One of these days, I’m going to make it a policy that I won’t review any two-bit reality show so full of itself that its review tape cuts out the revelation of the first contestant eliminated.
Fortunately for UPN’s “America’s Next Top Model” (8 p.m. Tuesday, WPWR-Ch. 50), whose opener demonstrates such hubris, that day is not today.
Tyra Banks’ modeling-world spin on talent-search shows is back for a second go-round because it did well last year, at least by UPN standards. In other words, it beat the shows on Pax and had some people talking a little about it, which is more than you can say for, say, the revival of “The Twilight Zone.”
And even though it began very lamely and was never reality television-making of the first or even second order, there ended up being something strangely affecting about seeing a dozen “girls,” as they invariably call themselves, living in a New York City house together, going out on trumped-up modeling assignments and getting eliminated one by one, often ruthlessly, by Banks and some fellow fashionistas.
The drama on “ANTM,” as the series is not commonly known, was often higher than the cheekbones, despite much of it being manufactured in the minds of temperamental contestants.
And although the cast this year is kind of generically “ethnic,” to invent an oxymoron, and doesn’t seem to be as dynamic as last year’s, Season Two still gets off to a decent start.
On the morning of the group’s first big shoot, one of the women oversleeps in the shared apartment and — shades of junior high school — nobody, not even the camera operator recording her tardiness, wakes her up. For the cameras, after she struggles out of bed, she labels them all with the B word and vows, through tears, that “It’s on.” Meow.
Another wanted to be on Tyra Banks’ “ANTM,” but refuses to do the first shoot, in body paint among naked men.
“I do feel that I represent the moms and the wives of the U.S., I guess like a role model,” she says, “and I do accept that responsibility.”
Duly noted, ma’am, but have you seen Banks’ work? You might have imagined body display as an outside possibility.
And represent away, but be aware that fewer than 3 million people a week watched this show last year. Role models were not produced.
One more note of irritation. The group’s first catwalk scene is staged on an old fighting ship in front of New York firefighters and U.S. military personnel. Is there no end to the cynical uses of genuine patriotic feeling, and is there no limit to what the New York Fire Department and military will agree to participate in?
