Next Top Model. Where's the Sparkle?

Is it just me or is this season's Next Top Model pretty tame? Where are the fights between the girls? Where is the super bitchy judging? Even Chris Kontentos seems to have lost his ability to verbally rip a girl to shreds since cutting his hair off. It just ain't the same. He should grow it back.

And, did you know they let those girls out of the model house? Yeah! I know! I thought they weren't allowed to go anywhere for their entire incarceration.

This week the girls competed for an AIDS awareness shoot in which they'd have to pose naked with one of the male judges. Evangelia and Sindorela won. Dirty Harry was naturally right in there with Evangelia, because he's a judge you see and maybe he could help Evangelia earn some brownie points off camera. After all, she has become a bit of a fatso lately so we are repeatedly told. And if that's overweight, then there really is no hope for the rest of us. Put that celery stick right down, wannabe fashionistas. From now it's warm water and half a pumpkin seed for lunch.

Sindorela being underage posed more of a problem, so she got Christ Kontentas who's tastes we all know are otherwise inclined, and ended up looking like fashion roadkill.

Next, since we have to keep the sponsors happy, the girls were invited to a Lipton tea party. Hey, did you know that all over Athens there's this new concept and people are throwing themed tea parties where you pick a concept and everyone gets together to drink tea and you... oh? You've never heard of them? Or been to one? Well they're all the rage according to Tasos. Oh well. What do we know.

More sponsor bum kissing followed in the form of Georgia's Vodafone sponsored birthday. What the hell? Is this show now just a carriage for the sponsors?

As the show progressed it became obvious the judges are getting bored too, and with nothing better to do they asked the girls to do something totally ridiculous. They made the girls catwalk at judging panel blindfolded. Now, tell me seriously, except for cheap laughs what did anyone learn from that exercise?

Eliminations time rolled round and much to my disappointment, no one got eliminated. Although I can't really complain since Nancy got kicked off last week. I waited a really long time for that. I even wish I had baked a cake to celebrate.

But none of that is really important, because Greece's Next Top Model pulled out a trump card so fabulous on Monday night that it left all model wannabes screaming with all the delight that their skinny lungs could muster. Ever watched America's Next Top Model where Tyra builds the girls up talking about a fashion designer or photographer they're going to meet, who usually just turns out to be a friend of Tyra's (eg. Nigel Barker. Not so much noted fashion photographer as Noted Pal of Tyra) and in the end the vast majority of us are like "Who?"

Well next week the Next Top Model girls are off to Paris. Where they get to meet Jean Paul Gaultier. Awesome. We can ignore for a fact that my brother in law took some of the shine off this moment by reminding me that JPG used to regularly appear on a tacky British TV show called Eurotrash, and therefore was a pretty easy to get hold of fame whore.

Who cares! It's Jean Paul frickin' Gaultier! Beat that, Tyra. Let's celebrate with a tea party at my house!

Image: http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/cm/harpersbazaaruk/images/b6/or_6bf9b70811964433382920.jpg