Australia’s Next Top Model episode 9 recap

IN THE penultimate episode of this year’s Australia’s Next Top Model the girls are taken to New York, and our favourite drama queen gets sent home. Noooooo!

It’s pronounced ‘get out of my office’.

This.

This was my expression at the end of this episode of Australia’s Next Top Model:

But the ... but I thought ... how did ...

But a LOT of expressions happened before then, so let’s get to those ones first.

For example, this is the expression when the modules are told, via the traditional medium of boxed T-shirts, that they’re going to New York:

OMG black boxes are always synonymous with air travel!

This is the expression when the girls arrive at Times Square:

OMG my mouth is drying out.

This is the expression when they’re told they’ll be going to ‘go-sees’ at Swarovski and Elle:

OMG those are totally brand names.

And this is a picture of a basking shark:

OMG plankton.

The go-sees, as explained by Alex Perry dressed as a gigantic piece of Greek licorice, must be arrived at on time in cabs and conducted in a professional manner. Unfortunately, there is no specific advice regarding simple grid-system city planning or the correct pronunciation of quite important words.

Several excellent and also not-excellent things happen, with corresponding expressions.

Alexandra is asked to impersonate a cat by the terrifying Anne Slowey at Elle.

Although she heard ‘cat sitting on a thistle’.

To further inflame Anne’s ire, Alexandra channels Elizabeth Perkins in Showgirls and pronounces ‘Givenchy’ as ‘Gi-ven-chee’.

It’s pronounced ‘Ver-sayss’.

She checks with Anne that she’s absolutely and completely sure there’s only one way to pronounce designers’ names. It’s fine, though. It’s fine. Anne Slowey has a scowl that can dissolve rhinoceros bowels, but it’s fine.

It’s pronounced ‘get out of my office’.

Over at Swarovski, Lucy tells the world’s primary purveyor of things that are not diamonds that ‘diamonds are a girl’s best friend’.

Diamonds are forever and so is my shame.

Brittany charms the starch out of Anne Snowey’s girdle, who thinks models with a history of operating earthmoving equipment are just the most darling things.

After a slight mispronunciation of her own, Brit even kills over at Swarovski, where she demonstrates the fine art of modelling jewellery naturally:

KAROFFSKY KISTELLS

Jess is a minimum of four days late to both appointments and stumbles twice, thus concluding the Facepalm Olympics. Brittany wins, and Alexandra comes second, which she says is the same as coming last because maths.

Nine weeks in, the modules finally get their first modelling lesson — a posing class led by model Coco Rocha. Weirdly she doesn’t just walk in, say “throw shapes”, drop the mic and walk out, but rather spends most of the day saying things like “your head is a clock” and “if you can’t think of faces, do the vowels”.

A, E, I will eat your soul.

The lesson is actually brilliant, like a truncated drama class or a series of photographs from a public hospital’s waiting room. The exercises get harder and harder, until Coco asks Alexandra to make a face like a psycho.

Nailed it.

It’s photo-shoot time, and Shiny Alex Perry and Coco Rocha meet the girls on the street, telling them they’ll be shot today by very handsome photographer and especially-famous-because-of-America’s-Next-Top-Model Nigel Barker.

Yes yes, OMG, we GET IT.

The best thing about this shoot, though, is the ‘directional fashion’, which is difficult to wear but extremely easy to nickname.

Inflatable surf-geisha.

Homegirl left the iron on.

Street-savvy power-fart

And crisscross lolly-boobs.

Despite everyone except Alexandra needing a little time to warm up, the posing class pays big dividends and the modules hit it out of the park. It continues to be truly irritating how good at modelling Alexandra is.

Suddenly, with barely enough time for a twelve-dollar airport coffee, we’re back in the Surry Hills Eliminatorium with Hawkins, Perry, and IMG Models honcho David Cunningham.

Jen drops the bomb that today will be a double elimination, reality hits that there’s only one more week left, and editors and make-up artists try to cope with eight hours of footage of everyone in the room squirting tears out of their faces in a constant stream.

First, the gorgeous-and-endearing-but-already-in-the-bottom-two-twice Jess goes, her tearful voice sounding like a printer running out of ink.

Goodbye, sublime ginge.

Then, because Brittany is a complete frigging champion, it comes down to Lucy and Alexandra.

And Alexandra, the world’s most determined, short attention-seeker, is sent home.

Wait what?

What the HELL am I supposed to write about next week?

Oh, right.

The winner and stuff.

I guess.