The two-hour premiere episode devoted an hour to narrowing 32 contestants to 13 finalists, and the second hour featured the first photo shoot and elimination. The bedroom themes for this cycle were Twiggy, Janice Dickinson, Christie Brinkley, Iman and a room themed of past contestants of America's Next Top Model. The girls were led to believe that they would all be shaved bald as a way to level the competition for the photo shoot, when in fact they were fitted with skull caps and posed wearing Swarovski crystals in an array of mannequin heads.

Episode four featured the girls receiving lessons on commercial and high-fashion posing. Their challenge was to model for a Sears catalogue, using the four seasons as their back-drop. This week's photoshoot involved the contestants posing as their dream careers.

In this week's episode the contestants were critiqued quite harshly by a woman. After the critique, each model took a Polaroid shot to measure how they took the criticism and how it affected their work through their facial expressions. Two photoshoots were taken in this episode, one where the contestants were made up to look like dolls. The other shoot directed by Tyra, required each girl to be photographed crying.

Janice Dickinson shocks the models at a red-carpet challenge; at a photo shoot, the women pose as celebrity couples. Later, another model is eliminated from the competition.