America's Next Top Model - Lights and Tragic

Ah, the makeover episode! Only once in every cycle does it come along: the chance to witness a group of unsophisticated mallrats transform, before our very eyes, into a group of unsophisticated mallrats with new haircuts! It’s like watching a caterpillar turn into a caterpillar with a platinum weave. This cycle, we’re getting makeovers earlier than usual, too—normally they wait until after a few eliminations. Smart decision: the more girls you make over, the greater your chances for entertainingly tearful breakdowns.

Now, I hate to remind you and possibly induce brain-scarring flashbacks, but do you remember what happened in the last makeover episode? With the poisoned apple, and Miss J. as the wicked stepmother, and zombie Ice Capades Tyra and OH GOD I CAN’T GO ON. Yeah. So I was dreading what sort of hallucinogenic nightmare the evil Top Model geniuses would come up with this time. But instead, all we get is kind of a "Mission Impossible" theme, with dossiers and stuff, and Tyra talking out of a little screen in a vaguely British accent. It’s almost… tasteful. I’m slightly disappointed, I have to admit. On to the makeovers, then!

The good: Celia goes quite short and sort of poufy on top. It looks cool, and she reminds me even more of Martha Plimpton now, which is generally a good thing. Sandra morphs into Ultra Naté and sort of pulls it off. Aminat’s afro is—shocker!—fake. After it gets unsewn from her head, Miss J. puts it on like a stole and marches around. Heh. She gets a long weave in its place. Allison gets big blonde waves, which I’m not sure about at first, but it grows on me. It neutralizes her freaky eyes a bit. “Fo” gets a very short pixie cut, and she looks SO CUTE. She’s like a freckled Audrey Hepburn. Only she’s jealous of all the girls getting long, flowing weaves. Yeah, just wait a week until those weaves all look like matted yak hair.

The middling-to-disastrous: Kortnie goes red, Tahlia goes blonde and London goes platinum and short. Jessica goes a bit shorter with red highlights. Teyona gets an awful long Jheri curl weave that Tyra calls “juicy,” which is appropriate, because it looks as though you could squeeze it and oil would drip out. And then there’s Natalie, who gets nothing done to her at all. She takes this as evidence that she’s perfect the way she is. I take it as evidence that they don’t care enough about her to bother.

Later on at home, “Fo” cries to the camera about how ugly and butch she looks with her short hair. She’s even wrapped a garish scarf around her head to hide her hideousness. I would like to put a picture of smiling, pixie-haired “Fo” beside a picture of rag-wrapped, snotty, red-faced “Fo” and see which one she thinks is prettier. Seriously, someone who calls herself a hippie is not allowed to throw this much of a princess fit about her hair. Especially not when IT LOOKS REALLY GOOD. God.

Next, for the CoverGirl infomercial, er, challenge portion of the episode, the girls are taken in a pink plaid stretch SUV (suck it, Earth!) to a makeshift Wal-Mart CoverGirl aisle. Their assignment is to go out on the street and harass busy New York women on their way to important jobs and meetings, then bring them back to the CoverGirl display and try to sell them some cheap green eyeshadow. It’s nice that this show tries to give its contestants a leg up on their probable future careers manning the Wal-Mart makeup counter. The team of Aminat, Celia and Sandra wins in spite of Sandra just standing around smiling creepily.

On to the photo shoot! The plaid Barbie-mega-mobile transports the models to a dark, dangerous-looking alley, where a mysterious man stands in the shadows awaiting them. Oh, I like this already. Maybe he’s a gang member! Eh, no, it’s just Mr. Jay. He tells them the photo shoot today is all about finding their light. Mr. Nigel Barker will be their sexy noted photographer, and they have to hold up two glowstick thingys to light themselves. Way to be frugal, producers—no need to pay a photographer or a lighting guy! The styling has a rock-and-roll theme, which seems to mean lots of neon-coloured fake fur and Jenny Humphrey eye makeup.

Most of the girls range from boring to awful. Nigel and Mr. Jay are not inspired by all the listless posing and dead, dead expressions. I think it’s about time for a lesson in smiling with one’s eyes! The few exceptions: Celia is so great that she upstages the girls even when she’s in the background, London and Natalie are good as well, and Wind-in-the-Face Teyona blows everyone away (ha! See what I did there?). “Fo” interrupts her shoot with another meltdown about her butchy hair, which, again, LOOKS REALLY GOOD.

For the second week in a row, Tyra appears to have kidnapped a small child to serve as a prop in this weird pre-panel fairy-tale segment about “a supermodel who wanted to guide future girls.” By “future girls,” does she mean, like, pre-op Isis? Or unborn children? Because they’re kind of hard to guide.

All righty, panel time. This week’s guest is former judge Nolé Marin, and he may have left his dog at home, but he sure brought the bitch! The models’ outfits look like “pajamas and doilies,” Aminat has a face “like a hush puppy,” Jessica’s photo is “ugly” and best of all, Sandra should have sat on her glow stick to get more emotion in her face. Hey, Nolé, stop doing my job better than me! Speaking of Jessica, which I guess we should a bit since (spoiler!) she’s going home, she’s clearly not at all used to being called ugly. There is something about her that seems like she should be swooning in the arms of a Fabio type, her blouse falling seductively off her shoulder and a title like “Orchards of Passion” behind her. Or, as the judges put it, like she should be on a telenovela. Well, okay, if you prefer to go with the racially-based mocking, fine. The judges say that Jessica feels like she doesn’t need to try because she thinks she’s the prettiest girl there. Most of the photos, to borrow Paulina’s phrase about Sandra, “radiate a dullness.” The judges like “Fo”’s photo, but not her stanky attitude about her makeover. They also like Teyona, Celia, Natalie, Allison and London.

Top honours this week go to Teyona (with a promise to re-do her weave), Celia and Allison. Jessica’s in the bottom two. “Fo”’s photo wasn’t anywhere near the worst, but she’s also in the bottom two, because she has to do penance for crying over her haircut and doubting the Benevolent Wisdom of Tyra. However, she will clearly not go home this week, because then she would have no chance to repent and be grateful for her second chance. You see, there is always an arc of sin and redemption in this show, and guess who the merciful deity figure is? So “Fo” gets to stay, and Tyra seems pleased by her tears of shame and gratitude. And pretty Jessica with the ugly pictures is out, as Tyra repeats to her the immortal refrain that being pretty is not enough, although if you’re going to be a model, it probably doesn’t hurt.

And so our Puerto Rican princess packs up her bags, and says that she’s going home with her head held high because she’s way prettier than some of the other girls there, as if being born pretty represents some kind of achievement on her part. Well, I guess she’s learned her lesson, then!

Photo courtesy zap2it.com