America's Next Top Model (Cycle 12) - 12x12 "Take Me To The Jungle"

Japanese animation -- known to nerds and teenage girls who live on the Internet (like me) as anime -- has this ephemeral style called facefaults that represent the Japanese equivalent to what American audiences would know as a wild take: a facefault occurs in anime when one character reacts in an extremely exaggerated and stylized way, and the way the character is rendered abides by conventions originally founded by Osamu Tezuka, but I'm getting away from Tyra's psychoscape.

This prelude is all to say that Allison is the live, flesh and blood manifestation of facefaults. She's already obviously a manga character come to life with those eyes, but now she's been reacting to ANTM's inherent ridiculousness like in way that defies facial physics.

Allison's Gallery of Facefaults, AFTER THE JUMP.






















And it's like she knows she's an anime character, too! Here she is, reacting to that stupid samba teach in an entirely appropriate way:









This is some straight Dancing With Ringu ½ insanity -- here it is in motion:

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Teyona was downright meta in this episode; she started off with a certain manner of confidence -- e.g. she felt safe because her body of work on the show was too strong for her to be eliminated, even after a subpar photoshoot -- that so often precedes a hubris-checking elimination. To her credit, though, Teyona realized the folly of expressing such confidence and convinced herself that she was courting reality death with such vainglorious behavior -- and saved herself! Self-correcting karma.

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I need to make my loathing for Ann Shoket clear. This woman is such a shameless wanton for televisual attention that she gloms so earnestly and unironically to this absurd self- or better yet Tyra-celebrating show, for lack of her own ability to leverage her hoary stewardship of that gray lady of teenybopper periodicals Seventeen into a show for herself she wants so badly, oh well hey she gets to hang with the cool, young, wacky kids! She's not old at all! and proffers nothing but insightless blandishments, blunt, inelegant stupidities, and obliviously inane remarks and keeps coming back for more.

Like, she says this about Aminat: "You use every single one of your strengths. Your legs are doing the right thing, your arms are doing the right thing, your face is catching the light." Not 3:30 minutes later (in tv time), after Paulina expressed her withering apathy for Aminat, Shoket brazenly backtracks! "I think you're [Paulina] right, though, what you said earlier about the face. It doesn't say much." AARGH YOU ARE SO UNREDEEMINGLY INSIPID WHY ARE YOU SUBTRACTING VALUE FROM MY SHOW.

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Indie rating: Stereolab – "Nothing to do With Me"