I have never been happier to end a cycle. And yes, there is an implied double meaning there. And yes, it’s completely true.

Weird Girl/America’s Next Top Petite Model would like to welcome you to this enormously picture heavy recap.

You know when Tyra says that she spends entire days, like, eight hour blocks of time crying her eyes out? Do you think they filmed the sequences for the opening credits on one of those days?

The girls can’t believe their incredible misfortune at having made it to the final two in the most pointless cycle of the most irrelevant show on tv, and they think back at how far they come.

Laura’s memories involve bathing dogs in plastic tubs.

Weird Girl’s involve that one time she almost peed herself in sepia tone.

The girls go out to the woods and come across a leprechaun.

Who is terrified of them.

And then starts screaming like a crazy person so they’ll go away. That was advice my dad gave me once a long, long time ago: if someone is bothering you, start screaming and yelling like you’re crazy so they’ll leave you alone. I don’t know where it was that I was coming across these people that wouldn’t leave me alone or why I was alone in this situation, but… He also tried to get rid of prank callers once by employing the same methods, but they just kept calling back to hear the crazy guy yell.

Those #1 Dad mugs only apply to my dad. Sorry.

Teyona, last year’s winner, shows up to pitch Cover Girl products to Weird Girl and Laura in a robot voice*.

Even Weird Girl’s, like, if you’re not buying it, neither am I.

*Is robotically not a word? Because I thought it was and my spell check keeps telling me that I’m trying to type the word erotically. So. Teyona erotically pitches mascara to the girls.

Why did the makeup people bleach off Laura’s eyebrows last week? And why was this never ever mentioned?

Jay introduces his very good friend Mr. Barker, with whom he plays Boggle every sunday afternoon at the old folks’ home.

Or wait. Tyra’s a cheapskate and “surprised” the girls by “hiring” Nigel to shoot their Cover Girl pictures.

He tells Laura to tell him what she was thinking of and she tells him, “Milkshakes! And little baby cats.” Then he does an interview and explains that he can’t get any masturbation fantasies out of that, and that he would have preferred for her to tell him all about how she was thinking about having sex with him and possibly two or three other girls, and that, therefore, Laura is dead to him.

Weird Girl, on the other hand, gets the most disturbing hug in the world. It kind of makes my stomach hurt.

During the tv commercial shoot, Jay tells Weird Girl that she comes off a little snooty and priveleged. To which she replies,

“My dear boy, you wouldn’t know privilege if it bit you on your bum.”

“And furthermore, you smell like poor people.”

“Is that my limo pulling up? Ta!”

After the shoot, Weird Girl’s face melts with the effort of holding in her terror at Laura’s randomly missing eyebrows.

I mean, anything would be better, I think.

The evil Seventeen Magazine troll shows up to hang out with the girls.

And she got Gilles Bensimon out of his coffin to moan at the girls. When I was in high school, I had a CAD class at the college taught by this guy who used to stand behind us and just go, “Uhhhhhhhhhh.” Gilles’ son?

So, I’m thinking, Gilles was a budget-buster, hence the cheapness of the rest of the episode, or he’s doing community service. For flashing women on the subway.

The editors clearly deleted the martini glass filled with straight gin and the parliament cigarette out of this shot, by the way.

Just in case, while watching the episode, you thought that Laura had a chance to win, this shot says it all.

Oh, my God! So much evil in their house in one day! I hope they scorched the earth when ANTM moved out of there.

Tyra’s there to have her final tear-squeezing session with the girls, where it’s revealed that Weird Girl, like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls and almost like DJ Tanner in Full House, ate lunch in the bathroom at school. I would imagine Tyra is interested in this story because eating while going to the bathroom seems like something she does a lot.

She also puts “petite model” in quotes and rolls her eyes, like she wasn’t the jerk who came up with it.

Laura tries to tell Tyra about the letter her grandma wrote to her saying how proud she was, but instantly tears up. Which I can relate to, because I now cry at everything.

Then the girls have their runway show, where “special guest models” are there to walk with them.

It’s just the last five girls who got kicked off. I mean, all of these “surprises” and “special guests” and “guess whats” and “first time in antm histories”, and everyone watching somehow managed to figure out that this was the recession cycle. Imagine that.

Um. I feel really dirty having looked at this picture.

And I think that the CW got hacked with a copy of America’s Next Top Dildo, or whatever the ANTM porn spoof is/would be called. (There’s gotta be at least one by now, right?)

Oh, wait! My mistake. It’s just the fashion show, where the girls have to pose erotically (this time I meant to write it!) in a stream of water, while the losers get to rub their faces on the finalists butts. Nothing porny about that at all. At least it’s a little cleaner than last year. I mean that literally, by the way, not morally. Last year was when they were writhing around on the ground in some kind of poop orgy.

Backstage, the girls are super psyched about the show and about going to panel that night, and then Tyra shows up.

And says things like, “Yeeeeeeah????? Are you exciiiiiiiited????? Yeah? Really???? Well, gooooood!” like she’s tucking in a bunch of homeless children on Christmas Eve. Like she wants them to think she’s excited, but she’s really not because she just feels so guilty that they’re still homeless. Except, in this case, Tyra doesn’t feel guilty that the girls aren’t gonna go anywhere, because she’s delusional and thinks she’s doing them a big favor by letting them on her stupid show. So, I guess the analogy is more like, She wants the kids to think she’s excited, too, but she really just doesn’t want their homelessness to rub off on her.

Although, after she pretends to be grossed out by how wet they still are from the show, she does spend a pretty prolonged time caressing their backs. But, I don’t know. That might have more to do with the fact that she’s bummed she wasn’t on stage with them, sticking her face in their butts, too.

I have so many things to say about that dress, that they’re all coming out jumbled. Like, PrettyinPinkGiantNeckFringeShowgirls?MOMBI??Ithinkshe’snakedbelowframepossibly.

Wow.

Even Tyra’s surprised.

But, then she brings it back to herself. Where it should be.

Does this look like a dream sequence to you?

“I have two portfolios in my hands, my hands, my hands…” Ms. Jay represents buoyancy.

This was at the point when Nigel mentioned Laura’s handmade clothes and Tyra was like, “Talk about those clothes I irrationally hate one more time? You’re done.”

Laura didn’t win, ps. So, she went out drinking. For thirty straight years. And then explained that her family was going to be so so proud of her in spite of being a big old loser, and that’s why Laura is the best person that ever came into Tyra’s orbit.

I kind of used to like when the runner-up was just sort of whisked backstage, like in any other reality show. Like, on AI when the loser is gone during the confetti canon parade throughout the theater and then they’re suddenly there, hugging the winner in the last 20 seconds of airtime, like they had never left. But now, to show off her final jumpsuit of the cycle, Tyra makes the losers hang out through all the hoopla and cry silently, until she can come over and explain to them why they lost.

Here’s another thing I don’t like about the last few minutes of ANTM. I always thought it would be a really creepy feeling to win this show, because the celebration happens with Tyra, Nigel, and the two Jays. So, it’s like having a birthday party with only your boss and your boss’s assistance and your boss’s boss in attendance.

And they keep staring at you and clapping. There’s just something very depressing about that. “Talk into the camera about how excited your family will be! Now come through this door!! They’re not here! But we are!! Now hang out with us for the next half hour drinking champagne and feeling awkward because we’re absolutely not friends with you!”

Again, Nigel manages to make me feel sick to my stomach. It’s the way he’s holding her arms, and the way he’s grinning evilly at her and that pained smile she has on her face. It’s like she doesn’t speak English and he gave her a hundred dollar bill and put her in a poorly designed fetish costume and got her to nod and say yes to something she didn’t understand, and the room he’s leading her into is filled with a bunch of naked men and cameras.

It was actually a photo shoot, btw, but, um… Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible picture? Is Tyra trying to absorb Weird Girl into her body for nutrition? Are they smizing? Are they not smizing because Nigel is naked on the other side of that camera? So many questions I don’t even want answers to.