by anyone else on Earth: pants), telling us, "We're so tired because we only had two hours of sleep from the night before." I don't have any idea why they've only gotten two hours of sleep and no explanation is immediately offered up, so I'll just guess it has something to do with "the volume and duration of Catie's continuing racking sobs," and we'll try for once to stick to the linear recapping thread. Xiomara tells us that she feels she has to "one-up everyone else with what [she's] doing because the last judging they told [her] that was [her] weakest week ever, and [she] will never allow that to happen again. Ever." Bugging her eyes out in the traditional fashion and shaking her head slowly, Xiomara is but a mere swinging stopwatch away from hypnotizing the entirety of the viewing audience into repeating "never. Ever. Ever" over and over and over again until we are entranced into believing her, while the confessional booth camera operator wakes up the next morning and doesn't know why he can't stop clucking like a chicken.

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Mama Said Knock You Out

The First Annual New York City Stock Footage Film Festival shows its classic entry Bad Moon Setting, as light spreads over the city skyline and sets our scene, approximately, appropriately, as "Somewhere out there/ If love can see us through/ Then we'll be together/ Somewhere out there/ Out where dreams come true." Cut to the more direct location setting of the faade -- which I guess it's only putting up because Simon Doonan told it to look more like itself -- of the ZoLoft. Inside and upstairs, we discover Catie jumping on a couch that Sara is lying on because, I guess, the couch told her that her haircut made her look like a little boy and she decided to exact her cumulative sixty-seven pounds of revenge on it. You show it, Catie. Jump until your hair looks bad! Jump until you can't stop crying! Give that stuffy piece of furniture the Culkin Death Grip you know it so deserves!

But first, cry me a confessional! "The past eliminations," Catie tells us over a clip of last week's Elimination Ceremony Thingymahoosy Vaguely Named Wingding Bimbot, "I'm feeling relieved, I'm feeling disappointed that I've let myself slip down the rankings." And sure enough, there's Catie in flashback standing next to...no one, no one at all! Oh, wait. Pan down, would you? There's a little weensy little girl next to her who, having been shrunk to what I can only guess is a microscopic fraction of her original size, must be prepping for her upcoming trip into a sick man's carotid artery to destroy a blood clot in his brain. Should you fail, brave bloodstream warrior, the entire world will be doomed! Wait! Stop! It's just Jenascia getting eliminated, downcast and dour and hiding under the wide brim of her fashion-forward Mushmouth hat as she skulks back to the DQ. Hey hey hey! Try out the new Blizzard!

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Camille-y Mouthed

Visions of Splenda-made sugarplums dance in sleeping models' heads as night falls over Manhattan. However, up inside the ZoLoft, Camille and Catie -- possessing a cumulative thirty years, ninety pounds, and almost limitless capacity for very different forms of soul-sucking evil -- sit awake in a ludicrously small room that I can only guess is the physical manifestation of Camille's humanity rendered spatially. Because we've never seen them have a conversation, it makes absolute sense that we'd find them exchanging conversation in the tones of the eighth-grade sleepover (look for Catie to ask the situationally appropriate "What do you think it feels like to kiss a boy?" and then put her hands on her cheeks and wait politely for someone to tell her what it's like to act like a grown-up), Catie whispering, "Did you think she was going home or you were going home?" We cut to last week's tiny-dog-sponsored hideous miscarriage of justice that sent Xiomara packing her extra rows of teeth and taking the PATH train of shame back to her old life selling Amway or licking bedpans clean or wearing lots of buttons (er, sorry..."pieces of flair") while serving mozzarella sticks to unruly suburbanites who are thankful of their chosen deity that it is, in fact, Friday. All of these girls have such desperate lives to return to I can hardly even remember which one Xiomara is heading back to. Wherever she's going, it isn't one step in the direction of becoming America's Next Top Model.

Camille responds that she was "just chillin'," thus admitting to us that, at least on the subconscious level of ironic rhyme, she perceives herself to be somewhat "like a villain." In a confessional, Catie further explains that Camille is "an incredibly strong woman." And it's true that to lift that ego every day without assistance would be almost impossible for a hill of ants going ego-lifting on the moon, so that kind of brute strength is practically unknown on a planet with this particular center of gravity such as Earth. But Catie continues her one-woman Camille begrudging-respect-fest: "She has no vulnerability and shows no emotions, happy or sad. She's just medium." Hoo-boy, but if only the two of them could get trapped inside The Fly chamber for but a flash together, the mutant animal that would emerge from the other side would be -- dun-DUN-duuuuuuuun -- an emotionally even-keeled person. It's a monster! A MOOOONSTER!

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Shake Ya Not-y

Give me your tired! Your poor! Your huddled masses yearning to lunch on ketchup and pickles! The wretched refuse of your teeming Walgreen's express lane! Or so seems to say the regal opening check-in with the Statue of Liberty this week, a shot which will also appear on the cover of Exceedingly Clich Establishing Shots Weekly, available on newsstands now. None of these girls has even ever been to the Statue of Liberty. With the exception of one field trip in fourth grade, I've never even been to the Statue of Liberty. So unless the topic matter of this show has somehow morphed into America's Next Top Student In Mrs. Karpen's Class At Birch Lane Elementary, let's montage over to the mainland and make fun of Camille. Follow me!

Up in the ZoLoft, we check in first with that very Vice Bootee from last week's Catwalk Of Doom elimination ceremony. Nursing a self-righteousness hangover -- what I can only infer is the morning-after curse of those who go to bed while drunk with self-righteousness -- Camille stumbles around the ZoLoft in the early-morning hours. Ssssh! Turn it down, Camille! You'll wake my private store of unused Jensacia-sleeping-late jokes! Camille pulls off that sleeping-mask thing that is essential sleepwear for divas, the Elephant Man, and those brave NASA technicians hard at work setting up that new space station ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN, confessionalizing, "I'm not eliminated." Congratulations. You're still in the running towards becoming America's Next Master Of The Obvious. She continues on, lapsing into an unfortunate bout of generic realitybabble (one word): "I'm continuing on this journey." Oh, you're continuing on the journey, are you? You feel that you and top modeling have a "connection," do you? We watch as Tyra does the booting of Catie, and Mercedes reminds us that there are six remaining girls -- fine, here they are: Sara, Mercedes, Yoanna, Shandi, Camille, and April -- as Catie takes her tearful (after such superhuman stoicism! I could hardly believe it either!) leave. There's a ridiculously quick pan of the rest of the girls, and as Catie exits, Sara actually has her hands cupped over her mouth in utter, total, I-am-watching- a-baby-carriage- fall-off-a- roller-coaster shock. Either that, or she's just trying to deflect attention away from the collagen porn lips that make the judges think she'd be perfect for a Hooter's calendar featuring "Our hottest racks, of ribs and otherwise."

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Fellini Meeny Miney Mo

The angry grunge soundtrack on loan from the Smithsonian for America's Next Top Nirvana Bassist has been reallocated to fill some holes in the action, not to mention some holes in the hearts of the rest of the top model candidates, still in mourning over the heartbreaking loss of -- wait, what was that girl's name again? -- Sara. That's right. Sara. Such a sad passing is commemorated with the usual sepia-toned flashbacks of last week's Domo Arigato Mister Eliminato (still casting around for a good nickname for that right of passage), where -- wait, what was that girl's name again? Oh, yeah, Sara -- tearfully hugs the other girls while they wail and beat their chests like extras at a Khomeini funeral street scene.

Up in the ZoLoft, the girls continue their difficult slog through the post-death ritual, following the rigorous strategies and methodologies of other cultures that have experienced loss: Christians attend a wake and a funeral. Jews cover the mirrors and eat a brisket. Yoanna does leg lifts on a yoga mat. Well, I guess it looks like everyone is better. Hey, you guys? Let's never grieve again.

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A Lump In His Haute

A subtitle reminding us we're in "Milan, Italy" accompanies shots of carefree, mint-loving Milanos who find it just as weird as the rest of the civilized world does that there's actually an "orange" flavor. They make up a Milan street scene, doing Milano things: they talk animatedly with their hands, they ride bicycles that the cinema of their youths told them are always mere moments from getting stolen, they cruise around on scooters and go, "Ciao!" But up in Il ZoLofto, things are somewhat less "Italy between the hours of 12 and 3 every day and also all day during the entire month of August" and somewhat more "Italy when it was feverishly trying to figure out how to strip Roberto Benigni of his citizenship because of that one year he clomped all over the collective heads of the Academy." A clanging alarm clock rings through the apartmenti, and Yoanna somehow manages to negotiate herself over rolls and rolls of unsightly, excess flab (send your hate mail and dissenting opinions to nigel.barker@antm.com) to turn it off, all the while removing a breakfast Twinkie from her internal monologue and voicing over, "Whoever said modeling was easy...it is not." Whoever did say modeling was easy? Probably neurosurgeons. And professional snipers. And inner-city junior high school teachers. But they are not here to learn. Because they are too busy. Working.

April, meanwhile, sits up in bed, conveniently reminding us through the elegant power of voice-over, "I'm tired." Heh. Maybe if this whole top model gig doesn't work out for her (and...well, just call it a hunch), April can clone her already robotic likeness with a series of talking dolls called "Intuitively Edited April." When sitting up groggily in bed, Intuitively Edited April voices over, "I'm tired." When drinking a glass of water, Intuitively Edited April voices over, "I'm thirsty." When cutting her clothing sheer off her body during an elimination ceremony until she looks like a whorish extra in a Samantha Fox video from, like, ninety-eighty pi, Intuitively Edited April voices over, "I'm booted." She continues talking. That string is much longer than it looks when I pulled it! "Every day that passes by here is another day that we're closer to our dreams." April, you share our collective dream of a show without April? Mommy, can we return this Intuitively Edited April toy? I find it much too technical.

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Mercedes Bends

"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 Next 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 ftiley 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.

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