Beloved ANTM! How I’ve missed you in these long weeks since the last episode aired. Why, I’ve almost forgotten what the latest set of schmodels actually look like. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing considering who we’re talking about.
If you can remember that far back, Rebecca was in the hot seat alongside Lluvy in the last episode but was spared much to best bud Kahlen’s relief. Rebecca realised she needed to inject a bit of edge into her pictures. Maybe she can ask Brittany for sexin’ up lessons.
Tiffany had the opposite problem. She had too much edge, or so she thought, and felt out of place in the highbrow world of the ANTM contestants. However would she fit in among her fellow intellectual models?
At a seafood restaurant, Tiffany was stumped when faced with rare delicacies like tuna tartar. “What’s tuna tartar?” she asked, to be told it was raw. “Raw what?” she continued. Lamb, dear.
“I feel like a fish out of water,” Tiffany lamented. And all this time I thought Lluvy was the fishy one. Poor Tiffany. How lame must you feel when people like Tatiana and Michelle are more sophisticated than you? Hell, they barely have shoes where Kahlen’s from and she even eats the tuna tartar without complaint.
Poor Tiffany reflects on her fish-out-of-water state as Naima and Michelle try to make her feel betterThe next day, the girls went to a theatre where they were met by a bearded man who was neither Jay Manuel nor Tyra’s dad. He was definitely a better actor than either of them as evidenced by his well-done fake British accent. It was the girls’ new dialect coach and he would be teaching them how to act.
Sweet! The acting episodes are always comedy gold although I doubt anyone will be able to top
Camille’s “acting” back in season 2. Although last season’s girls dying of
“illsnesses” was certainly up there.
Fake Brit wanted them to learn a cockney accent for their scenes the next day. Oh lord, cockney for their first acting gig? COCKNEY?! Seriously? This is like giving primary school students quantum physics. Brutal. I love it.
“Cockney? I can barely speak English,” Tiffany retorted. And therein lies the beauty of this task, dear Tiff. What better way to make you all look like fools than by making you sound like street urchins from Oliver Twist?
Mangled attempts at cockney then followed, none worse than Tiffany who mistook south of London for south of the Mississippi. Her version of cockney took a side-trip through Scarlett O’Hara’s backyard.
The dialect coach told them to prepare a character and work on their accents for the night. Like they could possibly get themselves sounding remotely bearable in a night. Only Naima seemed to have anything resembling a believable accent.
At the acting challenge, the girls were made up to look like old-time cockney flower-sellers. They had to dress themselves and do their own make-up and even had to paint out one of their teeth. Ooh, how very method of them.
They were introduced to their acting partner – Boris Kodjoe from Soul Food. Most of the girls glee-ed out at his hotness, a few smiled politely but obviously had no idea who he was, and Tatiana looked completely bored like she was thinking “Whatever. You aint no Taye Diggs.”
Michelle was stoked for the challenge the next day and confident of winning because she had done four years of theatre. Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back, Meryl. And screaming “I’m gonna feed you you to the sharks” at someone before pile-driving them into the wrestling ring does not count as theatre experience.
You know how they say that the more your work at something, the better you get? Michelle soon proved that saying horribly wrong. Most of the other girls were just as bad but hey, they haven’t had a whole four years of theatre experience. Naima was easily the best and Tiffany…well, let’s just say her whole character seemed to be southern ghetto girl magically transported to ye olde London towne. But don’t think her performance was a complete waste! Boris thought she had a great hat.
Naima won and got to take two of her friends to splurge on 10 000 dollars worth of diamonds. Now that’s a prize. Hey, I can do a decent cockney accent (if you’re half deaf). Where’s my 10k worth of jewelry?
Photoshoot time! The girls had to pose in a Wonderbra alongside a male model named Rib. Yes, Rib. And I thought Mathu the make-up artist had a stupid name. The man-starved models looked hungrily at Rib like they were…well, starved models looking at a plate of ribs. A couple were unenthusiastic. Rebecca was thinking about her fiancé back at home. Kahlen looked positively terrified because she’d never had a boyfriend. They don’t have things like boyfriends in rural Hickville?
Despite her initial awkwardness, Kahlen soon managed to generate a natural chemistry with RibBrittany got right into it but managed to come off on the classy side of sexy. Tatiana came off on the other side of that line. Tiffany was uncomfortable (they don’t have pillows in the ghetto) and Michelle thought the sexiest thing to do was to pin him down. You can take the girl out of the ring but you can’t take the ring out of the girl. Replace ‘girl’ with ‘guy’ and that’s Michelle for you.
Rebecca tried to look natural around Rib but was completely freaked out and couldn’t stop thinking about her fiancé. Oh, relax. It’s not like you’re drunkenly making out with him in a Jacuzzi in Milan.
Hey, it's a wonderbra, not a freakin' miraclebra. Some people are just born not to have boobies.Judgement day. The schmodels had to act like presenters for ANTM-TV and read off a teleprompter what fabulous things were happening at Paris fashion week. Remember how Tiffany said she could barely speak English? Yeah, well neither can any one else. Sample line reading:
“We’re here at Paris fashion week where top designers like Croissant Lacrosse are showing off their designations. Can you say Magneto? Neither can I! Cheetos is so in right now. Look to left. I’m signing off Frisky style. Until next time, Ow Revolt!”
Remind me again why Tiffany has an inferiority complex around these girls? Her own attempt at the teleprompter-reading was just as bad but shot through with lots of crying. The judges egged her on gently. Even Janice was nice enough to encourage her. Aw, everyone’s so nice today. Heh heh.
The judges bemoaned the lack of growth among the contestants. Maybe if you guys hadn’t picked complete no-hopers in the first place, dumbasses. Only Brittany was singled out as having improved.
Bottom two were Rebecca and Tiffany. Tyra turned over the last photo with a dramatic flourish (but can she speak in a cockney accent?). The photo was…blank. Gasp! Someone screwed up the shots at the one-hour-photo! No, turns out that it was far worse news. Both Tiffany and Rebecca would be going home.
Tiffany made some joke as she hugged the other girls goodbye. Tyra began to turn green. She called the girls back and started to lecture Tiffany on taking this seriously. But Tiffany did not get the hint and kept trying to defend herself by interrupting Tyra’s Oprah moment.
Suddenly, Tyra exploded.
It was glorious and terrifying to behold. It is so awesome and insane that I will copy and paste the whole rant:
“Be quiet, Tiffany! Be quiet! Stop it! I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this. When my mother yells like this it’s because she loves me. I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you! How dare you! Learn something from this! When you go to bed at night, you lay there and you take responsibility for yourself, because nobody’s going to take responsibility for you. You rolling your eyes and you act like it’s because you’ve heard it all before—you’ve heard it all before—you don’t know where the hell I come from, you have no idea what I’ve been through. But I’m not a victim; I grow from it and I learn. Take responsibility for yourself.”
Uh oh, what's that sound?
ARRRGGHHH!! It's a Tyrannosaurus Rex!! Run!!Yes, Tiffany, how dare you! How dare you sully the good name of ANTM and treat it as a joke?! This isn’t some game. This is serious business, like Tyra’s hip-hop career or Tyra’s pumpkin hair! All Tyra was trying to do was give you a chance, out of the goodness of her heart, and certainly not to exploit you and your drama for a money-making reality show or anything. Your grandma would be ashamed. Your mama would be ashamed. And worse of all, Tyra’s mama would be ashamed.
Oh Tyra. Why’d you have to do that? Oprah wouldn’t have acted like this. Oprah would have made Tiffany cry in her arms. And possibly given her a car.
Tiffany exited shame-faced and acknowledged that Tyra was right about taking responsibility. Yeah, I’d say the same thing too if that crazy bitch was in the next room. Then when the cameras switched off, I’d jump out the window and buy a stun gun just in case. Who cares what Rebecca said because she wasn’t part of the rant. Maybe if she’s fainted again we might have cared.
Watching two people fade out of the cast photo at the end makes me sad. I hope they didn’t have to share a limo ride home like on The Apprentice. Oh who am I kidding? They probably had to walk.