Hey guys I’m back! Sadly, I had to skip a week of ANTM. But I’ve returned for in time to see the girls leave the country for … Hawaii! Oh wait, that’s still in the country, even if it is one of the freak states. Looks the CW blew all its money on Ashley Simpson’s acting lessons. Wisely spent. Not that Hawaii sucks or anything. It’s where our president pretends to be from! On the other hand, no one gets excited about Hawaiian fashion week or the latest Hawaiian designer. I can’t wait to see how they’ll Tyradential this one out.

So last week, a.k.a. the week I missed, saw the albino twins sinking to the bottom two. Erin because she turned into a wailing emotional wreck in front of the CoverGirl cameras and Rae because she was too hard to tell apart from Erin. At least Rae can go see her kid and dye her eyebrows back to a normal color.

Erin stays to annoy the household, especially Brittany, with her general brattiness. Brittany, who is so very, very hungry, pats herself on the back for her emotional maturity, little realizing one thing a model does not want to be described as is “mature.”

There’s more waiting for the girls back at the house than endless pictures of Tyra. The house is wrapped in “danger” tape accompanied by dudes in HazMat suits. The producers obviously told them that everything was OK and go on in, because really, who would just walk past stuff like that? And wouldn’t you ask a producer what the hell was going on? Sigh, let’s just go with this charade. We’re already pretending it’s a “modeling competition.”

Tyra is there, of course. Fortunately, the smize costume is absent. Tyra’s pretending to spray paint the word “condemned” on the model house. Why? Because they are disgusting pigs. She drags them through the house pointing out their gross rotting food, slovenly bedrooms, and whatever sticky mess allowed a colony of ants to set up shop. Laura helpfully offers to castrate the ants, but nothing will appease Miss Banks. She actually says ANTM has “reputation to uphold” without laughing. Maybe Tyra really can act.

Surely, the girls will face some awful punishment for ruining ANTM’s long standing reputation for tidiness. Cleaning the house? Scrubbing the egg pan according to Tyra’s detailed instructions? No, something far more terrible. Something that will make them rue the day they lost ANTM’s cleaning deposit. A trip to Hawaii!

Huh, my parent’s ideas of punishment for not cleaning my room are vastly different than Tyra’s. She’s got a pack of hula dancers out in the yard to surprise the girls, and she strips herself down to a bikini. What was the point of all that condemned house stuff? Oh Rob, why do still expect this show to make sense? The answer of course, is that there is no point.

Tyra barks instructions at the girls on how to hula, instructions that are hilariously wrong. The girls get teensy bite of the fabulous food laid out before Tyra orders them inside to pack. Then she starts telling Sundai what to put her in her suitcase. Good lord woman, is there nothing you won’t micromanage? I think Tyra still mistakes the little models for children. Luckily Tyra remembers that she has to go home and order someone to pack her own suitcases, sparing the girls the humiliation of Tyra moistening a Kleenex and wiping grime off their faces before giving them a juicebox.

Laura grabs food to stash in her suitcase, only to be attacked the army of super-ants living in the house.

So the girls head off to Maui to ruin another house. And a fabulous house it is. Really, incredibly, jealousy-inducing amazing. After seeing the LA footage, I hope the Maui rental agency got themselves a huge cleaning deposit.

Slightly marring the beauty are videos of Jennifer’s CoverGirl commercial. Well, they’ll never be shown anywhere else, so she might as well enjoy it. And it goes without saying that Tyra’s mug covers every available surface.

I am bitterly jealous.

That goddamned vault has also made the trek over. I was hoping some prop-eating virus had evolved from the previous house’s slime to devour it, but no. There it is, because the zippy bon mots that fill the Tyra Mails require protection from crafty thieves. The Tyra Mail says something about fish, I think. I’m too distracted by Brittany’s ribs to write it down.

It’s Hawaii, which naturally means the drunken stars of Lost drunkenly careening about the island highways. Errr, I mean surfing! Jay arrives looking gayer than he ever has before. I know, I didn’t think it was possible either. The man’s a pro.

He throws out the requisite tenuous connection of whatever the competition is about and modeling. Something about poise and, more importantly, learning to fake your way through things. The girls are taught surfing by Sophia Beschen and the awesomely named Buzzy Kerbox, followed by footage of the girls wiping out repeatedly.

Sadly, the surfers forgot to teach the girls another important aspect of surfing: sunscreen. Laura in particular starts to turn lobster, or as she puts it, “frying like a pig in a skillet.” That explains the redness in the earlier footage. Girlfriend needs to borrow my SPF Irish sunscreen.

But there’s no rest for tomorrow’s melanoma. Jay introduces an “accomplished water sports photographer” (tee hee!) for their surfboard shoot. They’ll have one chance to get a good shot. To help them they’ll share the surfboard with an actual surfer and wear granny panties. OK, I’m assuming the granny panties help with surfing since I can’t think any other reason to wear them.

With the help of the surfers, they all manage to stand. Sundai’s the lone goofy-foot and winds up turning her back to the camera. Oops! Jennifer confuses surfing with walking like an Egyptian. In the end, Erin wins the challenge and gets a helicopter tour of the island. She picks Brittany and Nicole to go with her.

A helicopter tour! Awesome, right? Sure it is! Unless you’re Erin, in which case you bitch about it. She does have a point. A helicopter ride isn’t something physical like jewelry or a picture in a magazine. With a helicopter ride, at the end of the day all you have are amazing memories. It’s one of those sucky intangible things like love and friendship.

Speaking of friendship, it turns out helicopter rides are good for buying it. Before the challenge, Brittany thought Erin was a whiney brat, now that she got to go on a helicopter ride, Brittany loves Erin … who is being a whiney brat about the helicopter ride. Ah, money, is there nothing you can’t buy?

After a night spent slathering aloe vera gel over Laura’s 3^rd degree sunburn, the girls head off to the next exotic local: the farm. Yes, out of all the pretty locations in paradise, they go to the sugar cane plantation. At least Laura will feel at home, even if there isn’t anything handy to castrate.

Jay, who seems determined to go sleeveless for the duration of their tropical vacation, meets them. This will be a historical event. For the first time in ANTM history, Tyra will photograph two shoots! The girls are so fortunate. Who needs experience with professional photographers? Between this and Tyra crowning the winner before the judges panel, we’re about three cycles away from Tyra doing everything, including the modeling.

So, Tyra and Jay, what’s the connection between sugar cane and modeling? That models need to be sweet? That they require government subsidies? No, the real connection is far more convoluted. See if you can follow.

• Sugar cane is cultivated in Hawaii, therefore …
• People came from all over the world to work in the fields, which led to …
• Fucking, which led to …
• Babies, many of the inter-racial variety, which led to …
• Barack Obama, which means …
• The models will do blackface

No seriously, that’s their line of reasoning. Never mind that neither of Obama’s parents were sugar cane workers or that he’s not really hapa, as Tyra insists, or that any of that has anything whatsoever to do with modeling.  Basically it’s an excuse to randomly combine various ethnicities if the giant crazy blender of Tyra’s head. And oh yeah, blackface.

The girls trot off to make up to become whatever races Tyra’s finger fell upon in her Big Book of Ethnics. Tyra stresses that the costumes aren’t what the cultures are wearing now, or what they wore in the past, because that might be respectful and non-insulting. Instead, they will be wearing the “fashion interpretation” (read: Tyra’s interpretation) of that culture. Because it’s OK to be racist if it’s done in the context of fashion. That way, when someone says, “Uh, isn’t that a little racist?” you can say, “Clearly you don’t understand fashion. Also, you’re fat.”

Anyhow, this disaster of an idea moves forward, like the Titanic approaching the iceberg. Erin is Tibetan and Egyptian. She confesses that all she knows about Tibet is that it needs to be freed. Now she learning that Tibetans need to be freed from a series of  complicated hats. Tyra plants a series of them on Erin’s newly brown head before settling on one that looks like an exploded cuckoo clock. Tyra’s not getting enough emotion from Erin, though, she yells at her to “Think about Egypt and what they’ve been through.” Psst, Erin, I think Tyra’s telling you to act jewish. Wow, can you imagine if Tyra had actually including a semitic group? There’s a sterotype minefield we can all be grateful she avoided.

Erin mimics the look your dog gives you when you put silly hats on his head.

Laura is Mexican and Greek. As with Erin, Laura confesses ignorance of one of her cultures. She “don’t know nothing about Greek people” adding “do they use parking meters? I sure hope not!” Tyra complains the clothes are  too “on the nose.” She wants specific ethnicities, yes, but only in a bland, general way. No one wants actual Mexicans for God’s sake, just the pleasantly vague suggestion of a mild Mexicanality. In the end, Laura looks like she’s at the far end of a long night of drinking at the toga party.

At least the sunburn is covered.

The make-up, by the way is epic. Check out Nicole getting her body paint on.

Or Jennifer’s hair

Tyra really busted out her world atlas for this; she assigns Nicole Japanese and Malagasy, a.k.a. the fine folks of Madagascar. The Malagasy part comes through in coloration and hair rather than clothing, and at least spares us the horror show of the make-up people trying to recreate epicanthic folds. However, we are not spared the horror of Tyra once again telling Nicole to model “H to T” immediately followed by her explaining that “H to T” means “head to toe” thus eliminating any time saved by saying “H to T” in the first place, not that it matters, because saying “H to T” doesn’t actually take less time than saying “head to toe” to begin with. I’m exhausted. Nicole’s picture is nice. You can imagine Nicole gazing at a storm on the horizon, wondering if she should warn the village or take revenge on whomever put a giant wicker napkin ring around her neck.

Jennifer gets the most blackety blackface of them all, as Polynesian and Batswana, which wikipedia tells me is the proper way to refer to the people of Botswana. She struggles at first, then improves when Jay tells her to hear music in her head, the way the Batswana do, at least according to Jay and Tyra. It works, Jennifer looks like she’s chillin’ at Burning Man.

Brittany portrays Native American and Indian. In other words, both kinds of Indian, get it? She can’t seem to relax and get into the groove of this incredibly stupid idea. Think of Apu and that sad man from the littering commercial, Brittany. I’m pretty sure that’s what Tyra is thinkng of. Fashion! Brittany mostly looks annoyed, not that I can blame her.

Sundai is assigned Russian and Morrocan, so her skin gets plastered with a thick coat of … nothing. Tyra’s perfectly willing to go blackface, but whiteface? That’s over the line! It’s not like we don’t have the make-up for it, as White Chicks so sadly proved. But for whatever reason, Sundai just gets a little blush and a fur hat. She ponders what it means to be a Russorrocan in this crazy mixed-up world.

Back at the house, the girls deracinate themselves with whatever make-up remover they have on hand. Erin complains about the linens being too scratchy because she has decided to become insufferable. The Dalai Lama weeps.

I have to say, island life agrees with Tyra and the models, they all look quite lovely at judging, even without heels (for the girls). Even better, Nigel’s showing a little chest hair.

Kirsty Hume performs guest judging duties. The good news: she’s an actual supermodel! The bad news: she’s 5’11, so she can’t be passed off as a petite role model. With heels, she could have a whole foot over Sundai.

Yet another disadvantage of Tyra photographing (besides increased use of “smize” and “H to T”) is her propensity to recap the shoot during judging. It’s fine for the judges, and all, as if their opinion mattered, but we’ve already seen this, like five minutes ago. Even the twitter generation has a longer attention span.

Plunging right into judging, they straight up call Jennifer’s picture National Geographic, except without the accuracy and journalistic integrity. Or breasts. Come to think of it, they could have salvaged this whole shoot with more toplessness and less brown makeup. Miss J, cutting to the heart of things, feels she really sold the necklace. Blackface justified!

Nigel loves Laura’s close-up and I have to agree. The epileptic-fit vibe of the wide shot melts away up close. Tyra, recapping the shoot again, liked that Laura asked her to be honest while directing her. Sure, it meant Tyra honestly felt that a girl caught peeing in a field was a great shot, but still, hooray for honesty.

Nothing says fashion like a hunchback, so Erin gets high marks for hers, although I can’t rule out she’s merely crushed by the weight of that hat. Erin confesses her mind was a blank when it came to Tibet and Egypt, and she was intimidated by Tyra. Tyra replies that she should have asked questions. After all, Tyra is an expert on everything! She’s like a retarded United Nations of world culture information.

Brittany and her blend of Indians do not impress. Indeed, the dreaded C-word is used. No not that one, potty-mouth. Catalogue. Perhaps the Victoria’s Racism catalogue, or maybe L. L. Bigot. Nigel advises her to not think vintage, think forward … to a time when she doesn’t have to do black/red/yellowface. Or maybe when she can eat again.

Sundai Love, our lone model with out a change of pigment. Will it help her? Nope. She may have escaped the make-up, but you can’t run away from short, especially not on those tiny legs. Tyra likes her initiative, but she looks short, as in “Gap Kids.” Snap! That’s not just a catalogue, it’s a children’s catalogue. Of course, it would help if she weren’t dressed in immensely baggy clothing and holding a stick larger than she is. But you know how those ethnic types love their sticks.

Lastly, there’s the Malagapanese magic of Nicole. Nigel calls her stunning from “top to toe” highlighting just how stupid the phrase “H to T” is. I half expect Tyra to smize him to death on the spot for not using the official Tyranese language. Miss J likes that she didn’t lose her neck in the absurd collar.

During judging, Tyra complains that Brittany had the best wardrobe yet gave them catalogue. I actually had to pause at that point to ponder how Tyra can possibly believe an Indian head dress and a sari make the best wardrobe. Then I decided down that train of thought madness lies. Best let it be. The judges also acknowledge that Sundai is giving the same face in every shot, but it’s kinda working for her. Nicole gets props for modeling even when the camera wasn’t on her. Which, on a reality show, it always is, isn’t it? Probably better to not over-think that one too.

Photos! Nicole gets the top spot, followed by Jennifer, Laura, and Sundai. Tyra tells Sundai to look older than twelve, like maybe a slutty fourteen.

Brittany and Erin comprise the bottom two. Brittany’s great pictures are becoming formulaic instead of inspiring, while Erin is “standing in her own way, something we call ‘self-sabotage’.” Uh, Tyra, that’s what everybody calls it. I know you’re busy inventing a new, more incomprehensible language, but we’ve got that one covered. How about “selfbotage”? That’s up for grabs. As in, “She selfbotaged the photo by failing to smize.”

“Don’t be intimidated, tiny minion. I am just like you, only much, much better.”

Where was I? Oh yes, Brittany goes home. Tyra towers over Erin and commands her to not be intimidated. Brittany sobs that this terrible picture was her favorite photo. Too late to suck up now, Brittany, but nice try. Later Brittany confesses she takes “catalogue” as a compliment, because what math nerd doesn’t want to hear that? Nerds love catalogues! That’s where they get all their clothing!

brilliantmistake | 11.04.09 | Filed in America's Next Top Model, Recaps