Nicole is experiencing a surge of self-confidence in the wake of winning last episode's ninja photo challenge, and she comes out of her shell enough to become friends with Rae, although Erin still thinks she doesn't have what it takes.
Also, Laura is dyslexic, and explains that sometimes when she reads black and white text, it moves. She sometimes writes letters and numbers backwards. We find out who can cut it when the girls go to the studios of The Insider, where host Lara Spencer guides each of them through interviewing comedian Ant, a Mario Cantone look-alike who plays a variety of vapid or difficult stars and starlets who live for making interviews difficult. (One Ant tangent leaves Nicole literally speechless.)
Then the girls do it for real, interviewing actress Jessica Lowndes from 90210, but with the sneaky addition of the teleprompter going out halfway through each interview. Jennifer pauses momentarily before launching into her own questions, impressing Lara. Sundai interrupts Jessica too much. Laura panics when the prompter dies, goes totally quiet, then curses, takes a moment and picks it back up. Erin barely blinks when the prompter goes out and keeps moving. Brittany is clearly thinking too much about her next question and not really listening. Rae slouches. Erin wins (Sundai is incredulous, thinking Erin is far from engaging) and chooses Jen and Rae to go on the Seventeen photo shoot she won.
The next challenge is that the girls each have to write their own 25-second commercials for the Exact Eyelights collection from Cover Girl. After some writing time, Erin is the first to announce loudly that she's done, ticking off Nicole, who stays up late to learn her lines. Teyona is there on the set and shows off how well she can shill for Cover Girl, complimenting the girls on their makeup. Nicole keeps forgetting everything past her first line, but eventually pulls it together, and smizes like a fury. Nigel found Sundai to be amateur. Jennifer nails it, and Nigel calls her naturally charming. Laura tries to do her commercial like she's talking to her sister, and forgets almost all of her lines. She brings her personality through. Brittany knows her lines the best, but delivers them like a robot, which Nigel gleefully mimics. Rae can't get her personality across, and Nigel looks like he's gonna throw up from it. Erin constantly blows her lines and cries on set, leading to a lot of makeup fixes.
Kim Kardashian is the guest judge, and everyone thinks Jennifer's best take is adorable. Laura's take has a lot of stammering, but Tyra likes that it's personalized to the country. Brittany's is deemed too scripted, with no personality, and Tyra wishes she'd mentioned her math skillz. Nicole wears glasses, which Kim dubs "geek chic," but she's smizing in her commercial, and Tyra thinks it pops. Rae's is even stammerier than Laura's, and there's no personality coming through. Tyra and Miss J mock Sundai's businesslike delivery, and Kim thought she was joking. Erin starts crying before the commercial even plays, and the end result is fairly lifeless, as one would expect from a take filmed a couple of words at a time between sobs and four separate makeup applications. Also, her chin was too high.
Jennifer wins, followed by Nicole, Brittany, Sundai and Laura. Rae and Erin are in the bottom, but in the end it's frickin' Erin who gets another chance, since it's okay to cry sometimes, as long as it doesn't waste the client's time, which Erin totally did. Rae, however, they think is unsalvageable, so she gets to go home to her daughter. Fortunately, her desire to be a model has only been strengthened.
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