We begin with Aminat in the confessional, bitching about how she can too enunciate. At least, that’s what we think she was saying.
TYRAMAIL! A top model knows how to be direct. The hamsters, ever on the money, clue-wise, decide that this means that they’ll be taking a direct flight to somewhere. Out of the blue, LondonComeToJesus begins to extemporize about her relationship with God. The bottom line is that God wants her to be America’s Next Top Model. It’s His plan for her.
The next day, the hamsters roll out, not to an airport, but another photo studio. There, Mr. Jay explains to them what it is he’s been doing on set for all these weeks. He is the creative director, and his duties include choosing the theme of the shoot, the hair, makeup and artistic direction of the shoot, and editing/choosing the final images from the shoot. It helps you as a model, says Mr. Jay, to understand what all of that entails, and so today, you will each get to be the creative director for another girl. They do not team up, so much as round robin. Ann Shokett and her nose will be on hand from 17 magazine to judge how well the girls do. The product placement is South Pole clothing, and it’s Ghetto Fabulous, or so Animat tells us.
Fo says something inane about having to strive to win, but syntactically, it was much worse than that. They head back to hair and makeup and Sutan is knitting. This is the high point of the show for me, but I was too excited to be able to tell you if he’s a thrower or a picker.
Natalie goes first and styles Wind In Her Face with Big Hair. They get fifteen frames. Natalie tells us that she is really quite visionary. She’s wearing that stupid purple acid-washed vest, so she’s really quite a vision, as well. Natalie has Wind In Her Face walk across the set, again and again. Mr. Jay notes that a real model can create the image of walking, without actually, you know, moving around out of the light.
AllisonKeaneLemur is stoked for this challenge because she, too, is amazingly creative. Or so she says. She gives Aminat big hair. Mr. Jay is shocked at how emotive and out of her rabbity little shell she is on set. She actually does a good job art directing, but chooses the wrong “best shot.”
Fo is talking to LondonComeToJesus who is freaked out about her weight gain. She feels like a fat freak. That would be Fat Freddy. He’s the fat Freak Brother. The other two are Phineas and Free Wheelin’ Franklin. I bet she doesn’t know that. Anyway, she’s fat and freaked out. Maybe Jesus likes ‘em chunky?
Aminat now has to art direct Natalie, of whom she is not inordinately fond. She wanders around looking at wardrobe and being vague until Mr. Jay starts yelling at her that she’s only got another 15 minutes to get Natalie into hair/make up and wardrobe and onto set. Aminat tells us that South Pole is “urban cheek”. So much for her enunciation. As they sashay onto set, Aminat tells Mr. Jay that the delay isn’t her fault, and he throws down a bitch fit and explains how it not only is her fault, she’s getting demerits for not owning it.
Wind In Her Face does a great job of styling Celia, and Mr. Jay is so shocked by this that he asks the girls from wardrobe if Celia styled herself. LondonComeToJesus styles AllisonKeaneLemur as a “total rocker chick” or, as Mr. Jay put it, “exactly like London used to look before she had her make over.” True. Sad, but true. Celia faux-hawks Fo and then rocks the shoot.
Ann and Mr. Jay tell the girls what they think of their Art Direction: London did a bad job of styling, but a great job of choosing the right shot. Wind In Her Face did a great job of styling, but picked the wrong shot. Aminat sucked at time management, but managed to get the perfect 17 cover shot out of Natalie. AllisonKeaneLemur had no clue about how to work with a photographer, and she picked a bad photo as her final, but did a good job of styling. The challenge winner, then, is Wind In Her Face. Her prize is an editorial spread in 17, and she gets to take along two friends. Because WIHF is a nice girl who recognizes that without Celia, she wouldn’t have won, she takes her model to be one of her two friends, and her real friend Aminat. This straight up behavior ticks off Fo, who thinks she should have gotten to share the prize.
TYRAMAIL! said something that none of us heard. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Because Mr. Jay arrives at the house the next morning at the crack of OhDarkThirty, coffee in hand and hair and make up artists in tow. We see AllisonKeaneLemur waking from her nightly slumbers. Her rat weave looks as though marsupials have been nesting in it. She allows as how she herself looks like some kind of forest creature in the morning before her ablutions. She thinks she looks like a wood nymph. The girls on the couch think more like the marsupial that was nesting.
The girls are thrilled to have their hair and make up done in the living room, and act as though this is some huge treat. Then the doorbell rings again, and it is Ciara, an award winning R&B star that the #3Surrogate has to explain to yours truly who she is. Talk about tortured syntax. The crux of her fame is that she is also a he, biologically. And s/he’s got some fine pipes. Where was Ciara last season when we had poor Isis?
Celia, unlike Miz Shoes, knows who Ciara is, and claims to have been a fan for a long time. Everyone piles into the pink plaid limo and heads off to Webster Hall for the shoot. The concept is that the hamsters are (deranged?) fans of Ciara, and will be on the stage in front of her, wrapped up in microphone cord, trying to be near their idol. We’ve seen worse from the Creative Director. Our photographer today is Mike Ruiz. The girls are told to be aware of their bodies and faces, as their poses will be constrained by being bound up in wires.
LondonComeToJesus is all twitterpated over the costume: it’s basically a rubber bathing suit, or a series of wraps of electrical tape (kind of hard to tell). She’s freaking out because she’s packed on the poundage, and the electrical tape bikini is very unforgiving. Celia comes out first and, according to Ciara, who is all up in Mr. Jay’s monitor, checking out the frames, “gives good stuff”.
Natalie and AllisonKeaneLemur discuss how chunky LondonComeToJesus has gotten and talk about how insecure and stressed out she is over it. LondonComeToJesus just prays for Jesus to be inside her and take over her shoot for her. Mr. Jay notes that London has gotten huge. He calls her to one side after her frames, and admonishes her for not taking care of her body, which is supposed to be her temple. How will she do in the long run, he asks, if in the short run stress causes her to eat like a pig and gain tonnage? Huh? You are too tiny to be a plus-size girl, he tells her, so get a grip on yourself and release your grip on the fork.
Wind In Her Face comes into her own in this shoot and gets very Grace Jones. Natalie has been given Aminat’s old fro, and is told for the millionth time to show some emotion and get out of her comfort zone. She snarls, and gets high praise. Fo is giving lots of poses and faces and working it. Ciara loves the variety as she and Mr. Jay look at Fo’s film. AllisonKeaneLemur has to be brow beaten into giving any expression other than her usual slack-mouthed, dull-eyed stare. She glares at Mr. Jay and gets the Olsen Twin pursed lips. Aminat is lost and can’t find the light, the camera or a decent pose.
TYRAMAIL! Tomorrow we send another one of you useless slags home. LondonComeToJesus is in the confessional, talking about God’s plan for her. God wants her to be a model, so she is a little confused about why God is making her fat. I think that it’s actually more the laws of thermodynamics (more calories consumed than used) although Isaac Newton would say that is a manifestation of God.
Mike Ruiz is our guest judge tonight, and as Tyra intones, there comes into the judging room a bikini-clad boy, holding a giant bowl of something. There is some painful dialog and back and forth as Tyra ingests one of what ever is in the bowl and determines that it is a bowl of Brazil nuts. They will all, except tonight’s loser, be heading to BRAZIL!!! This devolves into some maraca playing by the judges and gives Miss Jay a chance to sashay around in a Carmen Miranda hat. She has no shame. She really doesn’t.
Natalie gets the first review, and Paulina calls her scary. Other judges find her to be stunning and fabulous, but agree that she needs to be more present in her face. Miz Shoes takes that to mean Natalie should try to project a thought once in a while. Aminat looks great in panel, but her picture is flat. Miss Jay tells her that she needed two cups of crazy and a pinch of insane. She would know. She probably has some to spare, too. Celia looks hot both at panel and in her photo. You do know that she’s not going to win, don’t you? She might come in second, but she is not winning. Paulina is thrilled to see her bringing it again this week.
Wind In Her Face related to the scenario better than any of the other girls. LondonComeToJesus is told that Paulina doesn’t love her over-the-topness, and Nigel clocks her for getting all pear-shaped. Miz Shoes says that Jesus didn’t bring the fierce when he inhabited her during the shoot. Fo was fabulous and AllisonKeaneLemur had a fierce face. If they say so. I suppose compared to her usual mouth-breathing, it was. She opens up to the judges, gushing over how much fun it was to shoot with Mike Ruiz, and how this was her favorite photo shoot to date. Nigel gets pissier and pissier as she talks. He reminds her that he’s a photographer, and that she’s shot with him. She just digs deeper and deeper until the rest of the judges take pity on both Nigel and her and shut her up and send her back to the pack.
The judging is quick: Natalie is a big question mark. Aminat has it all, but isn’t using it. She might be better for the runway than for print. Celia is the perfect stylist. Wind in Her Face is consistently good. LondonComeToJesus, in spite of having permanently smiling eyes, is not going to work in print or runway, and is a fattyboombabatty. Fo has perfect bone structure. AllisonKeaneLemur is a boring one-note.
And so the photos go to: Wind In Her Face, Fo, Natalie, Celia and AllionKeaneLemur who needs some instruction in how to care for that weave. The bottom two girls are Aminat and London. The judges look at Aminat and see a perfect face, perfect skin and a perfect body. But maybe she can only walk the cat walk. LondonComeToJesus has the best face of all the girls, and eyes that are always smiling. But she’s let herself get fat. Not only that, but Jesus did not bring his A-game to the shoot, and consequently although Jesus may be her saviour, he can’t save her from being sent home this week. Next week? Brazil. Nuts.