Courtesy of The CW
There’s a horror show in the woods and it’s America’s Next Top Model.
Let’s bitch it out…
Ty Ty and crew are back to playing favourites as ANTM once again rigs the competition to keep certain models in the game and drop others to the bottom. One-time favourites Lacey and Nyle are faltering, but do they deserve to be circling the drain as dullard cheater Mamé and excruciating chauvinistic Mikey climb? I don’t think so.
‘The Girl Who Took A Shot In The Dark’ is one of the most ridiculous episodes of cycle 22. This is an episode that features a challenge in which models fashion themselves into a PR brand (much like ANTM maven Tyra Banks), but they do so over the space of an evening and make pitches using whiteboards and sparkles. The results are predictably pitiful: more than half of the contestants come off shell-shocked (Lacey, Mamé) or completely inept (Devin). Even the most successful example – Nyle’s ‘Sign That’ app – displays an alarmingly naive perspective of the financials required to mount a business.
It isn’t surprising that Mikey winds up being the winner, after all Tyra has had a moder (a modeling boner) for him these last few episodes. You can practically see her and the producers salivating at his poor little street urchin background and his capacity for “good TV” (AKA attempting to bed literally every female contestant aside from the girl who is saving herself for marriage). Is Mikey’s photo shoot impressive? Sure, it’s the best of a weak bunch, but his dude-bro, hey ladies showing at the challenge is hilariously awful. For Tyra to go out of her way to praise his performance is so obviously prejudicial, I just want to scream.
Of course that’s nothing in comparison to the fact that the series actually goes ahead with a blind photo shoot when they have a deaf contestant. If ANTM hadn’t already been canceled (and its legitimacy an established joke), I would be pissed. Talk about putting someone at a disadvantage! This isn’t the equivalent of forcing a contestant who is afraid of heights or water to face their fears by skydiving or surviving a dunk tank; this is flat-out unfair to Nyle. Seriously, how do you justify taking away a contestant’s sight when he’s already hard of hearing? Yu Tsai’s inept attempts to accommodate – first with a pulsing flashlight beam, then knocking on the wooden box – are laughable while Kelly Cutrone’s curt dismissal at panel is rude. Should Nyle have refrained from making excuses from the get-go? Undoubtedly…but he also should have never been put in this position in the first place.
As it stands, it’s unsurprising that Devin finally goes home. He’s been near the bottom for weeks, and between his increasingly combative attitude and those ridiculous eyebrows it was just a matter of time before he was sent packing. Still, it’s worrying to see two of the competition’s (former) best contestants inching nearer the chopping block when the other remaining two are so clearly only being kept around for the “good TV”.
Ty Ty loves her drama and the continuing dominance of awful models like Mamé and Mikey proves that she values it more than good modelling.
Courtesy of The CW
Other Observations:
- Please strike the word “Fierce-A-Preneur” from your vocabulary. That fetch ain’t happening.
- Other thoughts about the challenge:
- Marie-Pier St-Hilaire: the name so hilarious that Tyra practically laugh/spits it out.
- Tocks? Seriously? Some stoner on Long Beach wants his pitch back, Mikey.
- Devin apparently doesn’t know what hazel is. The More You Know
- How did Mamé survive this challenge with her bad nerves, inability to connect to her audience and atrocious public speaking skills? Aren’t these normally the kinds of thing that Tyra rips people to shreds over, especially pageant queens with experience?
- I love how big of a deal it was that the models are sent camping – it made it seem like they would be in tents in the woods. Instead they’re just left in a cabin with minimal blankets and no beds (the better to inspire cuddling, no doubt). Where’s a slasher villain when you need one?
- Yu Tsai’s red coat: gotta have it or make it stop? It was certainly more memorable than his weak attempt at a ghost story.
- Sidebar: Yu Tsai is/was a biologist? Is that a joke? Did I hear that right?
- Finally, out of all of the shots of Mamé, Tyra choose that boring “test shot”? Wasn’t Yu Tsai praising all of Mamé’s dynamic positions? How did the most static shot end up at panel?
Best Lines:
- Mikey (surveying the all-woman panel): “I specialize in the older woman anyways” <throws up in mouth>
- Lacey (listing all of the reasons the photoshoot sucks): “I’m so over it right now.” Sounds like a meta-comment if ever I heard one.
- Mamé (making lame excuses for cuddling): “Mikey’s very flirty and Mikey’s very direct. He’s just Mikey.” So why go to bed with him?
- Kelly (critiquing Devin’s photo): “I feel like I’m watching some really bad movie from 1992 where there’s a character taking off on a tree that takes him to another planet and we end up somewhere really horrible.”
- Kelly (taking Devin’s modeling career down about 10 notches): “I think your fragrance should have been called Delusion.”
Your turn: are you glad to see Devin go? Do Lacey and Nyle deserve to be on the chopping block? Is it more likely now that either Mamé or Mikey wins this thing? Was the blind photo shoot unfair? And is Ty Ty playing favourites? Sound off below.
America’s Next Top Model airs Fridays at 9pm EST on The CW