The Starlet, Episode 5: Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight!

Okay, okay, okay… I get it! You all want your Starlet recap! Well I can kinda sorta blame this one on me writing my recaps at work before the day starts and finishing them up on my lunch hour and the fact that the lovely internet filter my office has put into place pretty much prohibits me from emailing some stuff out. But it’s here. In this recap you’ll get last week’s episode and then later you’ll get the big finale when one of the three final women is going to take home the title of The Starlet and the part on WB’s One Tree Hill.

And then they will fade into obscurity.

So as I suspected last week, this is the episode where the women will have to explore their comedic sides. This revelation came in last week’s teaser which was fresh on the heels of Lauren getting her diva self kicked out of the competition because… well… she pretty much sucked. Okay no “pretty much” about it. She sucked! Lauren was Mrs. Joanne One-Note when it came to her acting and it showed. What made it doubly nice was that she and Mercedes were ganging up on Katie left and right and it only fueled her fire to give the best performance of the bunch last week.

This week though is comedy. We don’t get any obligatory recaps from last week. Nothing of the women primping and preparing for the day or even Faye-Mail (which would be The Starlet version of America’s Next Top Model’s Tyra-Mail). These women are going right to class so they can learn about comedy from acting coach Michelle Danner, who gets a big wow when the ladies learned that she has taught people like Jason Alexander. Then again, I think it’s worth noting that Jason Alexander never won an Emmy award when he was on Seinfeld and hasn’t had a hit sitcom since then so I dunno if we should be wowing Michelle.

Michelle appropriately notes that in order to do comedy you can’t be afraid to make an ass of yourself. You have to be willing to let it all go and fully commit yourself to the scene and to the actions involved in comedy. Of course, in order to do this, the ladies are going to need some very special equipment – clown noses and shoes. That’s right folks. If you never want to get over feeling self-conscious, you just strap on some clown gear and go with it.

To start off, the women are going to have to do a scripted scene from a sitcom on, you got it, the WB Network – this time it’s What I Like About You starring everyone’s favorite MTV starlet, Jenny McCarthy, and Nickelodeon starlet, Amanda Bynes. This entire scene, Michelle tells us, is about the comedy that comes from miscommunication, which is pretty much the basis of every episode of Three’s Company, I would imagine… Fun trivia moment – for about half of the first season of What I Like About You, Jenny McCarthy was pregnant and most of her scenes had to be shot with her sitting down or standing behind something to cover her noticeable bulge.

But enough about the stupid trivia I know.

Michelynne and Katie are up first and they really don’t seem to have a problem with the noses or the red shoes. In fact Michelle, the teacher, loves their scene. They are totally into it and Katie is conveying the miscommunication aspect of the role perfectly as she can only hear the half of the Michelynn’s character’s phone conversation. To put it in Three’s Company terms, remember the episode when Janet was talking about her friend having a baby through a sperm donor and then Jack mistakenly hears her half of the conversation with the interior decorator who was going to help her redo her bedroom? It’s kinda like that…

Now it’s time for Mercedes and Cecile to do their scene. Cecile is okay and at least trying to get into the whole comedic timing that the scene requires. She’s not great (even though I picked her to be in the final two) but Mercedes is dreadful. She can’t let go, she can’t relax, and can’t seem to get into the spirit of comedy despite wearing a big red nose and clown shoes. Michelle, the teacher, picks up on this and has them try the scene again. She keeps trying to get Mercedes to give her more in the scene by focusing on Mercedes’ passive nature and hoping that some comedic breakthrough will happen. It’s more like a comedic breakdown since Mercedes can’t seem to get over herself and her insecurities. As my mother would say, “Mercedes, get off the cross, we need the wood.”

Michelle decides that she’s had enough fun torturing Mercedes for the moment and has the women do some more improv exercises. Again, she reminds us that you have to be willing to make a fool out of yourself for the sake of comedy. If that’s the case folks, then I must be a freakin’ comedy genius since I make a fool of myself on an hourly basis. Michelle takes three of the ladies through the scope of all things comedy with Michelynne going from a karate instructor to a duck. Katie had to be a bear scratching their back which requires her to writhe all over the ground. This goes on and on for a while and I have to admit that it’s pretty amusing to watch the women throw themselves into these characters.