New Zealand's Next Top Model Week Five

Illustration courtesy of Alan Gray

This week the girls mourn the surprise loss of Aafreen (we were surprised too!), enjoy ogling Dan Carter and are forced to walk the streets offering free styling tips and squirts of hair product.  Dakota is not amused, but we certainly are!

Holly is stunned that she dodged a bullet last week and had a reprieve from the chopping block, as is most of the country (and Lara, who thought Holly was destined for the boot too).  Is she still here just so she can turn the blood in our veins to ice with her permafrost glare?  Holly is inflicting her OCD tendencies on the rest of the house and she and Danielle have made a cleaning roster where one of the tasks is ‘vacuming’ and there are punishments assigned for failing to comply.  Courtenay thinks the roster is stupid and resents having to listen to orders from a fellow contestant. 

The girls are still in shock at Aafreen leaving but soon bounce back when Sara arrives with All Black and Jockey pin up Dan Carter.  The girls sit down for a question and answer session with Dan about being in the media spotlight and the modelling world.  Nellie or (Elza?) confesses she is star struck and seems to be temporarily rendered speechless.  Lara tells the girls that there is Jockey poster of him in their sick room at school, which scores her a high five from Elza (or Nellie?  Why didn’t they give one of them a Mohawk so we can tell them apart?).  Afterwards, Sara consults with Dan as to which girl made the best impression on him, using Polaroids she sneakily took beforehand as means of identification.  Dan says he found Lara too reserved and Amelia too distant; she failed to speak once.  Dan spies Eva on the end of the sofa and is 'impressed with the way she looked’.  Dan tells the girls that Eva was the winner of the challenge and will be the first new face on the Water For Everyone brand.  If you’ve seen the Water For Everyone brand you’ll know that the label is not exactly flash, which I’m sure is part of their ethos of keeping costs down and making bottled water affordable.  However, it doesn’t exactly translate well into a good photo for a model’s portfolio.  Eva’s blobby blue silhouette on her bottle looks like it could be anybody. 

Saramail arrives for the girls and says ‘a top model needs to appeal to the masses, time to get amongst the people’.  The girls meet with Colin and Herbal Essences marketing manager to discuss their next challenge, involving the pun-tastic new product ‘None of Your Frizzness’.  It sounds quite intriguing (product placement works!) even though I am outside the very limited target market of 14-29 years.  Do they think once people turn 30 they enjoy looking like a Pomeranian has made its head their home?  I wish one of them had approached me and my messy nest of hair in the street.  Except I wouldn’t want to encounter Dakota who calls everyone ‘sweetie, darling or babe’, which Colin says is offensive and ‘wrong on so many levels’.  And just grossly overly familiar.  She describes one woman’s hair as looking like a cats arse, which brings to mind Colin’s comparison last week of Eva’s hair to a raccoon’s arse.  It’s obviously the new trend in hair for 2010; what animal’s rectum does your hair look like?  There’s a horrible moment when a crazy old man hurls a racial epithet at Amelia then cowardly hurries off.   Colin says Elza was amazing, ‘she had the heels on, she’s such a giant’.  Holly has a pocket mirror to show off the new styles to her clients, and Colin ponders ‘where did she pull it out from?’  Michaela just makes it up as she goes along, telling two women that ‘it makes your hair grow and things’.  I’d like to hear more about what those ‘things’ are.  Holly wins the challenge and her prize is an Herbal Essences photo shoot for Cleo.  For once she doesn’t have to moan about how it should have been her that won. 

A cryptic Saramail arrives bearing the message ‘model, model, model, model, model, model, model, model, model, model, role model’.  Danielle has a spooky dream that a friend died in a car accident and there are inward gasps all round when she later discovers that her friend has tragically died as a result of a car crash.  The girls arrive at their photo shoot and meet Dave from Elemeno P who is there to interview them on behalf of the anti-smoking campaign ‘Not Our Future’.  A quote will be pulled from each girls interview and will be used as the tagline on ‘Smoking Not our Future’ posters. Holly pulls some unusual moves in her shoot, causing the creative director Neil Pardington to tell her to refrain from doing ‘the teapot’.   Danielle is distracted by her friend’s sudden passing and goofs off for the camera to the consternation of Chris and Neil.  Michaela and Elza effortlessly pose for their posters but a lot of the girls struggle to convey emotion, not just through their expression but also their bodies.  Eva finds the challenge very personal as her father is a smoker and she has tried to get him to stop in the past.  Dakota tries to be a smart arse in her interview saying  ‘if they’re going to make tobacco illegal can they at least give us THC’.  I get the feeling she’s just doing this to make her friends laugh but she’s totally sabotaging herself in the process.  Dave diplomatically tells her that that’s probably not the angle they want to work.

Back at the house Holly storms off after Dakota says something ‘insanely stupid’ to her.  We don’t get to hear what it was, only that Holly told Dakota to ‘read her tone’ which might just be the bitchiest thing I’ve ever heard.  It’s certainly up there on the bitchiness scale with ‘I’m not getting at you, but……….’ Ooh former friends face off!

It’s judging time and as usual, they throw in a quick shot of Auckland Museum, as if to imply this is where the elimination ceremony takes place.  In their spooky, spooky sacrificial temple.   Maybe once the models are eliminated they are fed to the mummy?  Could this be the secret to the panel’s youthful beauty?  I think we could be on to something here……

At judging, Sara introduces fashion designer Kate Sylvester as this week’s guest judge.  Kate says that Holly looks like a 35-year-old woman in her photo and tells her to project her youth.  Holly smiles and thanks the judges for their advice but inside she must be seething!  Amelia recounts her horror episode with the racist crazy and Sara tells Amelia she needs to decide ‘whose comments are going to upset you and whose comments you don’t care about’.  Easier said than done I think.  They think Courtney’s photo is so-so but what I really wanted to know was what her quote meant.  ‘Smokers are blenders like sheep’.  Am I missing something?  Sara pulls Dakota up over her inappropriate behaviour and she starts to weep saying ‘I try to portray confidence at all times’.  It just doesn’t seem to register with her no matter how many times they warn her about her antics.  Kate Sylvester says that Michaela looks more beautiful in person than in her photo, but the girls were told this shoot was more about personality than beauty.  Mixed messages!  The judges seem to be hating on Eva’s photo but I really don’t think it’s that bad, is it?  Sara says she was disappointed with Amelia’s attitude during the Dan Carter challenge. 

Michaela gets photo of the week, ooh those sneaky editors trying to pull the wool over our eyes and trick us into thinking the panel didn’t like it!  When Eva gets called up she gives such a sweet little speech about how she doesn’t want people to think he dad isn’t a role model because he’s a smoker as he’s a great father.  Sara gives her a hug and says her dad was a heavy smoker too but an amazing dad.  It’s one of the truly warm and genuine moments and it’s nice to see Sara’s softer side.  Holly is in?  I so thought she was going home tonight!  Dakota is in?  Shouldn’t she be in the bottom two? Nellie and Amelia are the last two facing the cut.  Nellie is all flushed with nerves, but makes it in, much to Elza’s relief.  Poor Amelia, she gets her boobs flashed all over the nation, has racial slurs hurled at her and is told to harden up and now they kick her out.  She is very philosophical about it though and says photo shoots are much harder than she expected.  But when is Dakota going to get her own show so we can groan at her for an hour?

The verdict: Not enough Colin.