Alexander Stacey McKenzie to prepare for their first task. Hey, guess what? It’s Rita with side-swept bangs! She’s holding her own camera (be your own boss, y’all) and telling America’s potential next top models that she’s sending them to runway coach Miss J. Officially established as the Final 14, and settled into their very expensive sorority house of horrors, it’s time for cycle 23’s first Tyra Mail RitAlert. YaYa DaCosta realness Courtney, giving face (and Courtney’s face, giving brows) Justine, if only due to her major lewk of blue eye shadow, braids, and a high-cut leotard with a sternum keyhole the size of California and Paige’s playfulness (what we’ll come to find out later is a signature playfulness). Among the 14 finalists, I’d categorize the immediate standouts from the new intro as Cherish, whose red hair really does set her apart Cody, serving some O.G. The second episode of ANTM’s reboot is super weird in the personality department, but it’s also a pretty fun time, starting with the new GIF-style intro credits. This world will eat you alive, and it all starts right here! Now featuring Rita Ora and a writhing mass of male models, ready to catch you when you fall spread eagle into your demise. On ANTM, however, these are just a bunch of 18- to 22-year-old girls screaming, “I don’t come from Africa! I am African-American!” and weeping about their anxieties in front of the people who hold their fate in their hands because they don’t know any better yet. But for the most part, they’re doing it on purpose, for the attention and the occasional skinny margarita at the Watch What Happens Live clubhouse. Can you imagine the cast of any other reality show being this earnest in the sharing of their (frightening) views, their (doomed) hopes and dreams? Sure, on ANTM’s contemporaries - say, your Vanderpump Rules or MTV’s The Challenge - the kids are also out there embarrassing themselves. They really don’t make ‘em like America’s Next Top Model anymore. If so, new host Rita Ora might have been a little off in her measurements, because the ladies of cycle 23 are spitting stone-cold crazy straight from the jump.
Is there something in the ANTM water? Does Tyra line the pipes of each cycle’s gutted brownstone with some sort of Harry Potter paranoia serum so that by the time the finalists get to the end, they’re pouring energy drinks down drains and rendered incapable of reading a city map to get through a simple go-see?