9-2: Smoke gets all up in your grill

(My apologies for being so late with this recap. On the plus side, though, not only will it be late, it'll be short! Yeaaa!)

The first couple episodes of any season of ANTM are all about thinning out the herd, getting rid of girls who probably shouldn't have made it into the house in the first place. But even as we're weeding out what doesn't belong on the show, we're introducing all kinds of new crap that doesn't belong on this show either. Tyra, God help us all, has apparently put her social conscience on steroids. This is going to be one message-heavy season, folks.

"I know, I know, it's stupid. Just keep telling yourselves that you might get a contract for ads nobody will ever see. And you might want to take this nicotine patch. Huh? Oh... no reason."

We get our first taste of The Gospel According To Tyra when the girls are introduced to their new transportation: a green machine that runs on biodiesel. (Which, I think, might mean this. Yummy!) Oh, yes, folks. Tyra has hopped on the environmental trend, a festival of well-intentioned, half-assed, self-congratulatory semi-measures to save the planet without actually inconveniencing ourselves. (Sorry for the bitterness, but I remember Environmentalism Lite from its last period of popularity in the early 90s, and clearly it didn't work too well if we're back here again with the stakes raised even higher.)

(I stole this image from Rich. Sorry about that.)

Not only is the bus green, the house is "green" as well, both in terms of decoration and in terms of the little messages about how to conserve resources thoughtfully posted around the place. What's funny about this is that I'm willing to bet that television production is not exactly an environmentally-friendly industry. While the girls are limiting their showers to 10 minutes or less, how many kilowatts are those background lights burning up?

But while the lights are (inefficiently) hot, Heather comes across as cold to her fellow competitors. Heather has a form of autism that's spelled "Aspberger's" but that she pronounces "Ozburgers." (I'm not sure whether to imagine burgers made of Australians, of Ozzy Osbourne, or of Seth Green on Buffy. I am sure that I don't want to eat any of them. Well, maybe a nibble of the Seth Green.) Some of the girls think Heather is weird, and Bianca makes the lovely comment that Heather is on a "three-second delay." Nice. Mila, meanwhile, actually asks Heather what it's like to have her condition, which I take as an admirably straightforward attempt to understand someone. She's not a rocket scientist, and she's definitely not a model, but Mila seems nice, which is a quality I value on reality TV, if only for its rarity.

So now that we've learned about environmentalism and Ozburgers Syndrome, surely the photo shoot will be full of frivolous glamour to balance out the episode, right? If you said "sure!" then you're still new to Tyra, you lucky dog. No, the photo shoot is about all the ways smoking can ruin your life forever. Think I'm exaggerating? Wait until you see the third-degree burns, open facial wounds and stillborn babies.

Here we see Ambreal coughing up blood because her lungs are all eaten up with the cancer. I like the different faces she's giving in the different sides of the photo, and she's got a good coughing-up-blood posture. I don't know what to make of the fact that I just typed the second half of that sentence.

Bianca's gums have clearly taken on a three-second delay as she gnashes her crumbling teeth over advanced gingivitis. Bianca's stank personality comes out even more as she picks a fight with Lisa backstage, then makes up later -- then tells the camera that she made up just so it wouldn't be held against her by the judges. I hate that such a slimy personality comes with such a gorgeous face; it means she'll be on my TV far longer than she probably should.

I'm not even registering Chantal at this point. I see her being eliminated around episode 6. (I will, as always, surely be wrong about that.)

While Ebony's thin legs were called out at panel, what strikes me about this picture (besides the totally dead eyes in both shots) is how freaking big her head looks in the oxygen-mask side. Look at the size of that melon! Otherwise? Yawn. Nice to see she's working on toning down the bitchiness, though. Maybe she realizes that Bianca has her beat in that category.

This being ANTM, of course the model with the social disorder is going to be forced to touch someone else! It doesn't look like Saleisha is all that thrilled about touching Heather either, though. This picture is supposed to illustrate the dangers of secondhand smoke, but they're not really portraying it well. Maybe if "before" Heather had a look of frustration that Saleisha was smoking and "after" Saleisha looked plagued with guilt over what her smoking had done to Heather, it might've worked. But this picture is just kinda there.

Damn! I don't really see a model in Janet, but did you have to set her on fire?! Sadistic freaks.

Smoking apparently turns Jenah into an alien. Or maybe into Leech from X-Men 3. Jenah is one of my favorites, but I like her better in the "after" shot than in the "before." At least there's something going on in her expression with the bald head attached.

I don't get why Kimberly is there. I really don't. I see her getting eliminated in the next episode. (We'll see tonight, I guess! Sorry about the lateness again, y'all.)

Now, here we go! With this picture, Lisa goes from being my pick for Top 2 to my pick for final winner. She's working it in the "after" picture, but more importantly, she's working it in the "before," where all she has to work with is a cigarette. I think maybe Bianca is targeting Lisa because the girl is such fierce competition. To that, I say: well-spotted... and good luck, 'cause even Bianca's bone structure is no match for Lisa's obvious spark.

Oh, dear. Mila manages to flub both sides of the shoot, looking startled in the "before" and not sufficiently mournful in the "after." She says she just wants to have fun with everything, and that's a lovely attitude to have in general, but it doesn't help when Tyra has decided that the theme of the shoot is PAIN. Mila, of course, is shown the door at the end of the episode.

I'm already sad for Sarah. She's beautiful, and does a nice job of conveying a vain woman horrified by her wrinkles in this shot. But there's no way she can win ANTM, and we all know why.

Stillborn baby. I can't even formulate an opinion of Victoria in this shot because I'm distracted by the stillborn freakin' baby. I'm not sure how long Victoria will last, anyway; she's got a rather horsey face and she corrected Twiggy in panel. (She was right; softspoken doesn't necessarily mean insecure, but still.)

The outster of Mila comes as no surprise. The stupid challenge (put together an outfit in an Old Navy) is no surprise, although it's always a delightful surprise to see my adopted cousin Benny Ninja. But we do get a bombshell at panel: Tyra has declared this to be a no-smoking cycle. But... but, Tyra! There are several smokers in the house who will surely experience withdrawal, making them miserable and cranky and... oh. Right. Gotcha.

Start placing your bets for the squabbles now, folks. It's on!

Comments

[Patrick Pricken]

So, as a German who's only reading along: Why won't Sarah win?

[Catherine Cantieri]

Willkommen! The reason Sarah won't win is that, no matter how much Tyra says that she wants a plus-size-model winner, for eight seasons now, the winner has been a size 2 or smaller. No matter how beautiful the larger girls may be, they're doomed from the start. But thanks for reading!

[Patrick Pricken]

So you're saying the girl above is "plus size"? Ye gawds.

[Dr. Beevomit]

If you can't see a woman's clavicles and/or rib bones protruding through the skin, then yes, she's plus-sized. Sick, isn't it?

You definitely called Kimberly's ouster, and it certainly seems like Lisa (the "exotic dancer" who somehow manages *not* to remind everyone of her occupation with her skankalicious attire and attitude, unlike, say, RoL's Heather) is the gal to beat. Kudos to you for calling out what I'd always translated in my mind as "Ausberger's syndrome" - which is basically autism without the communication deficits. Every time Heather would mispronounce her own disorder (again, which is *not* marked by communication deficits), I had to yell at the TV, "It's ASPERGER'S, dammit!" My wife now duct tapes my mouth when we watch. Now that I have the transliteration "Ozburgers", my money's on Munchkin burgers.