Well, I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’m hungry, so it’s the perfect time to recap the second hour of the "America’s Next Top Model" premiere!You know who I wanted booted from the series first? Perez Hilton, the odious celebuwhoreblogger who’s in one of those little wraparound segments. CW, I cannot stress this enough: Get rid of him.We see the girls strolling down Hollywood Boulevard and enter the deserted Arena Cafe, where they’re confronted by what appear to be four colorful extras from "Pirates of Caribbean."At first I thought one of them was Jared Gold, the designer in whose show Gina was forced to hold a roach last year , but the subtitle explains they’re "designers" from Elmer Ave. They act like we should know who they are — "Elmer Ave is all about rock ‘n’ roll" — but in an era where every free designer goodie lands in the glossy pages of Us People In Touch OK!, you know you’re a lower-level designer when the first major hit on a Google search only brings up some $1,200 blazers worn by the actresses on "The L Word."Anyway, out trot some weak-looking male models, all wearing Elmer Ave clothing. The girls’ challenge is to pick one man’s outfit and "feminize" it for a runway show. Mostly this involves wearing the blazers with no shirts, just ties, or sometimes no pants. Jaeda goes for the "button-down shirt as outfit" look recently memorialized by Angelia Jolie in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," but with her face and makeup she instead gives off a prostitute/Robert Palmer Girl vibe. Megg gets to the end of the runway and starts whipping her hair around — more groupie than rocker chick — and is followed by Melrose, who has the most idiotic walk I’ve ever seen. Naturally, the boys declare her the winner. The girls pile into their Conspicuous Tyra Consumption stretch SUV limo to take them to their Conspicuous Tyra Consumption house — seriously, photos are everywhere in the vehicle, and the walls are plastered with giant posters of fake photo shoots and fake magazine covers shouting Tyra! Tyra! Tyra! In the thrill of the moment, Monique and Christian are the last to realize there are 13 girls but only 11 beds. And here’s where Monique shines: "I’m not sleeping on no beanbag," she interviews, as you see her pick up Eugena’s items and drop them onto someone else’s bed, then drizzle bottled water all over the covers. "I deserve a bed." When Eugena comes back upstairs, Monique is defiantly splayed across the bed and says, "I just decided to pee on the bed today" with this total nonchalance, like "I just decided to try yoga today" or "I just decided to cook tacos for dinner tonight," only with this really threatening undertone. Girl is crazy.Meanwhile, they try to make Melrose out to be the bossy girl for — gasp! — cooking dinner and asking other people to clean up after themselves. However, she’s right — after two days the house is filthy, with trash everywhere, suds in the dishwasher and a ring around the bathtub. This requires a house meeting where the saner girls ask the others to kindly remember other people live there too, and could we also figure out a shower schedule?No, we cannot. Because Monique is there, and she wins the prize for pulling out the That’s Just Me card so early. And she wins extra beeyotch points for also referring to herself in the third person: "That’s just Monique. That’s what I like," she says when referring to long showers. She thinks she’s Mary J. Blige, who also likes to refer to herself in the third person ("Mary J. has had a hard life"). I have seen Mary J. Blige, and you, miss, are no Mary J. Blige.Or, as Anchal puts it, "Monique is cuckoo. There’s something wrong with her." Remember two seasons back when Bre lost it, snapping when someone ate one of her granola bars and going around decimating other models’ food stashes? And when confronted, she was all dead-eyed and passive-aggressive? Monique’s like that right now, and it’s not even halfway through the first episode!Tyra mail! Even the folders that hold the notes now are emblazoned with Tyra photos. I can’t wait for the episode where she preaches humility to the girls.Time for the photo shoot! They arrive at a house where Tyra "acts" like a diva, swanning around with a French accent and calling the girls all sorts of bad names. She is wearing a long black dress and that giant patent leather truss. It makes me think she’s had lipo and this is a decorative way to keep the bandages tight.Then Jay Manuel arrives, reassuring the girls "that wasn’t the real Tyra Banks." Yeah, except for the Pepe LePew accent, how much removed do you think that is? (It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Tyra being a little … attention-intensive. Might I direct you to her digitally retouched forehead?) No, she was playing a stereotype, Jay says, and the models will be participating in (cue the dah-dah-DAH music) "the most controversial photo shoot we’ve ever done on ‘America’s Next Top Model.’" (To imply controversy implies attention, silly man.) They’ll each portray a model stereotype. Melrose, since she won the challenge, gets a personal assistant for the day and a massage — she’s encouraged to be a diva for the day. Perhaps not coincidentally, she’s playing "the model who won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day," in reference to ’90s supermodel Linda Evangelista’s often-repeated comment. Monique will be the "cell phone-throwing model," a not-so-oblique nod to Naomi Campbell. Christian will be the model turned bad actress, which could be Robecca Romijn, Cindy Crawford, even Tyra herself. I look forward to the continuation of this theme: The model who dated the ugly rocker, the boring model who married Ed Burns, the Janice Dickinson-crazy model.Well, it actually takes two fresh young girls to equal one Janice: Megg will be the drugged-out drunk and Jaeda will be the plastic surgery addict. (Yes, because that concept worked so well for Kim during a photo shoot two seasons ago.)Monique is very flat as Naomi Campbell — I mean, cell phone-throwing model. Her face and body stay in one position as her arm moves animatronically in a straight horizontal line. CariDee rocks her dumb blonde shoot. Stupid Jay exhorts Megg to "think Gia!" during her "drugged-out" shoot, no doubt a huge help to the 18-year-old, who was born two years after Gia Carangi died. (Maybe she saw the Angelina Jolie movie on HBO?)Eugena looks like Lil Kim as the black girl the industry’s trying to turn white. Megan’s the diva with lap dog, and Anchal is the narcissist. None of these are remarkable shoots, and Christian’s even worse during her MTA shoot, giving only variations on a single theme. (Jay refers to it as "brokedown Tyra Banks," whereas I think most people thought of Tyra as "brokedown Naomi Campbell," so there you go.)A.J. takes control of the casting couch, and Jaeda does predictably badly on her plastic surgery shot. The best thing I can say about that: She’s got some awesome makeup. The twins take on the "controversial" aspects: Michelle plays a bulimic, all doughnut-covered hands in the bathroom, and Amanda wraps a tape measure around herself as an anorexic. Jay says Amanda needs to become comfortable with her body and needs "a little mirror time," my new favorite phrase.In a not-at-all-set-up drama, Melrose is late for her shoot. Uh, what happened to her personal assistant, whose job it would be to interrupt her massage and get her there to the set on time? However, when she begins defending herself she starts with the words, "Oh, honey," which makes me lose all sympathy she’d garnered and I am back to hating her again, enjoying every bad pose and, even, when she rubs sobbing into the bathroom. (A real bathroom, and not Michelle’s doughnut-strewn set, one hopes.)Judging time! Tyra is, as my makeup artist (and/or drag queen) friends say, "beat back," which means she’s got so much makeup on it obliterates her real features. The highlighter and concealer under her eyes alone could cover one of my walls. She’s also wearing a dress with such big breast cups that it reminds me of Jane Russell saying, "… for us full-figured gals," and a ludicrous bouncy wig.The prizes have changed: Seventeen magazine instead of Elle/Girl, and Elite modeling agency instead of Ford. At one point Tyra says, "I was with Elite for a couple of years" and the girls ooh and aah while the implicit "… until I realized they were a bad agency and left" goes right over their heads.Nigel tells Megan the light caught her back eye, not her front eye, which she’ll need to work on, and Miss J. says, "You can learn to do that at home, in the mirror." Yay! More mirror time!Anchal breaks down and cries talking about how she looks pretty with dark eyes. Tyra tells her to let down her hair ("You’re a lot more model-y now," she says). Speaking of eyes, you can barely see Megg’s hooded ones through all the makeup in the photo. Tyra also decides to re-style Megg, twisting up the sleeves on her dress and tying them to hoochie height. Where’s Jaslene when you need her? Oh, yeah, stomping around the streets of Chicago making fashion opportunities every day.Melrose, meanwhile, is told to put her hair up. Hair up! Hair down! It’s so confusing! Nigel says she "photographs looking old — and that’s with retouching." Ouch! Tyra tells Jaeda to lose the blazer and mocks her sideswept bangs. "This is high school and mall — we don’t do that," she says, conveniently ignoring the fact her sideswept Big Fake Bangs are only about 1 inch longer, even if they are 7 inches higher.Blah blah blah, Tyra gives her trademarked Too Late To Help The Girls advice and blocks out how she would pose for every single photo shoot because she knows everything …It’s down to Melrose and Christian. Melrose is crying before Tyra can even make it to the "must immediately return to the house, pack your bags and go home." Christian is shaking silently. When Tyra says Melrose is still in the competition, she drops to her knees and starts crying — drama queen!Christian, meanwhile, begins crying in the most uncomfortable way. You know how most girls try to hold it together until they’re at least out of the room? Not Christian — she’s doing these huge, wracking sobs that are sad to watch. Even Tyra can’t look at her."I’m crushed," she interviews. "I really didn’t see it coming." Aw, at least she’s spared from next week’s makeovers, where it appears that Melrose receives this season’s Unflattering And Unnatural Blonde dye job. (We see her as part of the group confronting Monique, which involves a lot of inner city-style screaming. I expect there to be a lot of head-bobbing and hand-snapping from her.)

Posted in: ANTM |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.