Some Dreams Really Need to Be Crushed

It is sometimes difficult to figure out where the reality begins and the producing ends on The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, but it is kind of fun to see Janice go through her evolution as a businesswoman. She had high hopes that her agency would have the covers of French Vogue, Elle, etc, but the reality of having to pay the bills means that she has to suck up to some clients that lack the prestige of a Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein. Hey, in the modeling industry, work is work, but would Janice have started the agency if she knew she had to kiss the ass of the likes of 1-800-DENTIST? I don’t think so. The finale is tomorrow but we have a lot of drama to catch up with before we get to that.Janice’s first client of the day was Kevin Black from Interscope Records. Interscope started in the 90s with the likes of Gerardo and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, but now is one of the most successful labels at Universal Music Group with hit artists in Hip/Hop, R&B, and just about everything else. Kevin was visiting Janice on behalf of the artist Avant, who needed some hot ladies to accompany him to a party. When asked why he picked Janice, Kevin said that she is a groundbreaking person, but let’s be honest, if there was anybody who was breaking ground at that meeting, it was Kevin, who was pushing four bills easy.

For a modeling agency, this should be just about the easiest job in the book. Janice had to find a couple of white chicks and a couple of black chicks and get them to dance around like it’s two for one night at Miyagi’s and they really want that guy who was driving the 98 Sentra to buy them a drink. Shooting fish in a barrel does not even begin to describe how easy this task is. Although she picked out girls who she thought would fit the bill, she was nervous about the results and when she saw the girls in action, was very disappointed. She said the models couldn’t move and feared that this was going to spell doom for her agency.

In order to get over her anxiety, Janice decides to get a mammogram. OK, so she had the mammogram scheduled months in advance and thinks it is very important. It’s part of her active, healthy lifestyle, which from what I have seen also includes regularly scheduled trips to the plastic surgeon and the liquor store. Janice’s agency had a meeting with Frederick’s of Hollywood that she was forced to miss because of her pictures she was taking of her boobs, and therefore Peter and Kodi stood in her place.

Who else gives you pictures of Janice’s boobs uncensored?

Frederick’s of Hollywood is a top name in the lingerie industry, and Peter and Kodi desperately wanted to be able to accommodate their needs, but there was a slight problem. Lingerie models need curves and most of Janice’s stable were the high-end editorial, waif thin type. Perfect if you are tying to sell something on the runway, but not so great if you needed cared more about seeing a models’ hips and not her ribs.

When Janice gets back to the agency, she is very upset because she believes that Peter and Kodi weren’t trying hard enough. Kodi didn’t want to send girls who didn’t meet the requirements because it makes him look like a joke as a booker. Janice knew that there weren’t many of her models that had a full set of breasts, but with a wonderbra and some double-sided tape, they could at least make a six piece chicken mcnuggets out of them. Peter is upset because he is trying to get the point across that they need more girls, but Janice is talking over him. In frustration, Peter slams the table, and that’s when it hit the fan.

Janice doesn’t like Peter’s attitude and hey have had many arguments, and I am not sure why Janice picked this incident to get pissed off about, but I know I felt bad for Nathan, who was sitting in on this meeting and just hanging his head as his mother just went off on peter, pushing and shoving. Peter, who looked like he wanted to smack her across the face at one point, held his composure while Janice continued.

When Janice finally got around to her reasoning, which was that her father beat her every day of her life and she is not going to let it happen again, again I could only think of Nathan. Hey Janice, stop the cycle of violence! Would you like your son to lose his temper and push people around whenever he is in an argument? From there, Janice went on and on about various things that Peter has done, including pushing Fargo onto her (even though she is probably the closest to what Frederick’s wanted). But like so many of Janice’s other tirades, this one was not necessarily about being right or getting her way. She yelled at Peter because she knew she could get away with it, and when the dust settled down and nobody died, Janice decided that maybe Peter was right on a few points and it was time to adjust some of her thinking.

Before Janice could deal with some of those problems, she still had to deal with the problem of Interscope Records. She had an early morning meeting with Kevin Black and showed up late, natch. When she arrived, Kevin had stepped out, and Peter was telling her how much Avant hated their work. Janice was clearly upset, but she used this as a motivator not only for herself, but for her girls. She had a new batch waiting to be looked at and she went outside and gave them one hell of a pep talk. It was so inspiring; it reminded me of Nick Nolte in Blue Chips. Wouldn’t it be great if they used Janice to remake that movie? They could call it “Blue Shirts”, and while the intrigue of the underground modeling agency recruiting game might not sound so great now, you know you would see it for the Donatella Versace cameo alone.

Kevin picked Pierce after he heard she worked at Sizzler

In order to sell her girls, Janice wants them to hike up their skirts, show a little bit of ass, and strut their stuff for Kevin, whether that means shaking their booty to some non-existent music or crawling across the table like a stripper trying to get another tip before her customer goes back to the buffet for the shrimp cocktail. I have touched on Janice’s hypocrisy at times, and while I don’t think that she was necessarily being hypocritical with the way she was trying to get a job for her girls, I did find it kind of odd how hard she was working to get a job from an organization which may not condone violence, but is surely not sponsoring any fundraisers for NOW.

I’m not going to pretend to be a feminist (not that any of you would believe me) because I am sure most of you would skip that paragraph anyway, but it should be noted that if you are the type who says that objectification of women is a problem in our society and continues the cycle of violence, having your girls show their ass in order to win a part on a video shoot where there only job would be to lounge around by a pool, Janice is not doing a good job. Her models may not necessarily be strippers and escorts, but if they are on the set of a video shoot, there is a good chance they are likely to bump into one at some point. If she wanted her models to be associated with porn stars, wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to tell them to hang out in Van Nuys?

Kevin finally decided to on sending Stina (my favorite of the girls, by far) and Pierce, and Avant was very happy with them, even though they looked about six inches taller than him on average. Strike up another victory for Janice and stereotypical male misogyny!

After admitting that she might not have the right types of girls to fill all of her needs, Janice calls a staff meeting, and they decide that there needs to be another casting call, but in the meantime she sends a few of her models to have a photo shoot with Mathu Anderson. It was going to cost a little bit of money, but Janice hoped that she could help expand her models’ portfolio and with a better portfolio comes a better package she can sell to other clients. Janice loves to think of herself as an accomplished photographer, but you know how the saying goes. If you want something done right, pay somebody who has an accent to do it for you.

I make fun of Mathu, but the work he does with Janice’s models could be called stunning. He worked not only on the sets and the lighting, but the makeup and the hair as well. Crystal had the most dramatic change. One moment, she looked like a girl you would find working at a Dairy Queen in Sand Dimas, and the next moment, she looks like the latest in line for the Twiggy “it” girl androgyny hall of fame. Although he tried a little bit too hard with Petra, turning her into more of a Warsaw Pact ho than anything else, Mathu came back strong with my girl Stina as well as with Brittany. When Janice first bumped into Brittany, I have to say that I wasn’t sure where the “stunning” came from. Perhaps she is a little too young for my dirty old mind (her “sexy” poses always sort of creep me out), but after her session with Mathu, I could see that when Janice talked about Brittany being born to model, she was not lying. She is already bringing more to pictures with her eyes and her face than most of the other models that have been working for a long time.

Janice knew Brittany had “it” and apparently so did Brittany’s mom. Fargo came in to tell Janice that Brittany’s mom is talking about leaving the agency. Although Janice has always said, “don’t rat out your bitches”, in this case, she didn’t care. To make a long story short, Brittany’s mom was talking about leaving, but I think that the real problem was that she realized that her daughter has all the talent, and the only power she has is that she can refuse to drive Brittany to any of her gigs. Janice and Brittany and her mom all exchange some tears and hugs, and it’s all worked out without much of a problem. Brittany is staying, Janice wants to have her, and she wants to be there.

In the middle of all of this, Janice had a photo shoot in Puerto Rico, which she used as a perfect excuse to get rid of the kids for a weekend, but hey, at least she took time out of her schedule to take them to Universal Studios! Studio them park the ride vs. a private beach in the Caribbean? Hey, only one of them has Jurassic park the ride, and I’m sure that Nathan has already been damaged enough by seeing his mom without a lot of clothes on. Is there any reason to add to his pain? In Puerto Rico, Janice had a photo shoot with Ivan Batisto, who is such a groundbreaker that he needs a chair to hold him up; either that or because he looks like he eats twice his weight in paella every day.

After her shoot, Janice came back to Hollywood just in time for the latest casting call. Although they need to find models, some of the people around the agency can’t stand the way Janice insists on seeing everybody at least once. As Gabe says, some dreams really need to be crushed, like that of the 49 year old, or the girl who has bruises on her knees from her other job stripping. This latest call was so depressing that Peter suggested that they might have to get out of LA in order to find their next big models.

With the casting call a failure, Janice at least got the pleasure of looking over some of the shots Mathu Anderson took of her girls. Janice does have a lot of beautiful girls, but Mathu was able to bring a little something more out of them. Janice was able to get her girls into places like Ed Hardy, but Mathu made them really look like they could make Janice’s dream of French Vogue. Most of the girls were speechless and some were in tears.

Although things this week ended on a high note, tomorrow’s season finale is going to bring some tough decisions for Janice. Her agency is getting work, but she is still in the red. It’s about time she starts trimming a little bit of the fat. We’ve seen a lot of guys and girls come into Janice’s agency, but next week Janice is going to drop some of her models. It’s almost enough for me to care about what happens, but at this point I’m just hoping that the show figures out what it wants to be when it comes time for the second season.

What did you think of this episode?