ANTM Ep. 7 Recap

The girls are all settling into their roles in the house. Laura is becoming standoff-ish, refusing to share the Tyra Suite; Kiara is the house mom and cooks for everyone; Victoria is the broken child. As odd as I find her intense connection to her mom (and absolutely no one else), I feel bad for her. She seems to be breaking down. She’s not eating much because she says that she can’t taste food without her mom, and she’s working out more, including lifting the giant chess pieces as weights. As sad as her obsessive exercising is, that image was kind of funny only because she was lifting giant pawns and it was bizarre.

The girls hint that something big is about to happen with Victoria for the entire episode, but nothing does. The girls confront her about her weight loss, eating habits, and illnesses in a very accusatory way, rather than being supportive. Are they just trying to get her to leave so they have one less competitor, instead of out of real concern for her health? It’s hard not to feel bad for Victoria, because she is clearly cracking and she isn’t getting the support she needs.

Though I had forgotten that she was even in the competition in previous weeks, Allyssa takes on a more prominent role in this episode. She is more determined than ever to get best photo.

Bryanboy shows up in his grandmotherly straw hat to present the models’ challenge: a road trip to Palm Springs. On the way, they have to make three stops where they perform “Random Acts of Modeling,” film some Nylon TV intros, and eat some chicken wings fiercely. In case you don’t follow Tyra Banks’ Twitter feed, Random Acts of Modeling (or RAoM, as I’m shortening it) is when Tyra does an everyday task but strikes a model pose as she does it, takes a photo, and posts it to her Twitter. Seriously, this is one of Tyra’s things.

The girls are split into two teams: Team 1 consists of Brittany, Laura, Kristin, and Allyssa; Team 2 is made up of Victoria, Kiara, and Nastasia. Few of the girls get the point of RAoM, most pose against landmarks (which is too “vacation photo”) instead of just tooching while buying amusement park tickets (which is RAoM). Things get awkward when Kiara wants to mother Victoria but Victoria doesn’t want another mother (there’s only room for one mother in her heart – she took up the whole heart). Then Victoria doesn’t actually film Kiara’s Nylon TV intro, which Kiara seems to think is because Victoria is childlike. Nastasia films a retake for Kiara (well, multiple retakes), which upsets Victoria because Kiara didn’t let her have a retake on her video when she messed up. Things are getting mighty awkward between Victoria and Kiara.

Team 1 finds that it’s hard to take photos at a wind farm because it’s windy. You don’t say…

Team 1 wins, they seemed to grasp the concept of the challenge a lot better, even though they don’t quite get the purpose of wind farms. Laura wins the challenge, her second in a row.

Before the challenge started, the girls complained that they didn’t have any time to shower before heading out on the road trip. They got quite sweaty posing on the road trip, and they arrive at their motel in Palm Springs looking quite greasy. Before anyone can freshen up, Johnny shows up to tell them it’s time for a dirty photo shoot, meant to look like it was after a really wild and dirty night.

This episode is called “The Girl Who Licks the Floor.”  Even if I weren’t recapping this, I’d watch it based on the title alone. Turns out it is Allyssa who licks the floor as part of her dirty photo shoot. Johnny spots on a cockroach on the floor not long after Allyssa’s tongue makes contact with the tiles. Kristin pours five gallons of milk on herself for her shoot. Kiara’s set is inside a dumpster, which hits close to home because she had to dumpster dive for clothing and she has been homeless; she handled it well and noted how far she’s come since her last time in a dumpster.

Nastasia had to stand in a running shower. The others seem to have it pretty easy in comparison: Brittany has a chair in a dirty motel room, while Laura and Victoria have a bathroom stall. Laura needs to be coached on how to pose like she’s throwing up into the toilet; has she never done it? Victoria comes to set in character. She plays a girl who needs to take a pregnancy test after some wild partying and stresses about the possible outcome. She never breaks character, even as she’s walking away from the shoot. As weird as it seems, didn’t Mr. Jay Manuel advise the models of part seasons to come up with a backstory and character sometimes?

During judging, Bryanboy tells Victoria that he wants her to look confident and happy next week if she makes it to the next panel. The other girls (mainly Kiara and Nastasia) start making faces and comments, prompting Tyra to ask what’s going on. The girls talk about Victoria’s eating habits, Victoria acts as if nothing is wrong. Tyra vows to watch her from now on.

Nastasia gets top score for her shower photo, Brittany is runner up. Proving how different the outcomes are with the new scoring and judging system, Laura is in the bottom two (with Allyssa.) She had top photo for the last two weeks and won the last two challenges, yet, like Leila, she had one not-so-great photo and landed at the bottom. In the past, she would have been spared just because the judges see potential. Laura got to stay; Allyssa was eliminated in the very same episode in which she started to stand out.