Well, the bitch is dead. Not that it really matters if Bianca's in the competition or not. We all know who's winning this cycle: You can see it in her widely set eyes. You can feel it in her bowl cut. You can hear it in the relentless, cheerful yipping that comes down like auditory slaps on your ears through the television each Wednesday night.
That's right: Barring some kind of unforeseen psychotic break on Saleisha's part, or Jenah's sudden transformation into an ass-kissing robot permanently affixed to Tyra's posterior, Saleisha's gonna win ANTM. This time next cycle, we'll be complaining about the way she bounces around the Cover Girl commercial, giggling, "This is my life!!" Of course, people will still probably be voting Heather Cover Girl Of The Week (By the way, how great was that? I really hope those 12 voters stay strong and keep up the Heather voting as long as The CW continues to send Tyra Banks to foreign countries with impressionable young girls under the guise of "modeling.")
Still, I was somewhat surprised to see Bianca go, if only because, as ANTM history has taught us, it's fun to have a bitch in the final three. And she was sooo bitchy in this episode, it's like she was drawing a perfect circle of bitchiness free-hand with her behavior. From sending Jenah to the empty part of the mall, to rolling her eyes at the prize Jenah won and saying, "I don't want a couture Chinese gown anyway," to saying of Chantal's latest I Am Model speech, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" to watching the four Chinese beauties dance and concluding, "It's not really my thing," to still talking shit about Heather. It's almost sad to see her eliminated, especially when we had to see her crying as Tyra was giving her great advice like, "Get your cousins, your aunts, your friends…to take pictures of you. Snap, Snap, Snap, Snap. Pose, Pose, Pose, Pose." You could almost see Bianca thinking, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Look at your thighs: You're borderline plus-size!" That's probably why she was crying—Cause she knew she would never be able to say those words out loud again.
But the finale won't be completely bitch-free. They've been grooming Jenah to take over the position since last episode, and I guess a back-up bitch is better than no bitch at all, right, Tyra? That leaves Chantal to be the dumb one (something she's really, really good at) and Saleisha to be as yippy as a chihuahua on caffeine (and also probably the winner). And they'll still be in China (which apparently has two of the world's fashion capitals, despite the fact that every place they send the girls to shop looked like giant Claire's Boutiques). Get ready to get bored!
Grade: B
Stray Observations:
—The best part about this episode was how each of the girls' hairstyles for the Great Wall photo shoot, ridiculous as they all were, managed to capture each girl's personality: Chantal's hair was like a giant blonde version of Gary Oldman's hair in Bram Stoker's Dracula because someone has sucked all of the life out of her brain; Jenah's hair was basically like Chantal's but raggedy, because she is defined by her raggedy extensions; Bianca's hair was literally taped to her head, because she has no hair; and Saleisha's bun looked like a parasitic twin covered in hair that was growing out of the side of her head, because Saleisha must have a parasitic twin somewhere on her body that she's leeching all that enthusiasm from.
—Ms. Jay is a world renowned runway coach because he tells girls not to move their heads when they walk? Can we all be runway coaches? (Answer: yes.)
—"I wanted to stay there…to work with Tyra a little while longer," maybe it'll be Chantal who transforms into an ass-kissing robot.
—Tyra: The Photographer/amateur psychoanalyst: "What wall do you want to climb? The real Jenah is on the other side."
—On a scale of one (Polaroids taken by a blind person, or Nigel Barker) to ten (Richard Avedon), how bad were Tyra's pictures? I say she's about a two (girl using a Le Clic in the dark without flashbulbs).