If your fierce factor has dipped a few points since the spring, never fear: Tyra’s here, and she’s brought along fourteen nubile nobodies willing to catwalk to stardom in this, the eleventh cycle of “America’s Next Top Model.”
The lineup: With contestants from France to the Ukraine, Harlem to Hawaii, this cycle’s group looks like a meeting of the United Nations, without all the four year educations and articulate speaking.
Backstage buzz: It’s all the same shenanigans with slightly different tall, skinny people: girl-on-girl make out session in the hot tub, accusations of racism, group cries at the judging panel. Oh, and there’s a dude in a dress competing, too. (Read on!)
Fierce: Isis, the pre-op transgender contestant, actually appeared as a background model in a shoot during a previous cycle. Not only does she inspire Jay Manuel to exclaim “Couture!” whenever she poses, but she promises to be a delightfully watchable thorn in the side of the other girls many of whom seem to think the competition shouldn’t be open to just anybody with any body.
Not fierce: If your idea of entertainment doesn’t include Tyra Banks pretending to be a futuristic robot, a model’s self-debate about the pros and cons of nuclear weapons, or Max of “Saved By the Bell” making Nigel Barker and Paulina Porizkova magically appear from thin air, this cycle may not be for you. And you may need to reevaluate what you do think is entertaining.
Last look: In a year full of political pundits, mortgage foreclosures and salmonella outbreaks, a show about people who stand still for a living can be a welcome change. Even if we have seen it ten times before.
"America's Next Top Model" premieres Wednesday, September 3, at 8/7c on the CW.
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