I fell in love with this show’s title the moment I heard it but I worried it would be a one trick pony parody show, instead it was well paced with intriguing hosts and a great cast that out of the gate promised to be one of my favorite new shows. I love America’s Next Top Model, but the catwalk has grown tired of Tyra’s retread challenges and the show now has to have a message in order to feed its self importance. It is ripe for a parody and Mark Cronin and company will inject the right tone and a heart into this promising vehicle.
Former presidential speech writer, economist and best-selling author Ben Stein helms this show along with credible fashionista, Bazaar’s Mary Alice Stephenson who has such adept comedic timing I thought she was a Groundling. The show has two challenges, the Edge and the Callback where the human coat hangers compete in intellectual and modeling challenges, and later they are eliminated in the Purge. The cast is a series of competitive pretty faces, none more so than Soviet Andre who wore a pair of jeans so low cut I swear I caught a glimpse of scrot. He is incredibly proud of his $6000 a month apartment, pretty girlfriend and washboard abs and admonishes the other soft models for eating sandwiches from the buffet. Andre looks like an old time boxer who got his lips stuck in an industrial vacuum cleaner. He is short and cocky and Mary Alice and her fashion friends took him to task for his diminutivity. He is going to be the break out star of the show because he is arrogant, blood thirsty and undeniably magnetic.
The saucy FHM/Playboy girls did not do as well under fashion’s magnifying glass and Mandy Lynn the Playboy model was luckily saved by Ben Stein’s breast fetish. With her silicone lips and skunk hair stripes she was an easy target for Mary Alice, but soon enough Mary Mary took pity on her and nestled her under her warm Balenciaga clad wing. She was spared, but Jami her Miss FHM Midwest counter part felt the power of the guillotine and was sent back to the vomitorium in the first round of cuts. Another dullard named Gaston (who admitted he wanted to be Kate Moss) was also sent back to Evitaville mostly because he’s dumb, misogynistic and struggles with his English. I spoke with Mark Cronin yesterday who assured me the show weeds out the dummies early on and will not rely on the initial joke to sustain viewers who will have a real competition on their hands as the cream of this beautiful crop rises just slightly above the mean.
