The girls return from judging to the mansion on the hill, where they find a pile of books about China. Heather interviews that she always wanted to go to China, Jenah is dumping clothes higgledy-piggledy into a suitcase, Lisa is saying that being in the bottom two really took the life out of her and Binaca is bitching about Heather. Again. Change the station, already. We know you don’t like her, we know you are jealous of the way the other girls and the judges treat her, and we know that you a stank ho. So unless you have something new to add, we pretty much have heard all you got, Binaca. You can put a sock in it already.

And off they go, in the little animated airplane, to Shanghai. Binaca says that everything is made in China, so to her, Shanghai is just one big shopping mall, and all she wants to do (besides send Heather back on the first boat) is go shopping, shopping, shopping. Heather loves being in China and says that she does not want to go home. We don’t want you to be sent home either, honey. You are the crowd favorite this season. Chantallobotomy allows as how she had no clue that China would be so amazing. She says it looks like something from the Jetsons. I guess, except, you know, for the lack of flying cars, robots and buildings that float in the air. Heather, in her inimitable deadpan, says that Shanghai is like no city she’s ever seen. Except, maybe, Las Vegas. We see a montage of neon lights and high rise buildings. Binaca says that she didn’t fly 14 hours to turn around and fly home, and that when she leaves, she’s leaving happy. Well, she’ll certainly be leaving Miz Shoes happy, but I suspect that wasn’t what she meant.

The two Jays greet the girls and tell them to get rested and ready for the next phase of ANTM. They send them to the hamster cage, which turns out to be a penthouse suite in some bazillionty story high rise. There is immediate drama when the dorm room proves to have only 5 beds. Salacious D plants herself on an enormous bed that looks like a triple king, and Jenah, Binaca, Chantallobotomy and Lisa claim the other four. Which leaves, if you are paying attention, Heather without a place to sleep. True to form, the other girls laugh and laugh and pull Heather’s chain, trying to make her snap because that’s the most fun they can have in the house: torturing the faintly autistic one. Salacious D refuses to share the giant bed, saying the only people she gets in bed with are men, which I suppose means that if Jaslene were still around, she’s share with her. Lisa barely sprawls across a tiny little fainting couch and laughs herself sick telling Heather that she could always sleep on that. Much hilarity ensues among all the hamsters over that bon mot. Binaca says that she’s so happy that they were able to make Heather freak out. Then, when Heather asks what the joke is, Binaca charmingly tells her “you the joke.” I have got to say that Binaca is a new level of stank, even for the show that brought us Bree, Camille and Darth Jader. After everyone catches their breath from the side-splitting humor of the past ten minutes, Chantallobotomy decides that Heather is getting ganged up on, and that it isn’t right and so negotiates that Binaca and Jenah will share the big bed, and Heather won’t have to sleep on the floor. It is Chantallobotomy’s finest moment. I almost forget how annoying she is by this show of fair play and compassion. Heather steps up her game and interviews that she’s very much over being picked on and teased and that she’s just not going to let it get her down.

Amusingly enough, and in a major show of good editing (and how did THAT happen?) the Tyra mail contains this “I can’t stand the bitching and the fighting in the house.” Get ready to rumble. Off the girls go to a film studio where they meet Louis, who is not really a tour guide, but their martial arts instructor. They are shown the Old Shanghai street set, and then martial arts mayhem breaks out around them. Pretty cool. They learn that today’s lesson will be martial arts basic forms and positions. This lights Heather up, who interviews that she always wanted to do martial arts, but her mom wouldn’t let her. “Thanks, MOM.” she says in her funny, slightly off way. We see them trying to learn the positions, which admittedly, are a lot more complex than the five basic positions everyone knows from ballet. Binaca and Chantallobotomy can’t follow the speed, or really hit the forms. This makes Binaca, in her own words, get sour. Honey? Sour is to you, what a Mento in Diet Coke is to Old Faithful. Puh-leeze.

They change into Chinese robes, and then are brought into a courtyard where they are shown flying rigs. They will be put in the flying harnesses, and hoisted into the air. Then Louis will call out positions, and they will have to hit them…in mid-air. Heather is psyched. She thinks this is just tits, man. What a hoot! What fun! Lisa does what Lisa does, which is to say she starts to cry. Binaca does not like heights, remember? So she is not a happy camper about this exercise. Ha. And ha. Stank beeyotch.

Jenah and Chantallobotomy are first, and neither of them can balance in the flying rigs. They give it their best, but still can’t remember which pose is which. It is amusingly bad. Lisa and Salacious D are the next pair in the air, and Lisa spends the time screeching in fear and sucking. Heather and Binaca go last, and Binaca makes a “joke” about this being the only time Heather can smack her around. Binaca interviews that she doesn’t trust strangers. She has a huge fear of heights. She can’t go high. The other girls tell her she has to do this, what if in real life she gets a job that requires her to go high or something. She says that she just wouldn’t take those jobs. Louis tells her that if she doesn’t do this challenge, she will be disqualified. And we cut to Jaslene’s Life as a Cover Tranny. She’s shooting for 17 again. This time a fshnn shute. Although her diction has improved over the weeks, she still can’t deliver a line in a way that can be understood without closed captioning. Really. She’s an embarrassment to trannies every where.

Back in Shanghai Binaca is explaining that she wants to model, not fly in the air. To which I say… why? I’d take the ability to fly, even on wires, over being a clothes hanger any day. But in any event, Binaca tries, gets about 10 feet off the ground and starts to freak out. She cries, she wails, she begs to come down. She shakes, she cries, she totally loses her shit, and refuses to participate in the challenge, which means that Heather gets to fly around by herself, striking poses at will. She is fucking awesome at this. There is no challenge, really, she is the clear winner of this one. Her prize is a $500 shopping spree. Hardly a $40,000 dollar diamond, or a day at a Thai spa, but money is money and shopping is shopping. She gets to take a frenemy, and although she knows how much Binaca wants to shop, well, Binaca is a stank ho who keeps torturing her for shits and giggles, so she takes Chantallobotomy instead. Because Chantallobotomy was nice to her, and made sure that Heather didn’t have to sleep in the rags and ashes in the fireplace.

We get to see the girls shopping in an all-night mall. It’s pretty amazing, and Heather points out that she and C are like giants in a land of little people. That Heather. What a way with words. Well, at least you can understand what she says. They finally make it back to the gilded cage, and there is Tyra mail, telling them to channel their inner queens. Let their beauty reign. Another person with a way with words. Only, nobody has a clue what that means. There is a footnote and it tells them to bring their own clothes to the shoot tomorrow. Clothes that express who they are. Their inner personality. I don’t know if Binaca brought her devil tail and horns, we’ll have to wait and see.

It’s a Cover Girl shoot! There will be both print and a tv commercial. Brent, from Cover Girl, gives them a script to memorize, and shows them that there is a hole in the script where each girl will have to insert an ad lib about what makes them a queen. Yes, they are shooting for the Queen Latifah line, hence all the queen references. We get a quick series of Heather fretting that she can’t memorize lines, Chantallobotomy complaining that she doesn’t want to wear her own clothes (which we’ll see soon enough was a valid complaint) and Lisa mumbling and psyching herself up to sucking.

Salacious D goes first and is adorable, damn her, and nails it in four takes. Binaca finally gets to take seven, where she says that she’s a queen because she has flaws but makes them beautiful. (HAH!) Heather comes out and looks wonderful, with her hair all loose and curled. She fails rather spectacularly. She makes faces and sticks out her tongue when she fumbles a line. She absolutely cannot deliver. Finally, Jay feeds her her lines. And even that doesn’t help because she can’t mimic the inflection he uses. I realize that she looks like Bebe Neuwirth. But her line about “I’m a queen because I’m different and proud of it” is killer.

Jenah has a great delivery (after about 12 takes) and really horrible lower teeth. I never noticed them before, being blinded by those rabbit fangs in the front. She’s also showing roots and the rat weave isn’t holding up so great. But she has on a great t-shirt, and she can do a commercial. Chantallobotomy is wearing what looks to be Raggedy Ann’s old dress. She says that she’s a queen because she loves and pampers herself. Then she wrinkles her nose and you just know that that little nose wrinkle has broken more teenage boys’ hearts than she can count. The judges love her to death.

Lisa. Lisa starts out bad, and then gets worse. Every time she flubs a line she gets more tense, and then of course, the tears come. Little Orange Man says that Lisa only focuses on failing. Salacious D goes over and tries to help Lisa, and gives her a pep talk and Lisa gives Salacious D a very rude sort of mind your own fucking business brush off. Salacious D saunters off saying she won’t help a ho that don’t want helping.

And…..back to the penthouse where the usual pre-judging smack is going down. Lisa doesn’t want to go home. Binaca asks the question “What will you do if you have to go home?” My notes don’t say, and I’ve slept since then, but I’m pretty sure that this question is addressed to (of course) Heather. Binaca says that she for sure is not getting the boot, because they can’t send her home just for not taking the challenge. And I’ve watched enough seasons to know that she won’t get sent home until the powers that be have milked the last drop of human unkindness from her stank self. Jump to judging where Jenah is looking amazing for a change, but sort of wobbly in her high heels, Twiggy. Nigel. Miss Jay in yet another ginormous afro wig. Jeffrey Chu, who was the Director of Photography on the Cover Girl shoot.

Lisa is first. She looked panicked and like she was about to cry, and her forehead really wrinkles up when she talks. “I was.” Then cry, says Tyra. Let it out and then move on, because otherwise, you look like this: like you are about to cry and the whole shoot is fucked. Cry, but don’t mess the make up and then carry on. Her still shot, however, looks great, which means it must have been Photochopped. Jeffrey gives her props for being able to do a fierce still immediately after walking off a set where she was crying and blowing chunks. Nice guy. Chantallobotomy squinches up her eyes when she smiles, and her wardrobe is universally abhored, but the nose wrinkle got called out for cuteness.

Binaca, Tyra notes, was disqualified from the challenge this week. Yes, says Binaca, I have trust issues. Nigel (and we have seen way too little of Nigel this season) spits out “Then you are in the wrong business, honey.” Yeah. And your commercial sucked too. And my lord, but that girl has a huge mouth. When she smiles, she looks like those characters from South Park, whose heads split in half at the mouth. Jenah comes out and Nigel tells her she lacks charm. Twiggy says that she wouldn’t buy anything that Jenah was selling. But her still, with her hair flying and her arms up over her head like she was caught dancing? That’s a great shot. And everyone liked her t-shirt.

Salacious D gets the highest compliments from Twiggy, who calls her an actress, and Nigel who says she flirts with the camera, and advice on how to reduce the baggage under the eyes from Tyra. Heather gets slammed as the judges say she got special treatment and still sucked. They tell her to focus, not to make funny faces when she flubs a line because it makes the editing so difficult. And then they see her still shot and you could hear a pin drop. She is smiling. A glorious, big, amazing, Julia Roberts quality smile. Who knew?

The actual judging starts and the first thing is that all the girls sucked big time at commercials. Having said that, someone has to win and someone has to lose. Lisa? Sucked the worst of all. Chantal was pretty and cute and did the least sucking. Heather disappointed in her delivery. Salacious D is great, but is she getting better as the weeks go on? Jenah is seen as distinctly unlikeable by Nigel and Tyra admits that she doesn’t have any inner attractiveness. Which maybe explains why she also gets no air time, even though she’s still here after 10 weeks. Binaca’s delivery was hideous and Miss Jay and Nigel find her weak. 

As Tyra poses, ready to hand out photos, she says that collectively, they sucked. But, giving Chantallobotomy the first photo, you sucked the least. But get rid of that horrible thing you were wearing. Salacious D gets the second photo and the lecture that week to week she impresses the judges with her spirit, but she’s slowing down. Binaca: somebody needs to work on her fears. Her still was seen as beautiful, but her film was a disaster. Jenah, surprisingly, gets the next photo and Lisa and Heather are the bottom two. Lisa, predictably, starts crying. She has personality plus, but she can’t handle critiques. She needs some self esteem. Heather comes in and the judges lovelovelove her, but her commercial? Eek. Even with Jay feeding her lines, she still couldn’t deliver. Still, the judges think you have a certain something (it’s called Aspberger’s) and so… Heather stays and Lisa the Lap Dancer and champion cryer, goes back to the strip club. As her image fades, I realized that Jenah and Chantallobotomy are standing together in that shot, and wearing the exact same color. One of those girls is going home next week, I’ll bet, and I’ll bet it isn’t Chantallobotomy.