America’s Next Top Model: And Then There Were Two…

This week on America’s Next Top Model, Mr. Jay shocks the girls by announcing that not one, but two of them will be eliminated before the final runway. I’m assuming the designer they suckered into agreeing to do ANTM refused to ruin his/her show with more than two midgets.

Reason # 812,039 why I hope the rumors that he’s off the Judges Panel next cycle are true.

Okay, gasmii, according to the previews two of these skinny bitches are going home tonight. I gotta believe that BEN’s a shoe-in for the finale, so who else do you think will make it? Laura, VampirErin and WonkEye each represent three different ANTM finalist stereotypes — we’ve got the sweet underdog, cast bitch and token minority, respectively. Since the bitch usually gets cut at the final three, I will guess that VE’s out. Between Laura and WonkEye, I think that Laura’s portfolio is stronger but I don’t think we’ve ever had an Asian girl in the finals before, which might be too hard for Tyra to pass up. Still, I’m going to give a slight advantage to Laura as a fan favorite, and predict a BEN/Laura final two. Let’s see if I’m right or completely assbackwards on this one.

Enough of my ramblings. The girls are in the limo on the way back to their house after panel, and VE’s a mess literally and figuratively. She reminds us of her suckitude and says for the third week in a row that she HAS to get a great picture this week or she’ll be eliminated. Yeah, I think your ass is out of second chances at this point. BEN chimes in with some very astute observations about VE — while VE definitely has the model look, VE’s low self-confidence and tendency to take criticism personally have really had a negative impact on her success. BEN I think will make a great therapist some day should modeling not work out.

As the girls arrive back at the house, BEN predicts that she will be in the final two with WonkEye, while WonkEye screeches at the camera that she’s so proud of herself for having the best picture last week. Goddammit, WonkEye. With Sundai gone, I thought my ears would get a break from painful hooting and hollering in the confessional. Calm the fuck down. WonkEye admits to us that she’s had a habit in the past of giving up easily — kind of like that eye muscle, eh? — and that she thinks that’s it’s a big deal that she’s had the strength to sit on her ass in free luxury accommodations while competing to earn thousands of dollars of stuff for these past few months. Wow when she puts it that way… she’s an inspiration to us all.

“Ugh, I give up on holding my head up straight.”

Laura tells the girls that her biggest dream is being a Victoria’s Secret model, which I find rather sad. It’s like saying you want to be a chef, and settling for being the fry guy at McDonald’s. However, Laura wants to be successful so she can support her family and spend more time handling human dick than bull dick. You gotta respect that.

Tyra Mail hints at hula dancing, and sure enough that’s what it appears to be at first. But hold on — it’s actually hip hop hula. What this means is that you start off doing hula dancing, and then strip and shake your ass a lot. Awesome! I imagine this was created after observing some drunk sorority girls dressed as hula dancers for Halloween one year. BEN is immediately nervous, recalling the Benny Ninja miming dance from earlier in the cycle when she scared the shit out of everyone. However, BEN puts her game face on and tries to learn the moves. I’m not sure which is funnier — BEN’s complete awkwardness, or Laura trying to krump wearing a picnic blanket as a skirt and a gigantic sun hat.

After learning their moves, the girls are given some time to practice. VE, as a former cheerleader who was actually intelligent enough NOT to break her ankle 80 times (ahem, Courtney), takes charge and tries to help the other girls. BEN is absolutely hopeless and she knows it. Still, she’s trying her best and trying to contain her growing annoyance with VE, who’s speaking in dance jargon and is not the most patient of tutors. VE makes a good point that in that BEN should just pretend that she knows that she’s doing, if all else fails. Somehow I don’t think BEN’s even capable of that.

BEN: What if I hold my arms like this, and then like swing them? Does that look like hip hop hula?

VE: Oh my god are you ki— ahem. Why, yes, yes it does…

So here’s the deal with the challenge — the girls will perform a group hip hop hula routine with some native Hawaiians, but each girl will have a solo at some point. During the solo, the girls are to make up their own routine that tells a story. My story would be “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and I bet I look like a one-legged retard. Get me the fuck out of here. The end.” Everyone assumes that this is VE’s challenge to lose, so I really hope she does lose it. The winner wins a 5-day all expense paid trip to Hawaii. VE practically drools at the mention of a prize that’s better than some motherfucking non-tangible stupid piece of shit helicopter tour unfair crap.

WonkEye’s up first, and while she nails the hula portions, she struggles a bit in the hip hop. Still, it’s a lot better than I could have done with years of practice. VE’s second, and it’s the reverse of WonkEye. VE’s hip hop is nearly perfect, but as Miss J points out, her solo was angry and aggressive rather than embodying the gracefulness of hula. Laura’s the balance between WonkEye and VE — she’s not as strong at either the hula or the hip hop as WonkEye and VE were, respectively, but she doesn’t have a clear weakness like the other girls did. Finally, it’s BEN’s turn. And it’s bad. Every time the dancers go left, she goes right, and vice versa. Poor girl is flapping her arms like a chicken during the hip hop portion, and looks more like she’s having a seizure than she is making deliberate movements. I so want to go dancing with BEN. She may be the one person who would make me feel better.

Afterwards, it’s time to announce the winner. And it’s… Laura! As Laura shrieks in delight, Miss J announces that she gets to bring one friend with her on her special Hawaii trip. And Laura makes the same choice I would have by picking WonkEye. This is NOT going to go over well with VE… And sure enough, VE is pissed and pouting all over the house, noting that her tutoring played a major role in everyone’s success. Sure, it might have been helpful, but no one asked you to do that and even if they did, one hour of tutoring does not make up for months of being a bitch.

BEN: Hey, dude, it’s all good. We don’t need Hawaii. We can go smoke some ganja back at my place…

VE: ::WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE:: What, did you say something?

Time for the photo shoot! The girls go meet Mr. Jay on a gorgeous beach covered with volcanic rock. He announces that each girl will be styled like the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes. Well that’s good and dandy, but here comes the real announcement — two of the girls will be going home based on this shoot. BEN takes the news the best, perhaps due to her confidence that she will be in the top 2 regardless if one or two girls goes home this week. As for the other three, well, I think their jaws are still on that beach. I wonder why they’re switching it up like this. Is Tyra just trying to avoid staleness and shake things up? Because she’s going to have to do a little more than move around the order of a few challenges and eliminate two girls in the second to last episode rather than two girls in the last episode to make this feel fresh. Although I do kind of like that next week’s episode should be able to include lots more panel deliberation when deciding between the final two.

WonkEye is up first, and she’s trying to incorporate everything she’s ever learned into her photo — including that by standing on her tippy-toes, she can elongate her body and look more alluring. Great advice — but not when you’re standing on jagged, uneven volcanic rock! Her balance is shit, and her “goddess” poses are cliched and unimpressive. She may have gotten some good shots at the end, but overall I think that WonkEye is in trouble.

BEN’s hair and makeup is gorgeous, and there is absolutely no doubt that she will be in the final two after Mr. Jay gushes that she “delivered a campaign-worthy image.” Seriously, her shoot looked fucking incredible. One of the best I’ve seen anyone have in any cycle.

Laura comes out of hair and makeup looking sickly and washed out to me, but maybe it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to those bright splotches of sunburn on her cheeks. Her poses are immediately weird, especially when she repeatedly raises one leg in the air like a dog marking a tree. Mr. Jay isn’t too happy either, muttering to himself “what is she doing with her face” and then telling Laura that she’s letting her lower lip hang there like a dead hunk of meat again. Afterwards, he even asks if she’s hungover, telling her that it “looked a little boozy.” Yikes. She is definitely in trouble as well. Based on what we’re seeing, WonkEye’s got a better shot at the final two.

VE is last, and she tells us that since she’s portraying a volcanic goddess, she will look powerful and wrathful in her shoot. However, that’s not what Mr. Jay wants, for he tells VE that she looks angry and he desperately needs her to show warmth. VE tries to correct it and seems to fix it enough to please Mr. Jay, although I still think that she’s rocking a serious bitch face. In the end, Mr. Jay seems very happy with VE’s shoot, and she clearly appears to have been second best after BEN. She also hits her head on some lighting equipment, which unfortunately is blocked by some douche who got in the way of the camera. I would have liked to watch that a few dozen times. So now the question is — if VE did indeed have the second-best shoot, can that overcome three weeks of sucking to land her in the final two? I’m still saying no.

Time for panel! Tyra’s wearing a ridiculously ugly beige outfit, and our guest judge is Ann Shoket’s schnoz. VE is up first for critiques. And they LOVE it. Nigel begins spewing out the compliments faster than I can type them — beautiful, wonderful, elongated, elegant, sexy, etc. He totally wants to bang her. The Schnoz likes it too, and Miss J comments that perhaps VE could have showed a bit more happiness in the eyes. However, Tyra informs VE that she looked “sleepy” in a lot of her film. I didn’t see that at all during the shoot, so perhaps Tyra’s trying to throw in some criticism to justify not sending VE to the final two, if that indeed is what happens.

“Seriously, I have to wear THIS dress? Look at it. It’s fucking nasty. This is so unfair.”

WonkEye is up next, and her picture is pretty but rather ho-hum to me. She’s got her mouth hanging open, and I find it somewhat amateur of a pose — something I would have expected weeks ago but not at this stage of the competition. The Schnoz points out that her body looks compact, and WonkEye goes on the defensive, arguing that her initial poses during the shoot had her elongating her frame and playing with her skirt. Tyra instantly reacts, almost snapping at WonkEye that she forgot her face and that playing with her skirt’s a pretty basic, amateur thing to do. Tyra ends her Ty-rade (trademark that, bitch) by saying WonkEye’s skin looked nice. Umm, thanks?

“I give up on my face. And on my body language. And on having any hope of winning this competition.”

Laura’s outfit at panel is mocked by the judges, but they really like her picture. It’s pretty fabulous, although her surprised expression reminds me of a baby with gas. I also think that she looks pretty damn short. Miss J tells her that she’s the “gold tooth in a mouth of decay”, which confuses the hell out of everyone. He clarifies himself by explaining that Laura doesn’t look like a model in person, but totally pops on film. I agree with that completely, but what the fuck that has to do with decayed teeth I’ll never know. Tyra surprisingly makes no mention of all the awful poses or facial expressions that Laura had during her shoot, which suggests to me that Laura is going to be a finalist. By giving VE some criticism and giving Laura none, I feel like the editing is justifying what the decision will be. As for WonkEye, I think she’s out at this point despite looking better during the actual shoot than Laura.

“Let me get this dress out the way in case the next one’s a shart.”

Finally, it’s BEN’s turn. I do not care that much for the picture they picked of her, for while her face looks incredible, I really dislike her body. She looks like a sack of potatoes. However, the judges love her vulnerable expression. I’m not at all worried that BEN’s getting eliminated here, but I can’t believe that there weren’t better pictures of her that they could have used. Maybe Tyra was trying to level the playing field a bit to add some suspense to the announcement of the finalists, which would be crap. Oh well.

“I feel very vulnerable by the way Tyra has picked this terrible picture of me from all the good shots that must have been in my film. How immature.”

Deliberations. Nigel finds VE disingenuous (read: fake) at panel, and Tyra argues that it’s hard to edit VE’s film because there’s a lot of crap to sift through to find the great picture. Nigel thinks that Laura is a diamond in the rough, but everyone struggles a bit with Laura’s body posture, noting that her angles were a bit off and that her legs looked shorter than they are in real life. Turning to BEN, they find her body contrived and that her face needed a bit more expression in the eyes. As for WonkEye, they repeat their critique that she forgot her face, but they think her portfolio is strong and that she has a great personality.

Before Tyra reveals the results, I’m going to revisit my predictions. I’m still confident that BEN’s safe. While I thought that the second slot would come down between Laura and WonkEye, I now think it’s between Laura and VE. However, I will stand by my earlier prediction that Laura’s going to the finals. VE’s gotten such a bad edit for the last month that I cannot believe that she’s a finalist. Let’s see if I’m right. I hope I am!

Called first is BEN, to the surprise of no one. Tyra then calls the other three girls forward. Turning to WonkEye, Tyra says that she loves editing WonkEye’s film, but that she’s been shaky lately. If by “lately” you mean just this week, then okay. However, that’s a pretty weird thing to say given that WonkEye had the best picture last week. Consistency is NOT Tyra’s friend. Laura has great pictures, but does not come off like a model in person. VE started off strong, then lost her way, but has now turned out a fantastic final picture. So who is in the finals? Laura! YAY!

So there you have it — a BEN/Laura showdown next week to determine who will become America’s Next Top Model. What did you think of this episode? Was Laura the right choice over WonkEye and VE? Should VE’s final picture been enough to save her? Did you find the editing as suggestive as I did, especially at panel? Does Laura have a shot at beating BEN, or all we just all going through the motions before we reason this season’s inevitable end result??? See you next week for the finale!