I eat some easymac. Someone is crowned "top model"

OKAY OKAY so I know you are pretty excited and SO AM I! Let's get down to this final episode of TOP MODEL and what could be our last chance to enjoy the sweet rumblings of Elza, the doleful eyes of Michaela and the punchy fists of Danielle.

HANG THE FUCK ON!??! WHAT IS THIS!?!?



What the hell?! This is the last thing I need and I. Oh wait I fixed it! Refresh really is an amazing tool.

Okay! Well now that I am past that frightening start I need to let you know that this review may be painfully detailed. My friend Erin just moved to the UK because she is living the dream and stuff and she is missing this last episode. She is a pretty regular fan of the show so this is bad news for her. I promised her, as we left our final outing featuring calamari and curly fries that I would detail the excruciating minutiae of this episode so this I will do. I keep my promises.

Wait first I am going to go make some easy mac. I know its midnight but easymac is timeless.

I might get a glass of thriftee too. That'd be good.

God that was a mission. My right wrist is incapable of holding or turning anything. I made 300 choctops tonight and now I think I have rendered myself disabled. I found some nuts which are meant to be in a salad or stirfry "nut fusion!:new!" and I am eating them too. And I couldn't find my special Gabs cup which I am to use because I have a very bad habit of drinking out of 10 or so glasses at once and losing them around the house. So now I have one very special glass which I bought which has pink hearts all over it. And anyway, I couldn't find it and then when I did I filled it up with thriftee and then promptly dropped a bottle of "rose pink" food colouring off the top shelf right into my special cup. OH MY EASY MAC IS READY! TIME TO ADD THE POWDER AND WAIT.

:( I couldn't stir the easymac! My wrist! It is truly useless right now! I had to get Toby to stir my easymac much like a small child. Its okay though, cos the easymac was YUM!

OKAY! So here we are at the beginning of what I hope to be a very exciting episode! Buckle down for a wild ride!

First we get a sweet rundown of just who is in the top 3.
Danielle: Judges favourite. They just love her and would marry her if they could.
Michaela: Overcame her "personal issues" (ie a tv show taking almost naked photos of a 16 year old)
Elza: "blossoming away from the shadow of her identical twin sister Nellie".

That is kinda harsh no? It makes Nellie out to be some horrific spectre standing in the way of Elza's beautiful life and career free from the shackles of her "womb-mate". Sara Tetro, I can see right through you and straight into your heart of darkness/Danielle favouritism/regret over Christobelle.

So we open with Michaela already in a state of despair mourning the loss of her "best friend" Courtenay. Maybe Michalea will come visit Courtenay in Wellington and I can sell them tickets and curse my miserable existence. We can only dream right?!

Elza is totally psyched to be in the top three and is happily surprised by her ability to exist without her "soulmate". "I can read maps without Nellie, I can pack bags without Nellie, I can go to the toilet without Nellie, haha just joking" which makes me think that she is joking that she can go to the toilet without Nellie. She must have a dangerously full bladder.

I love her though. She is babein. If I were a guy or into girls (and not just when I'm a bit tipsy and like to be making inappropriate advances on friends) I would be making a beeline to Elza. I would buy her a chicken and ask her to raise my red-headed babies.

Sara-mail! Time for a covergirl shoot! Danielle is freaking because she generally sucks at this speaking thing. The people from covergirl are there and they are told that they have to add a line of dialogue to their scripts which sets them apart. I wish Dakota was here! "Easy clean makeup keeps your face clean. Keep it clean, keep it shaved! lol!". Ah, bless.

Michaela is up first for her shoot



What does Colin et al think?



THEY LOVE IT!

It was "fantastic! Impressive! Flawless!". She is pretty good! PRETTY PRETTY GOOD!

And look how cute she is!



As a button.

She also nails the beauty shoot. She is looking pretty good! Didn't really know she had it in her! Maybe Courtenay was an oppressive Nellie shadow too!

Now it is Danielle's turn to wow everyone, and Michaela is a hard act to follow!
Predictably, Danielle stinks. Like real bad. She "didn't bother" to learn her lines. Don't worry guys, Sara probably thinks that's just awesome, shows character or bravery or something.

Anyway, Danielle crashes and burns



She is all "clean makeup..something something. Sensitive skin". No good Danielle, Cherie from Covergirl is not impressed by your attitude missy and frankly neither am I.

Colin and Danielle embrace tenderly in the corner and now Colin is saying that Danielle "crashed and burned" but I just said that myself of my own accord and now I feel like I should go change it to something else. But I am not going to compromise my integrity! Oh no. I just dropped some m&ms down my top. Oh bowh.



Shit gets serious.



Michaela is secretly pleased. Well, not so secretly, she tells us all about it.



Danielle plugs on through and tries to pull something salvagable out of her bag of disaster.



It is not entirely successful.

Colin makes this face



Tony Drayton, director of this fiasco "very much doubts we will be able to cut something together that will be acceptable to the client". Oh no. That aint good Danielle.

The photoshoot however goes well and Sara and Colin can heave a sigh of relief that their golden girl still has some gleam going on.

Anyway, it is Elza's turn to shine (or not) now and boy does she shine! She spins and twirls and is cute. She makes little "wooo!" noises and tugs at her collar.



She rocks out her her photo shoot and Colin is pleased that he has single handedly separated "those siamese twins".

Anyway, issues of accuracy aside it is time for panel to decide the top two!

The ususal suspects are all there and I wonder why Mr Chris Sisarich wasn't at the ad and photo shoot? Why was Colin there? Is this always the case? I have no idea.

Regardless, I have more pressing concerns



Time for the individual evaluations: Up first is Michaela

In her Covergirl shoot she is "fantastic!" Sara thinks she made an "extraordinary effort!". Guest Judge Denise Lestrange-Corbet thinks she looked "amazing". For her photoshoot they continue to love her and Sara thinks she appeals to a wide range of people (girls want to be here, boys want to be with her).



She is pretty smoking if we are being truthful here.

Up next to be evaluated is Elza. She says that her biggest achievement to date is being able to exist without Nellie. She says this "is a great thing". I still love her, despite what the Elza-haters think. I just love her to bits. I want to bring her breakfast in bed and surprise her with a kitten in a box on Christmas day.

Sara likes Elza's commerical but doesn't like her wink. She thinks Elza is too twee I think. Colin digs it though and I give Colin my approval from afar.

For her photoshoot opinion is somewhat divided.



Guest judge waxes lyrical about Elza's neck, Chris thinks its a beautiful shot but that she "doesn't have a beauty face" and Sara thinks she is the weakest of the bunch. I think Sara doesn't share my Elza affection. She saves all her lovin' for Danielle.

Speaking of Danielle let's find out how the judges can justify keeping her around after her commercial disaster.

The commerical they show is perhaps one of the most entertaining and surreal ads I have seen. The editors have obviously gone to great pains to cobble together something resembling a normal ad but have had to resort to some shots which are downright frightening





Would you buy makeup based on this? Well I probably would but then again I base most of my purchases on how threatened I feel by the one doing the selling. That's why you have to choose the most tough and on edge people you know to do things like charity collections and garage sales.

Sara moves on from this exercise in uncomfortableness to the beauty shot



It is quite beautiful and they love it. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Danielle, in fact I think she's pretty awesome BUT I do think that she has been chosen as a finalist at least from early on and they have given her an easier run than she should have got. If they were harder on her earlier then maybe she wouldn't have just "not bothered" to learn her lines for such an important shoot. I'm all about tough love. Except I'm not actually. They clearly want her to do well and will overlook things in her that they would absolutely eliminate another girl for. And that ain't cool in my books.

Sara says that if they were basing the elimination on the Covergirl shoot then Danielle should go home. But they all say that maybe they aren't really basing it on that. Well what was the point of it then? I can see where this elimination is going and I do not like it one bit.

Michaela is the first to go through to the final. Good for her, she's pretty impressive! And the other finalist is...Danielle. She seems pretty shocked herself.



And that's okay too and she is beautiful and stuff BUT

I pain for Elza.

As good as I think Danielle is I think they are putting too much stock in "potential" and discounting other things. Like how adorable Elza is and how much I want to help her feed her chickens. Important things like that.

Elza departs in a flurry of "thank you"s and tears and I miss her already.

Now might be a good time for you to go have a break and stretch your legs because we still have the final walk off to go and the final decision! Are you paying attention Erin!?

The final two are back in Wellington and Danielle tells us her first thoughts on getting into the final were "shitballs! that's frigging awesome!". She isn't boring that's for sure!

Michaela and Danielle reminsice about their non-high-heel walking past and Michaela cries about her position in top two, Danielle hilariously says "its in the kete bro" and I kind of love her again, despite my annoyance at the judges. It's not her fault they are playing favourites is it? No, not really.

Oh hey, Mercedes from ANTM who had Lupus is on an ad with Jamie Lee Curtis hawking some kind of makeup shit. Its 3am. I wonder if this is what the future will hold for our second place winner. As much as I am fretting over who gets top place and who is second I can't let myself forget that Christobelle, who is otensively meant to be right now's TOP MODEL is really doing nothing much to speak of save for some truly horrendous Nivea commericials and guest starring on this cycles top model.



I truly hope whoever wins, be it Michaela or Danielle that they have infintely more success than any of last cycle's squad, of which Ruby is probably the queen.

That kind of takes the shine off of the anticipation and drama doesn't it? Um, pretend I never said anything...

Anyway, it is time for the finale walk off! And finally we can see that it IS at wearable arts! And I am amazingly excited to say that I was in the audience the night this all went down and was way too excited (my friends can attest to that). But I am SOOO gutted that I didn't recognise them! I remember seeing the Ringmaster costume but I don't remember seeing any of Danielle. I remember the one in the horse-like get-up being super hot but I don't remember Michaela....I am so confused!

Before the walk (or after if you are totally suspicious about this like I am) Sara tells us "Their performance tonight has got to be a factor in this competition, its not the only factor, we are looking for a top model not just a runway model" etc etc. Once again WHAT IS THE POINT IF YOU ARE GOING TO IGNORE THE RESULTS?

It was such an awesome show and I am pretty impressed that they actually walked in it because it was pretty choreographed and isn't the kind of thing you can just walk into randomly at a moment's notice and do. Well apparently it is the kind of thing Michaela can just do at a moment's notice, not so much Danielle.



HOT!



SORT OF NOT

You know what? I am a bit doubtful as to whether this actually took place on stage in front of people. I know you can see some heads but it is really dark and you probably couldn't tell if it was just a rehearsal. And no one who I have talked to who was there remembers seeing them and people who were doing make up backstage had no idea either. I wonder....

But look! You get to see one of my favourite bits of the show! Check out these dogs dressed as elephants! Elza would have loved this :(



Danielle kind of screws up and stands in Michaela's spot and looks awkward and uncomfortable on stage. Michaela is displeased and worried that Danielle's mistake will cost her the win. I worry too.

OH GODS! ITS TIME FOR SOME PANEL TIME!

Sara, Colin and Chris are waiting to propel one girl through to the giddy heights of Ford Fiestas, Hufnagel and being managed by Sara. Once again, given that we know that Christobelle is also managed by Sara I wonder if this is perhaps the best prize.

The general consensus is:

Danielle: books more jobs/has an edge/has transformed from into a beautiful, gorgeous swan/holds the key to the future "global face"/makes Sara, Chris and Colin wet themselves with glee
Michaela: better at runway/commercial/walking/was already a beautiful swan. That's not very exciting because Chris, Sara and Colin didn't get to mould her into her exciting new self, she came that way which is not so good for their egos.

And the winner is:

Danielle! Are you really surprised though?



Dakota is going to be SO MAD!

I don't really see how they can justify this though, and once again I like Danielle BUT when you look at this episode Michaela was great at commercial, great at runway and they liked her photo right? Danielle however was terrible at commercial, awkward and bad at runway but had a great photo. AND in the past they have said that Michaela is consistantly good so its not like she was just awesome in the last episode and sucked the rest of the time.

Which means really that whatever happened in this episode Danielle was already going to win. Sara says "she hasn't come as far". But should it really be about that? Shouldn't the end result be the basis of the decision? Where they are at not how far they have come?

And Michaela is pretty devastated.



She has spunk though and is all "All i can do is continue modeling and make my own money, and get my own ford fiesta" That's the ticket Michaela! I hope she becomes some kind of supermodel and rubs it in their faces.

And that's where we end this "cycle", Danielle wins and she's pretty cool and stuff and I know she has her huge fans and that my opinion here is probably not very popular but I think Michaela should have won. But anyway, Congratulations Danielle and I hope you prove me wrong! Go dominate tragic Christobelle and do something much better than Nivea commercials and hawking Ford Fiestas across the country.

Michaela, go forth and be gorgeous. You show them, okay! And maybe come visit Courtenay so I can spot you around town and get really embarrasingly excited.

Elza: Get some kind of job as an a) kids tv star or b)tv host of the "Elza and Nellie show". I would watch it. Obsessively.

Dakota: Sort out your bad attitude and stop talking about vaginas and drugs in public.



never stop doing this though

And we come to the end! No more! Time to go outside into the fresh air! Bye!