ANTM 7.8: NO MORE HAIKU, NO MORE JAEDA
November 15th, 2006, 11:07 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Sam Mittelsteadt
This week, JAEDA feels the pain of the mane in Spain and the other girls are mainly plain, but CariDee does something horribly while Eugena does something well — insane!(No, it’s not iambic pentameter like I threatened, and I’m not doing it the whole recap, either.)This week the girls get whisked off to a Los Angeles repertory school and meet Tasha Smith, who has the fakest hair ever (and yes, I’m including her friend, Tyra) and says she is an acting coach. We’re then treated to past moments of Tyra "acting," like when she pretended to faint and "scared" all the girls, or when she was swanning about in a horrible accent pretending to be a diva, and I just have to say: Tasha, I wouldn’t be including Miss Banks in your success stories.After a perfunctory warmup we get to the meat and potatoes of today’s episode, which is an "exercise" called Dump, which Tasha explains by saying, "Whatever it is you’re feeling, feel it," and "make it over-the-top." Loosely translated, a desperate attempt to wring some drama out of this pretty boring crop of girls, who tromp up on stage and sob about how much they want to win, etc.Because she’s Jaeda, of course she has to throw in how devastated she still is by her new look (read: short hair), saying that even her boyfriend is tired of hearing about (which makes him just like the TV audience) and everyone thinks "Oh, just get over it." That’s one thing she got right! But "I don’t feel sexy and I hate it!" (Wah-wah.)CariDee gets up and somehow in the heat of the moment blurts out that she has thought about killing herself before — and on the Personal Revelation Scale, that squarely trumps the heartbreak of psoriasis, but the not-so-rare factor means it still pales by comparison to Michelle’s unprompted lesbian outing. CariDee flees into the bathroom for a sob session with one of the twins, and a camera-hungry Tasha follows them in for a group hug and to reassure them: "It’s all for a purpose." No, not salacious viewer interest, at least according to Tasha: The whole point was to warm ‘em up for … a silent movie? The girls have to follow instructions that Tasha shouts out — "Eat a lemon!" "Answer the door!" "Cry!" while they’re being filmed, and while the exercise might have been tough for the first girl, I imagine that after watching five other people go through the motions, whoever was sixth probably could have stumbled through it, there being no dialogue and all. (Foreshadowing!)Well, not everyone: As Michelle puts it, "Me and prune juice don’t mix very well," and indeed, after being ordered to take a big swig, she gives a big "urp!" and the juice kind of looks like it came … out of her nose? All over her lower face, anyway. It was gross, but Tasha, being the consummate professional, says, "I don’t feel like you’re staying in character." Yes, because the star of this silent movie would love to eat lemons and prune juice like the models do! Michelle, being a math professional, interviews: "I am 135 percent sure that I’m not going to win." And there’s more footage of Tasha berating her, asking to see vomit in the cup. "Actually, I’m 200 percent sure," Michelle amends.Perhaps to reward her for today’s most scandalous secret (foreshadowing!), CariDee wins and gets to do a guest appearance on "One Tree Hill." They get back to the house and see the finished result of their movie, which is the CariDee version. At a certain point she picks up the phone and — surprise! — it’s Tyra on the other side of the line, wearing a mantilla (at this point, I am considering creating a text macro that inserts the word "foreshadowing!"), and suddenly it becomes clear why the girls have been asked to overact on such a grand scale — they have to keep up with Tyra! Eventually she says that when you’re sad, you should take a trip. Only the subtitles are in Catalan, and CariDee (in character) keeps saying, "What? WHAT?!" until Tyra swirls out from the other room, still wearing her Spanish garb, and announces that the girls are going to Spain! (DING! That’s one foreshadowing payoff.) CariDee trucks off bright and early for her "One Tree Hill" gig, where it turns out she’ll be playing … a model. On the set, there is much discussion about how natural and easy it is for her to act. (Foreshadowing!) She also kisses a boy. (Where is that damn quick key?!) We get to see the stupid cartoon plane graphic, which has little cutouts for windows and the girls’ pictures kind of bobbling around inside as it heads for Spain.They board a bus and learn they’ll be picking up some local models, which of course are of the male variety since Jaeda has discussed her boyfriend already, and we all know "Top Model" only throws around the B-word when someone’s going to be kissing a boy-but-not-your-boyfriend for an assignment! The male models are … well, let’s just say there might be an all-male version of "Spain’s Next Top Model" filming simultaneously, because these boys look sort of like the guys who answered the Barbizon ad ("Be a model … or just look like one!") in the back of a magazine. No real stunners. Not like my not-so-secret crush Ryan, whom we used for our spring fashion shoots about green clothing and suits and swimsuits. Months later the hair stylists still get giddy if they talk about running into him. … and, uh, so do I. (Call me?)They head off to dinner, where the girls learn they’ll have to memorize a monologue — in Catalan! — and interact with a male partner during a commercial shoot. There will be kissing. Jaeda begins trying to talk to her male model, who becomes quite ugly as soon as he pulls back his Fabio hair, actually, and he is seriously like, "Could you please not disturb me while I’m trying to eat?"She keeps asking and finally he says something that translates vaguely as, "You’re all about trying to kiss me, and I am … not, right now." I’m not sure if this is the sole reason for the next development, but Jaeda announces he doesn’t like black girls. We never hear him say this, however, which I suspect is inflammatory enough of a statement that the editors would have included the audio/subtitle if they had it. He is, however, still a jerk. CariDee says, "I would make out with, like, Amanda before him." Wrong twin, stupid!The girls get to their huge Spanish apartment and CariDee, as challenge winner, gets to pick which bed she wants first. Will it be the giant-sized one in the room with the giant closet, or one of the twin beds all squished together in another room? Not so dumb about room and board, the CariDee.Melrose interviews that she stayed up two extra hours practicing her dialogue. This is not the last we will hear of this.The next morning, we see the girls still rehearsing. CariDee worries that she can’t roll her tongue: "I sound like a dead car," she says. Michelle, meanwhile, worries about kissing a boy, which she hasn’t done since she was 10 behind a shed. It’s acting! Pretend it’s Sarah Paulson, or Portia de Rossi … or Eleanor Roosevelt!It turns out the script they’ve "learned" — and I use that word loosely — is for Secret (DING!) deodorant. The girls must recite unfamiliar dialogue (DING!) while acting (DING!) with the guys, and then kiss their partner convincingly. Surprisingly, the wrong twin has trouble with that last part: Amanda just kind of lolls her head over, then veers forward, lips first. The effect is kind of like watching an earth-mover push forward, jerkily and horizontal.Eugena compares kissing her partner to "like kissing my closed fist," which sounds like the desperate cry of an abused woman. However, she is glowing and flirty and totally un-Eugenaic through the rest of the commercial, improvising some words (an act she OK’d with the director beforehand).Michelle is ungainly and so focused on the cue cards she ignores the boys, but goes in for the kill when it comes to the kiss. I bet she closed her eyes and dreamed of Amelie Maurismo.Jaeda is so worked up about having to interact with her partner that she can’t recite her words, she looks tense as a board and she can’t finish a take. Jay pulls her aside and, in the caring and supporting words of a photo shoot director, says: "You don’t have to cry. We don’t have time to fix your makeup." Yes — because his own makeup took so long to put on, the makeup artists are probably way behind schedule. Jaeda soldiers through, if by "soldiers" you mean "slogs through muck, looking miserable."Melrose, predictably, does well. I hate to say it, but this girl turns it out week after week. You’ve got to at least love her work ethic.And then CariDee. I don’t know if it’s the foreign language or what, but if you thought Jaeda was bad — well, at least Jaeda thought she had a reason. CariDee can’t do anything right, from speaking to walking to remembering what to do. At one point Jay tells her that her Catalan sounds like "Swedish/Cantonese," because it sure as heck isn’t sounding anything like a Romance language. It’s like she can’t act at all (DING!). However, not surprisingly, when it comes to the kiss, CariDee is all business. (DING DING DING DING DING!) The editors may have spliced together footage from several takes, but CariDee takes to her man as hungrily as a wolf to a pile of nice juicy steaks. I suspect that if they had been standing nearby, CariDee would have worked her way through the other five male models, too, all, "Hey, it’s part of the job, right?" Time for judging! (Well, not the kind I’ve been doing all episode long — the OFFICIAL kind, you know, done in the panel room with Tyra and Twiggy and J. Alexander and Nigel and guest judge, who directed the commercial).Tyra has found a way to distract my eyes off her blurry digital forehead: She’s wearing a corset-style top that basically gives her a Sophia Loren-style spilling-over shelf of bosom. I can’t stop staring at how big her chest is, whether in amazement or disbelief — cover up, girl! — to the point where I pretty much don’t look at her head the entire episode.The good: They say Barcelona sure is agreeing with Eugena, and Melrose did well. She shares the fact she stayed up two hours studying while the other girls roll their eyes.The bad: Michelle wasn’t interacting with her fellow actors. Amanda was better at the commercial, but the kiss was totally unbelievable. (I have to say that even Michelle’s kiss looked more like a makeout session than a kiss, which makes me wonder what Spanish TV looks like, and if the En Espanol tier of Cox Cable would make a passable substitute.)The ugly: They call CariDee out for poor performance, saying she looked a little drunk, and then a few moments later Nigel is calling her behavior "unforgiveable!" in a very angry tone. Twiggy says Jaeda was right to warn the judges she did a bad job, and that she "obviously cannot act." Her explanation about her partner is greeted with a little bit of surprise, but I don’t think with the sympathy I think she expected.And then we cut to commercials — where we get to see the very Secret commercial they just filmed! Only the girls are speaking in English. You’d think they would have maybe mentioned an alternate-language take at some point. … Nah, it’s only reality TV.Once the girls leave the room, Tyra suggests that Melrose’s commercial might be the best in "Top Model" history, and it’s posited that CariDee’s might be the worst. (I have to disagree. Remember Jade’s awesome, mesmerizing, horrendous "drag queen" take of a performance for Cover Girl? "Fabulous!")Outside, the other girls stew at Melrose for her "two extra hours" comment. Eugena says she does stuff like this all the time to make herself look good and, by extension, the other girls look bad. Melrose says (a) Eugena is wrong, and (b) she doesn’t care what they think anyway.Back in the room, the safe roster goes: Melrose, Eugena, twin, twin. It’s down to CariDee and Jaeda: The girl who can’t deliver — easy mnemonic: CariDee/Can’t Deliver — and the girl "who seems to have 9 lives," with as many times as she’s been in the bottom two.Could that be a Halle Berry/"Catwoman" reference? No matter, because Jaeda’s out of luck. (Maybe it was a cat food reference, as in "you’ll be eating it for a while, while your hair grows back in and you try in vain to become a model.") She interviews that getting kicked out … makes her want to try harder in the competition. A little late there, dear.In the lead-out, we learn that viewers selected CariDee as Cover Girl of the Week. In the footage, we see scenes of her dressed up in a matador-themed shoot in the middle of a ring with a red cape, which is only fitting to fade out on some apparently inadvertent … foreshadowing!









November 16th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thought JADE when they said it could be the worst commercial.
I loved Jay’s face when CariDee was practically consuming the “male model’s” face. I think he threw up last weeks popcycle.