Our remaining modeltestants on America’s Next Top Model are whisked away to the faraway land of Las Vegas to partake in Tyra’s ponzi scheme, her cosmetic line, Tyra. Who is the girl who became bootyful? We’re not sure, but we break “The Girl Who Became Bootyful” anyway.
Samir: As we predicted, and as everyone else on Earth, the Dustin-Justin dichotomy ended with Dustin coming back and Justin going home. Not a shocker. And henceforth, not worth the wait a week to see this come to fruition as we all knew it would. Frankly, J-Smooth, you can still go to Las Vegas if you want, it’s a short road trip away.
Margaux: But if J-Smooth goes without Top Model’s aide, how can it be for a business modeling opportunity, whatever that means. I love how hard Tyra is trying to sell Vegas as some exotic desert, girl you ain’t foolin’ no one but yourself. Well, maybe Dustin, since he’s eighteen year old and has most likely not yet been.
Samir: He could just bumrush all their challenges like he did the go-see last week. Regarding Dustin, exactly how is he going to enjoy Vegas at age 18, they just don’t address if he’ll be drinking with the gang. At least he can get a prostitute and gamble if he wants. The hate-Dustin vibe in the house doesn’t seem like a good thing for him. Also that he’s missing some cherished childhood experience to be here (Prom, again)=KOD. Why would they even try to confuse us with the Mamé family talk – we all know she isn’t going anywhere, so why bother?
Margaux: They also try to slide in some Nyle sob story lite, but just like we knew Justin would be going on home before Tyra announced it, we know Dustin won’t last beyond “The Girl Who Became Bootyful” because the comeback modeltestant never lasts. If Lelia couldn’t cut it, I highly doubt Dustin’s staying power.
Samir: They are really getting a lot of mileage out of these modeltestants as free advertising for the various things Tyra didn’t want to pay for, or wanted to sucker in to pay for her show. There’s a long soliloquy from the models about how wonderful it is to create memories on the PooP phones, and how vital selfies are to that process. Then Hadassah has to tell us that their hotel is the most beautiful she’s ever seen “And I’ve seen a lot of beautiful hotels.” I guess if you like a place made for coke addicts-all mirror ceilings/floors and neon lights, then yes this is the most beautiful hotel you’ve ever seen.
Margaux: All of this SLS talk, which is a brand new hotel that clearly needed ANY kind of press, leads to not only a plug for the SLS spa, but we see the pointless return of Don from cycle 20, who has a terrible single he needs to promote. Maybe he’s a package deal with the hotel?
Samir: Must be, but he’s got an album out Margaux, what a coincidence! This challenge is a one-take photoshoot of them as party characters jumping into the pool? And they get props (like credit cards, cocktail shakers, shopping bags, etc) yay…You can tell this is fixed because Don is offering modeling commentary that he clearly has no expertise in the field to offer, since his appearance on the show led to a “music career.”
Margaux: Don’s model critiques sound about as constructive as Nicki Minaj’s infamous “I would stop on this page. I WOULDN’T stop on this page”. “Her face was blocked. Her face wasn’t blocked”, thank you Captain Obvious. We’ve got one deaf guy, not 7 blind people. But it gets worse because for whatever reason, the modeltestants all have to get back in the pool to hear who’s won mini-challenge. Naturally, this is after we see an exterior establishing shot of the SLS hotel, in case we forgot where the hell they are.
When we get back to the hotel room, after Mamé is named the winner of the mini-challenge, it finally hits Devin that he might not be that great at modeling, and all it took was not-even-all-that-low score.
Samir: Not the time for him to lose his annoying nerve, because Tyra needs beauty-tainers to shill her makeup (Tyra calls this “empowering people”) at house parties to rack up Monopoly money, like she’s not satisfied with trying to become Oprah, now she needs to take over Tupperware, Mary Kay and Avon as well. Work that hallway like a runway!
Margaux: Ah yes, Tyra comes Tyra correct, unleashing yet another new buzzword, besides BeautyTainers, BankSign$. I mean, Tyra’s basically created a pyramid scheme here (complete with free labor!), how is this any different than selling CutCo knives? Besides this being makeup and not, ya know, knives. And why does a cosmetics line need a ‘theme song’? It’s no wonder the singer, Stori, couldn’t be bothered to make an appearance, she was probably just happy the check cleared and washed her hands of the whole mess.
Samir: It needs a theme song so Tyra can do another music video challenge on her show. And for our beauty-tainment. I feel more empowered already. The “banksigns” are the equivalent of Disney dollars-no retailers will accept them. I can just see the models trying to use them as tender in the modeling world “But Tyra told me these were worth something!”
Dustin is having a problem with the rhythm, which Nyle has seemingly mastered already. And the hate-Dustin vibe just grows and grows, like a fern misted by an unending spritz of negativity being spit out at him. I sense a “last hired-first fired” edit here. Maybe he already knows this and that’s why he won’t stop flirting with all the girls? He just wants to enjoy his time left.
However, Devin complaining that having Dustin is back is like having an annoying child around-um you probably shouldn’t mention that to the other housemates, they’re bound to assume you’re talking about yourself.
Margaux: Right? I don’t think Devin understands how ironic the analogy he’s making about Dustin is. But Devin is doing a good job, as far as Devin goes, in the music video challenge. Maybe his true calling is back-up dancer? Phew, thank goodness Devin is only a ripe 22, so he has plenty of time to get on that career track.
I don’t know why Tyra is trying to make Mikey the “hot guy” in this music video, maybe that’s Kelly’s input; that’s a mistake, clearly the hot guy is Nyle.
Samir: I completely agree on Mikey-they are working double overtime to sell him this week. I wouldn’t be so excited to see someone who looked like him slamming my door in and pushing his way in. His thing is “motion!” Tyra says. “Motion” is the new “tension.” I think that’s all part of their manufactured speedbump for Nyle-at this point the story editors are trying to avoid confirming what is dreadfully obvious and keep some semblance of a dramatic arc and suspense for each episode. Trigger warning: it’s not working. But in the hallway/runway all the guys seemed a lot better than the girls.
Margaux: I would have to agree on that point, the guys are probably less concerned with looking ‘sexy’ while dancing, which is why they excelled in the hallway section, but no one had an outstanding runway walk, those contraptions the modeltestants end up wearing in the club scenes are crazy ugly. Why are there spikes coming outta Mikey’s shoulders? And poor Lacey is tasked with saying the designers name like she’s heard of them.
Samir: Castoffs from a Lady Gaga video ten years ago is what these outfits looked like to me. Hadassah looks dead in the eyes in her runway walk, but Dustin appeared equally out of place in his house party host role. Their race to the bottom is on! Nyle looked great in everything-”it’s HOW you signed!” I liked that detail, and begrudgingly have to agree with Tyra. Not because he wasn’t great, but because agreeing with Tyra is a sure sign of dementia.
Margaux: I thought it was a great way for Nyle to stay Nyle within this insane and semi-nonsensical music video, and for me, he was the only one who really pulled off every scene. I hate using this word, but he brought a ton of energy to this limp concept. Unlike Mikey, who sorta shockingly wins this week, that felt really forced and manipulated – like, did you guys actually see Nyle’s performance? He turned it the fuck o-u-t.
Samir: No they didn’t really see Nyle’s performance. They saw Mikey’s head bobbing up and down between their legs earlier in the week. He’s servicing somebody to stay here.
Margaux: The only reason I can see why they fell in love in Mikey’s performance is because they’re all stuck in the 90s, or desperately want it to be the 90s, because that was the only bit of positive feedback Mikey received from multiple judges. MIKEY IS SO 90s IN THAT HALLWAY! I…okay, whatever Tyra. It’s your world and we’re just living in it for this one hour on the CW.
Samir: Don’t turn off your DVR recordings yet-we’ve still got the finished music video to watch. Oh yeah, and Dustin was eliminated. I wouldn’t be so disappointed as you seem Dustin that you ruined a “great opportunity.” I mean, Tyra couldn’t even afford to take you out of the country this year, so by being born too late to participate in the time when they went to Europe, you were already disadvantaged. But the video-why is the lip-synching so terrible (in addition to the video as a whole). It’s got to be a bad sign that the deaf person is the best lip-syncher and he can’t even hear the song. You would ALL be sashaying away if you were on Drag Race.
Margaux: It’s like Tyra just gave away who wins this cycle by making Lacey the shy-to-star center of the video. And this song, dear GAWD – it’s like 3 songs in one really, really, long, terrible one – one minute it sounds like Salt’n’Pepper, the next it sounds like a Katy Perry castoff. I feel like I’ve been in the club till 4am, and not in a good, fun time way. Like someone stole my purse and my friends left me behind kind of way.
Wanna talk stars? “The Girl Who Become Bootyful” was definitely a doozy, in the sense that even though all our predictions came true by way of eliminations, we still were surprised with delightful disasters. We finally got a music video challenge AND a glimpse into Tyra recycling footage from the opening credit sequence into this commercial-music video hybrid spawned after a very fucked up night in Vegas. That’s…how she came up with the concept for this, right?
Samir: Who the hell was that girl? Mamé? Lacey? Mikey? This episode didn’t really answer that question, which means we’re back to titles that have no real connection to what we cared about watching in the episode. Points off for that, but made up for with the utter horror of Tyra’s beauty-tainment music video infomercial. Let’s hope that in this case what happens in Vegas always and forever stays in Vegas.
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