Your normal Project Runway recapper, Christina Uticone, is off this week (rumor has it her superhero alter ego, the "Lavender Revenger," is fighting crime in London), so I bravely volunteered to take the reins for Thursday's installment.
"How hard could it be?" I wondered ignorantly to myself. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen an entire episode, but isn't it pretty much just another reality show where they give the contestants a series of unreasonable challenges, amp up the interpersonal conflict and drag out the proceedings to make the endings seem more dramatic than they are? Like Top Chef, only instead of a brusque Italian and a fashion model you have an authoritarian designer and...a fashion model, yeah?
Well, yes and no. It's a reality show, to be sure, but that simple assessment leaves aside one huge factor: my total ignorance of the fashion industry.
So this should be awesome. Let's let the couture begin.
First impressions: Bert is a jackass, and may have gotten the boot last week were it not for immunity. Instead, Joshua C. was let go, possibly due to mandatory "Josh" limits imposed by the New York legislature. Anya and Olivier are among the favorites, as is Anthony. Becky looks like the blond from Criminal Minds. Fallene might be an idiot.
Looking back at the scorecard, I'm sorry I missed the dismissal of somebody named "Gunnar Deatherage." That's like, the most metal name ever. I can also understand Anthony's motivation for getting his first win, since he's finished in the top three the last two weeks.
Because of the sheer tonnage of contestants, they're paired up for this week's challenge: creating an outfit for stiltwalkers. I like the models, who, for a change, don't all look like famine victims.
Bert, who reminds me of Glenn Shadix from Beetlejuice, is teamed up with Viktor, who isn't happy. To be fair, "unhappy" appears to be his normal state, as he spends the bulk of the day whining about the overbearing Bert, whose crack about Queen Victoria gives us history majors a bad name. Of course, they're the most entertaining team to watch, but while I wouldn't mind a fight breaking out, I'm not sure either could land an effective punch.
Anthony and Laura are next. They work quietly and competently, sharing a singular vision for their creation and putting it together with a minimum of fuss. BOOOO-RING.
Joshua, whom I dubbed "Gay Ryan Gosling," is stuck with Julie. I say "stuck" because Joshua doesn't think she's in his weight class, and he's right. Girlfriend, even I know about pleating.
It's at this point that the problem with having a bazillion contestants rears its head. Many of the remaining teams (Danielle/Cecilia, Anya/Olivier and Kimberly/Becky) have their own curious dynamics (Kimberly and Becky clearly don't like each other), but because there are so many of them, we know the people featured most throughout the second act are the ones in danger. The showrunners can't budget their time any other way.
Which brings me to Bryce and Fallene. Both were in the bottom last week, so this has to be considered the opposite of the Anya/Olivier pairing. The self-taught Fallene is clearly in over her head, as she doesn't even know how to cut fabric on the grain (which is apparently to fashion what the quadratic equation is to algebra). Her screwing up their planned bustier leaves Bryce hustling to come up with something in a pinch, and the results...well, we'll get to that.
