MMAS: Walk With The Animals

In episode seven of Make Me A Supermodel, it was all about animals and fear and sometimes fear of animals. Sometimes it was unclear which species was more scared of the other, but at least both the models and the animals were clearly smarter than the variety of judges used as adjudicators on this series. The producers could have saved some money and provided more insightful comments if they had hired a parrot in place of slow talking Tyson Beckford. Hopefully the models will realize that they need to just talk to the public through the camera and not pay attention to the inane utterances of the judging panel.

The opening dismissal was a contest between those with diminutive names: Frankie Godoy, Ronnie Kroell and Stephanie Bulger. This week the smallest of the small, in total votes, was predictably Stephanie. As I mentioned before, there was no way the viewers in this show's demographics were going to keep a blah girl over these two guys.

The models got a hair trim from Anthony Barrow of Cutler Salon while Frankie got a major whack job. Cory Bautista of New York Model Management told him it was time to lose the Fabio look. Considering that the long hair is a major part of the Frankie image it was big decision for him to decide whether to do it or not. Knowing that hair will grow back but reality tv competitions are once in a lifetime (not counting series with all-star editions), Frankie went ahead with it, and personally I think the shorter hair makes him a lot better looking. He felt unsure of himself when looking at the result but resident philosopher Casey Skinner eased his mind by wisely pointing out that "Fabio is what's inside". Casey may have gotten that from a fortune cookie but it sounded good anyway.

The fear that Frankie had of losing his hair led to a discussion about what the other models' fears are. Casey presciently declared his biggest fear was snakes. The next day the models were taken to an outdoor location where they were told that their photography assignment was to pose in a tank of water using a large snake for a prop. The models were allowed to see the snake up close and Casey begged it not to kill him.

The photographer was a real jerk. An automated shutter could have done his job. He was totally unable to do his task of getting the models to create a good photo. To make it worse, he just deflected his own inadequacy by blaming the models. Maybe he just needs to get an Instamatic camera and start learning his craft from scratch.

Two days later, the models found out that their catwalk assignment was to work with giant headpieces. Living mannequin Niki Taylor offered the best piece of advice that her blond mind could think of: "It shouldn't wear you, you should wear it."

To make the assignment more challenging, the models also had to take an animal with them down the runway. The various animals were assigned by random drawing and Perry Ullmann got the pig. The little oinker performed about the same as the one that Brett Novek got on America's Most Smartest Model, which is to say that models and pigs don't work well together. The piglet's greatest fear apparently was doing runway and his porcine screams caused him to be replaced with his understudy goat.

The models completed the catwalk as well as they good, and unfortunately Perry was the most affected by bad behavior of his animal. It didn't want to walk or even be dragged but Perry did what he could. The judges used the opportunity to try to humble him. Cory said that Perry's photo was weak even though the photographer had said otherwise and then the other judges piled on in a blatant effort to shake up Perry. I assume that they knew that the exercise they were attempting wasn't going to knock out him, one of the top contenders, so they felt free to put Perry in the bottom three just to teach him a lesson.

The most interesting part of the judges' question period was when Ronnie was asked who should be in the bottom three and Ronnie finally and fully threw roommate Ben DiChiara under the bus as I had previously predicted he would do. Ronnie also was able to get a dig in during Perry's inquisition, showing he is the master manipulator of opinion for this voter driven contest.

The bottom three are Jacki Hydock, Ben and Perry. Once again, the unappealing girl with two popular guys doesn't stand a chance. Bye-bye Jacki.