S05E04 - The New Team USA
"So, this is the new Team USA"
"Everyone, get some rest tonight, tomorrow, I'm gonna teach you how to model your asses off."'
—Jeannie
The Cheer Squad get the last girl they need on their team while meeting the Van Burens in a cafe, who are listening to their mom's stories and talking shit about each other, despite Shay's assumptions, the team actually wants Cameron in their team, who readily accepts it and they all make fun of Shay for even suggesting it.
Finally with 11 people, the New Team USA gets together in front of Jeannie who just then realizes none of them have modeling experience. Frustrated but with no options, she explains the competition and it's procedures (5 categories, in which a male and a female model must compete together and gather points to their team, with the final competition being a runway walkoff between the team captains of the three highest scoring teams). She then hosts a small runaway competition to choose one of the girls as the captain, which at the end, becomes Mackenzie. After Jeannie talks Cameron out of leaving the team when Mackenzie is elected captain, she tells them to rest and be ready for the following day's training.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Syntax: At first, the wording is deliberately left vague over which Van Buren girl will be on the team.
- Ascended Extra: Despite playing the role of a recurring character prior to this season, in this one, Cameron is in the main team instead of Shay.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The team captain has to be the best model in the team, because in the final competition, the captains face each other off in a runway walk off. Jeannie gives the captain title to Mackenzie when she shows to be the best model (and the only one with experience) in the team.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- The viewer was led to believe that Shay would join the cheer squad once more, but they don't want her, they want her sister Cameron on the team.
- Brittnay gets told off by Cameron when she tells her that amateur porn doesn't count as modeling. Cameron meant that it definitely counts.
- Deconstruction: Jeannie does one of Cameron's life with a painful "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Cameron is ultimately, someone sad and pathetic who is just getting fucked by teachers and college students without ever actually accomplishing anything meaningful in her life and that is probably stuck in this loop until something can break her out of it, which includes the opportunity given by the competition. After the speech, there seems to be a brief moment where Cameron realizes her life really is awful and that she isn't really enjoying it.
- Don't Explain the Joke: Cameron tries to insult Shay by saying the only older guy she could date is their creepy neighbor Gil Portsmouth (a guy with one leg and a creepy stare who didn't report his wife's death until weeks after she died in their house), but Shay drags it out by claiming to have no idea who that is. By the time she recalls him as the guy who has an orange tree in his yard, Shay doesn't even remember Cameron's attempt to insult her.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Deandra calls Cameron out for making a joke with the son of Breaking Bad, who had actual cerebral palsy and is never played for laughs.
- Epic Fail:
- Cameron's attempt to insult Shay by saying the only older guy who would fuck her is their creepy one-legged neighbor fails miserably because Shay doesn't know who Cameron's talking about.
- Brittnay's catwalk strut, to the point where the music crashes and everyone makes some colorful comments on how awful it was.
- Femininity Failure: Britney is shamed for her supposedly terrible Supermodel Strut.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Right before we find out how bad Brittnay's walk was, the music first gives us hints by conking out.
- Freudian Excuse: Cameron thinks that her interest in older men comes from the fact her father was Jayna's teacher.
- Hopeless Auditionees: The various catwalk struts from the teens after Jeannie demonstrates.
- Hypocritical Humor: Deandra with her prosthetic arms has the nerve to refer to Shay's neighbor Gil as "that fucking one-legged freak."
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: After rounding up Team USA:Mackenzie: We got every single attractive American we knew in France.
Brittnay: And Cameron. We got Cameron too. - Not This One, That One: The Cheer Squad is not interested in having Shay in their team, despite that being her assumption, they want Cameron.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The New Team USA doesn't have any modeling experience aside from Mackenzie, they don't know what they are doing and are simply the best looking Americans that were in Paris at the time.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jeannie gives one to Cameron in order to convince her to stay in the Team. Said speech includes pointing out how pathetic is her life of being fucked by her teachers and frat boys without actually ever accomplishing anything meaningful in her life.
- Rule of Three: Mikayla gets splashed on three separate occasions in this episode: first by her mother, then by Deandra, and finally, by Shay.
- Running Gag: Deandra still thinks that Mikayla is a Mogwai.
- Shout-Out:
- Mikayla calls Denadra "Optimus Prime".
- Deandra throws water at Mikayla to see her reaction, and thinks she is still a Mogwai.
- Cameron compares Brittnay's walk to the son of Breaking Bad. She gets called out for it.
- Supermodel Strut: Jeannie tells the New Team USA that a model's ability to catwalk is the most important thing about modeling, and explicitly says confidence is a key factor. This is Played for Laughs when we actually see the character's doing it, since there's no actual animation, and the only way to tell if the strut's quality is by the character's reactions to them.
- Take Our Word for It: When Jeannie demonstrates her Supermodel Strut to the New Team USA, she comically doesn't have any animation and her model just slides on the catwalk, but the others all act like she's doing it incredibly. The other auditions also occur the same, and we can only tell their supposed quality by the character's reaction to it. This is lampshaded by Britney, who's upset her catwalk was supposedly terrible, even though it looked the same as everyone else's.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Jayna implies that Cameron's father was her high-school teacher, but she is not clear about how their relationship started or when.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Jeannie forces Cameron to stay in the team by giving her a list of reasons why winning would benefit her and how much of a loser she is without it, but she clearly doesn't like anyone on the team.
- Terrible Interviewees Montage: When Jeannie tries asking what some of the new models' specialties are.
- Wardrobe Malfunction: Cameron lets a nipslip while walking down the runway. It was totally intentional of her part.
