Cycle 20 has breathed life into a franchise that has been flagging and failing in its three past runs. The format was tired, Tyra Banks’s weaves were waning and, in all honesty, the judging panel had been drained of life and vigour. Barring the excruciating presence of Bryanboy, whose entirely pointless function is to tell us what social media thinks about the models, the judging panel has come alive again for the new cycle. Mouthy PR-woman Kelly Cutrone of The Hills fame now regularly locks horns with male “super-model” (he’s hardly Sean O’Pry…) Rob Evans in the judging chamber, and the semi-final was no exception.
The action is centred in Bali, which rather than some dubious claim from Tyra about being “the fashion capital of the world,” is justified because she quite liked going on holiday there last summer. The five remaining models are dispensing with the pleasantries and going for the jugular. Renee, this Cycle’s “sassy bitch” opens fire saying of Chris H, “There’s a place reserved in hell for people like you.” Jourdan and Cory aren’t exactly pulling their punches either, calling him fake. Bit of an overreaction; all he did was survive elimination over Nina, this cycle’s “quirky” model, and Jeremy, beefcake without any beauty. Chris H turns to Marvin (dubbed Starvin’ because of his cringe worthy pulling tactics in the Model House), but Marvin tries to fob him off because, “I came here to win. I’m not interested in establishing a relationship with him.”
In typical ANTM-style, both the photo-shoot and the week’s challenge are so ridiculous you couldn’t actually conceive of the models ever actually being asked to do it. First of all they have to work out competitively, with the prize being an appearance in the workout video of the previous cycle’s winner (yeah, her career is going that well). Jourdan, because she’s too skinny, loses to Renee (and has a panic attack, but on ANTM that basically amounts to going “GUYS I’M HAVING A PANIC ATTACK!”), and unsurprisingly, Marvin who goes to the gym, trashes the other boys.
The photo-shoot is downright batty, largely because the models are draped and made up to look like bats. Hung upside down they have to swing around, and considering the high camp of the piece, it’s a bit unfair for creative consultant Johnny Wujek to be saying “guys, come-on, be masculine.” Marvin surprisingly nails the challenge, getting great photos. In the second dizzy turn of the episode Renee faints, which is forgivable since she has just been strung upside down. The photographer shouts at the other two boys a bit, but eventually they got told, “we got the shot.”
Panel proved a delight this week, too. Kelly finally went all guns blazing on Rob Evans mouthing off at Cory, an androgynous male model, for not being masculine enough. Even better, Cory even has a go at him and Evans looks suitably sheepish before sulkily throwing out a ‘6’ in the scoring. Tyra falls off her chair at Marvin’s photo and writhes around on the floor for a bit, spouting off some true Tyra crazy about his face. Bryanboy falls off his chair too, unfortunately avoids suffering an injury, and tries to tell Marvin off for using the same face. Nobody cares though, because Bryanboy is essentially irrelevant to the panel since all he does is talk about social media, which a computer could easily do for us all. Two models go home and we’re a step removed from meeting “the winner of America’s Next Top Model.”