It's a sort of mini-ANTM with Petra Nemkova, the new face of celebrity disaster capitalism, in the Tyra Banks role, and a truncated roster of model wannabes, six achingly young girls, who, in contrast to the bounteous drama-fest that is why most of us watch ANTM, are not only virtually drama-free, but whatever personality or spark of intellect any of them might have is carefully edited out.
There is one girl for whom this has presented such a challenge that the producers finally gave up, and now present her as the bad apple in the bunch, and seldom was reality show persona more ham-handedly and obviously created. Interestingly, this particular girl is the only one who is already a real live working model...
The rest of the girls are terminally sweet.
Exuding a cartoon-quality vapid innocence, they hang onto every word Petra and their other various mentors utter, rapt and wide-eyed.
After a visit from a nutritionist, who pronounced only one of the girls as even on the charts with regard to body fat, she and one other who have been deemed not yet sufficiently skeletal "struggle with their weight."
In addition to self-consciously presiding over the awkwardly staged predictable lessons on this or that aspect of practical and applied modelage, Petra also does things like takes them out to a park to plant trees because she is not just a figurehead but takes a very hands-on and active role in every step of the girls' development because she Cares and has all those dimples.
In the most recent episode, the agency dude actually tried to get rid of the one with a personality (and the one who already knows how to model and clearly has a face that screams Vogue), and while the cameras did not actually show the producers' immediate apoplexy, nor the rival agency reps tongue-hanging and panting outside the door, the unmistakable stench of spent fireworks wafted from the screen as Agency Dude magnanimously announced that he had decided to give Angelika another chance.
There is one girl for whom this has presented such a challenge that the producers finally gave up, and now present her as the bad apple in the bunch, and seldom was reality show persona more ham-handedly and obviously created. Interestingly, this particular girl is the only one who is already a real live working model...
The rest of the girls are terminally sweet.
Exuding a cartoon-quality vapid innocence, they hang onto every word Petra and their other various mentors utter, rapt and wide-eyed.
After a visit from a nutritionist, who pronounced only one of the girls as even on the charts with regard to body fat, she and one other who have been deemed not yet sufficiently skeletal "struggle with their weight."
In addition to self-consciously presiding over the awkwardly staged predictable lessons on this or that aspect of practical and applied modelage, Petra also does things like takes them out to a park to plant trees because she is not just a figurehead but takes a very hands-on and active role in every step of the girls' development because she Cares and has all those dimples.
In the most recent episode, the agency dude actually tried to get rid of the one with a personality (and the one who already knows how to model and clearly has a face that screams Vogue), and while the cameras did not actually show the producers' immediate apoplexy, nor the rival agency reps tongue-hanging and panting outside the door, the unmistakable stench of spent fireworks wafted from the screen as Agency Dude magnanimously announced that he had decided to give Angelika another chance.
