Rewarding the jerks

Here's a quick recap of this week's reality goings-on with The Amazing Race and America's Next Top Model.

This week on TAR, the teams went off to Moscow, where Lake the butthead dentist lamented that it would be cold. In Russia. Yeah, I'm feeling real bad for him.


Anywho, the events leading up to Moscow were uneventful, and lead to the Roadblock, where a team member had to jump off the high dive while wearing swim team gear (that would be a Speedo, folks). That's all pretty uneventful, but I cursed myself for checking out Lake in his banana hammock. Hey, I know he's a jerk, but it doesn't stop me from looking (that's him at far left). Then the diver/jumper needs to go down a couple feet in the water to grab the clue. This is easy for most, but it turns out Mama Wanda has a phobia about swimming. You think maybe this wasn't the best Roadblock for her to choose? Desiree's encouragement doesn't help, but a Russian swim coach eventually does.

Moving onto the Detour, teams have to choose between cleaning a public bus or finding a clue in one of hundreds of Russian nesting dolls. The bus place turns out to be hard to find, so only the lagging teams opt for it - Wanda/Desiree, Dani/Danielle, Dave/Lori and...somebody else, I forget.


You would think teams would have learned from previous seasons that the needle in a haystack Detour is never a good idea, as it leaves too much up to chance. And to make matters worse, in the background are traditional Russian musicians and dancers, who are pretty much there to make noise and crank up the anxiety level a few notches. It's all highly unexciting, capped by Eric/Jeremy getting out first - HATE. They get to the Amazing bathmat to have Phil tell them that the leg is not over - it's the infamous 2-episode leg! So it's all to be continued. I'm just sad that the jerkwads with small equipment down there landed in first place. I loathe them.

Next week - Wanda and Danielle argue. Noooo!!!!

Over in the land of vacuous shallowness, Tyra saw 12 beautiful girls move on to week 2. This time the girls actually do get the makeover, and what I did not know from previous seasons is that the direction each makeover takes is determined by Tyra. So that results in some good changes (Mollie Sue sports a mod haircut like Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby) and some very bad (Sarah has this weird swept up over her head hair thing that she hates).

Next the girls go to a runway show, and are each asked to pick out an outfit that defines their personal style. They are assisted with makeup by Cover Girl spokesmodel Naima from season four, who looks like she would rather get a root canal from Lake than have to shill cosmetics. Most of the outfits are ugly to start with, so no one comes out really well here, but again Nnenna wins the challenge. She gets a huge shopping spree at a high-end boutique, and chooses Gina (how sweet) and Jade (dear God) to join her, as they are her roommates. Apparently in Nigeria they do not have a course in Divas 101, where the first lesson is "Do not reward the woman who thinks she's a diva but is not in fact talented in any way."

Leading up to the main shoot, the house drama involves Jade being a delusional psycho. She basically prances around the house at 3 a.m. in her underwear, telling everyone that she is the shit, and they should worship her. She even goes so far as to try and get Wendy off the phone. Wendy who is talking to her mom, who has just seen their flooded house in New Orleans. Meanwhile Furonda is doing her own diva routine, showing that the hair weave she got has apparently turned on her internal diva switch. Of course she and Jade face off a bit, and it's fabulous. Drama!

The shoot requires the girls to wear next to nothing while writhing around on blocks of ice. Predictably Danielle bitches that it's too cold. Nnenna handles it well, but gets a runny nose, which is totally what would happen to me. At the judging panel the results show that I am not in line with the judges this time. While I thought the real stand-outs were Gina and Joanie, they instead fawned over Nnenna and Danielle. Whatever - judge for yourself. Also, Brooke has ginormous lips to go with her big chin. The judges call her "not conventionally beautiful, but totally model material." Does that translate to, "You're weird looking, but they like that in fashion right now?"

12 beautiful girls stand before Tyra, 11 photos in her hand. It ends up with Wendy and Jade in the bottom two. The basic issue is whether to keep Wendy who is drama-free but distracted by thoughts of her family and personal tragedy, or keep Jade who is nuttier than a fruitcake but gives something to the camera. And they keep Jade. Fucking Jade.

So this is when I realize why I (love to) hate this show. If you want to succeed, you have to play your drama in front of Tyra to the hilt. If you are dull or lacking in drama, then you will go home. That's why we kept around trash like Tiffany in the past, while nice girls got the boot. So lesson learned - if you want to be America's Next Top Model and you lost everything in a natural disaster, you had best bawl about it at every opportunity.

Next week - cockroaches!