Trivia NYC/DSO Media

This is a recap of Episode Two of America’s Most Smartest Model. I don’t know why I decided to start this little project, but hey, we’re into it now.

* * *

I gotta admit, I’ve been thinking about Gaston, the Argentinian horndog who was purged from the show last week, quite a bit. There were precious few actual antagonistas in this group, and he had it in him to be a good one, with his unnatural ability to keep the women feeling uncomfortable and foil any potential hookups that might be on the verge of happening, not to mention his poodly hair getting in everyone’s stuff. Now that he’s gone, it all falls to “Soviet” Andre to be the Alpha Dick. That’ll be the drama of the show moving forward. I think they’ll be alright for another few episodes, at least.

Episode Two opens the morning after, with everyone crawling out of bed. Nice beds. Mandy’s happy she’s still here and she practices smiling through the inner-tubes on her face, and VJ complains that they’ve put a whole new set of number codes on the door locks. This time, instead of trivia questions, they’re all roman numerals. There’s no reason for any model anywhere ever to be a morning person, but whatever. Jesse, whose hair looks somehow more Boondocks-like than usual, works out MDCLXVI on a scratch pad. Andre helpfully points out that M is a thousand. His work is done, so he goes to Camera to ask “Didn’t I just leave Russia?” (I’m still convinced you’re from like, Dayton, Ohio, and you’ve never been to Russia. But who’s to say.) VJ figures it out first, and gets First Pee Of The Day award.

Jesse comes back from the gym, covered in sweat. He’s taking his homework seriously, which is cool. The other guys in the gym are helping him out with things like technique and what a sit-up actually is, showing him around to all the glorious wonders of an exercise room. Erika (the world’s smallest Clydesdale) patronizes at him, and he sneers her off in a moment of foreshadowy goodness.

Mary Alice: “So every day I send the models a note du jour,” she nods the corner of her head again, like she’s been drinking all night, like I sure as hell would be, “which explains what their upcoming challenge is going to be.” Except she didn’t yesterday. But hey, I’m all for traditions retroactively applied. Daniel, being one of the two models who can read, does the honors. “Good Afternoon, models.” It’s unclear whether they let everyone sleep in or mess around all morning or whether she’s just digging on their laziness. It works either way, I guess.

They show the actual note, which saves us having to decipher the occasional mispronunciation:

Noted philosopher Francis Bacon once said, ‘For knowledge itself is power.’ In today’s Edge Challenge what you know will bring great rewards. I’ve divided you up into co-ed teams of two.

• Pickel and Rachael
• Andre and Lisa
• Brett and Angela
• Jesse and Erika
• VJ and Rachel
• Daniel and Mandy Lynn

Please join Ben and me in the living room in an hour for a meeting of the minds.
- Mary Alice

The font is one of the crap script fonts that they gave away for free with WordPerfect 1.0, and she varied the size of the opening salutation and her signature at the end, which makes the whole thing look like a ransom note of some kind, but what the hell, they’re not giving away style points on this show, are they? (They are? Oh.)

Pickel kind of digs Aussie Rachael, so that works. Lisa is kind of alarmed at having to do a shoot with Andre, Blonde Rachel (who seems to have brought about 36 bikinis, all of which inappropriately accent her carnival-length torso) is hot for VJ already, so that works out, and Daniel and Mandy Lynn are both, well, sunbathing topless, so basically half the pairs wanted to schtup each other already and the other half are scared and petrified about their pairing. It all panned out awfully … cleanly.

Mandy Lynn: “I feelike I totally thcored being taired up wif Daniel, becauve he’th one of the moaf fmartetht people in the houth.”

Pickel: “The note du jour said that knowledge was power, so we started a little impromptu study session.” What in the world do they think they’re studying? Do they understand what they’re actually going to be asked? Because if the goal is to cram for some kind of exam, well, cracking a book an hour beforehand is kind of like filling an empty warehouse with toothpaste, one squeezed tube at a time. It’s not going to fill the room with anything meaningful, and it’ll only make the floors slippery.

Trumping this thought, VJ and Rachel The Torso get the idea to hoard all the books in the house. They hide them where no one can find them (behind the food, or maybe with the cleaning supplies), and then smirk as everyone else gets mad. Of course, they’re not doing anyone any good wherever they’re hidden. But they wouldn’t do anyone any good anyways, so this is all kind of harmless fun. Rachel and VJ sit back to back fending off the pointless rage from everyone. Brett takes it all the way: “Look, if this is a competition, then why not when we’re all sleeping, you just kill us all?” Andre was no doubt considering this already, and would have done it if he could get the punch code for the knife drawer open. “I’ve never heard so much bitching!” “I’ve never heard so much pettiness!”

I’ve never heard so much — wait, sure I have. Never mind. God, Rachel is ugly when she’s angry. Her scrawny arms fall limp and useless to her sides as all available blood goes to her face.

VJ, inexplicably, is smitten. “Remember, this is America’s Most Smartest Models-Models… I hid it. Big deal, That’s a pretty smart move by Logan. Punks.” VJ is referring to himself in the third person surname tense.

Cut to the Judgement Room, which has been made out to look like a certain kind of game show (”Puzzle Me Pretty”) with a grid of questions in different categories. (Here’s a hint: eight letters, starts with J, rhymes with “Leopardy!”.) Instead of dollar amounts, though, each question is for items one would need on a photo shoot. (See? Clever!) The easy questions at the top are for smaller things (lipstick, blow dryer, fishnet stockings, breast cutlets), while the bottom answers are tougher and are for more important things (like clothes, extra shots, steal an item from another team, or extra time at the shoot). This should be fun.

We’re at the point in the episode where Mary Alice pimps her friends. The make-up artist has worked for magazines “such as” British Vogue and Glamor, and the hair stylist is a VO5 expert of some kind, with no worthwhile credits to their name. Maybe it’s me who’s doing their hair tomorrow. I should check my voicemail. If elected, I’ll serve. Why the hell not.

Mary Alice then slows down. “I wanna be clear about something. The items you win today are the only thing you’re allowed to take with you for the photo shoot.”

Jesse is scared by this. “If we don’t win anything in this challenge, then we’re going to this photo shoot butt-ass fuckin’ naked. I have a big-ass stomach, and I know this is going to be an issue.” He’s got a big ass where his belly should be, I mean, there’s almost fat there! What a roly poly porker Jesse is! I mean, he might be over 150 pounds! I know, the horror!

Note: I’m not making fun of the fact that Jesse isn’t a workout fiend, and that his six-pack isn’t visible. I’m making fun of the people making fun of him. But as we learned in the last episode, people die to be models, bro. So Jesse’s just going to have to suck it up. Or at least, suck it in.

* * *

After the commercial break, Pickel goes first, guesses what the symbol Au stands for, and wins some doctor and nurse’s outfits. He beams in profile, his chin pointy enough to hang a painting off of. Mandy Lynn goes second, and has no idea what “GOP” means. (Cut to Blonde Rachel mocking her goofy look. Gurl, I wouldn’t do that. You got a serious comeuppance a-coming your way at some point yourself.)

Andre is wearing a yellow sweater over a black shirt and patterned tie that makes him look like Mr. Rogers had joined the Russian mafia. He may be color blind, too. I’m just saying. He gets the inventor of the light bulb correct, though, which he needs. “It’s important that I have to win stuff for Lisa, because it’s a team effort,” he sneers, following it ten seconds later with “Lisa is a fucking idiot. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know anything.” Pickel is the only one in the group who seems to have heard of the Great Depression, and he & Aussie Rachael are, to use Ben’s phrase, “blowing out the doors of this barn,” with a ton of goodies already. They seem pleased with each other. VJ, in a popped collar, won some Western wear for him & Blonde Rachel. Good thing. That taffy-pull torso of hers needs something on it.

They speed up to only include the correct answers, which indicates the quiz itself lasted deep into the night.

Blonde Rachel is tired enough that she just points at the question she wants, and then stomps her foot when she’s asked to actually speak. I know, honey. She misses Napoleon’s last name, so the question passes to Mandy Lynn, who gets it right, and The Torso is visibly shocked. Watch who you calling stupid, lady. Mandy may not be the brightest light in the chandelier, but she’s 180 watts next to your little birthday candle.

Erika goes back to a question she got wrong before (”Who was the main designer for Jackie Kennedy?”) and gets it wrong again, prompting Jesse to cuss her out to the camera. Jesse’s wearing a backpack, for a reason that eludes me. They’re downstairs in the same house, and they’re only away from their luggage for a three hour quiz.

A three hour quiz.

Lisa gets her next question right, but it’s for lipstick. Which would be fine, except they already had won a bag of makeup, and there were still no clothes for Andre. Shockingly enough, he’s apoplectic. “What a selfish cow!”

The game finally ends, with Jesse & Erika having nothing but body paint and a bed, so fatso’s going to have to shoot naked after all, and Andre & Lisa have tons of items for Lisa and nothing for Andre, which sets up tomorrow pretty well drama-wise at least. Everyone else has varying degrees of adequate setup, though Pickel and Aussie Rachael are clearly today’s winners.

Preparation begins. VJ and The Torso are practicing making out in front of the cameras (actually just near-kissing, though they’re both up for more). Andre walks in the room. “Am I interrupting something?” VJ snaps back, “Yes.”

Cut to Andre out by the pool arguing with Lisa. “You guys are so weak, it bothers me.” Lisa tries on a backbone for a moment: “Having a chemistry on camera is what has to read! And I will not have that with you unless you break your barrier with me for this photo shoot!” (Huh?) Andre warms to the argument. “What’s your problem? Does it bother you that I’m better, or that I’m this or that or I’m different?” “You’re not better than anybody here, Andre!” “You’re out of your fucking mind. You think I’m fucking equal to anybody here, you’re out of your fucking mind.” From there, it degenerated into a barrage of fucks and shits and general assholiness. Lisa disappears into the house, and Andre follows shortly thereafter to find Erika, Jesse & Mandy Lynn.

Jesse starts in. “Andre. We were just talking about you, dawg. What’s wrong with you?” Andre stops at the doorway. “Nothing. I’m Russian. You guys are bunch of Americans, and you gonna lose. That’s end of story.” Amazing how his accent got thicker between the pool and the living room.

* * *

Next morning, at exactly 5:37, Mary Alice goes room to room and wakes everyone up, pushing everyone out to the back yard, no primping, no preening, no nothing. After everyone gets down to the pool clad only in their sleep togs, Mary Alice starts by calling out Erika. Her task from the episode before was to wear heels everywhere she goes, all day long. It turns out that she didn’t wear them to bed. (I don’t know why not. Heels in bed feel divine.) Any primping that was done this morning would have given an unfair advantage, so everyone is forced to jump in the pool, and then they’re herded directly into trucks for processing. Good thing none of them had ever heard of World War II (as we learned earlier), or there would have been some seriously inappropriate holocaust references in here. The fact that they actually have official America’s Most Smartest Model vans is a vote of confidence from the network, though, if nothing else.

At the studio, Mary Alice introduces Robert Erdmann, the photographer and first genuinely famous person I’ve seen on the show (where famous = someone whose name I’ve actually heard before, once, a million years ago.) The things everyone won the night before are lined up at separate stations, and everyone’s going to be given a half hour to shoot their roll and decide on the best print, upon which they’ll be judged. We don’t need a voice-over to know that this isn’t a lot of time, but we get two voice-overs saying this isn’t a lot of time.

Everyone springs into action. Andre is disgusted despite getting some underwear in the lingerie package they won, and Jesse’s obsessing about his belly is driving Erika to distraction, but aside from that everyone is making do. VJ & The Torso are flirting harder and harder, and everyone else is starting to mock them.

First up to shoot: Pickel & Aussie Rachael. Rachael decides that her nurse’s uniform is unnecessary, and so she goes naked except for the nurse’s hat. (Somewhere, Andre sees them throwing clothes away, and he seethes. See Andre seethe. Seethe, Andre, seethe.) Erdmann got on Rachael for being greedy and unresponsive, but Pickel was doing twice the work anyways, trying to make the shot good. Dude, his name is Pickel. Of course he’s used to trying harder.

VJ & Blonde Rachel are next. She’s got a western shirt on and the fishnets, which show off her broomstick legs, abnd VJ is in jeans & a bandanna, which show off his perfect pecs. (He is a fairly good looking guy, as long as you don’t look into his eyes. The back of his cranium is quite visible through those windows to the soul, even on my small-screen lo-def TV.)

Erdmann is sick of Andre after all of a few seconds. He snarks about him to Lisa right in front of him, which loosens Lisa up a little, even as Andre tries to direct everyone in the studio. They wind up with a shot that consists of him basically strangling Lisa with her pearls. Somewhere OJ Simpson is watching this and thinking, “Man, that’s a harsh shot.”

Mandy Lynn needed a lot of help, and so Daniel spent the entire half hour in one pose. Angela & Brett manage a workable generic color shot. Jesse & Erika, naked except for body paint, are both having a hard time, and the stress is starting to show early on in their shoot time. Erika looks more freaked out than even Jesse, and they wind up with a stiff and anxious looking photo.

Welcome to my unphotogenic life, guys.

* * *

[Weight loss ad. Pizza ad. Health club ad. McDonald’s ad. Pizza ad again. Just saying.]

* * *

Back in the studio. Mary Alice has seen the shots, and seems surprised by their general quality. She pulls them up in order. Rachael & Pickel’s looks great. VJ & The Torso, as we established back in the Jurassic Era, have great chemistry (VJ gushes about her “good soul,” while off camera she sharpens her knives.) Andre & Lisa’s shot is next. Lisa gets big ups for being so expressive, especially while being choked with her own pearls by a screaming Andre. Robert then calls Andre out for his mouth: “You will annoy many people in your life. It will damage your career, unless you Shut. Up.”

Mandy Lynn got the hairstylist, which was good because her hair was the only good thing about her & Daniel’s shot. He had clearly cramped up lying on his elbows, and she looked like she had fallen asleep on his crotch. Angela & Brett’s shot was fine. They were awkward, but they looked alright with your standard “face-to-face with a pink rose” shot.

Finally, Jesse & Erika. She gets on Jesse about the weight thing again (”What does she expect to happen in a day?”), and then she addresses Erika. “I’m a little worried about you as a model with your one note. When we’re interacting, there’s this lack of energy that I feel from you. A character has yet to come out. I don’t know who you are.” (Jesse: “Great. Erika’s boring, and I’m fat. Not good.”)

In a decision that was obvious ten minutes ago (hey, it’s tough to fill an hour with manufactured drama), Pickel & Aussie Rachael clearly had the best shot, and gain callback immunity through to next week. Andre & Lisa get kudos for a compelling photograph, but Mary Alice makes a point of saying she’d never use the shot as it depicted violence against women. Well, yeah, there is that.

Back at the ranch, dueling monologues about why everyone else’s pictures stunk. Daniel & Mandy Lynn are pissed but they agree, Andre wonders aloud how anyone could think he could be violent towards women, which stops the chatter in the room cold. Everyone turns to him, shocked that he’s that un-self-aware.

* * *

Elimination time in the Judgement Room. One person will be purged tonight. “Most of you did an incredible job,” Mary Alice begins, working that corner-head-tip thing as hard as she can, “but there are two teams that needed work.” Erika & Jesse and Mandy Lynn & Daniel are called to the front. Daniel gets props for smarts, but he had a very bad shoot. She questions his style, but he’s smart, so there was no way he was going down tonight. Mandy Lynn did “pathetic” on the quiz (who said that? Oh, look, Ben Stein is back! He’s been missing from the last half hour of the show!), but she’s been working hard and paying attention and has a lot of heart, so she’s going to get her hair dyed black next week. I can’t wait for that.

They shoehorn one more commercial break in. Clearly, there are advertisers falling all over themselves to pay for this show. It still baffles me, but hey, thank goodness for DVR.

* * *

Jesse & Erika are left. Jesse is still very smart, although he’s not smart enough to not wear a wife beater that’s a size too small, which shows off his belly like nothing he’s worn before. “To have my body rejected on a daily basis is really starting to take a toll on me,” he says, and I can feel that, dawg.

Erika, on the other hand, has no personality, and doesn’t care about the competition anymore. So like the conventional paradigm in the pre-Copernican Era of geocentric cosmology, she is invalidated.

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