Australia's Next Top Westie Scrag Series 4 #10

I don’t want to talk about it. Which is obviously a lie, because all I’ve done for the last – what, sixteen years? – is talk about this brilliant, stupid, glorious, psilocybin-enhanced show.
But I don’t want to talk about... you know, IT. What happens at the end.

I’m very upset.

So I won’t talk about it. I’ll just type paragraph after paragraph of sanctimonious garbage about it. And you’re going to read it, because that’s how this works. Thanks, by the way. I’m off to cry myself to sleep and question fate’s cruel shiatsu massage, and you can wade through the When You Get Caught Between The Scrag And New York City episode of Australia’s Next Top Model.

Bah.

· We revisit last week’s elimination, in which James-Caan-To-My-Kathy-Bates Caris inexplicably loses to “blank canvas” Alexandra. Alexandra reminisces: “Caris said... (chokes back tears and adam’s apple)... you deserve it”. You misunderstood, my dear. Caris was talking about your pants. As soon as Caris is out the door the mood changes, however, as Joydhi announces (taking care to twist each vowel like a satin pretzel): “Soooyyy, yoir guys... you’re goying... toooiir... THE BEGAPPOOOOL!” Our modules aren’t quite sure what Joydhi means, but it sounds like it might be in Europe, so they celebrate with the now-obligatory hands-up-to-their-mouths. When Joydhi clarifies (twice) by saying “Nooiir York, Nooiir York!”, I become thankful that they’re not going to Kokoda, Kokomo, or a slow boat down the Orinoco. Girlfriend’d turn herself inside out.

· The sun rises over Casa De Scrag one last time as the girls pack their bags, don unattractive headwear, and jump on a plane. All of a sudden we’re flying over the Statue Of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Central Park, just in case anyone’s still confused about what “The Begappooool” is. The modules exit the airport, glamorously rugged up against the Northern Hemisphere chill, and I realise that Alexandra’s Hypercolour parachute pants might just be made of too flimsy a fabric for this climate. Thank you, God. Thank you, baby Jesus. Suitably, Demelza feels quite at home in any place that can be described as ‘frigid’, and starts announcing everything she sees, with the only criteria being that anything she notices can’t be interesting or noteworthy in any way. “Midtown Manhattan!” she heliums, reading from a roadsign. “YELLOW TAXI!”, she squeaks, which is like pointing out freckles on Julianne Moore. Samantha pitches in with “Ohmigod – they’re driving on the other side! I just realised that!”. New York, New York - It’s a hell of a town. The Bronx is up, and the IQ is down. Alexandra feels right at home, though:

· In a totally unscripted moment, the scrags link arms and spontaneously jump out of the YELLOW TAXI! to enjoy the view. Alexandra says she feels like she’s in a movie. My guess is ‘The Arsehole Who Ate New York’. Back in the YELLOW TAXI!, Demelza has her head out the window. You know who else rides in cars with their heads hanging out the window? That’s right. Arf. In a special effort to endear herself to the show’s format owners, she points to a billboard advertising America’s Next Top Model and shouts “you suck!”. Sit, Demelza. Eat your kibbles.

· The girls are staying at a hotel called ‘The Alex’. It’s shiny. You know who else is shiny and called ‘Alex’? That’s right. You’re really smart, huh. The modules are staying in the penthouse suite, and, just like the real Shiny Alex, there’s really not that much up top. I mean his hair, silly. Not his brain. I’m sure you have to be very smart to make people want to sell their ovaries for one of your box pleats. Whatever. The penthouse is a bit shit. Regardless, there’s a bit of a fight over beds, with scads of adult ‘bagsing’ and other grown-up stuff like croquet and disdain. Now, I know watching three cold tourists fight over sleeping space should be interesting, but I’m momentarily distracted by carbon.

· There’s something that happens in every truly glorious reality television show, and its occurrence marks how you separate reality wheat from reality chaff. I call it the ‘Talk N’ Dream’. In a Talk N’ Dream, the soundtrack is a voiceover spoken by one particular contestant (I want to say ‘character’, but that implies too much), usually voicing their hopes, dreams and fears, and the vision is a slow zoom into the face of that contestant, who is standing looking wistfully into the distance, completely unaware that we’re sharing this secret, private, intimately meaningful moment with them. Talk N’ Dreams usually happen by a window, by an ocean, in a dimly-lit room or in front of a view, and everyone pretends that the cameraman, soundman and lighting technician aren’t really there. Talk N’ Dreams are fucking hilarious. Demelza’s Talk N’ Dream is no exception – her voiceover babble uses all the traditional words and phrases like “win”, “reaffirming goals”, “made it this far”, “spurs me on”, “reach” and “woof”. She surveys the New York skyline thoughtfully, imagining all the pairs of shoes within it and how she can buy them with Daddy’s money.

· In the morning, Joydhi breaks into the penthouse and drags the freezing modules out onto the balcony for a gee-up. She brings them coffee because they’re jetlagged, and reminds them again where they are:

She then explains that they’ll be visiting three modelling agencies: Marilyn, MC Squared and Elite, and then doles out portfolios and a handful of extraneous vowels.

· In the car on the way to the goy-sees, Alexandra complains that she’s not feeling very well, and this is reflected in her husky voice. Also, her teeth seem to have gone yellow and her skin has broken out in thousands of little dot – what’s that? Really? Always? Huh... Anyway, of much greater concern is her ensemble of silver jodhpurs and a white skivvy. Silver. Jodhpurs. Like she misunderstood the phrase “modelling agency” and took it to mean “Rodeo in space”. Demelza says “I’d like to think that mine is the best portfolio”. Honey, I’d like to think that when I wake up in the morning, Clive Owen will be making me French Toast with a side order of wang, but in the real world, some things only happen on the weekend. The girls are nervous about introducing themselves all over New York, so I’ve made it a little easier for them:

· Let’s see how the agencies compare, shall we?
o Agency One: Marilyn
Met By: Kwok Chan, who I want to shrink in the oven, keep in my pocket and rub for luck and cuteness
Loved: Alexandra, because she’s “fashion”
Hated: Demelza’s youth and Samantha’s blah.
Best quote: “I thought Sam photo was beautipool - I love the way how people retouch her”.
Comments: Kwok Chan continues this series’ special study area: Accents Of Excellence. Refers to Demelza as “Demell”, because this is a very exclusive agency that doesn’t have time for concluding syllables.

o Agency Two: MC Squared
Met By: Pink (from the reality show The Agency, for those playing at home), and Jean Luc, who adds another adorable accent into the mix. It’s somewhere in there amongst the folds of spooky skin.
Loved: Samantha, because she’s awesome
Hated: Demelza, because she’s gone pear-shaped
Best quote: Can’t narrow it down to just one:
Jean Luc about Alexandra: “I don’t like der eyes... they’re nearly no eyelid”;
Jean Luc about Demelza’s measurements: “36?! Zat 36 ees going to ‘aunt you”;
And my new Pink ringtone:
“She’s very, very bottom-heavy, she has horrible, horrible legs”.
Comments: Demelza lies and says she’s from Sydney, because she’s either ashamed of Wollongong or can’t pronounce it.

o Agency Three: Elite
Met By: A robot in reception, then Roman Young (and he’s both!) and Neal Hamil (and he’s neither!)
Loved: Alexandra, because of... um... nope. It’s gone.
Hated: Demelza’s hips
Best quote: “She is what I call (roll eyes into back of head) achingly beautiful”.
Comments: Alexandra says “I got called out first, which I was really happy about because I got to set the standard for what they were expecting”. I call this the ‘Proctologist Index”.

The agency visits didn’t constitute a challenge per se, but I still feel like handing out a prize. Here you go, Demell:

· In a piece of inspired scripting and stellar acting, a room-service schmuck delivers a Joydhi-Mail, and the girls seem to think this is extraordinary. This is like Mrs Klimt dropping the tea-tray in shock upon seeing Gustav use some gold leaf, or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like being surprised that Jordan and Peter Andre’s kids aren’t doing too well in school. The Joydhi-Mail is an Oscar Wilde quote about wearing works of art, and Samantha wonders if their next adventure will involve “doing something arty”. You think?! Perhaps body art, Samantha? I’ve got a suggestion:

· Joydhi meets the scrags at the Eli Klein gallery in SoyHoy, where they’re introduced to Malan Breton (from Project Runway series one through eighteen, for those of you playing at home), who designs achingly beautiful clothes, but speaks like he’s sucking on a sour, farting mouse, and laughs like he’s just bitten the head off primary school. The modules learn that they’ll be modelling a retrospective selection of Malan’s designs in front of a great big bunch of wankers. Really. Really. Slowly. Let’s give them some bullets:
o Samantha gets to wear an achingly gorgeous hat, and Demelza gets to wear a dead black emu on her head. I think that’s fair.
o Alice Burdeu (last year’s winner, for those of you who are clinically dead) turns up for a sticky-beak, sporting the very latest in Homeless Hooded Chic.
o Sam kicks arse. Full stop. What a freakin’ champion.
o Demelza, in sequins, looks gorgeous and does pretty well. Selfish.
o Alexandra is absolutely brilliant, and leaves the other two girls in the shade. Kidding! Somebody please send me a four-page faxed diagram explaining what was going on with her walk. For serious. Have you ever seen anybody try to stub out a cigarette, give directions with their head and keep an egg-yolk balanced between their thighs all at the same time? No. Me neither. Alice and Joydhi do a great job hiding their amusement. Kidding!

· After the show, Joydhi tells the girls that tomorrow they’ll be shooting their “first proper international phoy-toy shoot”, whilst everybody in Fiji gives her the finger. The next morning, the modules meet Napoleon Perdis (wearing a leather jacket with “Free Tibet” on the back), and stylist Bryan Marryshow (wearing clothes that don’t make him look like a supercilious waxed fat man). The modules are thrown into designer duds and head out to a make-up van in the street, before posing for photographer Antoine Verglas in front of a YELLOW TAXI!, because this show is all about stretching a cliché until it begs for lubricant. I’ll apologise for that with a summary:
o Whilst in make-up, Napoleon asks each girl questions with the obvious intention of trying to summon the bitchy. Some may call this “putting the cat amongst the pigeons”. I call it “This is why I drink”.
o I adore Alexandra’s outfit. I hate it when that happens. She pays for my misguided-support-shame with stupid eyelashes. I love it when that happens. She also says, of Samantha: “Sam’s lack of fashion knowledge came through... she didn’t know how to hold herself”, and of herself : “They saw that the outfit fit me so well... that they didn’t need to change anything”. Despite posing really well, she pays for her smug, manly self-love by twisting her ankle and hitting herself in the chest with a taxi.

o Demelza’s first outfit didn’t work, so she changed into a different one which was much, much more like kitten-attacked toilet paper. What the stylist didn’t seem to realise, though, was that it wasn’t the frock that was the problem. IT. WAS. THE. SHOES. At the bottom of Demelza’s legs there lives a community of desperately oppressed pink pom-poms, and the only route of escape available to refugee pom-poms is via climbing up the scaffolding on her shins. They’ve seen the bountiful mountains of plenty at the top of her thighs, and they want it. The grass is always fatter, my dear little downtrodden pom-poms.
o Samantha has borrowed her hair from the cover of Whitney Houston’s I Stuck A Fork In The Powerpoint album, and her frock from someone who makes clothes I really, really hate and then puts sequins on the shoulders. She finds it hard to follow directions, which is fair enough, because she has to smile, lean, and pretend to talk on the phone like, all at the same time. Brutal. She cries afterwards, upset that she didn’t do better, and my heart breaks into thousands of tiny little low-fat pieces.

· The girls ponder their chances of being in the final two next week, and Alexandra says “I have more of a chance of making it through than not making it through, based on how many girls there are”. Oh my god! So what you’re saying, right, and let me tease this out gently, is that TWO apples, right – don’t lose me here – is more than ONE apple? Feckin’ genius.

· Suddenly, without fanfare, the girls are teleported back to the Elimination Station, where Joydhi meets them tethered in a fetching citrus bungee-cord. She natters through the prizes, which I think this year include a Granny Smith apple and an arline sick-bag, and then introduces the judges: Charlotte Dawson (who appears to be smuggling something in her hair) Shiny Alex Perry (who looks like a smug mushroom who dreams of being the mushroom equivalent of Frank Thring), Vogue publisher Grant Pearce (who seems obsessive about combing), and Jonathan Pease, who probably wanted to go to New York but didn’t. Each girl is asked to deliver a speech explaining why they think they should be Australia’s Next Top Model. More tedious than this: advanced calculus and slow days in parliament. Demelza cries. Like human tears.

· Phoy-toys are shifted through, and the Perry/Dawson zingers are a bit light-on again this week, because we’re at the pointy end, it’s no laughing matter, and the poor dears are spent. The final three scrags are dragged back in to hear their fate, and one name is called until it’s down to Samantha the Fair and Demelza the Pear. Demelza learns that she has desire, but not maturity, and Sam is told she’s a dark horse, but lacks edge. Three New York minutes pass, and Samantha is chucked. Bye, Samantha! Mind you don’t be all gorgeous and perfect and shit on your way out.

· This leaves Demelza and Alexandra. You know how I feel about Demelza and Alexandra. How to choose? Which road will you take?

Now, I have good news and bad news. Mind you, the good news only affects me, and the bad news only affects you, so it’s like I get a cake, eat it too, and watch you slip in dogshit in the rain. So win/win, really. The bad news is: the recap for the Grand Finale Cirque Du Scrag next week will be late – possibly by as much as two days. The good news is: the reason it will be late is that I’m going. To the finale. I knooooiiiirrr. A benevolent and glamorous Foxtel persona (who shall only be known as MM) has been reading this self-indulgent tripe, and thought it proper to invite myself and Petstarr along for the spectacle. So what’s the lesson here? Be as bitchy as you like – you’ll still get invited to parties. Mental note: wear dark colours and waterproof mascara in readiness for drinks being thrown in face. Thanks, MM. You’re the unexpected twenty dollars in my jeans pocket.

Flair. Hair. What the fuck am I going to wear?


Go jump in a YELLOW TAXI! over to the Bland Canyon. Tip your driver.