Miz Shoes Reviews: ANTM

Yeah! It's acting lessons this week on America's Next Top Model. Nobody in the house seems to give a rat's ass that Anchal, poor poor Anchal has been sent back to Homestead, Florida. I care. Nobody should have to go to Homestead, unless you are looking for a U-Pick tomato field, and those are all being turned into condominiums and housing developments with ridiculous names evocotive of things --like ocean views or mediterranean villages-- that are nowhere near Homestead. Of course, if you did name those places after things you can see in Homestead, you'd have developments with names like "Mount Trashmore Vistas", "Las Casitas des Trabodores Migrantes" and "Hurricane Andrew Decimated Us Farms" and I don't think people would buy them. But I digress.
Yes, acting lessons. Still in the running for becoming America's Next Top Model are Melrose the megalomaniac, CariDee of the loose screws, Eugena the official Black contestant still in game and with none of the dermatological services given to Yaya but no less deserving of same, Jaeda who Will NOT shut up about the hair already, and the twins: Blah and Bland. Who will have a breakdown on the stage? Who will rock the acting class and get a walk on part in another forgettable WC/WB/UPN show? Do any of us really care?

In what has to be one of the most shocking revelations to date, Jaeda cries and sobs and beats her breast over the agony of having had her hair cut. No. Really. CariDee cries and cries and cries that nobody in the house likes her (stole that one from her old friend Anchal) and that she knows what it's like to be sad. She tried to kill herself once. (Not hard enough, obviously. It must have been the heartbreak of psoriasis that led her to it.) Melrose gives it her all and screeches that nobody in the house has any right to say that their photos are better than hers and who the fuck do they think they are to judge her and so on. I have to say, that of all the hamsters, Melrose is the only one who understands that this is a competition, not just a Real Life reality show.

The challenge is to "act" while Tasha (Tyra's friendgirl and acting coach) shouts meaningless direction at them. This will be filmed and pieced together into a silent movie. They will be judged on their movies, and the winner will get the walk on, etc. etc. The silent movie consists of looking out of windows, opening doors, sobbing, answering a phone, eating a lemon and drinking prune juice. Where's Anchal now? She wouldn't have turned her little nose up a lemon and prune juice. Why lemons and prune juice? Why not. You can't actually make the girls eat poison, can you? And if it were something like a lettuce leaf or dry toast, they might actually like it.

CariDee wins. Whee for CariDee. Then there is the big reveal that they are, in fact, going to go to Barcelona*. That's in Spain. In Europe. Just in case you weren't sure. Tyra manages to come out in full flamenco drag.

In Barcelona, the girls are told they will be working with Spanish models, and are much relieved to discover that these are male models. They go to dinner together, where they are instructed to pair off and rehearse a commercial script (that they will be doing the next day... in Castelan, as opposed to High School Spanish, I suppose). None of the male models speak much English, and in what may be bad editing, bad communications, a terrible misunderstanding, or just some guy being an asshole, Jaeda's male model refuses to make out with her saying that he doesn't like it or want to or something. Jaeda takes this to mean, and tells everyone within earshot over the next day and a half that it means, he told her he doesn't like Black girls. That's not what I heard. It's not what the subtitles said, but this is a "reality" show, so your guess is as good as mine regarding the truth of the matter.**

Melrose stays up late, studying her lines. The other girls do or do not, but we don't see them. We do see them all whining (have I mentioned what a fucking WHINY bunch of hamsters they are this season) about how they can't speak Spanish. They can't roll their "r"s. They can't memorize the lines. Jaeda doesn't want to kiss anyone but her boyfriend and anyway this guy is a pig who doesn't like Black women. They are a pathetic bunch this season, really.

The next day, they go for their shoot, and CariDee sucks beyond all suckiness. She is trying to remember her lines by rolling her eyes far back enough in her head to read the script she tucked up under her skull, apparently. It's scary. The twins are ho-hum and hum-ho. Jaeda has a melt down about the kissing and the racism and the fact that she has short hair and the Castelan and the sun and the moon and the stars and everything in the world. She sucks at melting down, too. Eugena doesn't suck as much as she usually does at everything and Melrose rocks the shoot. Are we surprised?

Judging. Tyra says Eugena is now someone to watch. Why? Is she going to suddenly develop talent and good looks? The twins get to stay, because between them there is enough going on to make one good model. CariDee is once more noted as being a bi-polar freakazoid. Melrose is already boring us with how good she is, albeit older than dirt. And that leaves Jaeda. Where does it leave her? On the fucking plane back to the states where she can grow her hair and kiss her boyfriend all she wants and remember the halcyon days when she was the prettiest girl in school. What ever.

Next week: Bull fights?! Better than flamenco, for sure. Will they have to eat squid and eel tapas, too?

* We do not, unfortunately, get a visit from (or to) Manuel.

** This may also be the first week without the writers, but honestly, I saw no difference between the quality of the story arc in this episode and any of the first half of the season. Maybe with the writers we would have a definitive version of what Nacho (no, really, that was the goober's name) said to Jaeda.