The A-List: New York Recap: Gentlemen Prefer Botox

The A-List: New York keeps getting better and better! I'm lying, but this show is about make-believe, and I want to invite you to this fantasy. In last night's episode, Derek enhanced his Marilyn Monroe drag costume with actual lip injections (!), Austin bawled when he saw pictures of his own naked body, and Reichen and Rodiney pretended to have problems again. All in all, an A+ effort from an A+ list of (sigh) A-holes.

Because The A-List: New York loves us, it kicks off the episode with Austin getting to see all his naked photos from last week's shoot. How could this go wrong? After all, Austin stood naked in front of a camera, clutched his genitals, and pointed at the lens like an old-school Chippendale. That's what modeling is all about, just ask a prostitute.

Oops! Austin spies the pictures and realizes he's (gasp) no longer anorexically taut and tortured-looking, like in his Marc Jacobs-romancing heyday.

"I was horrified," he says to us. "It was disgusting. It showed all of my worst features. I look pregnant."

I love that Austin's problem with the photos was that his abs weren't metallic enough and not, say, that he posed like the poster gigolo for a highway bathhouse called The Junk Hut. To add insult to injury, his modeling consultants also hate the pictures.

"There's no excuse at 22 to have that," one of the consultants tells us, referring to (what else) Austin's monstrous fatness. He encourages Austin to give up modeling entirely and take acting classes, since "it doesn't matter what their bodies look like." Too awesome.

"If they're telling me to give up (modeling), they don't know me," Austin hisses. I thought that was the point. They don't know you, so they're telling you if you have a chance of competing with every other perfectly nippled 22-year-old in New York. Anyway, Austin doesn't need modeling world people telling him he can't model. He's on a television show about delusions and bad ideas now, and he's got Elite pectorals in that fabulous world. Real world, you may have a seat.

Moving onto Derek, who is the single maddest squirrel I've ever seen: He's meeting up with odious ginger T.J., and they're talking about how Austin has "no common sense." This will get especially hilarious when Derek gets lip injections in about five minutes so that his ghetto Marilyn Monroe costume looks complete. (Stay tuned!) He also invited TJ to Fire Island to hang out with Reichen and Rodiney, who are vacationing to get away from the... stress? Of their relationship? The one that they have? I'm not actually sure why they need an escape together.

Wait, wait, here are Reichen and Rodiney now, and they're having a meaningfully cinematic dialogue about their relationship.

Rodiney: "I know you need your own space, so I'm going to let you have your space."

Reichen: "Yeah. I really do need my own space."

(Fin.)

After a three-hour, Logo-edited silence descends upon the room, Reichen speaks up again. He hears he's being replaced in his play, My Big Gay Italian Non-Musical Because Reichen Cannot Sing. Rodiney is crestfallen.

"What are you going to do, Reichen?" he asks.

No joke, Reichen replies, "I'm going to make sure you're contributing to our finances." The psychologist from last week had it right when he said Reichen likes being a breadwinner until he decides to get resentful and feel used. Well, actually, I had it right when I said that Reichen is an egotistical narcissist who kind of thinks he's smart. But the psychologist was on the right track toward being me. They all are!

But back to Derek and his common-sense lip injections. He's hosting a party where attendees must come in drag, and he wants to be the fairest Norma Jean of all. This means he needs drastic cosmetic surgery. He's getting both lips plumped so that, as he put it, "I'm going to look like Megan Fox."

Now wait: I've seen this Megan Fox person before, and she doesn't look like a pissed-off chipmunk prince. Secret: Derek does. Confession: I don't see how balloon lips will change that.

His assistant shows up at his place and notices his new lips right away. Instead of commenting diplomatically, she accidentally starts gawking like a Japanese ghost mask.

"Are you supposed to be drinking?" she sputters, noticing that Derek is doffing beer between his bloated Pokemon lips.

"Well, it's light beer!" he says, before adding, "Well, it's dark beer."

But before Derek can wow us any further with his awesome decisions, he tells his assistant that he needs her at his drag party to compliment him all night. Before she can resist and claim that she has a hair-washing appointment at the hairwashery, he adds, "And I need you to help me shave my legs." At this point she's trapped, not just in Derek's apartment, but in a life that she only wanted for her Facebook enemies. "You're a hairless diva!" she cries, trimming his tiny gams and exhibiting a desperation that I associate with Death of a Salesman.

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