Australia's Next Top Westie Scrag Series Eight #3

One of the things I like about this show is its emphasis on health and fitness.

You know, like running, jumping, eating right, punching, drinking blended salads, giving birth to medicine balls, vomiting, that kind of thing.

This week’s entire episode is about keeping your weight down, your breakfast up, and getting elegantly puffed out.

Put on your sports bra and stuff it with kale, it’s the ‘What Are Your Legs? STEEL SCRAGS!’ episode of Australia’s Next Top Model.

Let’s model ‘til we puke.

Housekeeping

After a lot of thought (four seconds, with gin), I’ve added two late-comers to the list of contenders for Reality Television’s Most Overused Catchphrase, which are “This is my dream” and “Give it my all”. They’re late, but they look strong, like a pregnant weightlifter.

Current leader is “Oh my god”, which is hardly surprising considering the modules moved into their big ol’ house this week, and also considering the number of wacky surprise twists those producers keep coming up with every week, the crazy maniacs.

Mind you, in freeze-frame “Oh my god” sometimes looks like those cards you teach autistic kids about emotions with.

Incredulity.

Excitement.

Shock.

I Sat On A Pin.

You Cannot Beat Me, Mr Bond.

Constipation.

And it’s really no wonder there’s so much wonderment. The module mansion is unbelievably superb, what with its views, and its walk-in wardrobes, and its spectacular bathrooms, and its well-stocked Miss Shop, and its… its luxurious… er, what...bedrooms.

MAJESTIC.

Directly at odds with the health theme this week, Ashley stubbornly and argumentatively gets appendicitis. She says “Basically I just got a burning sensation in my spine, and they took me to the hospital and the hospital said I had really bad appendicitis”.

That is one talented hospital.

Learnment

At the module mansion, there’s an SJHMEOONOMG (Sudden Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything Out Of Nowhere OH MY GOD), and about the module mansion, Jen says “Become a successful model, and you could have a multi-million dollar mansion like this one”.

I AM IMMEDIATELY SKEPTICAL.

Plus  I found some other skeptical things which are also skeptical.

Skeptical dog.

Skeptical cat.

Skeptical cow.

Skeptical earthworm.

Skeptical kid.

Jen then tells the scrags what the prizes are this year, which I think include three identical tubes of lip gloss and a goldfish in a bag.

Speaking of goldfish in a bag, Mrs Everything introduces personal trainer James Duigan and four hundred and twenty-five plates of junk food. James is there to talk about how bad junk food is, and says “What I want you guys to understand is that sugar is a substance that literally drags collagen out of your face and makes you old”.

Reeeeaaaally.

All the girls instantly swear off junk food and reform, as James crows poetically: “Out with the old and gross, and in with the new and the fantastic!”

He's so bardy-conscious.

James then makes a green smoothie from spinach, cucumber, celery and ginger, telling the girls that ‘just about every model I know has this just about every day when they can’, which is like James Gleeson saying he’s sometimes sort of inspired by sea creatures mostly when he feels like it or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like Kanye West saying that he might spend a little bit of time being a bit of a cock once he gets ‘round to it.

It is around this time that Taylor tells us she’s never had celery before.

Reeeeaaaallly.

April the French Robot says that the only form of ginger she’s ever had is in gingerbread, to which everyone replies “What do you MEAN you’ve never had celery before?!?”, because whatever, APRIL.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, a segment about health and celery gets boring. Nothing to do but chuck a bunch of food in the bin and go to bed, I guess.

BUT NOT FOR LONG.

Challenged.

Extremely early in the morning, a Jen Mail drags the scrags out of bed and into the loungeroom to watch a video by a thing called Candice Swanepoel, which I have just learned is not a bacteria.

Melissa calls her “the face of Victoria’s Secret”, as if faces matter to Victoria’s Secret.

Taylor says “I knew she was a sort of big person, but I didn’t know who she was”, which makes Candice exactly like celery.

Regardless, Candice speaks briefly about fitness as is required by law, and then instructs the modules to get changed into clothes they’ll find in their bedrooms and get ready to leave.

OH MY GOD WHAT KIND OF CLOTHES MIGHT THEY BE, ARE THEY CELERY CLOTHES, BECAUSE I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THOSE.

Melissa, discovering fitness shoes, a fitness top and fitness leggings, guesses that they’ll be doing something fitness-related. That girl sure has a great big brain inside her totally, totally normal-sized head.

A quick Nissan sponsored Nissan car-trip Nissan into the sticks Nissan later, and the scrags are in a swampy-looking park with James waiting for them. He announces that this week’s challenge is so big that he’s going to need back-up, heralding the entrance of the retarded little work-experience kid.

I ARE RIDE MY BIKE BRRRRRMMMMMM

Except it’s our Diddles, and he’s putting the modules through a 1KM army-style obstacle course, complete with net crawl (in faeces) sandbags (full of faeces), trauma tunnels (through which faeces comes), tyre rolls (faeces), a cable-drum leap (not actually sure what that is), barbed wire (barbed wire) and faeces.

The winner gets two prizes: two thousand dollars’ worth of gym gear…

OH MY GOD!!!

…and a year’s supply of James’s health supplements.

There was supposed to be a cricket noise here but the cricket died.

Before starting the challenge, everyone prepares by smearing mud on their face, except Duckie.

Pardon?

Oh. Oh, right. Um.

Everybody smears mud on their face.

Calm your tits, Adamant Little Guy.

Jade is a fucking gun. Maddy Banana Paddy is unfazed because she’s used to mud, which is a great quality in a model. April doesn’t short-circuit in the water despite the fact that French robots are usually only designed to withstand wine.  Taylor has a little whinge, Duckie takes forever to work her way through a ground-intestine to Taylor’s intense and malnourished annoyance, Rhiannon comes last because she’s still exhausted from ridiculing Buddhism last week, and Brooke announces that there was “100% pooh in there”.

Now, I don’t care how awesome your blog is, don’t go doing a Google image search for “100% pooh”.

You shouldn’t trust me very often, but that’s pretty much a sure thing.

Jade wins, Brooke comes second, Taylor has trouble breathing, and Dajana yacks her bikkies up all over the grass.  What better time to stereotypically exaggerate her ethnic heritage, right?

Also I gagged the whole time getting this screen-shot, but I did it FOR YOU.

Diddles tells the modules that he’s proud of them, and that there’s a present waiting for them back at the house.

So the girls not only get to vomit, they also get free shit. Free shit that’s different to the free shit they got this morning in the free shit room, and also different to the free shit that they found in their bedrooms in the house full of free shit that they’re living in until somebody finally wins a whole lot of free shit.

And also sunglasses.

Then suddenly, just to bum everyone out, Ashley comes home with her surgery wound and her pain and everything. WHATEVER, ASHLEY.

(For an explanation of the above, see Appendix A)*

No but seriously, welcome back, Ashley. Welcome back. And in keeping with my stupid thing where I include an old sit-com theme every week, might I also say…

Welcome Back, Kotter!

Go ask your mum what that means.

We go to a break and a voice-over reminds us of the prizes again (they’re the same as before except we’re pretty sure the goldfish is dead).

Phoy-Toys

HEY LOOK, IT’S DAWSO.

She’s at the gym, because god forbid we’d forget this week’s theme, huh. She introduces the scrags to the concept of a ‘sports luxe’ photo shoot and introduces photographer Justin Ridler who, somewhat unexpectedly for a softly-spoken gent in spectacles, instructs the girls to get greased up.

Everyone gets bronzed, greased, braided, and dressed in the sexiest of sexy fitness gear.

Except Shanali.

For whatever reason, Shanali is dressed in the charred and greasy remains of the Michelin Man after a very serious tanker explosion.

But she seems totally relaxed about it.

In modelling competitions, as in hangovers, puffiness is not necessarily solely the domain of losers, however.

You’re still my favourite, Shanali. 

Even though, seriously, what the puffy fuck.

What else?

In her let’s-take-you-aside-for-just-a-moment interview, Shannon stares icily and determinedly into our very souls and says clearly and surely “Whatever they throw at me, I will do. I can be Australia’s Top Model”.

And I realise that perhaps she’s not Brooke Shields. Perhaps she’s Tracy Flick.

We're pretty much fucked.

This particular shoot is MADE for Taylah from Western Austraylah, who can cut glass with her jaw, and flesh with her inevitable leotard-wedgie.

Duckie is good until she smiles, at which time the entire room explodes with outstanding Olympic exuberance.

Jade in a crop top and red leather shorts makes me want to do sit-ups for four days.

Melissa looks a lot like a doll wearing a fitness outfit, and everybody knows that dolls do not wear fitness outfits.

SHUT UP BARBIE NOBODY ASKED YOU

During her shoot, Rhiannon says “It was actually really funny because first I just sat on top of one medicine ball and Charlotte said make sure you sit between two, because it looks like you’re giving birth to it, so that was funny”. Yeah, not as funny as Buddhism, but not bad.

Maddy struggles with over-thinking (right? That’s a thing) at first, but then stops thinking (that's a thing also) and BOOM! There it is. A farm whose main crop is awesomeness, sexiness, and let's be besties.

Shannon looks amazing, but more importantly she is DETERMINED and GODDAMN if Mr McAllister is going to STOP her from winning this ELECTION.

April gets some good shots, but Charlotte worries that she only has one look. All April really has to do is update her software to include FACES 6.0 and she’ll be sweet.

Taylor looks like a boxer. Well, her outfit looks like it once belonged to a boxer. Taylor herself looks like flannel-dusted, bored twig. Charlotte gets her to punch towards the camera, pretending it’s something she doesn’t like, so she pretends it’s everything.

Dajana, Brooke, and Abbie are all now in a gang called ABS N’ BRAIDS, the membership criteria for which are being hot, having cheekbones, and looking like you’re in an Eighties movie and if you don’t dance to save the community centre, the orphans will die.

Ashley does her shoot lying down because what, she’s lazy or something. Probably. I didn't really have time to look up what an appendix is. Presumably a milkshake. Lazy people like milkshakes.

Eliminationosity

Eventually everyone no doubt jogs and does burpees towards the Eliminatorium, where Jen is dressed in pink (ready for wordplay), Dawso is dressed in floral (ready to be a garden), Diddles is dressed in a shirt and tie (ready for a job interview) and Shiny Alex Perry is also dressed in a shirt and tie (ready for a job interview for a company that specialises in squinting and making shirts two sizes too small. His chances at getting the job are outstanding).

We trawl through the phitness photographs, during which:

a)      Dajana proves herself to be quite good at bringing the quotes (not just the vomit), so I’m betting one thousand dollars that she’ll get that most-popular-favourite-model prize thingy at the finale;

b)      Dawso and Shiny Alex Perry agree with each other TWICE, dogs and cats become friends, I can smell colours and a satellite falls suddenly out of the sky;

c)       All of the photos are bullshit perfect amazing (except for Shanali’s, but I still love you, sweetie); and

d)      I make an unnecessarily bullet-pointed list, because I’m totally the boss here. Right, Amazing Psychic Desk?

Why do I even include you, Amazing Psychic Desk.

The judges deliberate, and zing-of-the-week must go to Shiny Alex Perry, who says of Taylor “I don’t think she’s photogenic, and it’s pushing shit uphill”.

Um, no, that's pulling Pooh upstairs.

Taylah from Western Austraylah gets photo of the week, and names are called until it’s down to just Maddy Banana Paddy and No-Celery Taylor.

Eight years pass, I do the grocery shopping for the week, and it’s Dawso’s turn to do the laser-eyes.

No, sweetie...

Jesus...

No….

Oh, fuck it. Do the honours, Pezza?

THANK you.

Bye, Taylor! Any last words?

Exactly.

*THERE IS NO APPENDIX, SHE HAD IT REMOVED, DER.