America's Next Top Model Series Seven #3

Not since 101 Dalmatians have I seen so many bitches with bad hair in the one room. Magnificent. I always, always love a Makeover Episode, but this one came with extra claw-sharpening and a few choice bleeps in addition to the usual wailing and kvetching. Buckle in for the 'Short Back And Snide Asides' episode of America's Next Top Model

· Okay – the new version of the theme song sucks arse. Because she doesn't have her greedy fried-chicken fingers in enough pies already, now it seems Tyra "sings" the theme, or at least speaks all the breathy, saucy bits – especially the one that starts it all: "You wanna be on top?". I suppose if Tyra's always on the bottom, that would explain why her hair is always such a god-awful mess.

· Twin Michelle and Piggy Megan practice their runway walks in the Runway Walk Practice Room, and gush about how it's good to be supportive of each other. Megan gushes a bit too much, and I start to twig that she's the first of this series' token gay girls. This means she will lose.

· A Tyra Mail gets the girls up at some ungodly hour, and Monique gripes about how she didn't get her beauty sleep. This starts a bell tolling which continues to ring throughout this episode, and it's a bell which signifies that Monique is a catty, prissy, stuck-up, hard-faced, bitter demon of a girl, likely to stir up mayhem at every turn and cause some excellent, excellent telly in the meantime. It's a very telling tolling. The Jays meet the girls for a café breakfast and discuss their upcoming makeovers. Continuing the Groundhog theme of Things Which Happen Every Series, Jaeda the Jaw boasts "My hair grows so fast. Shave it. I don't care". Hands up who senses a delicious tanty just around the corner? I do! I do! Wheeee!

· Incongruous, irrelevant breakfast over, the girls head back to the Module Mansion, but find that something large and heavy is blocking the door. It's Tyra! She leads the modules through the house with a quick psychotic sashay, and reveals that the living room has been transformed into a Makeover Salon. The mountain may not come to Mohammed, but promise it a trim and some highlights and it'll bring its own towels. Tyra introduces their stylist, Frederic Fekkai (too… many… jokes… about … surname… rushing… rushing… all at once…), who she says has done her own hair for years. Run, girls. While you still can. Tyra then, one by one, lets each module know exactly how they'll be shorn, shaped, and shaved by unveiling truly abysmal drawings of each girl with her new do, apparently sketched by the slow kids in a Year 9 art class at a school for children with rickets.

o Melrose will be platinum blonde, which may only serve to make her lips and eyes look bigger. Soon they'll meet over her nose and she'll suffocate.
o Brooke Witherspoon will be taken from blonde to chocolate, because blondes love it when you do that.
o Eugena the Boring will be given hair extensions. Yawn.
o Piggy Megan will be going blonde, blonde, blonde.
o Anchal will be given layers, and her hairline will be taken back an inch by way of medieval torture and a pair of tweezers.
o Malicious Monique will have her old weave removed, and a new one put in. Why?
o Caridee will be given blonde extensions, even though she's perfect.
o A.J. will be given a Linda Evangelista short cut, which she already kind of has, but they can't just have her sitting there reading a magazine, can they?
o Skanky Megg will be given big, frizzy hair extensions, apparently to make her look even more like a dirty Guns & Roses stage door diehard.
o The twins are both going red, but one will be wavy and the other one straight! Gasp! They cry bittersweet makeover tears, because they don't want to look different to each other, because they know that being ugly and pale with big ears and no chin isn't enough to keep them in the competition.
o Jaeda the Jaw is told that because she looks too mannish, they're going to enhance her masculine features, which to me seems like giving Marcia Hines shoulder-pads. They promise her a Halle Berry short, short cut, which justifiably brings on a storm of tears and despair, despite her breakfast bravado. Jaeda shouldn't cry. She already looks like a man – when she cries she looks like Angry Man With Testicles In Vise.

· The modules are set upon by washers, dryers, hackers and stylers in a Makeover Montage which includes all the predictable yet delicious elements: buckets, nay KEGS of tears are cried, and Jaeda is only outdone by Malicious Monique who, horrified at people seeing her weave-less, sits in the loo and hyperventilates with horror. Mr Jay rolls his eyes like the row of tents he is, and in a three-ring Cirque De So-Gay, has a spray at the girls, making a point that I shout at the screen every single series – models are a symmetrical collection of faces, bodies and hair, whose opinions DO NOT MATTER. Take it and like it, as they say in the classics.

· Results are varied, with at least a third of the modules looking worse than when they started, like they fell out of an Early 90's Hair Tree and hit every frizzy twig on the way down. Skanky Megg, despite her joy at now being able to "headbang even harder", has been inflicted with matted hair-extensions so artificial-looking she looks like Barbie's friend Skipper's Even Uglier Friend, with no campervan, no townhouse, and no running water. Don't go near her with a naked flame. Or a bottle of amyl nitrate, while we're talking. Brooke Witherspoon's blonde-to-brown transformation means the hotness difference between Cruel Intentions and Election, and may be her blah undoing. Jaeda the Jaw is terrifying in her new role as Conan. She's one unhappy, scary dude, dude.

· Megan speaks on the 'phone to her girlfriend. I knew it!

· A Tyra Mail sends the girls to meet Mr Jay at a skyscraper for a stupid, pointless, product-placement challenge. The instructions are as follows:
1. Run to a table full of Cover Girl makeup products and pick the right colours for yourself.
2. Run to the elevator. If you miss the elevator, you're disqualified.
3. Put make-up on in elevator
4. Get off a few floors later, run to racks full of frocks and pick "a look"
5. Run to the elevator. If you miss the elevator, you're disqualified.
6. Repeat the above with accessories
7. Be met on the top floor by Queen Latifah and crap on about your "Fresh Cover Girl Look".
Family restaurants worldwide could have commemorated this challenge by bringing out a McBoring Happy Meal, except for a couple of minor highlights. Malicious Monique missed the second elevator, and was disqualified to the sound of all the other models taking a nervous inhale, and Melrose commenting cagily "We're all getting beaten up tonight fer sure". Caridee had a rare lapse of taste and wore a scarf around her head, floor-scrubber style, and Brooke Witherspoon decided her look was "Prom Queen" and announced it like she was reading from an autocue in another country. Eugena the Boring won the challenge, apparently because she used colour the best, and picked Caridee and Jaeda the Jaw to share her prize of a brief Cover Girl photoshoot for their website. Even the prize was boring. We've pleased the sponsors now. Can we move on?

· Malicious Monique is pissed. She's not happy that she was disqualified from the challenge, and like most of the girls in the world who need a brisk knee-capping, she takes it out on everyone else. And that is why this show may get a mention on my tombstone. A brilliant Drama in Three Parts ensues, and I move to the edge of my couch, eyes and mouth agape.
Part One, In Which Monique Hogs The Phone.
Monique spends THREE HOURS AND 34 MINUTES on the telephone. Sometimes she's speaking to her mother, and sometimes, just to give her mansion-mates the shits, she listens to the dial tone. At least I think it was a dial tone – it might have been a brain activity monitor.
Monique's mother's conversation proves that the self-obsessed, potentially crazy apple doesn't fall far from the tree – when Monique complains about the other "raggedy, no-talent" modules, her mother (no doubt with waggling head and preacher-hands) exclaims that they'd better watch out when they "Mess wit a child of GOD!". I love that God always makes his way into this show. We all know from the Bible that every time a model vomits, Baby Jesus cries. Monique's mother then urges her to "Tell them 'I AM A PRINCESS OF THE THRONE!'", which to my father would mean that she's a girl who spends a lot of time on the toilet.
Part Two, In Which The Modules Revolt Against The Princess.
Melrose is fretting about using the 'phone, as she needs to speak to her landlord about not getting thrown out into the street, so she subtly tries to get Monique's attention through the tinted 'phoneroom glass. When this only draws scorn from Monique, the other modules pitch in to try and prise the Throne Princess from the receiver using all their guiles and wiles, which for Caridee means bringing out everyone's favourite – the Pressed Ham. Nothing seems to work, and Monique gets so angry she looks like a cat that's been shaken up in a box of thumbtacks.
Part Three, In Which Anchal Finally Shows Her Stones.
Anchal is so incensed by Monique that she storms into the phone room, wrestles the receiver from her, and with screwed-up face, pointing finger, and the personality we all knew was hiding in there somewhere, gives Monique a verbal Brazilian of pure caustic brilliance. The ANTM censors have a field day as most of Anchal's diatribe is brought to you by the letter F. Monique screams back, flips the bird, and in a comparatively flaccid response, tells everyone to "kiss her grits". The girls have a good, traditional bedroom bitching session, and we have her, ladies and gentlemen: Public Enemy Number One.
Curtain.

· Wow. I have like, a really high stupid threshold, and this week's photo shoot was just about the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Seriously. Like, stupider than Peter Andre, man. 3 "extreme hair" stylists, including one who calls himself "Weavin' Steven", God help us, are introduced. These are people who create massive, teetering hairstyles complete with colours, sparkles, towers, model helicopters and motorised moving parts. And they shouldn't. Imagine dropping some LSD, reading some Lewis Carroll, listening to some Zappa, spinning around really fast and then designing a hairstyle. Not good.

· Monique is trapped under a strange, swoopy rooster shape complete with mini-trophy, and is convinced she's the best module to ever squint her way through a shoot. Anchal looks amazing under a haystack, despite a flopping prop, but Brooke, adorned with patriotic hair and sparkles, tries to summon the angry flag within, but fails. Twin Amanda looks great in red sweeps and jewels, but is flat in her photo, whilst sister Michelle looks ridiculous as a dopey toucan, but manages to pull off a half-decent photo. Megan's hair is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen in my life. It's a monster mullet. With Princess Leia-style side-croissants. WHICH ARE POWERED BY A BATTERY AND SPIN AROUND AND AROUND. Make it stop, Mummy. Somehow, under her whirling pastry goods, she manages an excellent shot. Megg is a fugly piece of white trash, and this fact will never, ever change. AJ gives good facial but her stripy hair overpowers her, and Caridee comes off a little draggy beneath her great big red hair and great big red eyelashes. Eugena thinks she knows everything, and is even boring in black and red feathers. Melrose is a much-improved rainbow, but Jaeda, despite a green and yellow flowery group of lumps on her head, still manages to look masculine.

· Back at the house, and Melrose freaks out when Monique, fresh from the pool in a wet cossie, splashes her with water that seems to have come directly from the crotchular region. Let's call it Dew From Hoo-Hoo Springs, and leave it at that. Melrose rolls around on the floor, and threatens to vomit, prompting all the modules to start praying that Monique is eliminated. I want her to stay for as long as possible. She may need electro-shock therapy, but she's GOLD.

· ELIMINATION. Tyra's outfit is not good. No, ma'am. A velvet corset keeps last night's eleven-piece bucket at bay, topped with metres and metres of drapey, tenty blue fabric which bunches and catches in all the wrong places. Miss Jay has an Alice band in his hair, Twiggy looks a bit bedraggled, and Spunky Nigel, who I'm keeping locks of my hair for, looks through the telly into my soul. Guest judge is Tracey, the hair photographer. The judges hate Megan's photo, which I think is actually a winner, call Caridee a drag queen, think Twin Michelle's decision to kiss her own arm in the shot is inspired, and are underwhelmed by AJ and Monique. They give Jaeda some schtick about her lack of confidence about her new man-hair, and she looks like the saddest gladiator in the world.

· The judges deliberate, and Scary Blue Tyra starts calling out names, including Monique's which causes everyone except me to say "poop". Another week of psychotic bitchiness? Thank you, ma'am – may I have another? It comes down to Jaeda the Jaw and Piggy Megan, and to save time, Tyra just tells them they're both shit. For some reason Megan is sent home, ridiculous considering the deformed lumps of girl still in this competition. Bye, Megan! Don't be openly gay on your way out, or another opportunity might be whisked roughly from beneath your feet.

Next week, catwalk practice is ramped up to include tightwalk practice, there's more bitching, and an increasingly physical Melrose/Monique war is waged afresh. Struttin'. Tuttin'. You ain't Nuttin'.