7/12—True Beauty—Stop Smoking!

  

This week's episode was actually painful to watch. We're down to the final four and they are running out of activities to entertain themselves, so they play Truth or Dare for awhile, then decide to go to the pool. A full bar with more alcohol than usual had been set up for them to imbibe or not. Taylor drinks way too much, then slips and falls on the concrete. Ooooooh.

After spending the day in the sun, they return to the suite, where Carson is waiting for them. He presents their next challenge, which will begin as soon as they can get dressed. They are going to be trained as blackjack dealers and then turned loose on some high rolling players.

The Secret Challenge:
As each contestant rides the elevator one-by-one down to the gaming floor, a "pregnant" actress is in the same elevator smoking and drinking. Will the contestant say anything to her? Three of them express their concern for her baby. Amy is oblivious.

Amy has never even played blackjack before and is poor at math, so she is very worried. The others are confident they can handle it with no problem, but it does turn out to be much harder than any of them thought it would be. Taylor's alcohol over consumption has him relaxed, but he is unable to handle the cards as well as he would have normally. Erika is personable and competent in the task. Amy and Craig both had problems with some of the terminology, such as "double down" and were judged by the pit boss to be the worst dealers, so were placed in the bottom two. Taylor squeaked by.

The Final Straw Challenge:
When Craig and Amy are waiting in front of the hotel for their ride to the final face off, they are presented with an opportunity to help a young mother who is having trouble loading her luggage, baby and stroller into her van. Craig helps, Amy walks by and ignores her.

Craig is chosen to continue and Amy must then endure the video tape of all of her indiscretions: bad mouthing the other contestants, peeking at the interview questions in the elevator, ignoring the abused bride and ignoring the mother loading the car and completely oblivious to the smoking pregnant actress.

She nearly has a nervous breakdown while she watches the tape and asks to leave, but continues to watch. As she slinks out with her head down and shoulders forward, she looks completely dejected and humiliated. Her confessional reaction is the same as all the others, that she has not been depicted as the person she really is (as she sees herself). Really painful.