Alright, anyone with a brain could tell that this show is a little unfair. Who is picked and who is sent home is so contrived; everyone can see straight through it. It really is too bad a lot of them are in denial. Anyway, let's go through a typical season, or cycle, I should say, because Tyra has to be menstrual.(I stole that from someone funny.) The first episode generally starts a clip show with a Tyra-logue about modeling. How far she made me, how she struggled, how she is(or was, depending on who you favor) #1. Then we go through 30-something young girls who get flown in to some city for an in-person interview of sorts so Tyra can get a glimpse of their TV personalities and hear sob stories. The Tyra makes a series of cuts to get down to the top 10, 12, 13, or 14 contestants.
Almost all the episodes after that generally go like this: we open with the b*tches, I mean "aspiring models" in Tyra's ego-house. There's fighting, there's laughing, there's the focus(usually) on the girl who is going to be ceremoniously sacked by the end of the episode.
The girl's are then sent to a few things, sometimes in a different order. The first is usually some sort of contest to depict who can do the best at something stupid. Blah, blah, blah. Then comes the photo shoot. The photo shoots are generally the second best thing in the show, second only to the pictures that are shown during panel.
Of course, there are usually some episodes throughout the season/cycle that break the robotedness. The first is always the make-over episode, generally 3 or 4 episodes in. Everyone gets a dramatically awesome hair make-over(or not, in a lot of cases) and there's always some menstrual case whining(except for cycle 8, where when no one whined enough, they had to take out Jael's cute extensions just to really irritate).
And then there's the episode where the girls do an acting session and star in a commercial or something of the like. And sometimes we get a clip show where no one is eliminated and nothing is all that interesting. And of course, there's always the episode where the girls get sent to a foreign fashion capitol(and apparently, any big city in the world is a fashion capitol to Ty-Ty) and someone gets sent home without being there for 24 hours.
Then the final episode shakes it up a bit. Because there are only 3 contestants left, we must suffer two eliminations where Tyra reminds us what the winner gets. And it's always the same thing. A modeling contract and a magazine spread(It was with "Elle Magazine" the first few cycles, but I think when they realized this show didn't turn out any actual TOP models TyTy's winner's got dropped to "Seventeen Magazine".) So yeah, they usually do a CoverGirl shoot to pick the final two and then do a fashion show... before evaluating both finalists and usually picking (in my opinion except for Cycles 1 and 7) the worst of the duo.
In all honesty, this show doesn't really turn out what you could call Big Winners, but it's entertaining when you need a guilty pleasure amount of trash in your week. Enjoy.
