Miss America 2010: Already loving Miss Kentucky

Miss America 2010, hosted by Mario Lopez and What Not To Wear’s Clinton Kelly, airs live Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on TLC. Below is an interview reel featuring a few of the contestants speaking about the scholarship program. Early favorite: Miss Kentucky Mallory Ervin. For starters, her name is Mallory, which, of course, makes you think of Family Ties. Then, you’ve got her non-pageant posture — she’s almost hunching in her director’s chair. Then, she somehow manages to explain how nice all the contestants are in a way that doesn’t make you want to slap her. “I know you all watch the pageant, and think Ohmygosh, I wonder what’s goin’ on when they walk off the stage. But I’ll tell you what, everyone is so nice, it’s surprising. But I think at this level of competition, because everyone’s so accomplished and everyone’s so comfortable in their own skin, that that’s all they need to be is nice and kind to other people — like compete with themselves rather than each other, I think. That’s a great thing.” Her talent is vocal, her platform is Autism Awareness — good. Her career ambition is “to pursue a career in the entertainment field” — eye roll. Might be time to move on…

You can peruse the contestant profiles here. I’m now rooting for my homestate girl Miss Pennsylvania Shannon Doyle (talent is tap dance, platform is Home Away From Home: Enriching the Lives of Hospitalized Children, ambition is to become a pediatrician — the summa cum laude graduate of Villanova University received honors in her first and second years at Jefferson Medical College). I’m also curious to see if Miss Rhode Island Julianna Strout (ambition is to become a district attorney or marketing executive) looks as much like a total ballbuster in-person as she does in her glamour shot.

Talents I’d love to see on TV: Miss Georgia Emily Cook‘s oboe solo; Miss Virgin Islands Shayla S. Solomon‘s steel pan drums; Miss Hawaii Raeceen Anuenue Woolford‘s hula, and Miss Kansas Becki Ronen‘s classical trumpet.