America's Next Top Reality Series

Thanks, Brigitte, for filling in for me on Monday and giving us a whole new way to rate the world that is pop culture. As promised, I'll cover Brigitte's normal Top Model beat plus give you the lowdown on the newest reality show. Sit back and enjoy!

You Are No Longer In the Running Towards Watching America's Next Top Model:

It was down to the last three contestants this week on ANTM. The first challenge involved creating a Cover Girl television commercial for their new lip gloss line. After the judges critiqued each girl's performance, they cut to a commercial break and the first thing we see is the very ad that the ANTM judges just tore apart. What sense does that make? If I were Cover Girl I'd be mad that not only did the CW air a sub-standard commercial (which I realize Cover Girl has approved) but they first aired a show segment that points out all of its flaws.

In the first elimination round we finally see some personality out of Jenna (aka Melrose #2) when she breaks down in front of the judges about how hard she had it growing up. This isn't enough to save her, though, and she gets sent home first, leaving Chantal and Saleisha to duke it out in the final round.

For the final challenge the girls had to model the gowns of a guest designer while walking the longest runway in the world (according to Tyra), lined on each side by dozens of dancing Chinese performers on stilts.

At this point I honestly thought that both girls had equal chances of winning the competition. And they were neck and neck until Chantal knocked over one of the guys on stilts, causing him to land in the splits on the ground. Ouch and oooouch!

Pretty hard to recover from that one - Saleisha is crowned America's Next Top Model.

Rating: Content Kitty

And Speaking of Crowned...

See you later Gossip Girl, reality TV has taken over! Do I hope for the writers strike to end so we can all get some closure on our favorite shows? Sure, but if I have to watch reality television, I can't think a more genius concept than Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants, which premiered this evening after ANTM.

It was exactly how I envisioned it - like a real life Drop Dead Gorgeous (sans the delightful Minnesotan stereotypes). Not only is there the typical bitchy cattiness between beauty queens to keep you entertained, they're all backed up by their super competitive pageant-moms. And by looking at most teams you can barely tell which one is the mother and which one is the daughter.

First Challenge: Come up with a team name, costumes, and a "first impression" presentation for the judges.

We're introduced to a host of characters in tonight's episode as the teams create their presentations. There's the delightfully eccentric couple that wrote their own song, the go-getters who practice opera singing at 7 a.m., the overly self-conscious team who are constantly dealing with body issues and feelings of inadequacy, and the well-educated pair that for some reason chose the unfortunate name "Silent but Deadly" without thinking about the meaning of that phrase (and had to be told by judges that that name stinks...wink, wink).

The best part was that each woman had to wear a sash with her team name printed on it, so team Silent but Deadly had to wear their sashes long after they knew that they were advertising themselves as a smelly fart.

Elimination came in the form of a de-sashing ceremony, where one team gets their sashes cut off of them with an over sized pair of bejeweled novelty scissors.

The Reigning A's and The Blonde Bombshells ended up in the bottom two. The judges tell The Blonde Bombshells to pick up the scissors and - wait for it, wait for it - tell them to cut the sashes off of The Reigning A's. What a twist! I have high hopes for this show.

Rating: Cast of Frasier

This entry was posted by Lady Amy, on Wednesday, December 12, 2007. You can leave your response.