If there’s one specific thing I can’t stand, it’s specifics.
Well, one-ish.
So it’s great that this week isn’t about anything really
singular or crystal clear like, what - walking, or smiling, or finding your
light, or not strangling people.
This week is all about movement.
Movement and ‘being in the moment’.
The instruction manual for moving and being in the moment is
either one hundred and forty thousand pages long, or it’s just a picture of a
confused monkey.
I LOVE YOU, GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH. |
So get your skates and your watch on, it’s the ‘I Like To
Scrag It, Scrag It’ episode of Australia’s
Next Top Model.
Be in the moment, but quickly.
Housekeeping
Whilst we’re all being pretty much forced to bend over in
front of ‘Oh My God’ while it opens a tub of margarine as far as the quest to
find Reality Television’s Most Overused Catchphrase is concerned, you can’t
deny the impact of the suddenly-appearing ‘In The Moment’, which has come eagerly
from behind like an analogy I’m not really prepared to make. I only just
started counting instances of ‘In The Moment’ this week, and it’s already
coming fifth.
Also, “I’m not here to make friends” FINALLY gets a guernsey
when Ashley says “Obviously it’s sad to see Maddy go, but I’m not really too
fussed about the friendships I make in the house right now”. SHUT UP THAT
TOTALLY COUNTS.
Learnment
Morning breaks at the module mansion, and the modules busy
themselves doing mansion things.
Staring out at the water...
Doing those really hard sit-ups...
...and not being too fussed about friendships in the house
right now.
And possibly planning a migraine. |
Suddenly, but hardly surprisingly because week eight you
guys, a Jen Mail chirps through and
Screamin’ J. Hawkins quotes directly from her PhD thesis once again. There are
words and phrases like ‘smooth’, ‘bust a move’, ‘express yourself’ and ‘strike
a pose’, so I have no choice but to guess that today’s lesson will be all about
having a terrible CD collection twenty years ago.
Abbie, not being born twenty years ago, guesses that “maybe
it’s like movement, and then like, you gotta like, keep a face?”. It’s fair to
say that Abbie has become a master at keeping the same face in all
circumstances.
She's probably really good at spotting ninjas. |
Off everyone trots in the glamour Nissans to the Sydney
Opera House, where Screamin’ J. Hawkins makes a brief appearance to tell them
they’ll be doing ballet with principal ballerina Amber Scott, who is elegant,
poised, and so thin she looks like someone stretched a fruit roll-up over a sea
urchin.
Ashley is impressed by the way Amber dances, saying that
“She’s moving really graceful, and she’s on her tippy toes, like, on that part
of her feet? Like the tippy tippy toes?”. I know she doesn’t sound overly smart when she says it, but
she sure looks it.
Also how is she doing that. |
Amber tells the scrags that today’s lesson is all about
physical expression, and that “being a ballet dancer’s a bit like being a
model, we can’t just be a body”.
Maybe she can rename herself 'The Personality'? Second thoughts no. |
Amber has some tutus and ballet slippers for the girls, which
is the worst thing that has ever happened to Shannon.
“So there’s Amber in her big elegant white tutu looking so
beautiful, and we’re given little pink fluffy frilly tutus that we gotta whip
on over what we’re actually wearing” she determinedly whines. “Doesn’t exactly
make ya feel elegant, does it?”.
Tracy Flick's tippy tippy toes will dance on your grave. |
Everybody does a few unconvincing ballet moves.
This is a terrible lesson.
Those are terrible tutus.
Everyone is terrible.
And Duckie is the terriblest.
And I guess now would be a terrible time to make a Black
Swan joke.
Your FACE is, Adamant Little Guy. |
Shannon concedes that “we would’ve looked like the worst
unco-ordinated like, giraffes on a stage EVER”.
I dunno, man. I have seen a LOT of unco-ordinated stage giraffes.
Then it’s over and nobody is sad about that.
Challenged, Part 1.
Before they leave the Opera House, Screamin’ J. Hawkins
tells the modules that their new skills will be put to the test tomorrow, when
“you’ll all star in the very first Australia’s Next Top Model Fashion Film”.
Fashion what? Film? That’s not even a thing, is it? I
Googled it, and this is what I got:
Oh look, FINE. It is
actually a thing. It’s fancy words fashion designers use when they mean ‘ad’. They film models
wearing their clothes with a view to promoting, marketing and selling their
clothes, but they don’t call it an ‘ad’. I am just about done with this shit.
So okay, Shannon gets really excited because she’s heard
that fashion films can go viral, so maybe there is something to get turbo-jazzed about and I should stop being so
judgy-wudgy. Then Screamin’ J. Hawkins enlightens us with “In the film, you’ll
bring to life the new flavour range of Mount Franklin’s lightly sparkling
water”.
I am moderately re-wudgied.
But shoosh, no time for that – we have to launch ourselves
flingingly into:
Interlude: A
Clusterfuck Of Eye-Rolls.
Now pay attention, because I’d hate for you to miss one second
of this ridiculous bullshit.
Okay.
The scrags are in the Module Mansion, doing irresponsible,
inconsiderate things like washing dishes and mopping floors. Bitches.
Ashley, who is selflessly lying down on the couch, asks the
other girls to be a bit quieter, because she has a migraine, and I am
completely certain that it’s a real migraine and not just a headache. Of
greater concern should obviously be the fact that Ashley’s legs have clearly
been amputated, preventing her from standing the fuck up and going the fuck to bed.
Melissa, belligerent delinquent that she clearly is, has a
mild dig at Ashley for her COMPLETELY REASONABLE AND ALMOST SAINT-LIKE request,
which causes Ashley to storm into her
shared bedroom, throw a pile of clothes on the floor, and make a startling
threat that I’m surprised even made
it past the producers, the editors, the censors, and the police.
Ashley, right – wait, still painful – Ashley says: “And if
Melissa doesn’t come in and clean her shit up, she’s gonna find that...I’M
GONNA DO IT MYSELF”.
Is that even LEGAL, cleaning
up someone else’s shit for them?
Later, Ashley cries to camera “When you’re locked in a house
with girls for two months, things do get tense, y’know?”.
Naw. Poooor little migraine-riddled, luxury-mansion-trapped
Ashley. WAIIIIT a second. A full house.
A girl called Ashley. I believe this week’s retro sitcom theme has just written
its own way into the story...
Doobeedoo Ba-ba-dah.
Melissa rounds off the drama by saying “I don’t regret
anything I said, like, I stand by everything I said to her just then, however I
don’t want her to look at this as me, like, attacking her”.
YOU BETTER WATCH YO BACK, BITCH, OR YOU’LL FIND YO-SEFF WITH
ALL YO STUFF CLEANED UP.
Right.
Challenged, Part 2.
Suddenly there’s either been a flower bomb dropped on a
paint factory in Fiji, or the scrags are all wearing Camilla frocks and
standing in front of Dawso, who gees them up about doing their first ever
fashion film because that’s totally a thing and not just an ad.
Ashley thinks she has a pretty good chance of winning, and
adds “I got pretty excited. Y’know, I’m a good actress”. Oh, totally. Nobody
doubted that migraine bit for a second.
Dawso continues, telling the girls that they’re lucky to
welcome two very special guests today.
Oh, Dajana. You so ethnically stereotyped. |
The guests are film director Alex Goddard and frock designer
Camilla Franks, and everybody says ‘sparkling’ eight times each. Dawso explains
that each girl represents a different Mount Franklin lightly sparkling flavour,
like lime, lemon, or berry.
Dawso then dangles a
sparkly carrot, telling the colourful clump of girls that the challenge winner
gets over a thousand dollars worth of self-modelled Samantha Wills jewellery,
which causes a great rush of baklava-eating.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. To help them model, Dawso introduces
doppelganger spunks the Stenmark Twins, the first decent male totty the scrags
have seen since they started.
Phwoar-eth. |
Shannon says to camera that she really, really wants to win
this challenge. A horse that has been dead for a decade and a half reanimates,
digs its way out of its own farmyard grave, learns to talk, and says “Dude. We
get it”.
The idea of today’s not-ad is that the Stenmark twins are
leaving messages for the girls around the house, tied to Mount Franklin
bottles. Careful, boys – if you leave that shit lying around, Ashley might
clean it up for you.
The modules are supposed to go on a treasure hunt to find
out who’s been leaving the mysterious messages, and are given complex tasks
like picking up bottles, sitting upright, looking confused, and sunbaking.
They finish by running along the beach to the final bottle
and seeing the Stenmark Twins coming out of the ocean, when really they could
have just left one message on the kitchen bench from the beginning that said
‘Going for a swim. Laters’. WASTING MY TIME.
Of the twins, Abbie says “The view is spectacular. Spelt
with an S. And two twins”, proving that Abbie should, under no circumstances,
leave high school early.
We watch the not-ad, and it’s hard to pick who the best girl
is because they all are, almost without exception, freakishly terrible. Picking
the best girl is like Lord Leighton picking his favourite industrial cityscape
or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like asking Miley Cyrus to pick her favourite
floor-length turtleneck.
Abbie wins, presumably because of her vast range of
expression.
Nailed it. |
Ashley, still hungover from her selfless altruism earlier,
is bummed about not winning the challenge, saying “I just don’t understand how
the judging happened. Like, do they just pick it at random?”. Maybe the judges
had a migraine, babe.
Interlude: Chocolate-Coated
Sit-Ups.
Ashley deep-fries stuff.
Ashley dips things in chocolate.
Ashley squirts whipped cream directly into her mouth.
Ashley does exercising with Jade.
Phoy-toys
Let’s go to the beach, yo!
Shiny Alex Perry corrals the girls near some coral down at a
chilly but bright Bronte beach, still not finding it necessary to put his sunglasses
over his eyes, but doing a half-decent impersonation of a sugar-bowl.
He tells
the modules that when fashion brands do campaigns, they have to work ahead of
the season, so Winter is usually shot in Summer, and swimwear is usually shot
when the water is very, very cold.
Melissa is unsure, saying “I got a little bit nervous. Water
is not something that I’m extremely comfortable with”. Dude. You’re like 70%
water. Find a way to deal.
Shiny Alex Perry introduces a long-haired, tanned photographer who probably wants very badly to make it in Europe in four or so years' time, and thinks that a single blog post might affect that. He surprises nobody when he says “I grew up on the Northern beaches of Sydney. I’ve
been surrounded by Australian beach culture my whole life”.
Today the girls will be impersonating natural, caught-in-the-moment,
non-posy Aussie surfer girls in wetsuits of various coverage, holding surfboards
with their names on them. Duckie says she’s not good at surfing which is weird,
because people who are terrible at ballet are usually awesome surfers.
Melissa is up first, and despite telling us that her dad
describes her swimming style as looking like she’s drowning, shivers through
the cold to land an excellent, if unco-operatively youthful, shot.
Shanali’s body is bullshit. It’s just bullshit.
Abbie looks surprisingly appropriate as a surfer chick,
cementing her place as that girl that nobody really had an opinion about in the
first few episodes but that everybody spastically loves now.
Shannon sits on the edge of the pool and I actually dig her
shot. Mind you, I’ve always appreciated good value, and she seems to have
managed a photo shoot and a gynaecological
exam for the price of one, so extra points for efficiency and sexual health.
That is the most determined vagina I have ever seen. |
Ashley over-poses a fair bit, despite Shiny Alex Perry
urging her to be ‘chilled out’, have a ‘sense of quiet’, and be ‘a little bit
zen-like’. Clearly what he should have said is ‘pretend you’ve got a migraine’.
She’s really quite nervous about her shot, telling us that “All it takes right now
is to have your hand the wrong way and you could be eliminated”. She may be
right, y’know.
Zen-like. |
Duckie says she’s pleased to be ‘doing something completely
different’, not like posing on scaffolding, or near an elephant in Thailand, or
with fifties styling, or on a fallen windmill in the outback, or laughing on a
hotel balcony. Completely. Different. The photographer says she’s not modelling, she’s just
sort of hanging out in front of the camera. He means it as a good thing. I
know. I know.
Dajana has to pretend that she’s an Australian surfer chick,
and does an excellent job of pretending she’s an Australian surfer chick who
suddenly and repeatedly gives birth to a surfboard. She keeps falling off the
board, getting more and more frustrated. Happily, she keeps her face sophisticated
and serene.
Acting, you guys. |
Jade does a bomb into the water while the photographer shouts ‘Cannonball!’.
Meanwhile, Shannon determinedly laments missing the opportunity to make a ‘Shannonball’
pun. Jade is fine. She’s fine. She uses the term ‘a little too Blue-Steely’,
but she’s fine.
The photographer gives each of the girls a little kiss when their shoot
is finished. They don’t seem to mind.
Eliminationosity
We come back from the ad-break to learn about the prizes,
which I think this year include four sample-size Kit Kats and a meerkat onesie.
Screamin’ J. Hawkins welcomes the girls to the Eliminatorium
in a black and white print and promptly describes Dawso as ‘Our resident beach
babe’…
…Diddles as ‘every girl’s favourite lifesaver’…
I promise that's a Lifesaver, not an anus. |
…and Shiny Alex Perry as a ‘bronzed Adonis’.
He's so sleepy he forgot to wear a tablecloth. |
They all flick through photos with a smattering of
interesting:
Dawso describes Shanali as ‘totally tubin’ it’, and nobody
pretends to know what that means, including Dawso. Jen says she’s ‘in a moment’.
All the judges spastically love Abbie’s photo, noting her posing
progression. Jen says she’s ‘in the moment’.
Jade’s photo causes some considerable argument. Shiny Alex
Perry and Dawso do agree that it’s ‘a moment’, though. Gosh, so few things are
these days.
Duckie looks a tiny bit like she’s drowning, but completely
beautifully. Everyone waits with bated breath to see what Jen says. She says it
is ‘a moment’.
Dajana’s shot also causes some consternation. Dawso
convulsively loves it, but Shiny Alex Perry shocks her by saying he hates it. Jen
says it’s ‘definitely caught in the moment’. I catch Dawso in the moment and make her eat some baklava.
All the judges remark upon how young but cute Melissa looks
except Jen, who says ‘there is a moment there’.
Shannon’s shot is the least uptight anyone has ever seen her,
and is quite, quite awesome. Dawso is a bit miffed that in the shot she’s not
noticing the hot guy next to her, making the odd decision to call Shannon ‘dude’.
Shiny Alex Perry giggles, remarking "I think it’s really funny when old people
use the word ‘dude’", easily earning him this week’s trophy.
Screamin’ J. Hawkins isn’t wild about Ashley’s shot as ‘it’s
meant to be in a moment’. Ashley has a cry, which is one of the main symptoms
of migraine. Pretty sure.
I'm also pretty sure that most of the girls are in, at, or at the very least living next door to the moment. Wouldn't you say so, Amazing Psychic Desk?
The scrags leave, the judges deliberate, Dawso threatens to ‘slap
those silly sunnies’ off Shiny Alex Perry’s head, the scrags return, and tense
background music plays, preparing itself to be replaced imminently by that
fucking ‘she lives in a different world’ fucking elimination fucking song.
Shanali gets photo of the week at least partly because she’s
my best friend, Abbie is called out second, and names are called one by one
until only Jade and Ashley remain. Ashley starts crying. Everyone dies of
shock.
Eighteen full seasons of Two and a Half Men pass, and Ashley
is out. She cries, inspiring all three judges to join forces and laser-eyes.
PEW PEW |
BEW HEW |
Bye, Ashley. You’re gorgeous, even when you’re being strangled with a migraine and appendicitis.
Any last words?
Exactly.
6 comments:
Brilliant as always. But what I want to know is how in the world you manage to get these recaps up so quickly??
I hate that elimination song too!! Too funny
The baklava-eating Shakespeare is pure GENIUS.
...and I thank god that mute buttons on remote controls exist every time those ear-bleeding guitar chords start up on that absolutely hideous elimination song. Surely change.org has a petition going against it already?
Best prizes ever, four sample-size Kit Kats and a meerkat onesie.
However the more fashion conscious meerkat, for example Aleksandr Orlov is much more likely be sporting a silk dressing gown and cravat.
No mention of Ashley complaining it's hard to stand out when you're a zebra in a room full of giraffes? Uhh... Ash?
Your blog is the best, thanks again for the snort-laughs.
Accurate re-cap as usual...
But, WTF is a surfer chick doing with a surfboard in the pool?!?
It's like an ice skater chick hanging out in the coles frozen food section.
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