America's Next Top Model

America's Next Top Model is reality television without pretensions. Or, rather, it's a reality television show with pretensions that are so obvious, they're impossible to hide. It's a show about being shallow, daring, energetic, humble, and, of course, absolutely gorgeous. Led by Tyra Banks and a variety of photographers, stylists, acting coaches, directors, designers, and EX-ex-models, ANTM will go to all kinds of lengths to grab your attention.

From four blonde beauties doing a high-fashion shoot in Venice to soap-opera style acting classes with Taye Diggs, to old-fashioned nudity and sex (on- and off-camera), every season, every episode, will grab your attention. It's not quality television, but it's fun and addictive and all over the place. Don't invest money in the original series of Bankable Productions, but if you've got a free minute, check it out on VH1. They might have a marathon on. And - who knows? It might be that episode with the wet t-shirt pillow fight.

Oh, how I miss the days of Nigel, Mr. Jay, and Miss Jay! I respected the opinions and judgments of those guys. These days, it seems that the show is less about fashion and more about fads. And I'm sorry, but I find Kelly Cutrone a frumpy, grumpy, lump, while Johnny Wujek just needs to take off those stupid hats and dress like a grown-up! I am willing to live with the in-house dramas (and flirtations, in this season) because I find the fashion shoots interesting; I'm not sure I'm willing to put up with the social media hype and the unimpressive "experts" on top of that. This will be my last season of being an ANTM fan—unless most of the cast is fired and the old crew brought back.

America's Next Top Model has upwards of twenty seasons and the first 3/4 are great, and then the final 1/4 is pretty much down the drain.

Like many young women I grew up watching America's Next Top Model in the early 2000s, and then somehow or other fell out of it. Watching those early seasons again (season 1 to 15) much of it still has that popcorn eating appeal. The series is rife with drama, some insight into the modeling industry and many spectacular photo shoots enabling the series to run the gamut of the happily trashy to the highest of fine art.

As many of the winners fell quickly out of the spotlight over the years, one comes to accept America's Next Top Model as a reality show foremost and a modeling career second. As a reality show America's Next Top Model felt like one of the better ones because some of the permanent cast like the fabulous Jay Manuel reportedly did genuinely care about the models-to-be. Jay Manuel and Tyra Banks did try to keep it real, as well as some of the other judges like Andre Leon Telly and Paulina Porowitz (sp?). For the most part the judges tried to steer the models into a good direction, sometimes into becoming commercial models, or focusing on runway, or acting or producing. They tried not to be harsh but could be right divas some of the time, which is what the public liked at the time as many watched American Idol on the same nights as America's Next Top Model.

But eventually much of the better staff and judges were fired, much to the degradation of the show. The replacement judges were terribly bitter or vapid in the worst way. This is probably around season 18 to the end, like season 23 or around.

America's Next Top Model always had a problematic message of encouraging girls to push ahead despite their discomfort for the means of capturing a good photo. However in the later seasons this message became a kind of masochism, with photographers denying the amateur models even common comforts such as in season 21 when a Guess photographer wouldn't give a cramping Jourdan a foot rest in a back twisting, knee raised photo shoot.

For me, watching season 21 was a kind of self inflicted masochism. I wouldn't recommend it because it doesn't get better. I don't know who hired Kelly Cutrone as a judge, because she's a nightmare. After a long hiatus of eight years such as I had, I was surprised by how self-destructive the show had gotten in its later and final seasons.

Considering the whole series, I have to give a 7/10 instead of the higher score I want to.

Like any long running series it gets a little worse the digger you deep behind the scenes, and I'm still registering some of what I read on reddit and beyond. But mostly I still like my childhood favorite show.

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.

Episode 17x08: America's Next Top Model was never 'good' but it was entertaining with some interesting characters and lots of pretty girls (and latterly boys). This is all about entertainment and not a competition to find a real supermodel. It's also all about Tyra Banks. Her ego rules the show even from the start but by the end her ego is bigger than the universe! There were some horror-themed challenges for the contestants which I enjoyed. For me, this episode is where the show jumped the shark and went from legitimate entertainment to a ridiculous parody of itself. The fact that they made a song 'pot ledom' which is as imaginative as putting the name of the show backwards and tried to push this as the next big thing really shows how self-involved and totally out-of-touch Tyra and other senior producers of the show were. And it only went downhill from there. The series without Tyra almost added some model style rather than tacky cheese but it wasn't enough. Hopefully this show will never return.