The Wife:
First of all, this was the most lackluster episode of ANTM yet this season. Could this be because my darling Marjorie turned off her strangely alluring awkward charms in an effort to be what the judges wanted her to be and spent the episode casually sipping wine like a real European? Perhaps. Perhaps her spark truly was missing, and that’s why this episode was so blase.
The editors spent the first few minutes of the episode letting us know that Marjorie would be leaving by having her constantly reiterate her insecurities and her fragile nature. They also assured us that joining her in the bottom two would be Samantha, who has actually turned in to a retarded troll doll, prancing around the house with her hair protruding from the top of her head, making odd giggly noises and, occasionally, doing stiff-legged cartwheels. It’s like my words are coming to life. This girl is one step away from waking up one morning to find a jewel where her belly button should be and having the other girls make wishes on her.
I'm a wish troll!
The girls then went off to have a teach with Paulina about the essence of modeling: selling stuff you don’t really want to sell without saying anything at all. Paulina is so wise. That really is what modeling is about, and the girls had to demonstrate this by selling cell phones, toilet paper and fresh herring. Samantha, apparently, doesn’t understand where food actually comes from and she proceeded to make a big stink about how disgusting it was to see a raw fish. I didn’t write this down, but I’ll paraphrase her sentiments: “It’s like someone caught the thing, gutted it and threw it there in front of us. Yuck!” Oh, really? Because I’m pretty sure that’s actually what happened to that herring. Fish come from the sea, then someone catches them, guts them and cleans them and sells them to a market which in turn sells them to you. Honestly, is she telling me she’s never seen a raw fish in her life? Not even on Food Network? This girl . . . is a moron.
Paulina’s teach intended to prepare the girls for their challenge the next day: a commercial audition for director Richard Golodecky (who is totally cribbing Hot Diabetic Sam’s sexy top knot from Top Chef 2), with scene partner and Calvin Klein model Mark Vanderloo. The winner of this challenge would receive a 10K shopping spree at G-Star Denim, which they would split with a friend. The girls looked at the storyboard concept for the commercial, and then had to act it out indoors with a treadmill and Mark Vanderloo. Everyone did okay on this one, but Paulina thought — bless her heart — that they were all excellent in their own unique way. Samantha was so over the top with her performance that she was a ham and cheese sandwich. McKey was a bit understated, but was criticized for how awkwardly her kiss with Mark Vanderloo was executed. Analeigh turned out, of course, the best performance all around, because she’s “a natural actress,” but the challenge win went to her best Marjorie, whom Paulina and Richard felt was so awkward that her performance came off as the most believable of the four. Now, I love me some Marjorie, but unless I’m going to remake Godard’s Breathless, I would not cast that girl for anything that involves a motion picture camera. I believe her strengths lie in print modeling and in runway work. The win probably should have gone to Analeigh, but since she presumably won the unaired acting challenge and Marjorie chose to share the prize with her 50-50, I guess it worked out okay in the end.
Back at the house, the girls try to relax and cut loose by inviting over their boat tour guides from the go-see challenge to have some wine, cheese and fun. Marjorie is the only girl who drinks that night, and the other girls automatically start to frame that as a problem, citing that the party is starting to “get sloppy” and “out of hand.” I don’t know what party they saw, but at the party I saw, other than Marjorie’s hot tub time and McKey wrestling some of the boys on the floor, nothing was out of hand. I have seen people get far more trashed and done far stupider things in my life. I’ve also seen far more out-of-control parties on ANTM. Sure, Marjorie kissed a dude, but its not like she had a boyfriend back home like Cycle 2’s Shandi. The level of drama caused tonight in the hot tub is nowhere near what happened when Shandi got in a hot tub with some Italian models and then proceeded to fuck one of them and make the most tragic and awkward phone call back home in Top Model history, my favorite line of which is Shandi’s boyfriend Eric squealing into the phone, “You had sex with someone? How could you, Shandi! How could you!” (It’s okay. Shandi and Eric got together again, then broke up again and are still friends.) This party didn’t even get into the levels of awkwardness from the dinner with girls of Cycle 7’s Barcelona trip had with their Spanish scene partners for the Secret commercial . . . when one of the boys told Jaeda that he didn’t want to kiss her because he didn’t like her. (Jaeda assumed that he didn’t like her because she was black, which could be true, but its more likely that he didn’t like her because he thought she looked too masculine. Spanish men are not intro androgyny.) As far as ANTM parties go, this one in Amsterdam was pretty tame, but I’d still like to give a very special Fiercee to Analeigh, for being such a sweet person and an incredible friend by getting Marjorie out of the hot tub, putting her to bed and sending the boys home. She’ll make some Saudi Prince very happy some day.
A glass of wine a day makes you into a Viktor & Rolf ad. I actually really like this photo. It's disturbingly high fashion.
The next day, the girls headed off to their photo shoot in the Dutch countryside, where they were told to pose against the scenic windmills wearing extreme hair and makeup . . . to make sure that they learned to make the model shine through the clothes? I thought they’d learned that already this season, but maybe I’m wrong. This shoot reminded me mostly of Cycle 5’s vaguely Victorian countryside shoot, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Nigel may have been thinking the same thing, as he showed us some pictures of Kim in that challenge in her “Top Models in Action” segment. As far as the shoot itself was concerned, the top two were clearly McKey and her bajillion-mile-long legs and Analeigh, as both of them turned out awesome poses during the shoot that pleased Mr. Jay.
“You give a girl a rake and she becomes a model.”
Marjorie didn’t fare quite as well, delivering several bland poses, but modeling well over all. Mr. Jay warned her to step up her game at judging, because he likes her on set, but knows that the judges don’t love her in person. Samantha, however, went on to fail spectacularly, turning out only 7 good frames out of 53 bad ones and crying on Sutan’s shoulder about how badly she sucked. Frankly, I think she needed this so that she’d stop being so damned retarded all the time and realize that you actually do have to be serious about things that are, oh, I don’t know, your job.
All challengers must face me in a cage match. With chains!
At panel, Tyra turned out yet another Black Sofia Lauren photo, with her dangling a pair of clogs from her hand while sitting on a railing. It was very, very Italian . . . even with the clogs. Tyra and the judges also loved McKey’s photo, and Tyra strangely pointed out that McKey’s lips are like the Joker’s, which I guess is true . . . but I really don’t know if that’s a compliment. Perhaps she could have said “like a harlequin mask”? I feel like that’s more accurate, because when you saw the Joker, I think only of Heath Ledger and the wide cuts from the edges of his mouth to the center of his cheeks. Those, Miss Banks, are Joker lips. The judges found Marjorie’s photo to be highly unusual, but very pretty. However, they were unimpressed with her calm demeanor at judging, causing Tyra to declare:
“The opposite of nerves is not boring.”
That’s a statement that I, amazingly, can’t really argue with. The judges then berated Samantha for turning out 53 bad frames and only 7 good ones, but praised her for her final shot, which was very much like a broken down doll, a phrase Miss J adores. Analeigh turned out the best picture of the bunch, leaping in the air while holding her giant rake and turning out a photo that reminds me very much of Cycle 9 winner Saleisha Stower’s Mongolian invader photo on the Great Wall of China. (I would give you a photo of both of them, but CW decided to put Sam’s photo under Analeigh’s page, so it makes no sense to do the comparison without both photos.) Also, Anne Shoket must have been very hungry because she kept comparing Analeigh to various sweet food items. I am afraid that, if left unattended, Anne Shoket will eat Analeigh.
Callouts: Analeigh and McKey, with Samantha and Marjorie in the bottom two. Tyra decided to oust Marjorie for losing her special quirk-spark and decided to give Samantha another chance, despite Tyra’s earlier admonishment:
“Samantha, for some reason, you just don’t get it.”
I understand that Marjorie committed ANTM suicide by trying too hard to please the judges, but I am frankly surprised that Tyra allowed someone who can’t figure out how to dress like a model to go so far in this competition. She’s absolutely right: Samantha just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get that modeling is more than how you walk a runway or look in a photo. She doesn’t get that you have to take your job seriously. She doesn’t get that legalized prostitution is not a question of respectability. She doesn’t get that being raised in Europe is different than being raised in America. She doesn’t get that saying so doesn’t mean you hate America. She doesn’t get that fish don’t come from the sea fully cooked. And, I certainly hope, she doesn’t get to be America’s Next Top Model.
I’m pulling for a McKey-Analeigh face off on that long, Dr. Seussian pink runway next week. As long as its those two in the final showdown, I don’t care which one of them is crowned America’s Next Top Model.
Note: My husband is experiencing some technical difficulties on his end of this, which is ironic, because he works for a technology company. I’ll update later when he gets internets back, because I’m sure he has much to say on the subject of our dearly departed Marjorie.
The Husband:
I actually have very little to say, other than
Clearly, this face was molested as a child.
I very rarely cry foul about reality show behind-the-scenes machinations, because I know that there are many sides to every story, and that yes, we as viewers would have a better time witnessing drama and conflict then simply people getting along and the hero always winning.
But I very much believe that Marjorie’s ouster instead of Samantha was purely for dramatic reasons, and they had to cover this up by focusing so much on Marjorie’s neuroses, which aren’t nearly as bad as they made them out to be. Girl could model, foo. She was the canvas you needed.
I know that this is the way of the world, but this time it was just so transparent. They literally listed everything wrong with Samantha to her face, items far worse than just “having nerves,” but because a McKey-Analeigh-Marjorie final three would just be too friendly and happy of a finale, they needed a villain.
Simply put, Samantha is not what the show strives to crown, not even when it’s trying to forward a very important message (like last season, which told us that plus-size is beautiful, even if Whitney wasn’t exactly the epitome of plus-size) or cycle 8 (which taught the moral to never give up). I can’t see why they would ever crown somebody who’s solely destined for catalog work, since Tyra is obsessed with high fashion and editorial. (And even when she’s technically not for those things, she still says she is.)
Sigh. Sad face.
11.14.08 at 6:36 am
I was not very happy with Anne Shoket – quite condescending.
This has been a rather not boring, but sober season, or at least sober on camera season of ANTM. What’s up with that?