Mary Alice, you ARE the weakest link

I started watching this show between commercials of a different show, and I got hooked on it. From the title, I thought it would be really pathetic, with the judges (Mary Alice Stephenson and the ubiquitous Ben Stein, who brings smarts cred just by sitting next to Mary Alice) poking fun at the models' attempt to be not just pretty faces.

They do poke at them, and there is some genuine contempt shown, particularly by Mary Alice, who is coming off like yer basic school marm (more on that later), and one of the models, Andre, a Russian, has contempt for everyone and everything American. Boo, hiss. But I like most of the other models and the tasks they have to perform are creative at least, so I keep tuning in.

There was one particularly brainless contestant, blonde Rachael (there's an Aussie Rachael too), who finally got sent home on last night's episode - she had been leeching off the other models, barely scraping by in the tasks, and last night she hit her all-time low, by insisting that Daniel, one of the smartest (sorry, MOST smartest) models in the competition, had to be her partner. He was acting the gentleman and allowed her to glom onto him and of course, they failed the task - which involved cutting out geometric shapes to specific specifications - miserably; Rachael couldn't cut out even one of the shapes and therefore they lost.

Mary Alice was so (can't resist) bent out of shape by Rachael's fiasco and by her attempt to drag Daniel down with her that she called her out before the show's actual elimination phase to sternly inform her that she was booted. Felt like I was watching a high school reality show where one of the student's behavior was so disgraceful that she had to be seriously chastised and immediately expelled. Although she did deserve to go home long ago, I thought this was handled very poorly by Mary Alice (whom I think was also reacting to some catty comments that Rachael had made about her on camera). I personally would like to send Mary Alice home, but that's just me.

12/18/07: So it's over now and VJ won, which is OK with me, I mean it would've been pretty brutal if America's Most Smartest Model turned out to be a Soviet. And Andre is an unsufferable prick who, near the end, actually tried to pass himself off as a caring and loving individual. Hilarious.