America's Next Top Model (Cycle 6) - 6x08 "The Girl Who is a Model, Not a Masseuse"

ANTM has never been a model (GEDDIT?) of consistency, and the last episode was no exception when they eliminated Nnenna, who went from early favorite to being hung out to dry.



What got Nnenna booted was her reserved deportment (and karmically, her friendship with Jade) and articulate nature that leads her to talk her interlocutors to death. However, she acquits herself much better in a one-on-one setting where she can interact more directly with a single person rather than trying to engage with multiple people at once, as she proved when she won the interview challenge and also in her teleconference on Thursday. In fact, she humanized herself a lot in her teleconference by explaining that her monopoly of the telephone lasted only two nights, and that she actually cooked her boyfriend dinner when he popped up at the house (thus explaining her unresponsiveness to him). However, Nnenna's intelligence is about as exciting as reading Gérard Genette's narratological treatises. Don't get me wrong, Narrative Discourse is an excellent theoretical text and unusually readable for the work of a French structuralist, but dude, I'm just not into analepsis. (And no, you didn't need to know any of this.)

Especially when the discursive level of Top Model is constituted by Joanie calling Furonda a "ding dong" for misspelling "et cetera." And extra points to Jade who tried spelling it "excedera." (That recap episode -- "The Girl Who is Going to the Moon" -- was probably the single best recap episode of a reality tv program, ever. So much unaired Danielle and Joanie wackiness!)

Model Entertainment Value Index
After hours trading: Performance based on recap episode.

1. Danielle
327 points, +53, +61 (after hours trading)
Danielle is just so cool, perhaps the only contestant I'll ever want to know platonically. She has charm, poise, and an off-the-wall sense of humor: vacuuming Jade's sweat with the dental spit sucker! I'm way too impressed with how hard she had worked to accept her gap, and then how she acquiesced with little complaint to Tyra's dictate to get it fixed. And her "rough" accent? Cute, suckas!

2. Joanie
301, +19, +58 (after hours trading)
She had a somewhat disappointing showing, especially in front of the judges, where I expected her to sell herself like "the rent is due." She nevertheless amused me when she drank coffee before her upside-down photoshoot, but where her stock really went up was in the recap episode. Handling a tooth that was just extracted from her mouth? (FYI, when I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I wussed it with the general anesthetic, baby!) Believing that Jade is an alien? Oh, by the way, "Ding dong" is officially entering my vocabulary now.

3. Jade
193, +7, +20 (after hours trading)
I don't want to get too analystic with my derogatoriness, but I don't think I can withhandle Jade's proportionable gendre. Her releasement of such malapropisms is mildly amusing, though her face is anything butt.

4. Furonda
189, +19, +5 (after hours trading)
Her fear of touching Nnenna? Splendid! And when Joanie made fun of Furonda's rules (in a sexy Arkansan drawl!), Furonda was good-natured enough to crack up.

5. The ghost of Cassandra (Cycle 5)
32, +31
My word do they producers love making fun of Cassandra!

6. Sara
24, -3, +3, (after hours trading)
MEH. Though she redeemed herself slightly in the recap episode, where she actually came off articulate and almost half as smart as she thinks she is.

Indie rating: Solex - "You Say Potato, I say Aardappel"