Once upon a time there lived a supermodel whose blood was so mingled with pure ridiculousness that, when angered, her hair flushed magenta, her forehead tensed up to form a craggy Andes of fury, and her voice growled forth with all the ego-fires of hell: "I was rooting for you we were all rooting for you!" She was known to have fumed as her minions scurried about at her feet, "I have never yelled at a girl like this!" But this supermodel now has a talk show, and a cameo in the upcoming Hannah Montana movie, and so she really can't be bothered to morph into a raging ego plume everytime a wannabe Cover Girl Hip Lip Slicks With Peppermint Oil tongue twister auditioner steps out of line. She. Is. Tired. She can't even remember what it was to be angry at these girls anymore. That's how tired she is.
And so, when Baby Martha Plimpton, trembling like an albino leaf on an overstyled tree, stood before Tyra, she was fully expecting to be knocked over by the sheer force of Tyra's anger. But, strangely (or not for this comatose cycle/season) there was no anger. Tyra rushed through the "I only have one photo in my hands" incantation, allowed Baby Martha Plimpton to stay as long as she'd learned her lesson about under-bus-throwing, and sent her back to the line with a tried and true piece of advice I last heard during HBO's Hookers At The Point: "You don't mess with someone else's money." Evidently, Tyra is so tired, she is now confusing HBO's America Undercover with her own memories because she added, "This is really personal, because that happened to me," but then didn't elaborate at all. Are we just all supposed to know that Janice Dickenson, or Atoosa Rubenstien, or whomever worked Tyra's corner oh-so-many cycles ago, thus messing with Tyra's money? Of course we are. What a silly question. But Tyra is too tired to admonish us.
Elsewhere in the episode, while Tyra slept standing up in her stable carved from frozen tears near the abyss, Aminat and Teyona tried to get Tahlia to start some drama in the house. But Tahlia, who has the personality and temprament of silly putty, was like, "I'll just sit here and wait to be put back inside my red plastic egg, if that's cool." And of course it was, because Aminat and Teyona have much better drama-starting skills, such as: Yelling while standing on a staircase, Hurling accusations about a consipiracy while standing on a staircase, and Leaving the staircase to yell, "Stupid, stupid, stupid," over a kitchen island at Natalie more times than if they were in an infinite echo chamber. Eventually, Tahlia wandered over to the fight she was supposed to be having, and from the top of the staircase read a cheesey soliloquy about modeling and "this competition." (She had pressed herself up against some newsprint, so it was easy to remember all the words.) Lemur Barbie's giant eyes rolled—which took about seventy-five minutes—at the sad spectacle of it all.
The next day, Mr Jay met the girls at the mannequin graveyard and told the girls that they couldn't be just hangers. They had to be hangers who can also convey three emotion-faces: alluring, sensual, and mystery (which is different than alluring). To help them in this task, Bankable Productions procured a woman known for her modelling range: Howard Stern's wife. Her advice? Look in the mirror a lot. This way you can see your face! It's skills such as mirror-looking that get you on the cover of Hamptons magazine six times. Do you know how hard it is to get on the cover of Hamptons? You have to be either married to Billy Lee Joel or Howard Stern or, you know, be rich and live in the Hamptons. (I interned at Hamptons—which isn't based in the Hamptons—one summer when I was in college and Star Jones was on the cover. Also, she had a column in the magazine called, if I'm remembering correctly, "Summer With Star." True story.)
Following a fun game of "Guess what Tyra's face would have looked like in this picture if Mr. Jay hadn't sliced it right out of there with a sharp, sharp knife!" (I bet Mr. Jay personally carved out Tyra's face from every single cardboard cut-out), the girls went to their embody-the-color-of-this-powder-we're-blowing-all-over-your-face photo shoot. Yes, this is the exact same thing as the poster paint bukkake photo challenge from cycle/season 10 but with powder. Yes, that was only 2 cycles ago. What part of "tired" don't you understand? Aminat managed to do "modern green;" Lemur Barbie went with the girliness of hot pink; Ye Olde Londontowne looked as if she had been beat up by a smurf; Fo smiled with her red-powder-covered eyes; Teyona looked so hopeful splattered with yellow that Tyra brought up the Obamas; Natalie was a moon-faced orange; Tahlia pretended the photographer was her boyfriend, which has something to do with purple; and Baby Martha Plimpton embodied the "conservativeness" of grey. All in all, it was pretty boring.
But the most blah, in Tyra's hasty and all-powerful estimation, was Sandra, who was sent home even though she never engaged in under-bus-throwing, like Celia. And so Tyra mumbled something about profiles, before asking Ms. Jay to throw a blanket over her shoulders and lead her out to the putrid pasture for another lengthy nap.
Grade: C
Stray Observations:
—"Yes, I have big eyes. Yes, they're on my face. Sorry." Between that and calling Tahlia's staircase soliloquy "Chicken Soup For The Teenage Soul" I'm really starting to like Lemur Barbie.
—Well, at least we got to see Tyra's Ebony cover three times. That's important.
—Where was Ye Olde Londontowne's street preaching during the staircase shout rumble?
—Next week, Natalie and Tahlia should get in a fight over who is the most drippy. Except Tahlia won't fight. Natalie can just argue with the banister instead.
—"A model's job is to look better in pictures than they do in person. And you do." Nice, Nigel.