Top Model premeires tonight. Bored yet?

Remember when Top Model was the shit? When you tuned in because you knew the girls were going to do fabulous fashion shoots and Tyra would give something crazy modeling note about adjusting the body or smiling with your eyes (that TOTALLY made sense), and Janice Dickinson would be a total bitch (and TOTALLY be telling the truth), and you actually believed those girls would go off and have some kind of career somewhere in the world?

Yeah, that's not happening on tonight's premiere. 

ANTM isn't a show about modeling any longer. It's
about dressing girls in cheap looking clothes, having them scream
like maniacs, parade around in ridiculous high heel boot camp challenges, then have them do photo shoots for
commercials and complain that their photos are too commercial. And that's fine. I'm all for
entertainment. But if you're gonna do that, then make it good.

Here's how the show will play out:

Tyra does a big narration about all the girls where she tries to sound enthusiastic. We figure out who this season's (I'm sorry, "cycle"—whatever the hell that is) bitch is by first act, we get a semi-tragic story from various girls who want to model more than anything (but didn't start at 13, 14, or 15 like most working professionals) and then the semi-tragic girls all get kicked off.

Then it's off to the real episode, which sports the much-anticipated makeover. This makes sense. Why wait three weeks for the only episode everyone loves? Then they have Perez Hilton guest-starring, which makes no sense because everyone hates him, he has no fashion sense, and he's fugly. Oh wait... never mind. Having Perez means publicity and the show needs it. Two points to Tyra. (Mamma didn't raise no fool.)

This cycle also brings in André Leon Talley. Perhaps he'll be the new Janice, but from the commercials it just looks like he's going to be inventing a bunch of ANTM jargon like "smize" (smiling with your eyes), as opposed to gay-jargon which is much more clever (such as assues or handifat). According to the press notes, André currently serves as the
editor-at-large of Vogue and is prominent in the world of designer
fashion. He also has a front-row seat to runway shows all over the world.
So there!

But let's face it, there will never be another Shandi, who was my favorite. I've made peace with that. And I did love André in The September Issue, and our beloved Miss J. Alexander will be mentoring the girls during challenges, so maybe there's hope. I'll give it an episode or two.

And if it sucks. You'll be hearing about it.