New Zealand's Next Top Model - Week Eight

Illustration courtesy of Alan Gray

Who needs to go out on a Friday night anymore?  All the drama, excitement and Colin Mathura-Jeffree you could ever want awaits you on your magic picture box!  

As seems to be the trend, the episode opens with the models targeting one girl to be the object of their derision.  This week it’s Lara’s voodoo doll that must feel the needles of their disdain.  Danielle thinks Lara’s a self-horn honking twit and Dakota says Lara “thinks she’s got it all, but she’s got nothing”.   In whose direction will the wheel of misfortune spin next week?
Saramail: Say your prayers girls, you’re about to worship at the altar of fashion!  Love Sara

What?  No XOXO from Sara?  That’s cold.  The twins LOVE trying to decipher the Saramail clues but are invariably wrong.  They’re just like the Hardy Boys, only not as handsome or accurate.  They set off in their stagecoach to St Matthews In The City church for their first challenge.  Wouldn’t it be great if Xzibit pimped their ride?  (‘Yo Dawgs, I heard you like modeling so I got you this stereo system made out of nude g-strings and Naomi Campbell’s weave’).  Father Colin greets them from the pulpit and tells his congregation that today they will be modeling Lonely Hearts lingerie.  Courtney is slightly horrified at the idea of stripping down to her undies “in a holy place”.  Dakota says wearing lingerie in a church made her “feel a bit sacrilegious” but then she thought “nah who cares”.  Simultaneously, all around the country cups of tea are involuntarily expelled through nostrils.

Dakota asks her fellow Christians Michaela and Courtney to say a prayer with her before their runway show; Courtney doubts Dakota’s devotion to her saviour as she says she “doesn’t really act religious”.  Yes, we noticed that too. Lara looks like she has a bit of frontal wedgie going on and Colin says she needs to clean up her walk as she’s “hitting some unusual poses”.  Colin doesn’t rate the twins on the runway either; he describes them as “very heavy and very dark”.  Nellie pulls an odd ‘grieving widow’ pose and Elza bobs her head from side to side as if she’s weighted down by a beer can helmet.  Dakota says she saw someone laughing at her, and seems to think they were mocking her figure.  When she gets backstage she starts to cry over her ridiculer and the girls rally round her.  The rudeness!  What sort of easily identifiable monster in a tiny group of people would laugh at someone during a nationally televised show in a church?  Hmmm, did it actually happen or did she just imagine it?  Well, THC can make you paranoid.  Dakota gets annoyed that Lara is the only girl who doesn’t rush to dry her tears and says she could see “Lara’s ass jiggle”.  Oh the hypocrisy!

Michaela says she thought when they got to the top seven the competition would be intense and bitchy, but all the girls are really close.  Dakota thinks “they’re all actually tight in the house”.  Awww that’s so sweet.  And obviously a set up for the fight that we KNOW Dakota and Michaela are going to have (unless you hate spoilers and have been avoiding the ads).  

Illustration courtesy of Alan Gray

Saramail: It’s time to sink or swim.  Don’t let performance anxiety hold you back.  Love Sara

Nellie whips out her magnifying glass and uses her detective skills to solve the clue, and thinks the challenge might be selling surfboards.  Guess again Nancy Drew!  You’re shooting a music video for Opshop!  Director Ivan Slavov and Opshop lead singer Jason Kerrison explain to the girls that they will rehearse in the studio and the three best movers will move to the aquatic centre next door to perform underwater.   Nellie says contemporary dancing for her is embarrassing because she looks like a “dead octopus having a heart attack or something”.  What kind of terrifying zombie cephalopod suffers heart failure after death??  The girls all throw themselves into the challenge, gyrating in the jet stream of a wind machine.  Lara smugly chirrups “Ivan told me that I have the exact look he’s going for”.  Hmmm, maybe her voodoo dolldoes deserve some light pinching after all. The models lounge around in their matching red robes, looking like a boarding school secret society out of a girlish novel (the kind that investigates who put the salt in the sugar shakers, not the kind that draws pentagrams under their beds).  

Ivan chooses Danielle, Elza and Lara for the pool shoot but invites Nellie along too as he likes getting value for money, and why stop at one wet and bedraggled twin when you could have two!  Back at the secret society treehouse, Dakota bitches about the other girls, Lara in particular whom she refers to as “fat”.  Michaela gets so annoyed with Dakota’s spiteful comments that she says she wants to punch her, but Dakota just laughs and urges her to do it so she’ll get kicked off.   As much as we feel your pain Michaela (oh how we feel it!) it’s really not a good idea to threaten violence, no matter how obnoxious the target.  

At the pool the girls start to submerge and Ivan says Danielle was really great, telling her “it was f*****g amazing”.  Elza is a water baby and doesn’t want to get out of the pool.  The girls are there for hours into the night deep sea diving, then we get a sneak peek at the finished video featuring our mermodels.  

Saramail: A Top Model needs plenty of drive.  Let’s see who’s firing on all cylinders?  Love Sara

No S.W.A.L.K?  The girls head to Auckland’s old railway station for their next photo shoot and as they arrive an explosion goes off and Nellie almost soils her pants in fright.  It’s the day after the video shoot so some of the girls are tired from their evening of underwater action.  Sara is there for the shoot and reminds them that being tired is part of being a top model.   Lara wins the ultimate prize for the Opshop video shoot, a singlet dress from Cybele.  Dakota must be hacking up furballs at her rivals win.  MEOW.  They’re shooting today with a Ford Fiesta car and decorative explosives.  Why do they always have flaming mushroom clouds in car commercials?  I'd have serious concerns about buying a car that’s constantly shooting fireballs, it could be an indication of a fault in the fuel line!  Although sufferers of severe road rage would probably delight in a car with flame-throwing capabilities.  

Chris Sisarich is today’s photographer and he tells Michaela that “walking and working in your photograph is kind of hard”.  Is he not aware that there are other professions in which walking and working go hand and hand?  I present to you the computer workstation treadmill!  Now you too can walk and work, just like a model.  Elza suffers a severe freak out and an ambulance is summoned to check her over.  She says she felt “completely numb” and “spaced out” from exhaustion.  Does Elza suffer from panic attacks?  This is the second time she’s had a major meltdown on a shoot, I hope she’s getting some help while she’s in the house.  Danielle delivers the call of the week, saying Elza needed to “pick up her balls and get on with it”. Nellie can’t recover from the afternoon’s drama with Elza and the late night before, she says she’s emotionally and physically flat and Chris and Sara think so too.  Uh-oh, I sense a twin-excision approaching.  Dakota does the dorkiest run, which miraculously comes out looking really good on film.  Elza surprises everyone by putting in an appearance and actually pulls off some good shots. 

Illustration courtesy of Alan Gray

Judging

Sara reveals, with very little fanfare, that one girl will be eliminated and the remaining six will fly to Phuket, Thailand for their overseas fashion foray.  So Los Angeles last year and Thailand this year?  I suppose it is the sarong capital of the world but I wouldn’t have guessed it as their destination, that is, if the Herald hadn’t already spoiled the surprise.   Excuse me while I gently needle my NZ Herald voodoo doll.  

Michaela says not getting picked for the video knocked her confidence and she had a bit of a breakdown at the photo shoot, well you’re not alone there.   Colin says she looks like she farted and doesn’t want anyone to know.  So maybe her fireball is result of natural gas and a lighter?  Steve from Lonely Hearts is this weeks guest judge and says Courtney was one of the most talked about models in the show.  Sara and Colin pull Nellie up on her attitude at the photo shoot, which Sara describes as “like a big dark cloud”. Nellie starts weeping as she says she was tired and scared about Elza, which then sets Elza off crying about wrecking Nellie’s photo shoot.  Colin wags his finger at Elza about her bobble headed walk, which is likened to a car rear window-nodding dog.  When Sara asks Elza what happened at the shoot she says she was “fragile and tired” but gets emotional and can’t finish her sentence.  Despite her difficulties, her photo still turned out great.  

Panel Discussion

The judges are disappointed in Michaela’s lack of professionalism and Nellie’s negativity doesn’t win her any points either. Colin and Chris think Dakota has no idea what she’s doing and Steve points out that she was bottom of the barrel on the runway.  Danielle’s photo is Colin’s favourite and Chris says he is starting to see her blossom.  

Sara calls out Danielle as passenger number one on the flight to Phuket and says she is proud of her, oh aren’t we all!  Courtney, Elza, Lara, Michaela will all be joining Danielle for virgin Mai Thais on the beach in Thailand.  It’s down to Nellie, who looks dressed for work as an extra on 80’s soap ‘Gloss’ and Dakota.  Sara tells Nellie she wouldn’t have been happy with Nellie’s attitude if she’d been paying for her services and that Dakota seems like “an accidental model” and she’s not sure if she’s learning.   Dakota makes it on to the plane and Nellie takes the disappointment well, she seems prepared to go. Elza looks like she’s about to spontaneously combust in horror as she erupts into tears.  Sara says it was a hard decision, but could it have been calculated to heighten the drama?  Separating our co-dependent twins at this all-important juncture? Oh boo we will miss you Nellie and your weird twisdom, take care of that hermaphrodite cat for us!   

Do you agree with the final six?