America's Next Top Recap: Talking Out of Turn

I like Celia (pictured, left) and so far she’s done almost everything right in this competition.

Except for that time in the last episode when she dared to strut onto Tyra’s runway and speak out of turn about another contestant during judging panel, earning her a thorough ass-chewing (or asshole ripping, if you prefer). Damn that was brutal.

We’ll get back to that eventually, but first let’s talk about the rest of the episode, which featured a visit from “America’s Next Top Recap” favorite Benny Ninja, the return of Sandra the Beast and the most amusingly artsy/pretentious crowd at a runway show yet (which is saying a lot for this program).

To the surprise of no one, Sandra was flying high after having the “best” picture at panel. The placement of my quotation marks was not an accident — Sandra’s picture was good, but I thought London, Fo, and Tahlia’s shots were all better. Aminat agreed with me (she thought London should’ve gotten top honors), but she hates Sandra even more than I do, so we can’t really trust her judgment.

Before Sandra could annoy me any further, the girls got a visit from Toccara, one of the show’s most popular alumni. She came over for a slumber party and wanted to stress the importance of a model having a personality. She did this by repeatedly talking about great her personality was (ick), but I was just happy to have anyone around that would stop Sandra from talking.

The next day, the ladies met up with Benny Ninja and DJ/model Sky Nellor to learn about posing with music. Most of the girls (Allison, Sandra, Tahlia, Kortnie, others) made fools of themselves. (The show had worked particularly worked hard to show how much of a goof off Kortnie apparently is. Foreshadowing!) Meanwhile, the usual suspects (Celia, Natalie) excelled. The girls learned they’d be modeling clothes by the Blonds at a fashion show at super-duper hipster/transgender club the Mansion. I’m convinced Benny Ninja spends at least 40 percent of his time at the Mansion, where 60 percent of the people (men and women) look like Boy George.

Benny shouted “pose” to the girls (I thought it was part of the soundtrack at first) and encouraged the audience to boo weak poses (that was pretty funny). Unsurprisingly, the final two were Celia and Natalie, with Natalie unable to keep her balance on the runway due to her head getting so big and Celia fiercely picking up the win.

To be perfectly honest, I’d rather watch Natalie’s super-confidence in her abilities than Tahlia’s wimpy, tedious complaining. I totally understand how Tahlia can get really insecure because of the burns on her body, but her whole purpose for entering this competition was to inspire people. Last night, she seemed to be inspiring people to quit. Celia was also annoyed and seemed to get support from the rest of the girls in saying that, if someone other than Tahlia got eliminated, they should speak up and tell the judges about Tahlia’s repeated threats to quit.

I’m not usually a fan of mutinies or persecutions against one contestant (especially when that contestant is already down in the dumps), but I had to kind of agree with Celia’s sentiments. Of course, that could be because I hate quitters. Mostly though, I agreed with Natalie that Tahlia only wants to quit when she’s not doing well. (I hate frontrunners even more than I hate quitters.)

We saw this after Tahlia rocked her photo shoot and earned top photo of the week honors.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, the girls were posing as early 20th century Ellis Island immigrants, complete with period-appropriate photographic equipment.

Since the older camera didn’t allow for much movement, and the concept of the shoot (immigrant family photo) didn’t lend itself to too much outrageousness, I actually found this to be one of the more boring photo shoots in recent history (despite the presence of Benny Ninja and some terrific child models in the background).

The only ones I really liked were Teyona (most authentic), Tahlia (bonus points for looking model-y AND looking at the camera), and Natalie (looking like a dead ringer for Keira Knightley). The rest of the girls weren’t so much bad, they just missed the mark by looking off into the distance (like London) or getting lost in the background (like Celia).

The final two was comprised of Kortnie and Sandra, but because we’d been told Kortnie was a goof off, and because Sandra creates too much drama in the house to let go (and because Kortnie’s picture was worse), the outcome wasn’t a surprise at all.

What WAS a surprise was that Celia decided to go ahead with the semi-mutiny. After Kortnie’s elimination, Celia strode onto the runway from her safe perch and told Tyra about Tahlia’s ambivalence and repeated desire to quit. While I didn’t expect Tyra to exactly say, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I’ll let Tahlia go because you said so”, the way she completely smacked Celia down was still pretty harsh.

Tyra said that Tahlia had never expressed to her or any of the other judges that she wanted to quit (Why would she? She’s actually been doing well in panel?) and said that she was disappointed in Celia because it wasn’t her place to tattle on another contestant. I can definitely understand Tyra’s latter point (and it would’ve been nice if another contestant had spoken up in Celia’s defense), but this still felt more like Tyra-nt re-establishing her domination over every single person on the show than an honest defense of Tahlia’s merits in the competition.

So what’d you think of this episode? Is there ANYONE on this show who isn’t a “Random Profession/model”? Was I the only one surprised when Philippe Blond spoke and she was a man? Finally, did Celia just kill her chances at winning this thing or while Tyra let bygones be bygones?