America’s Next Top Model – Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

CW

With the election right around the corner, it’s only fitting that TV shows are getting into the political spirit and tackling some of the hot-button issues. This week on Top Model, the subject is immigration. Samantha starts the intellectual debate when confronted with Elina and Marjorie complaining yet again that their weaknesses ( being dead inside and moving like an epileptic chicken, respectively) stem from the fact that they are European. Samantha asks that, since they both moved here when they “were like eight,” shouldn’t they be used to being in America? After all, they’ve had “like, eleven years to kind of adapt to American style.” Indeed, Samantha, indeed.

As culturally insensitive as Samantha’s query may have been, I get where she’s coming from. I’m not the only one, either. In fact, the whole issue causes a divide in the house with Elina, Marjorie and Analeigh on one side, and Samantha, Joclyn, Sheena, and McKey on the other.

When I originally watched this episode, I thought that this week’s challenge was especially annoying. The girls had to wear green bodysuits that worked as green screens, so when they modeled some clothes from Petro Zillia, their bodies would be invisible on television. Sure, it’s kind of silly, but no more so than anything else on this batty show. So it was upon further reflection when I realized that it wasn’t the challenge itself that I found so annoying, it was the line’s designer, Nony Tochterman and her insistence on dressing herself like an eighty-year-old woman. I see the new frontier of hipsterdom, and it has a pink perm.

My theory is that everybody was as distracted by her as I was, because everyone kind of sucked. Elisa ended up winning, but that was mainly because she managed to successfully avoid both acting like a stripper and actually losing her clothes.

Not only do we get crazy invisibility, but it’s also Cover Girl commercial time! Talk about a double dose of embarrassment. Tyra and company seems to be trying to mitigate the humiliation factor and has finally given these poor girls a Teleprompter. I’m kind of sad, because the highlight of every season is watching the contestants prove every single stereotype about models as they struggle with both memorization and the English language. This time, they only had to worry about the latter.

Predictably, that was difficult enough for most of them, as the majority of the commercials ended up being a hot mess. Analeigh’s was the major exception, however. Tyra says that it was the best Cover Girl commercial in Top Model history. I’d even go so far as to say that it is legitimately good, regardless of the competition. I could see that being aired on television with only minimal changes.

This is the last episode before the girls go overseas, and other than the first episode, to me, this is the worst one on which to get eliminated. You come so close, deal with so much bullshit, and you don’t even get a free trip out of the deal.

Here’s the order in which Tyra handed out photographs:

Analeigh

Sheena

Samantha

Marjorie

McKey

Elina (challenge winner)

So it’s poor Joclyn who doesn’t get the trip to Amsterdam. I understand the decision; out of the remaining contestants, she is the least “modelesque.” However, I’m really confused as to why Elina was in the bottom two while Marjorie was right in the middle. I really do not understand her appeal at all.

Who do you think should have been eliminated?

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Oct 23, 2008 @ 19:57 EST5EDT