Most Dumbest of Most Smartest - Episode 2
To recap each episode of America’s Most Smartest Model, we’ll be highlighting the stupidest moments that occur as Mary Alice Stephenson and Ben Stein search for signs of intelligent life in the fashion industry. After the jump, we’re cold getting dumb…
Awesomely, the numeric challenges that prevent the house of models from entering their bathrooms and refrigerators have changed, lest the models rest on their recently acquired laurels. Today’s challenge involves Roman numerals:
VJ’s scrawling looks like the paranoid, highly philosophical work of a career meth-user (like Intervention’s Cristy, for example):
And that makes the shirt Jesse wears later in the show verrry interesting…
Is that a swipe at VJ, Jesse? Meow?
VJ eventually makes it into his bathroom and, just in case you were curious and didn’t have a piece of loose leaf to scrawl on, here’s what he came up with:
While VJ’s chicken scratch would probably make only the most desperate of algebra teachers proud (”Show your work!”), it probably doesn’t qualify as a truly dumbest moment. The first of the episode belongs to Mandy Lynn, or, as I call her in my head every time someone says her name, Mandolin.
For this week’s game-show challenge, Puzzle Me Pretty, the models are paired off in teams. Mandolin and Daniel form a team, which makes Mand happy: she refers to Daniel as one of the “most smartest people in the house.” Something tells me that the jokey title of this show is lost on Mandolin and only serving to reinforce careless grammar. It’s over her head, streaking in the sky above her…streaks.
As they prepare for the pending game show, the team of VJ and Blonde Rachel decide that they’re going to hide the encyclopedia that they use early on in their studying session, so that no one else can use it. When Rachel is called out on this, she becomes defensive.
It’s always great when Person 1 calls Person 2 a jerk and Person 2 becomes 10 times more jerky as a result. Keeping in line with the grammar-mangling nature of this show, this phenomenon should be dubbed wrongtious indignation.
Once the game show kicks off, more most dumbest moments, of course:
It’s a Jeopardy!-style game, in which a right answer wins whatever prize comes with it for use in the next segment’s photo shoot. When Mandolin is asked what “GOP” stands for, her response is, awesomely, “governor of presidents.”
On this show, Mandolin’s personality is so standout that from the beginning, it’s been safe to call her a “god among insects.” I’m upgrading that title to “governor of presidents.”
Another highlight is when it’s Blonde Rachel’s turn to pick the category. She just points:
…for like five seconds! When Ben suggests that verbalizing is a much better form of communication than pointing, B.R. still doesn’t get it. There’s a beat until she says, “Oh,” and makes her decision. No indignation, but still wrongtious.
Keeping with that thread of not even being able to follow the rules of the game, much less answer its trivia, a question on Jackie Kennedy’s stylist makes the rounds. No one gets it right so the question remains on the board. Erika chooses it again and gets it wrong again. Why and why?
Meanwhile, Lisa who already has answered a question correctly that will give her makeup on the photo shoot, chooses a question that will give her lipstick. And then she gets it right. So she has makeup and extra lipstick, but nothing for her partner Andre (maybe he could put lipstick on his…lipstick tube?). Andre interviews that Lisa is a “selfish cow.” Andre is aggressive and sometimes a jerk, but this seems like one of the most smartest moments of Most Smartest.
And then, the teams take their photos. Here are the results of the shoot:
Everyone’s shot gets praise from Mary Alice, with the exception of Daniel and Mandolin’s and Erika and Jesse’s. Mary Alice criticizes Jesse’s weight, imploring him to work out, which she already did last episode. Jesse points out that his love handles are not going to melt off in a day. It’s not smart, but it’s touché. The challenge comes down to Pickel and Rachael’s shot and Andre and Lisa’s shot. In the end, Mary Alice goes with Pickel and Rachael because it’s just a better picture, and also she didn’t want to condone violence against women by praising Andre. He has no idea what she’s talking about.
It isn’t violence! It’s a love strangle!
In the end, the Final 4 comes down to the two teams that you probably could have predicted, per the results of the photo shoot:
But Daniel gets to feel superior for at least one more episode, and Mandolin will continue to strum our heart strings. It seems as though Jesse, with his body’s gelatinous tendencies, will be kicked out, but instead, it’s short, stubby Erika. Ben Stein’s send-off to her is priceless: “Like the conventional paradigm in the pre-Copernican era of geocentric cosmology, Erika, you have been invalidated.” She won’t be touching the stars today…or ever, probably, what with that height deficiency.
In her exit interview, she informs us that she’s going to continue to attempt to convince the world that “short Latinas can be sexy models, too.” Well, a platform’s a platform. It can only make her appear taller.
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