Stalemate

I haven't bitched yet about last week's episode of America's Next Top Model. Well, until now.

The challenge was OK, even though it featured the Kardashian line of clothing. High class, ANTM! Oh well. From what little I saw, the clothes weren't bad. And the real challenge for the models was to step onto a moving carousel and then step off it onto a runway. There was a little awkwardness, but no major spills. This all happened on the beach. It made so little impression on me that I can't even remember who won the challenge. Bre again? Might have been.

Then we moved on to the photo shoot. The theme was positively weird—the models had to portray Michael Jackson at different stages of his career. Very realistic for the modelling business, no? I'm starting to see Bianca's point. This was all done in conjunction with adviser and guest judge LaToya Jackson, Michael's sister.

It was a challenge in a way, I suppose, but really, would any of these women put this in their portfolio? I doubt it. There were some interesting shots, but nothing that really stood out. The makeup team resisted going with blackface for the white models. After all, it wasn't really necessary for the later years, was it. But Allison, the only one portraying Michael during the Jackson 5 years, was browned up. Ugh.

At panel, after going through the usual preliminaries, and hearing the opinions of the regular judges, Tyra announced that they had allowed LaToya to set the order from best to worst. Laura got best picture. I always like when Laura does well, but really, even the best shots weren't any big deal. The extremely annoying Lisa and the surprisingly much less annoying Angelea, who deservedly had best picture in the previous episode, were in the bottom two. So who went home?

Neither! LaToya decided that everyone got A for effort, and no one would be eliminated. I mean, we're going through all the build-up and I'm getting all hot and bothered when suddenly he grunts, rolls over, and starts snoring, and I'm like, yo, what about me? Srsly, this felt like a major waste of time. Sure, I know, ANTM is probably always kind of a waste of time, but normally I enjoy it. But here we had an uninspired runway contest, a more bizarre than usual photo shoot, and no payoff. I felt like I'd been played. I mean, please, couldn't they have overruled LaToya and sent Lisa home?

Even the drama has been dull! What fun is that? Bianca is having some kind of meltdown because she thinks the other women are picking on her, and Bre keeps stepping in as protective sister. Shannon is having another kind of meltdown because she can't stand conflict (meaning normal human interaction), and Bianca gives her shit for being a Christian. Lisa shoots off her mouth at every opportunity but she really hasn't taken any great photos. At every shoot, she either jumps in the air or spreads her legs. We haven't even had the seemingly tranquilized Alexandria to kick around! She seems to have decided that bland is better than pissing everyone off, and so far she's managed not to be sent home for it.

So unless they worked something out with the CW network, I'm guessing this means we're going to have a double elimination at some point. Maybe even next week. Yeah, I'll watch. Sucker. Sigh.