Official Announcement

Ladies and gentlemen, it is now official: With the exception of Meerkat Manor (because they're fascinating) and Deadwood (because it RAWKS MY LAME ASS), my favoritemost TV show in the world is now officially Project Runway.

Having said that: I am SO MAD!!!!!!!

For those of you who aren't fans, I'll summarize: there are clothing designers, each week they are given a design challenge, and based on their success or failure within the parameters of that challenge, they either continue on, or they are "out". Actually, for most of the males, being "out" wouldn't be an entirely new experience, as there are reportedly only two hetero males (I know who one of the two is, but the jury's still out on the other) and so, stereotypically, things tend to get bitchy.

The remaining cast:

Angela: Inconsistent designer with an unfortunate love for little cloth poofy-things, which she calls "fleurchons" and with which she sprinkles her clothing liberally. Most people think she should be gone by now, and at least half the cast is annoyed by her to a greater or lesser degree.

Kayne: The gayest of the gay, and I love him. He's amazing, even if he did turn out the most fugtacular green-and-mylar dress in history last week. I even love him despite the fact that he's one of the bitchiest ones there....in fact, that's a big part of WHY I love him. With the exception of that one dress, I've loved his designs.

Michael: If this man is gay, then there is no god. He is an EXCELLENT designer, having won 2 challenges in succession, and besides that he is HOT. Probably my favorite designer this season.

Vincent: Oh. Goodness. Um....what to say about Vincent? The consensus among PR fans is that the editors are keeping him around for shock value/comedy/to see what happens when he snaps. A weird little man, with questionable design skills.

Uli: Nordic blonde lady with an accent. Solid designer, no drama, very nice. A sleeper, but I bet she makes final 3.

Robert: Kayne's foil and straight-man, though I use the term VERY loosely as he's the second-most-flamboyant guy there. Except, that is, for his designs, which have been roundly denounced as "boring", which is why I've liked most of them.

Laura: A very elegant, very funny and sarcastic mother of 5, whose specialty is understated and chic designs. I've liked most of her stuff but it's starting to seem a little too consistent. She's the best tailor there, however. Kayne and Robert can't stand her. Actually, almost none of the guys can stand her, and I'm not sure why.

Jeffrey: AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHH SHUT UP JEFFREY!!!! :::pant pant pant::: Let me try that again. Jeffrey: HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE!!! :::snarl::: Okay, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to go with his bio from the site. Jeffrey YOU read it. I'm just disgusted, after this week.

The challenge usually involves models, who the designers choose from a pool and who are in a contest of their own, which I'm not even going into because they're not in this episode. Instead, the designers are told, this week they will be designing for "everyday women"...and out come their models. Who are the designer's mothers (or sisters, in two cases.) Of course, everyone cries, because that's what people do on reality shows when presented with their mothers--it's like a rule of some sort.

The moms are uniformly adorable. They really are. I don't see any overbearing bitches there, and I want Michael's mommy to take me home and cook me something delicious and let me sleep on their sofa. Or Kayne's mom, for that matter, or Uli's (although Uli's mom would probably cook something weird like sauerbraten, since she speaks German almost exclusively.) The moms are great, is what I'm saying. Many of them are plus-size ladies, which is the real "complication" of this challenge. You'll see why in a minute.

The designers are allowed to pick their models, but they can't pick their own mom or sister. They choose in random order, and Jeffrey is the last to choose, which leaves him with Angela's mother. Now, this would be disaster waiting to happen regardless of WHAT Angela's mother looked like; there's no love lost between Jeffrey and Angela. Jeffrey thinks Angela is an idiot and a weak designer; Angela thinks Jeffrey is an ass. Neither of them is entirely wrong about the other, but the venom is extensive. So Jeffrey/Angela's mom would have been a bad pairing no matter what.

But Angela's mom is large-sized, and her personality is the one guaranteed to set Jeffrey into full asshole mode--she's quiet, and retiring, and a people-pleaser. You sense that if she doesn't like something she wouldn't say anything to your face, but she would make her opinion clear when talking to someone uninvolved. (A lot like me, really, and that's no compliment to me.) The designers are told to meet with their clients and find out what they like in clothes, then design them an outfit.

Angela's mom says she likes deep green and deep purple; she wants something modest and kind of conservative. Now Jeffrey, though you can't see it in the pic that goes with his bio, is the season's punk-looking guy. He's got tattoos everywhere, including a large one on his neck that is mostly words--I see "DETROIT" in there, and something that looks like Latin or Italian. His aesthetic has been described by the judges as "ugly beautiful"--very edgy and challenging. He used to be part of a punk band in the early 90's--and, we learn from his mom, Jeffrey is a recovering alcoholic and addict who has turned his life around.

It is a testimony to how much I have already grown to dislike this man that I don't feel an instant kinship with him upon hearing this news, the way I usually do with ex-junkies. He has an unearned sense of his own superiority, constantly belittling other designers and their work--yet for someone whose designs are so clearly head and shoulders above the rest, curiously he has yet to win a single challenge. (In reality--the place outside Jeffrey's head--his designs aren't bad, but they're not great either.)

The meeting with Angela's mother finished, he goes with the rest of the designers to the fabric store, which is a place in which I would die of sensory overload mixed with covetousness. Seriously, if God were a clothing designer, this would be the fabric store he shopped at. They have EVERYTHING. Well...almost everything. As Jeffrey tells it, they have no deep green whatsoever. Even if I believed that, which I don't, what would be my next choice of color after deep green?

Yeah, you're not Jeffrey either. Because HE chooses this mother-of-the-bride polyestery-looking stuff in PERIWINKLE. It's gross. It wouldn't go with deep purple even if deep purple were the most popular color in school, owned its own car, and lived in the best subdivision in town. In fact, there are very few colors I can see this periwinkle working with at all. Some shades of navy, maybe, which is the other color Jeffrey goes for. (Has anyone else noticed: Angela's mom mentioned neither periwinkle nor navy? Yeah, I noticed that too.)

He goes back to the workroom and immediately he and some of the other designers start snotting about how they never expected to have to design for plus-size women, and they have no idea of how to do it and no understanding of proportion on "that type of body". Personally, I think anyone who complained about having to design for large women should have been immediately disqualified, because seriously--you didn't "expect" to have to design for larger sizes? To me, this implies that you ONLY plan to design for these coat-hangers with legs you see on the runway and in Hollywood, and to hell with the rest of the world. And there are WAY more size-14-and-ups in this country than there are size-4-and-unders, believe me. So these whiny little brats who plan to spend their careers designing for the physically-perfect? Need to shut the hell up. Even some of my favorites get in on the complaining, Kayne.

About two-thirds of the way through the challenge, the clients are sent in to check up on their designer's progress. At the same time, the show's design mentor Tim Gunn comes in and critiques what he sees so far. The challenge is on a tight schedule--they only get one day to do it--but that's not unusual for this show. Some of the mothers are happy; others are less-happy. Under the second heading comes Angela's mother.

Jeffrey is working on something across the room when his model comes in, and Tim goes over to talk to her. She is looking at the outfit on the dress form, and she's clearly not too thrilled. Tim asks her what she thinks of it, and she answers--those aren't her colors, she's concerned about the styling, basic criticisms along that line. Meanwhile, Jeffrey has noticed Tim at his workstation, and sprints back to put an end to their unsupervised chat. Angela's mom repeats her criticisms to Jeffrey, as politely as she can. She is not bitchy or loud or unnecessarily venomous; she merely states the reasons why she's not happy with the design. Jeffrey starts accusing her of sabotage, of trying to get him put off the show by making him create a losing design so that Angela could win, and this was EXACTLY what she'd told him she wanted...he's spouting all sorts of paranoid crap. Angela's mother responds with shock, and says she was being honest with him and she didn't appreciate the way he was speaking to her. He tells her that he doesn't appreciate her standing by his workbench, and that's that.

The next we see, she's in the back area with Angela, behind a screen, and she is CRYING. Some of the other mothers are trying to calm her down, but she's very upset and so is Angela.

Now, if I had anything to do with this show?? Jeffrey would have been gone, right then and there. It wouldn't have mattered if in the end, he'd come up with the most gorgeous periwinkle-and-navy Chanel gown, something that would command a ten-thousand-dollar price tag, because HE MADE HIS CLIENT CRY. You do NOT do that. You do NOT make your client cry. And it's only made worse by the fact that she's somebody's mother. How do you justify breaking someone's mom down to the point that she's in tears?? You can't. It's just wrong. Even the other designers think so. "You broke her down," says Michael. Meanwhile, I am screaming at the television, and the cats are looking at me funny, because: she's CRYING, dammit. Not cool.

So they have the runway show, and some of the outfits are gorgeous and others...well, aren't--you can see pictures here, along with how people have rated them on the website. Vincent, of all people, won the challenge (though I'm not sure how, since I thought there were at least two designs--Uli's and Michael's--which were much better than Vincent's). In the end, the choice for who would be "out" came down to either Robert or Jeffrey.

Guess who they sent home?? Robert, for being "boring". I would much rather wear something boring than something "interesting" but fugly and poorly-constructed!!! And also, JEFFREY MADE HIS CLIENT CRY. He wasn't even the least bit apologetic about it, afterwards; he pretty much blamed Angela's mom for his own poor performance, claiming that he'd given her exactly the dress she'd asked for. Which...no, not unless she asked for a fugly, poorly-constructed sack.

THIS is why I get pissed at reality TV sometimes. I know that Robert's sin wasn't so much that his CLOTHES were boring, as that he was perceived as not being enough of a character. Of the remaining designers, I would say that the only two who aren't characters are Uli and Michael, and even Michael gets a pass on that front because he's the only minority on the show this year. Angela is the hippy-dippy ditz; Laura is the weird mom (who just announced that she's pregnant again); Kayne is the flamboyant gay guy; Jeffrey is the edgy guy with no social skills; and Vincent is just completely insane. When it came down to it, Robert had to go this week because his design was one of the worst, but also because his character was the most superfluous of all the remaining designers. After all, they already HAD a "flamboyant gay guy"; Robert, his flamboyant gay sidekick, was expendable.

Normally Jeffrey would have been one of my favorite designers--I'm a sucker for turned-their-life-around stories. But if this guy has turned his life around, I'd hate to see what kind of an asshole he was BEFORE he quit drinking and getting high!

They're all pretty good designers, even Jeffrey; don't get me wrong--I'm not disrespecting their skills, because I know I couldn't do what they do...but there's more to who goes and who stays, I think, than design. Which sucks, but that's how it is, I guess.

Still: SHUT UP AND GO AWAY, Jeffrey. You made your client CRY, you big jerk. And there's nothing punk-rock about that.