America's Next Top Model Series Seven #9

If Dr Seuss watched this show, he'd say something like:
Modules. They're here, they're there, they're everywhere. They're in the air. They have nice hair.
We've got a new, action-themed episode, yet another stupid, stupid photo-shoot, and modules throwing themselves around with gay (some more than others) abandon. It's The Cat In The Fat Goes Splat! episode of America's Next Top Module.

· It's a Module Mansion Musical Memorial, as CariDee strums her guitar and Melrose, lamenting the recent departure of Brooke, "sings" along. It's like a tone-deaf owl got its knackers caught in a vise at a siren factory. She sings:

We love you, Brooke
And we're gonna miss you like hell
You brought to this house
A feeling I could feel.

Aaaah, Melrose. Not a smart girl. She's frustrated, though. Frustrated with girls who keep avoiding elimination, who don't "want this" as much as she does. Thing is, nobody wants this as much as she does. The Postal Worker Within would happily stick a javelin in her own eye to win this competition. I really can't wait until she doesn't.

· The modules are trucked off to the beach, where they're met by Gabrielle Reece, an ex-module turned champion beach-volleyballer, who introduces this week's theme of movement and action. Jaeda takes an instant shine to her, relating easily to her massive frame and bulging muscles. It's like Brigitte Nielsen looking in a mirror, but with testicles. Gabrielle explains that you can be muscular and feminine, active and attractive, or chunky and spunky. To demonstrate her point, she asks each module to dive head-first into the sand in a bikini, whilst posing for a photo. Anchal is mortified about stripping off and revealing her "flab", which to me looks like a perfectly acceptable body dangling beneath two gargantuan bosoms. She under-commits to the sand-diving, and adds to the overwhelming sense of pointlessness surrounding this exercise. I must say, though – Sweet Jesus, those twins are pale. Seeing them leap and flail in their smalls is like throwing a handful of sneaker shoelaces into a strong wind. Food and sunshine, my dears. Stat.

· The diary-room gets a good workout this week. Eugena claims that Anchal's self-consciousness "makes her look more like a big ol' blob", and Melrose takes a personal interest, saying that she's "frustrated with Anchal's pictures. I want her out of here". I love watching a Messiah complex blossom in the mind of a simpleton. You know what I'm talking about, Anthony Mundine. Anchal has her turn, and after the usual "I have no friends, I'm fat, I'm lonely" gripe, moves on to her distaste for Melrose, stating succinctly: "I just wanna slap the ho". I stop being bored senseless by Anchal for a second. Then it's gone.

· The Module Mobile drops the girls off in the middle of the desert, where they're met by NASCAR driver Stanton Barrett and the wonderful and ridiculous James St James, a sort of gay designing thing. More mascara than Liza. Less hair than Angry. A black turban reminiscent of Shirley's in Postcards From The Edge. More elbow and shoulder-pads than the entire cast of BMX Bandits. It's terrifying. Yet appealing.
The girls are here for a photo-shoot challenge based on the action theme – they're to pose in front of a racecar, pretend they're cross with "boyfriend" Stanton Barrett for putting his career ahead of theirs, leap at him angrily through the air, show their frocks to best advantage, look pretty, and take their own photo by pressing a button on a remote-control device in mid-jump. I know, it's stupid, but it's also f*cking brilliant. Better than motorised hair and Fabio by a long shot.

· Eugena rises above boring and is pretty good. She's practiced looking angry quite a lot – mostly between dawn and dusk every day for her whole life. Melrose seems to think that angry people hurtling through the air should still smile, and Jaeda is three times the size of Stanton Barrett. As she launches herself at him, she casts a shadow on him as she comes between him and the sun, and he looks so frightened I think a little bit of wee comes out. Twin Amanda is less 'angry girlfriend' than 'disgruntled spaghetti', but Caridee (mostly because she's perfect) rocks the freakin' house. She starts by spitting "This is your last race, BITCH" at Stanton, and then flings her frame from right to left and back again. Anchal, in a surprise comparable to getting wet in the shower, is shy and restrained. She moans "I'm afraid of my boobs falling out" (which is, frankly, bloody fair enough), and James St James snorts "I don't care about your boobs". Big shock from a man in heels. Twin Michelle is better than her sister, and shows commitment to the task by walking all over the car in heels, denting it in the process. I'm quite impressed that she actually weighs enough to dent a car – she's the kind of girl who doesn't look like she'd leave footprints in chocolate mousse.

· Michelle wins the challenge, and chooses Caridee, Amanda and Melrose to share her prize, which is "the opportunity to win a ten thousand dollar shopping spree", which seems like an unnecessarily vague prize description. Is that like walking in a thunderstorm is "the opportunity to be killed by lightning"? The winners go to Billion Dollar Babes and are met by Kate Robelius, the Aussie owner, who tells them they have 30 seconds to put on as many clothes as possible. The girl who puts on the most clothes wins everybody's clothes. Stupid. Boring. Melrose won. Whatever. That girl wins bloody everything. Perceptively, she says "I feel like every girl is wanting to kill me right now". Bingo, sweetie. Slowly. With razors and salt.

· The modules get a Tyra-Mail blathering something about all models being airheads. "I don't get it", says Caridee, making me want to go shoe-shopping with her this weekend. The girls schlep out to an indoor skydiving facility (the kind where you hover in mid-air in a plastic room over a gigantic fan, looking like a leaf caught in a pool filter), and Jay reminds them that this week's theme is action and movement. They'll be hovering in the virtual sky-diving zone, dressed as "sexy space sirens", reaching out for a tub of CoverGirl foundation, which will be Photo-shopped in later along with a cosmic background. My dreams of an un-ridiculous photo-shoot concept are dashed. Dashed, I say! It's funny, though – when I hear the phrase "sexy space sirens", miraculously I don't think of rubbery off-white bodysuits, gardening gloves, goggles and helmets shaped like novelty condoms. That kind of outfit more effectively evokes the phrase "men's downhill". That just shows what I know about fashion.

· Twin Michelle is up first (literally), and she does the best that an ungraceful knitting needle can. Jaeda is next in the air, proving that this fan is one powerful bastard, although she complains that her face is flapping. Twin Amanda is thrown around like a sock in a dryer, although Jay says she's like a "ballerina in the sky". Sutan the gayest make-up artist in the world looks at Anchal in her space-suit and says "Suck it in, honey". Anchal pouts and says "I am". Sutan hisses "Suck it in harder". This seems to upset her into doing the same pose over and over again. It's a miracle she's not beaten to death by her own windswept boobies, to be frank. Eugena is as boring as a hovering somebody in a wind-tunnel can be, and Melrose underwhelms, even though Jay tries to spur her on by shouting "Come on! Make these girls hate you even more!". Caridee swoops and dives like a hyperactive superhero without any regard for her personal safety or that of those around her. She rocks so hard I'm going cross-eyed.

· The modules shuffle into the Starship Enterprise to be introduced again to the judges, including Spunky Nigel, who I'm having my tongue scraped for. Tyra's hair has been tortured into a kind of bouffant tsunami, and she's swathed in dark blue satin, cinched at the waist with a weightlifter's belt. Not too bad, to be honest, although I think my standards have dropped due to weekly visual abuse. The girls are given a great action-themed challenge – a verb and an adverb are randomly drawn from two hats (they must have edited out the bit where these are explained as "doing words" and "words that function as modifiers of the aforementioned doing words"), and each girl must play out the described action. Eugena "shakes flirtatiously", and while her body wobbles, her face stays dead. Boring. Michelle "skis sadly", which is a kind of angry forward static moonwalk. Jaeda "skips sensually", and glimmers of her personality are seen behind her manly façade. Amanda "swims frightfully", and yes, she does. Anchal "dances aggressively", and all of her except her norks give a half-arsed performance, right until she sprints out of the room. Melrose is told to "box joyfully", and, mental behemoth that she is, adopts a joyful face whilst miming the outline of a cardboard box. To add to the confusion, she mouths the words "cover girl". Oh, man. She's stupid. Like, stupider than cheese. Caridee "hides dizzily", and stumbles around the room, voguing drunkenly, hiding behind her hand, the door, and anything else available. She's brilliant. The judges practically gyrate with admiration, and I'm thinking of knitting her a scarf. Or a house. Somebody name a landmark after this girl.

· Photos are picked through, and most of the "sexy space siren" shots look angular and awkward, just like girls suspended in mid-air do. Anchal is given a bollocking for not committing to the tasks and challenges this week, although her space photo, which I'm calling "Cosmic Hooters" is pretty good. The judges' chairs get a bit moist when Caridee's performance and photo is appraised, but Jaeda's photo is mostly jaw.

· The judges deliberate, and Tyra stands before our modules, cradling the Photos of Doom. Names are droned (and Tyra asks Eugena to shake again, and flip her hair "like a white girl") until it's just down to Boobie Anchal and Twin Michelle. Anchal is told she has a gorgeous face, but that she doesn't believe in herself. No mention of her fat arse. Michelle is told that she has natural talent, but that she doesn't seem to want to be a module, which is offensive to Tyra. Eventually, Anchal is given the flick. She cries and hugs all the other girls, including her nemesis Melrose, who gets the extra farewell message of "I still hate you". Gets you right there, innit? Bye, Anchal! Don't knock a vase off a shelf with your great pendulous rack on your way out!

Next week, the girls go to acting lessons, Caridee calls someone mean a bitch, and the girls are off to Spain! Drama. Karma. Mañana.