Make Me A Supermodel: Meet the Models

BravoTV's latest entry into the reality TV milieu, "Make Me A Supermodel," premiered last night (unofficially) with a special titled "Meet the Models" where the audience is introduced to the 16 aspiring supermodels who will compete on the show. After about 30 seconds of watching the show you can tell the pitch meeting went something like this:

Television producer walks into a room full of executives and says, "Hey, you know how 'America's Next Top Model' is really popular? And you know how 'American Idol' is really popular? Let's combine the two!" The television executives looks around at each other and say, almost in unison and with unprecedented joy and exuberance, "Of course!"

But here's the thing about the American Idol format when related to a modeling competition: they included the try-out part where they make fun of the people who are obviously not right for the competition. If you're not following me up to this point, I'll just say it, they spend a good amount of time making fun of people for being ugly and not realizing it. It's like a nightmare middle-school flashback where Nikki Taylor and Tyson Beckford make fun of awkward, unattractive people who are deluded enough to think they too can be models. Luckily they do the mockery with overlaid narration, and not with a panel of three judges at a table, like "Idol."

Editorial Note: If you're unfamiliar with Tyson Beckford he is best known for his role in Zoolander as Derek's "walk-off" couch.

The second part of the show was a mini-competition with 36 finalists. We got a brief introduction to some, and longer looks at other who we knew would be on the show for the rest of the season. This included the application video from Frankie. Frankie, who we learn from the video, is a hyper-active guy with an endless surplus of interests including: wake boarding, playing guitar, and having a really angular face. He's also very proud of his abs, which are "rock hard," we know this because he tell us so in his application video whilst lifting up his shirt. Thanks, Frankie, you also simultaneously illustrated how you're a douchebag.

As you can see from the Make Me A Supermodel website, which for some reason is impossible to find from the BravoTV homepage, Frankie--for all his virtues--still lives with his parents. You know who else still lived with his parents? The Entertainer on "I Love New York 2," and we all know how that worked out...

We also got to meet a prison guard/aspiring model named Ben. In his application video he says, in uniform, "you know, sometimes you have to put your dreams on hold for a while and survive." Hey, that's great advice, really I'm not being sarcastic. But how many prison guards out there do you really imagining daydreaming about working it on a catwalk in Milan? What kind of weird mash-up is this? They're, like, mutually exclusive personality traits. That's like Mike Tyson aspiring to be a speech therapist to disadvantaged youth. I wonder if later in the show he'll draw some kind of comparison with modeling and being a prison guard like, "you gotta' block everything out. You can't think about who's hollerin' at ya', whether it's angry cons with shivs or excited photogs, you just gotta' keep on walkin' with yer head high... and strut."

There was one guy who got kicked off in the second part of "Meet the Models" who I didn't understand the presence of. I mean, I don't know who looked at this guy and thought and thought "Now this guy, this guy is a model." Amy had a good point, a lot of models look really different in person, and sometimes they're pretty unattractive. But this guy had specifically un-model-like features, like, things that would keep him from getting dates let alone getting fashion work. Damn, I thought I could find a picture, but I can't. Basically he had giant ears, no chin, and really huge lips--like consume his face big.

And then there was Ronnie. Another Abercrombie model, really? I don't need another one, I'm pretty tired of the ones we've got already, thanks. With his bleach blond dye-job and orange spray-on tan, no one thought that Ronnie's fakeness would let him pass to the final round, but low and behold, the judges saw something in him, some kind of fire, some sort of supermodel quality beneath all that slightly "off" chemical enhancement. Truth be told, he did have a nice smile and a classic "boyfriend cute" look, but I still couldn't handle his average, AF-ness. He does look a lot better on the BravoTV page though.

Later in the episode, we learn he's gay, which for some reason made me like him a little bit more. I don't know, maybe it's because I don't think he's out there stealing available women from normal guys like me with his cheesiness. I don't want to have to be cheezy to get dates, I want to rely on the old stand-bys like driving a flashy car and starting rumors about having a giant penis.

There were some other contestants like the really pretty starving artists guy, Casey; or the woman who looks like she was born to play an art gallery owner in every movie EVER, Holly; but this post would just get absurdly long if I kept going.

Generally speaking, the show made me a worse person after it was over. I spent an hour exhaustively picking out every contestants flaws to the point of near insanity. I even found something I hate about Tyson Beckford's face (look at his upper lip sometime, like really take a good look--it'll blow your mind). More over, Nikki Taylor was hardly in the show. I watched the damn thing because she looks so hot on the poster, but her only camera exposure was in the way of unflattering close-ups that made her look old and puffy.

That said, I'm going to keep watching. If I can say one good thing about "Make Me A Supermodel" it's that they have the story-telling narrative about the contestants down. As much as I love hating on shallow models (and there's plenty of model-y shallowness in this show to hate) the producers manage to occasionally weave an interesting story around some of the contestants, which anyone will tell you is the key to endearing an audience to your show. That, and like I told Julianne, I just really love watching good-looking people.

Editorial Note: If I ever mysteriously disappear for a week don't be surprised if you find me dead of starvation, sitting in front of a mirror.

So yeah, "Make Me A Supermodel" is on Thursdays at 10:00pm MT/9:00 CT, and I recommend it for a bunch of reasons I can't exactly pinpoint. Or don't watch it, I don't really care, it's not like I'm getting paid for this.