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Welcome to the most animal-friendly TV format in the country.
After her leopard outfit from episode one and the zebra look from the previous week, Heidi Klum shows herself in a tiger coat today.
Since the model mom will traditionally wear at least one bird of paradise combination, crocodile boots, leo costume and an absurd onesie (optionally panda or brown bear) during a GNTM season, it can be assumed with a probability bordering on certainty that we will have all 13 volumes at the finale "Grzimek's animal life" will have declined.
Until then, however, Corona - like the rest of the world - has relentlessly under control of the 16th season of the past perfect festival.
Logically, the airline miles account remains emptier during the GNTM pandemic edition than Andi Scheuer's success statistics.
For the girls, this means above all: Instead of the usual fashion metropolitan hopping between Los Angeles, Paris, Milan, New York and London, this year there is only Berlin and an Opéra Garnier ordered on Wish - the Friedrichstadtpalast in Mitte.
Can the models ballerina?
They had to prove that in the third episode of GNTM
Source: ProSieben / Richard Hübner
However, there is at least a ballet crash course from a kind of Désirée Nick with a black wig and the stage name Alexandra as well as the realization: A ballet training that lasts around four years in the main course after years of training and passing the entrance exam can only be limited to four Compress hours.
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Professional ballerinas say that you need about four years of hard training to be able to dance safely enough in pointe shoes, but at GNTM everything goes a little faster.
In just a few weeks, for example, some candidates increase their number of followers from just above insignificance to a stately 400,000 and are then able to rewards the rest of their careers daily in Insta stories to advertise mascara discount codes as euphorically as if they just had a pill against weight gain invented.
Or at least against Markus Söder.
So it's hardly surprising that the girls qualify for ballet dancing in pointe shoes in the record time of just one hour.
By the way, next week there will be four hours of pilot training, and then the candidates will fly a tornado fighter jet in a triple loop through the Brandenburg Gate.
That has to be included, after all, all participants aim high!
The ejection seat special, which goes down in GNTM history as a “Starfighter” shoot, will of course be presented in cooperation with Germany's Next Top Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the Federal Ministers' Heidi Klum.
No coincidence, because AKK and Klum have a lot in common: They love carnival and like to let their subordinates spend the night in dormitories.
Ballet mantra of the hour: elegance, body tension and discipline
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But back to the topic: In the ballet workshop, Désirée Alexandra Nick implores the girls to memorize the ballet mantra of the hour: elegance, body tension and discipline.
Some girls look like they're trying to explain the difference between the Biontech and AstraZeneca vaccines.
Of course, the girls look sparingly out of their scarce underwear.
Or just like Lothar Matthäus when he has to translate the sentence “I came to win the championship” into English without an accident.
Or maybe they are just afraid that they might have to dance “Swan Lake” later.
And how that can end with swans on television, reality TV experts have known since Sebastian Preuss received his bachelor's degree.
Alysha suddenly appears out of nowhere as a ray of light from the acrobatics of pirouettes in the ballet camp.
I could swear I've never seen this candidate before.
Maybe it was smuggled in on the spur of the moment, so that at least someone doesn't look like they're tying their legs during the stretching exercises before the first position.
Or she was secretly exchanged for Sara, who suddenly seems to have disappeared from the ensemble as if by magic.
Who doesn't get a photo?
Heidi Klum was supported in this decision by choreographer Nikeata Thompson
Source: ProSieben / Richard Hübner
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After a few demi-pliés, Désirée Alexandra Nick quickly gives the Bolshoi rookies the most important insider tip for ballet princesses: "You have to have elegant feet and full hands" before they finally take the budding foot and hand models straight to the training evening dismisses her loft.
20 GNTM candidates who practice pas de deux after just one day of classes, that of course looks a bit like someone secretly replaced the isotonic drinks with brandy at the national youth games of the Andrej-Mangold-Hauptschule Hannover.
Dancing makes you hungry, hunger makes you aggressive and this combination creates a party mood among the ProSieben quota analysts: The field of participants reliably delivers the next big defamation clatter in week three.
After Liliana hoped for her (leg) breakthrough last week, the big avocado pate is developing today.
True to the proven motto: Always on those who are not in the room, Chanel and Linda decide on a targeted blasphemy offensive and shoot themselves at their comrade Elisa.
I didn't really get what it was all about because I just had to google “Kindergarten”, but somehow Elisa criticized the excessive consumption of Cornys while at the same time she was happily preparing an avocado toast.
It is understandable that the anger of the Corny enthusiast faction is enormous.
In inimitable literary brilliance, Linda reports with excitement: "I look into Elisha's face and think to myself: shut up".
The first hate character capable of shitstorm
In this cozy dinner discrediting atmosphere, Chanel does not want to give her the coveted price for the insidiousness of the week without a fight and adds: "I just think, eat your avocado toast and shut up".
So suddenly there was a lot of competition for Liliana on the downwardly open Lijana memory scale of the most intriguing meanness.
Who will ultimately make the race suddenly seems completely open.
Oh, and by the way, just to understand: Corny is a muesli bar, not a candidate.
Then it is finally the next morning, and although it is not yet Easter, Jesus is returning.
In the form of photographer Marcus Schaefer, who had already provided biblical shooting moments in the 2017 season.
He is making his comeback at the "Swan Lake" on the Spree.
The girls compete in shooting duels in extremely delicate and largely transparent ballet tutus.
There is not much time left for eye make-up during preparation, which is why the make-up artists obviously throw water bombs full of black ink at the candidates as a makeshift.
Only a few hours after her "Elisa should shut up" bonmot, Linda sits next to Elisa and gives a lecture on group cohesion, of all things.
Yes, she has to laugh herself.
It is impressive how ProSieben constructs the first shitstorm capable hate character here.
Linda conjures up solidarity.
It seems so grotesque, one is almost afraid that Sheikh Chalifa bin Zayid, President of the United Arab Emirates, is about to come and assure his solidarity with the LGBTQ movement.
In outdoor shooting duels on an ice-cold Spree bridge, it's about more than just a good photo, permanent frostbite and dubious make-up, because the respective duel winners go straight to the next round and no longer have to go into the decision-making walk.
In the end, as always, Heidi Klum will decide who these winners are.
And that according to clear parameters: expression and diversity.
It's not about ballet, because: “I'm not looking for a ballet dancer”.
That's true.
But neither are top models.
And bonus question: If you are not looking for a ballet dancer, what is the best way to train around the clock before the shoot?
Exactly: ballet.
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Now that it is clear at the latest that in the end only cannon fodder will be recruited for Günther Klum's influencer marketing booth and no useful offspring for the Royal Ballet School, his daughter Heidi gives us at least a few iconic model wisdoms such as: "Don't forget your faces" .
And that's true: Models who appear for the casting without a face, statistically speaking, get the job even less often than Michael Wendler a job at RTL.
At the end of the day there are ten duel winners, because the television tower on Alexanderplatz, which is always visible in the background, runs outside the classification.
From a posture point of view, he would have deserved a photo first, but Klum is apparently not only not looking for a ballet dancer, but also for television towers.
Back in the Modelloft there is an emotional campfire moment for gourmets of the Trash-TV meekness when candidate Alex confesses to the GNTM squad that she came out two years ago as a trans woman.
More like a performance art installation than a classic catwalk
If you look at what's going on out there in our supposedly cosmopolitan, enlightened and liberal world, and especially in the social media comment columns, as soon as someone appears who doesn't fit smoothly into the normality scheme of the 50s, it's a bit embarrassing that, of all things, a group of very young women from diverse backgrounds has to show us how to react to such an outing.
As if it were normal.
Because it's normal too.
As if the evening wasn't extraordinary enough, Nikeata Thompson comes in and prepares the ten losers in the duel for tomorrow's elimination walk.
It's more like a performance art installation than a classic catwalk.
First the girls lie upright in bed and have to suggest waking up from a bad nightmare, then they run for a while on a treadmill until a cloud of fog explodes in front of them and they walk down the catwalk in transparent negligee.
What to expect in everyday modeling.
19-year-old Mira walks down the catwalk in a negligee
Source: ProSieben / Richard Hübner
When very young girls roll around half-naked in beds, Zotenqueen Klum is usually not far.
And even today she has a presence of mind to present a gem from sexual couples therapy: “Stiffness in bed is never good”.
And she's right there, at least when Tom Kaulitz is not around.
Fortunately, the nightmare-on-catwalk disaster is over relatively quickly with only ten participants, and Klum can concentrate on her three core competencies: giving photos, not giving photos and cutting out valuable tips.
Like this punctuation note to Liliana: "Remove the question mark when you leave the house".
Justus Jonas doesn't like that, neither does Liliana, because in the end it is decided between her and Nana who has to leave the GNTM adventure in week three.
And what can I say: Heidi is not in the mood for being carried out of the studio with broken legs and therefore decides to stay with Liliana.
Nana has to go.
For some inexplicable reason, the ProSieben soundtrack officer refrains from showing the tearful farewell scenario backstage with the Nana classic “I'm Coming, I'm Coming, I'm Here Have No Fear.
Nana Is Back, Nana Is Here ”, and so Nana follows Maria, who was eliminated a week ago, without musical homage, into the post-GNTM era very early on.
Who it will hit next week or whether Heidi Klum spared the girls with the sentence "Unfortunately I don't have a photo for you today", since two candidates, Sara and Ricarda, have already voluntarily left the expulsion cycle, I'll tell you here in the next one Week!
Author and model Marie von den Benken commented on the 16th GNTM season for ICONIST
Source: Getty Images
Marie von den Benken is on Twitter and Instagram as @Regendelfin, she is from Hamburg, model and author. She also writes every week on ICONIST about the big and small dramas at "Germany's Next Topmodel".
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