The next morning, the models are carted off to a ballpit-runway hybrid where Ashley, Drew, and Law greet them and announce that the fans - in their base sadism - have chosen to bring back cycle 16’s bubble runway-challenge, in which models stomped the catwalk while encased in a Zorb for no apparent reason other than to be humiliated by this show. We then get some filler on Shanice’s troubled background, because “Shanice is poor” is the new “Erin is old” (which is thankfully alive and well in this episode).
She menacingly whisper-smizes and signs off, and the girls are left to rummage through 15 years of Schadenfreude-based photo shoots and guess which ones will be re-staged. Tyra announces from her utility closet that it’s throwback week, and that fans have voted on some historic Top Model challenges to bring back for this episode. In her mind, Rio’s path to victory is clear with Jeana out of the picture, and she giddily joins the other models in a twerking circle until Tyra Mail arrives. The velocity with which Rio crams all her (un)cherished Jeana memories into a sweaty duffel and tosses it into a mental bonfire is impressive while also defying multiple laws of emotional, entropy-governed spacetime. We start with the girls celebrating Khrystyana’s win from last week’s music-video challenge, then quickly move on to Rio spending the better part of 45 seconds mourning her BFF Jeana’s departure. We’re obviously gagged to see Eva and Nigel mashed up with these final-four zygotes, and while this is one of the better episodes of the cycle, there’s still plenty of tomfoolery to eye-roll about.
Alack and alas, ANTM can’t escape the asymmetry of time, as much as it tries to remind us of its former glory with a salvo of throwback guest appearances. An egg can turn into an omelet but not vice versa, for example, and invoking the metaphysical memory of that egg after the fact does nothing to conjure it back into existence. Top Model, like all closed physical systems, is subject to whatever entropic forces make some events irreversible. The final four contestants on America’s Next Top Model.