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“America’s Next Top Model” Recap (18.10): Kung Fu Crying

Last Week!

The models went to Macau! Catherine got kicked off! Drama ahead! 

Modelland East!

The ladies walk in to see Laura‘s winning photo from last week. Go, Team LezBiModel! The producers have written “I Feel You” across the top in a ’70s lipstick font that they took from a Donna Summer album. Why do they keep crapping up the photos like that? Doesn’t it make the photographers cranky? 

Laura is stoked to have her second winning photo and a challenge win to boot. She says Sophie is happy for her, but the others are wondering “When is this bitch going to fall?” Instead of the Box of Prizes that Must Not Be Named, Laura gets a prize that’s just for her and Eboni wonders if it’s cutthroat instead of teams now. Alisha interviews that she loves Eboni, but duh. 

Alisha also says things are getting intense and catty as Laura admires the clothes and jewelry from her gift bag. Alisha says Laura is not the biggest competition. Eboni begs to differ and says Laura is the girl to beat. And recalls that Laura hates her. 

Laura says that Eboni is obnoxious, spoiled, and vain, and that she’s not going to beat Laura in a rough childhood throwdown. Dang. We see a shot of Eboni fretting over Laura not liking her as Annaliese wisely says “If, she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t like you,” in a tone that gently suggests Eboni should move on and do anything, anything else. 

Eboni lists her accomplishments and says she’s going to win. Credits! 

Modelland East!

The ladies eat while Alisha says being in the bottom two doesn’t scare her while completely obsessing over it. She came in second in her season in Britain, so she’s not used to this whole bottom two thing. Alisha thinks Sophie should have been in the bottom two and says Laura should be a phone sex operator. We cut to an old clip of Laura saying “women definitely give me better orgasms” to AzMarie during Week One and the clip of her saying that really good sex makes her feel powerful from last week. We then get a confessional of Laura saying yes, she loves sex, because duh. 

Wow, Alisha is on quite the confessional rampage! She says Annaliese is a presenter, not a model, which is like invoking the angry spirit of Legendary PR Maven Kelly Cutrone to come and smite someone. Alisha says she has the longest legs and the best body of any of them. 

Annaliese feels chipper because she’s in the Final Five and feels like she’s steadily getting better, noting that she has risen to a personal best of runner-up photo last time, while Alisha has been up and down throughout the competition. 

Tyra Mail!

As always, the message is capitalized by a madwoman and uses fonts that came bundled with your clip art in 1991. 

Some models think it’s the acting challenge, but Alisha excitedly says she thinks they’ll be knocking someone out. What happened to her on the plane to Macau? Was there a lot of gamma radiation or what? 

Model Bus!

Laura wonders when she’s going to have sex again. Golly! Do you think the editors are just maybe possibly setting her up? Sophie says there’s not a challenge about having sex, and then says it’s getting stressful. Well, yes, because no one has the tension reliever of — oh. She means they’re getting down to the girls who are really ready to fight for the top spot. 

Hong Kong!

The models love the architecture. Sophie says it looks like childhood games were turned into buildings. Laura points out that skyscrapers are phallic, and Alisha goes overboard again and interprets that observation as sexual attraction. She says, “Now, that is just disgusting. How can you live life like that? You walk on the street, you want to hump a pole?” Oh, that’s not what she meant. Give it a rest, prudeball. 

Miss J. is here! He mentions Hong Kong’s thriving movie industry. We also meet actor/pop star Nicholas Tse. And some attackers! Suddenly everybody is kung fu fighting! It doesn’t even look a tiny bit real, but it’s charming enough. Miss J.’s terrible, overblown reaction shots are so bad that they may have been what got everyone fired. 

Laura thinks Nicholas Tse is cute. Miss J. plugs two of his (Tse’s) movies and mentions his Hong Kong film award. Sophie does a better job of giving perspective by explaining that Tse is a massive actor, on a par with Brad Pitt over here. Nicholas says that acting is “emotion, expression, devotion, coordination,” which also describes modeling. OK, fine. Nicholas announces that the girls will do a fight scene, and the winner gets to come back to Macau to do a music video. That is a good prize. 

Laura has never acted or done a fight scene, but she totally wants this one. She says she’ll do whatever she has to do to get this. The producers are jerkbirds, and might as well drop a flashing neon sign behind her saying “But does she really mean ANYTHING?!” 

The girls learn their fight combo. Eboni says the moves are easy, and she got a yellow belt in tae kwon do as a kid, so she’s got this. Time to pair up with the stuntmen! Ooh, except for Laura, who as last week’s challenge winner is paired up with Nicholas Tse. 

Annaliese feels confident because she was a gymnast, and is overall feeling good about the competition. She actually looks pretty good rehearsing her fight scene. Alisha says she picked it up pretty quick. Her punches are all over the place, but you can’t fault her enthusiasm. 

Oh, dear. Sophie is too adorable to fight. She’s prancing around and making little teeny fairy punches. She says she’s from Oxford and these things don’t happen there. But then she thinks about winning and starts to tear it up. 

Nicholas coaches Laura in a totally normal way, but the producers play seduction music over it, because they are stink vultures from Hell. Laura does mention that Nicholas is cute, and then that she finds Asian men sexy, not realizing that the producers will use pretty normal comments to try to edit her into a ravening sex beast. 

Remember your Top Model lessons, girls: There is either prudery or rampant sex mania. There is no such thing as a normal, healthy sexual impulse, and even if there were, it would certainly not be OK to talk about it in a natural and straightforward way. Someone set up a Kickstarter to get Tyra and the gang some therapy. 

Lines! Holy monotone, they are also getting lines! Alisha says she isn’t threatened by lines, and none of the other girls can really act. She is correct. Eboni is so bad that when I played this episode Meryl Streep broke into my apartment and punched me in the neck. Sophie is also not great during her rehearsal. 

Back to Eboni. Wow, no one is a gem, but Eboni somehow manages to sound like she learned to speak English from a car navigation system, then decided it was too warm and expressive and dialed it back a bit. Alisha really wants to show her stuff because she was in the bottom two last week. 

Time to shoot!

Nicholas says they’re going to keep rolling no matter what, which we all know is a made-up rule, but in the grand Top Model tradition, we will totally pretend it is how a set really works. Each model gets one practice and one real take. Eboni is first. Her rehearsal is not great, and Nicholas tells her to use her Tae Kwon Do. So either Nicholas is psychic or he’s maybe chatted with the models more than we’ve been led to believe. Or maybe Eboni just has an incredibly detailed résumé? 

Time to roll. Miss J. helpfully announces that this is Eboni’s one take. Eboni walks on and says “Oh, no. We have company,” so woodenly that several spruce trees shuffle over to watch and carve little hearts on themselves. Eboni looks OK throwing punches, but then she delivers her final line so badly that one would not be surprised to learn that she said each word in a different recording studio on a different day in a different year and they were all spliced together by engineers who did not wish to risk exciting the pride of ferocious lions who had inexplicably been allowed into the editing suite. 

Alisha is up next! She says her lines one million billion jillion times better than Eboni, by which I mean pretty OK. Her punching is fake and wild, though. But again, nice — or at least perfectly competent — acting. We see Eboni watching Alisha’s shoot, and she acknowledges that Alisha nailed it. 

We haven’t seen Annaliese practicing her dialogue yet. Is she a ringer? Let’s find out. She’s super stoked at the chance to come back to Hong Kong and be in a music video. She does well! Perfectly fine with the dialogue, even giving a saucy little look to her camera at the end, and she looks good with the punching. Laura gets bleeped and blurred. She was hoping the others would suck. 

Laura is up next. She says when she thinks of Angelina Jolie in fight scenes, she thinks of her sexy hair flying all around, so that’s her strategy. Laura does a pretty good job with her first line, then lets down her pony tail to complete her fight. She makes pant-hoot noises while she fights, but remembers to act while she’s punching, and does a respectable job. Alisha reminds us that Laura is not Angelina Jolie. 

Sophie is ready to bring it home. Whoa, she says her first line normally, like a real actress, and the contrast with the others is startling. Her fighting is terrible — they actually animate pixie dust coming out of her fists — but her line delivery is really pretty good. And adorable. 

Nicholas liked the way Eboni improvised and took off her jacket, Alisha’s wink to the camera, Annaliese’s bad-assery with the fighting, Laura’s modelicious thinking for taking down her hair, and Sophie’s ability to interact with her scene partner like a real human being. And the winner is — Laura! 

She is incredibly happy, and says she’s glad she can show the judges she’s still winning. Alisha is pissed, and acknowledges that she’s hating right now. She says there’s no way Laura deserved that win and she’s pissed off big time. I am curious to know who she thought the winner should be; it was objectively not Alisha. 

Modelland!

Whoops, turns out Alisha does think she should have won that one. Eboni says everyone is a little pissed. Alisha doesn’t understand why she didn’t get picked. Because you were punching things in Iowa, hon. Sophie thinks Nicholas was eyesexing Laura. Laura says she wouldn’t mind having sex with him. 

Somehow that morphs into Eboni saying, “She admits that she didn’t do the best, and yet she still won the challenge.” When was that exactly? I would like to see the footage. I mean, yes, lord knows what actually goes on, but since the editors and producers are determined to make Laura look like a naughty bad frequent sex haver this week, you’d think they would include a statement like that if it existed. 

Eboni and Alisha suggest that Laura “seduced” Nicholas to win. By which everyone clearly seems to mean “flirted with” at first, but then Eboni says “She’s sleeping her way to the top.” 

And the sleeping volcano that is Laura begins to rumble. She is not cool with anyone saying that. Not at all. Eboni, having slandered and massively pissed off the wildest card in the house, goes to sleep. Never become a character in a horror movie, Eboni. 20 minutes after Eboni crashes out, Laura comes in to the room to make damn sure everyone is clear on the fact that she wouldn’t sleep her way to the top. (And, really, young models, never forget Sharon Stone‘s sage warning: You can only sleep your way to the middle.) 

Alisha, whom I am really disliking this week, interviews that Laura saying she wouldn’t mind sleeping with Nicholas is the exact same thing as saying she would sleep with him to get ahead, which it is not, and then says that Laura is a slag, which is British for slut. Alisha gets a penalty flag and a loss of 30 goodwill points for slut-shaming and false accusations. Ugh. 

Annaliese, in an interview, says “We still know you as over-the-top sexual Laura who orgasms on photo shoots. Seems a bit fishy.” And then she makes a Force 10 purse-lipped bitchface. All the Brit girls I know are fun and relaxed about sex. Whence in England did this Carnival of Prudery come from? 

Eboni says she was joking and she’s sorry if Laura was offended. And then she pulls up the covers and makes likes she’s going back to sleep to stop the fight, which is a reasonably good tactic. Laura stomps off and Eboni points out that Laura has called her a bitch and she didn’t care. (Except for the part where she was obsessing over it.) 

Eboni says she’s stressed. Laura angrily drinks tea. Sophie says there can only be one winner and the pressure is mounting like a Jack-in-the-box and then makes a little “Bew!” noise and hand gesture that indicates that her childhood Jack-in-the-boxes a) were adorable and b) exploded. 

TyraMail!

“Only the early risers make it to the top! Fierce and Love, Tyra” 

Once again, we are given vague false hopes about the models having to deal with worms. At some very early hour (There’s a caption, but it’s cut off if you don’t have a widescreen TV.), wardrobe stylist Anita Patrickson breaks into Modelland East and announces that it’s time for hair and makeup, which is already being set up. Sophie mentions that it’s a startling way to be awakened. Just in case you forgot that this show is cruel. 

Laura, in an astonishingly poor choice of words, notes that the other models can see how much she’s “lusting” for the Top Model crown. She says she can deal with the other girls bitching and still rock. 

A very tall tower!

The model bus pulls up and Alisha says she is not cool with where she was going, and that she does not do heights. We see a shot that is either Annaliese in stark terror or massively yawning. Jay Manuel is here! He notes that he knows that some of the models are afraid of heights because of the CN Tower in Toronto during Week 5. Never show Jay your weakness, models! It’s like inviting an orange vampire into the house. Jay admits that he lied in Toronto, and that he only meant they weren’t going to do a height photo shoot right then, but now they are. Wow, this is like Chekov’s rule of modeling: If someone pulls a giant tower out of a desk in the first act, you’d better be dangling a terrified model off it by the third. 

Jay, just to be a dick, tells them they’ll be 764 feet above the ground. It’s the home of the highest bungee jump in the world. Jay tells them they’ll be in harnesses with Nigel Barker. Oh, don’t get all huffy, Brit prudes, he means safety harnesses, dangling outside. It’s raining and windy. Nigel seems perfectly happy, but Sophie is so nervous she’s crying a little as she describes the weather conditions. She doesn’t know if she can do this. 

Laura looks happy about this one and interviews that she loves heights and thrill-seeking. Jesus, Laura, why don’t you just record a selection of titillating nouns and verbs for the producers to cut together and call it a day. Sophie is scheduled to go first, because it’s better television if they don’t give her time to compose herself. She hates flying, roller coasters, and this. Anita Patrickson advises her to look out, not down. 

Nigel tells the models that they will be representing the strength and the power of Macau. Fine. I’ll be representing the speed and agility of Los Angeles. Nigel wants Sophie to go first, and Sophie thinks she needs some time to calm the hell down. Nigel asks for a volunteer, and Laura says she’ll go out. “Damn straight, the world needs to see Zagalicious.” Oh, Laura. 

Sophie snaps out of it. She thinks Laura is her toughest competition, and knows that she shouldn’t let Laura get a leg up, even if she’s a friend. She also knows that at 21, she doesn’t have many years left to get in with New York modeling agents. She pulls it together, puts on her sweetest voice, and tells Nigel she can go first after all because she doesn’t want to delay things. Damn, Sophie. Good girl. Nigel says it’s raining out there anyway, so what are a few tears? 

Sophie gets into her harness as Laura looks on, mildly pissed. Sophie shuffle-steps out to her mark and then gets help turning around. Jay, because he is a dick, asks Sophie to pose without holding onto her safety line and then makes his “Oh, dear” face. Alisha watches Sophie and tries to play it cool even though she’s freaking out too. 

Sophie loosens her pose a bit, and Jay says she got some good shots. She shuffles back to Nigel and he gives her a big hug as she bursts into tears. Sophie goes inside to get warm and says it’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. Annaliese says “The thing is, I’m not scared of actual heights, I’m scared of falling from a height.” She hates the wind in this context. 

OK, so all three Brits are afraid of falling and two of them are vocally uncomfortable with people saying they enjoy sex. If we can get Sophie to get all uptight on us, we may have Britain’s Next Top Metaphor on our hands.

Hmm. Annaliese may have been playing her “fear” up just a bit for the cameras — once she’s out on the platform, she seems suspiciously fine. Jay says he really liked how Annaliese worked the harness, and AfterEllen.com readers, as one, wish AzMarie was still on the show so we could have all passed out from the hilariousness of that remark and perhaps set it as a ring tone. 

Jay says Annaliese did an archer, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sort of thing, which is when Nigel realizes Jay is just saying random things again and explains that Annaliese didn’t fight it. Jay says that Annaliese, standing in a dress on a high platform and holding a harness, “really understands the culture here.” Thanks, Jay. 

Sophie tells Alisha and Eboni that being on the platform was like an out-of-body experience. I think she’s half genuinely telling them her real feelings and half cold messing with them. It’s totally working on Alisha. Laura is ridonkulously excited for the shoot. Eboni says Laura is “obviously physically attracted to Nigel,” either because the producers have goaded her because that’s today’s storyline about the Naughty Bisexual or because Eboni just feels like being a creepbucket. Seriously: I know Laura is a wild child, but they can’t even find a shot where she’s even really paying much attention to him. 

Laura goes right to the edge of the platform and crouches and bends. Jay loves how fabulous she is. Laura waves cheekily through the window at the other girls and, really, she deserves a little gloat at this point. Annaliese and Eboni look stunned and crabby. 

Eboni reminds us that Laura hates her, then says she needs to work on her facial expressions. She heads out and crouches a lot like Laura did. Eboni reminds herself of how far she’s come and that she can still be successful despite her rough childhood. 

Laura says she doesn’t think Eboni is as strong as Sophie and Alisha and Annaliese. She is biased, but she is correct. She says she’d rather have a Brit win than Eboni. 

Alisha says she’s terrified, but is just going to focus on her family. That and her work with the Anti-Sex League. Alisha knows she needs a good shot, so she steels herself and works it. Nigel says all the girls got a wake-up call, and Alisha knew this was make-or-break — but she wasn’t as good as she could be. 

Modelland!

Eboni is worried because of her past performances. The editors realize they’ve telegraphed the bottom two way too soon and cut in a shot of Annaliese saying “I just realized I’m the only one who hasn’t got Best Photo.” Sophie is drained. She hopes her obvious commitment will keep her in. 

Alisha is shouting to Eboni, who is right there, that she’s been exhausted for the last few photo shoots and she’s done everything they asked her to do. Laura, in an interview portion that may or may not be relevant to that, is sick of hearing the other models find out about insignificant things. She says this competition is about going through struggles and coming out on top, so let’s get rid of the regret. 

Alisha says the shoot was so horrible that she’s wondering if she even wants to be a model now. I’m pretty sure there are normally fewer platforms in the sky, Alisha. 

Panel!

Tyra is wearing a dress that goes to mesh at the knees. She also calls Nicholas Tse “Nick.” Well, well, well. Tyra says she is lightheaded and doesn’t know if it’s because of the heights the models went to or because Nick is so damn fine. Everyone laughs obligingly. 

Annaliese, like some but not all of the other models, seems to have cut her flag top into a halter. I really hope this is evidence of an ongoing model poker game. She says the shoot was fun. Nigel liked what she did and Legendary PR Maven Kelly Cutrone says she looks like a warrior. Tyra tells Annaliese to avoid Angry Nose. Everyone likes how Annaliese used the harness in her shoot, but they still Photoshopped the harness out. Fine. 

Alisha’s shot is almost completely obliterated by rain on the lens. Seriously? That’s the best ANTM technology had to offer? Nigel likes her weird shot, but thinks she could have done better. Tyra thinks Alisha looks like she is going to church in the wind, and then does a tight five on that topic. Anyway, she almost hit high fashion. If only she’d made more of a swan neck! LPRMCK doesn’t like it. 

Sophie admits that she hated the shoot, but with the harness removed it makes her look like she has crazy awesome arms, like she is power grooving on top of a building. Nigel mocks Sophie’s fear, but says she did surprisingly well in her calm moments. LPRMCK says she doesn’t like Sophie’s pose. She is incorrect. 

Tyra casually mentions how many times she has posed on the edge of a cliff, because no big deal, and says in those situations she just went somewhere else. (Inwardly. She didn’t stand up and walk off the set. Or at least not on the occasions she’s talking about. Shush and let Tyra inspire you.) “I’m going to give them the product. But I’m not going to give them me, or else we’re not going to get the shot.” Moral: Tyra is a better model than any of them and always will be. I always feel like after she tells one of these stories, she should walk over and dominance-hump the model she just schooled. 

Eboni was not scared, so Nigel says she should have done more. He liked the body language, but not her face. LPRMCK thinks the proportions of Eboni’s headpiece are off. Which would be an excellent thing to bitch about to the art director or the wardrobe stylist, neither of whom are here. This is something like the third time LPRMCK has made comments that suggest she thinks models design clothes and sets and things. Maven, my tooch pad. 

Tyra also doesn’t like Eboni’s face and says she needs to learn her angles. Tyra tells Eboni that she, too, needed to learn her angles once, and how to cheat for the camera. And then she knocks Eboni to the floor, makes her show her belly, and bites her neck. 

Laura looks chic and fantastic. “Nick” thinks Laura needs more leg extension, and Tyra compliments his eye, but loves this photo. Well played, Laura. 

Judging!

Tyra says “Are y’all ready to eliminate somebody? I said, are y’all ready to eliminate somebody?” in a sweet Southern Belle accent while wildly batting her eyes. A shot of Nicholas Tse as he says “Yes, Tyra,” reveals that he has no freaking idea why she is doing that. It might be the funniest moment of the show. 

LPRMCK calls Annaliese a TV presenter again. Does she know what that phrase means? I think she thinks it means “serial nun puncher.” Nicholas agrees that she’s an actress. LPRMCK keeps yelling “She’s not a model!” Nigel points out that Annaliese keeps getting better, and invokes Mercedes from Cycle 2. He says Mercedes was similar to Annaliese, which she was not, and that she is still a successful model, which, OK, not a bad point. 

Nigel thinks Alisha should be able to model, but can’t. He also says she doesn’t know what her feet are doing, which is fascinating. I understand that, though: While I was doing last week’s recap, my feet totally robbed a bank and I didn’t even notice until I pulled off my new Fabergé slippers to go to sleep. LPRMCK says, “Really, there’s nothing sadder than a 6-foot girl who’s a size 2 that’s that beautiful that’s not photogenic.” She’s right: Famine is hilarious compared to that. Nigel says he needs a woman to have sense of humor. Fist bump, Nigel. 

LPRMCK is still making fun of Sophie’s picture. She says she looks like a weather vane and then makes gestures that look nothing like a weather vane, but do look like a Godzilla attack. LPRMCK works in mysterious ways. Nicholas says Sophie is adorable and energetic. Correct. LPRMCK is incredibly pissy this evening, and says that as a publicist — IS EVERYONE AWARE THAT SHE’S A PUBLICIST? — she would have been on the phone trying to get the terrified Sophie pulled off the shoot because she might not be able to deliver. 

Nigel: “But she did.” 

LPRMCK: “-ish.” 

And with that, LPRMCK is dead to me for the rest of the episode. 

Which means that some ghost spent a minute bitching about Eboni’s pose. Nigel says he liked Eboni’s calm persona — neither too jazzed nor too scared, and a photographer wants that. 

Everyone loves Laura’s photo. Nigel points out that she had the advantage of not being hampered by fear drool, but I’m pretty sure we just got that bit to add “suspense.” 

Best Photo:

Laura! Go, Team LesBimodel, go! 

Runner up:

Sophie 

Exact Middle:

Annaliese 

Alisha and Eboni remain! Both are sobbing, both have high potential. Both are disappointing! 

This Week’s Obsolete Model:

Eboni — OR IS SHE?! 

Alisha says she can’t stay! She has things she needs to do for herself to get her spirit back and be Alisha again. She says she can’t take this away from Eboni. 

Whoa! Tyra says Alisha can leave, but Eboni is leaving with her. Eboni knows she’s been boned and she’s not cool with it. She is stonefaced at having been dicked over as Tyra coaches her on learning to find her angles and gently humps her off the show. Alisha is sobbing as Tyra hugs her. She says that this is harder than modeling, accidentally pointing out that the show does not, in fact, have much to do with modeling. 

We are down to the top three, y’all. See you next time for go-sees and models posing inside a giant bottle! 

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