Congratulations, Eva!

Ok, I'm going to admit it: I kind of enjoyed watching most of “America's Next Top Model” this season. It's L's thing, really, but I get sucked in to watching it most of the time. Yeah, I know, that's a problem. But admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery, right? But since I did enjoy it, I just wanted to congratulate this season's top model, Eva. At times I thought maybe Nicole should have won, or Norelle, but I liked Eva all along and she was hands down the best choice of the final four or five. Heather Havrilesky (who now has her own blog) has a great piece in Salon about why Eva was the best pick, and about why the show is so wrongly watchable:

See, this is what makes “America's Next Top Model” so much less predictable and more fun than shows like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” -- it's not based on the whims of fellow contestants, or worse yet, the whims of The Donald. (Who in the world thinks inept political femme bot Jen should have made it this far?) Tyra Banks and a carefully selected panel of extremely egocentric, bizarre, sadistic human beings pick out the next top model, and they do it by looking at actual photographs and footage of the girls strutting on the runway. These women do real work, as silly and staged as a lot of it is, so that by the time a winner is chosen, we have a very concrete idea of how good each woman might be at this profession.

Unfortunately, according to Havrilesky, a lot of the show's appeal has some deep connection to the trauma of growing up playing with Barbie dolls. I can't say I share that exactly, but still, the piece is a fun read if you watched the show. For the record, I do not watch “Desperate Housewives” or “Runway” or anything else like this (except insofar as “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” are like it, which isn't very far), so maybe there's hope for me yet.

Posted December 17, 2004 04:27 PM | tv land