‘America’s Next Top Model’: Makeover time!

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‘Top Model’ watchers who are bored with the same format each season might be frustrated with this latest cycle. Tyra’s attempts to make the show more relevant to the actual fashion world should be commended: she slightly changed up the perennial-third-episode-of-the-season Makeover Show by not telling the girls what she’d be doing to them -- ostensibly, how it’s actually done in the fashion world. More luminaries from the fashion world have been incorporated into the cycle as well, so last night Elle MacPherson showed up (although she was mostly there just to hawk her lingerie line, which the girls modeled.)

Unfortunately, Tyra is making no attempt to eschew the cliches that the show falls into each cycle. Allison and Dominique, for instance, were set up early on in the episode to be in the bottom two (although Dominique should have been in there anyway for her awful soccer-mom makeover.) Dominique referred to herself as a ‘diva’ in the first few minutes of the show, and the episode provided ample footage of Allison sitting around crabbily as the other girls frolicked and screamed (why is there so much screaming in this cycle?), picking fights, talking about how much more experienced she was, and the kiss of death, discussing how she rocked her photo shoot. Meanwhile, viewers could spot a mile away that Stacy Ann would be the model who got her hair shorn, as she was the only one shown begging Tyra’s picture not to give her short hair.

One can’t ask too much from ‘ANTM,’ but it’s not unprecedented for reality shows to make some stabs at changing their format to keep things fresh. Take a look at ‘Beauty and the Geek,’ for instance, in which some of the rules get modified season to season. It’s the same guilty pleasure, but at least it attempts to give its viewers a way to truly differentiate each cycle of the show. Whereas on ‘Top Model,’ if, for instance, a marathon is shown on VH1, it becomes evident that episodes could be shown from all 10 cycles and it would not be confusing, as it’s the same model, just with different models dropped in.

At least when Dominique and Allison ended up in the bottom two, it was for reasons other than hubris: neither performed well in the photo shoot, and neither one of them had anything extraordinary going on, looks-wise, especially compared with, say, Marvita, who seems to grow more striking with each episode.

Dominique received a second chance, as well as the promise of a redone makeover, so time will tell if she’s able to do more than talk about her turbulent past and why she deserves to win.

(Photo courtesy CW)