HAH!
Did I scare you?
Well, I'm no Teutonic Queen.
Heidi starts off the episode by waking up everybody at 5:30 am with messy hair. She says "We're going to Coney Island," but she doesn't actually make it there. So, HAH! Fuck you all, she needs her beauty rest.
At Coney Island, Tim Gunn shows us the product placement of this episode, which may actually be among the worst that Project Runway has ever come up with: Yoplait Froyo.
Yoplait, you see, cannot afford to do their own marketing and testing for their froyo, and have the Project Runway designers hand out froyo on this cold, rainy June day in New York to get words that describe the experience. You know, so the words can describe the outfits...or, for Yoplait to use in their marketing. Whichever.
On top of this, this is a teams challenge, which seems alright except it seems cynically planned to pair Team Portlandia-In-Milwaukee together. You know, Sunstainidiot and Ex Military Miranda. One is oblivious to the world around them, and the other hates everybody, specifically her partner.
The other teams seem well paired, at first. Make note of "at first".
The teams hand out their froyo, and once that bit of marketing brouhaha is out of the way, we get down to what the challenge actually is: make froyo-descriptive outfits out of carnival toys that the teams have to play games to win! Whee!!!
At this point, everybody is having fun, including Team Portlandia...namely because Miranda is biting back her hate to attempt to work with Sustainidiot, even going so far as to lie to him saying she may have been bitchy to him so far, but she's actually glad to be working with him! He is oblivious to these lies, and instead focuses in winning a unicorn stuffy.
Once toys are procured, we are delivered to the work room, where Sandro promptly starts alpha male-ing his partner, Sue the Burner. Sandro, who had previously already been showing his douchy side, becomes ultra-bro douche this episode. He starts dominating Sue and constantly belittling her at every turn.
The other team of fascination is Team Portlandia, where Manic Pixie Sustainidiot maximizes his neuroses while Miranda starts patterning. While she's patterning, Sustainidiot changes their mind, deletes the sketch from the HP workbook (save? What's that?!) and re sketches something completely different. This is the beginning of the end for Team Portlandia, as Miranda comes back incredulously and starts to lose her see-through mask of cordiality.
Everybody else seems fine, and gets about 30 seconds of airtime.
Tim Gunn review time!
Ken and Jeremy (aka ToKen and London) show Tim sketches. And have nothing to show Tim. He approves of the material.
Alexandria and Dom (a white blonde whom I keep forgetting about and the black girl with taste to spare), are making a "Japanese street culture" dress that looks like an ugly kid's toy on the mannequin. Tim approves.
Justin and Alexander (deaf guy and red head probable drag queen) are making something that, according to Alexander, might be junior. Tim tells them to add something but be tasteful!
Karen and Bradon (Red Head Drew Barrymore and Dance Beard) is creating something avant garde, but only have a giant green vinyl tumor on their form's hip. Tasteless Sandro sees this bit of hideousness and says "I want to do that next time!" Tim says they're the only ones doing this avant garde thing, and that's good.
Sue and Sandro are having their fights spill over into Tim Gunn review time, as Sue immediately starts bitching about Sandro's dominance to Tim upon Tim's arrival. They show Tim a cheap blue vinyl top, and then Sandro starts ripping apart the design sketches they have. He then starts worrying about Zac Posen's critiques of his work as "This too much, that too much." Since this recap is obviously written after the next week's episode aired, I want you readers to make note that Zac Posen was starting to creep into Sandro's mind and poison him. Then, Sandro starts cursing up a storm and calling Sue's ideas "Lady Gaga shit." He starts insulting her work, and she's trying not to fight him in front of Tim.
Kate and Helen do a bodice and structured skirt out of deconstructed sombrero remnants. Tim approves.
Team Portlandia have assembled a cheap looking dress that Tim calls "hospital gown-y," "Disney", "Happy Hands at Home" and crafty! And, Sustainidiot is doing a could-be-cool but ultimately cheap looking yellow weaving fabric to make a vest over. Tim's critique is the breaking point for Miranda, was already visibly seething, and she shuts down while Sustainidiot tries to resurrect their dress with add-ons.
Miranda loses faith in the dress, and in Sustainidiot, and turns into Megabitch shutting down Sustainidiot. Meanwhile, Sue starts standing up for herself to Sandro.
Finally, Megabitch starts mouthing off about Sustainidiot and their dress in the sewing room. And, by mouthing off, she's totally insulting Sustainidiot, saying he sucks and that he's a terrible designer, and he's awful to work with. Even when Timothy enters the room, Megabitch is all "I don't care if he's in the room. You wanted the Mean Miranda, you got the Mean Miranda." Timothy's been crushed, hard, and he goes to cry to somebody because, well, she was being unusually cruel. And, when he walks off the show for a couple hours and re-passes the sewing room, Megabitch is STILL mouthing off. Even Drama Helen tells her she's being a bitch, and she's needs to cool it with that shit. Megabitch's attitude is even noted enough to prompt Sophie, the model, to write a letter to Timothy. Then, Megabitch loses her steam and starts feeling shitty and crying. When Timothy comes back, it's that tense calm after the storm.
Meanwhile, Angry Warrior Sandro and Sue are still fighting until Sue finally kowtows to Angry Warrior and says that she'll just be his assistant. He says he respects that decision, because he finally won.
The next day, Megabitch tells Timothy that she feels "so rude" for how she treated Timothy yesterday. And, she "feels like an incredible ass." She doesn't apologize on screen. And, Timothy makes her eat her words. "Actions speak louder than words." And, "I did nothing wrong." These are the words of a grown up victim if bullying. Megabitch then starts lying her ass off saying she loved the look they've created in order to curry Timothy's favor, and it doesn't work.
Makeup and Hair, then runway!
Heidi comes on stage to explain all the convolutions of this week's project and it's completely ridiculous. First Yoplait Froyo, Descriptive words, then Coney Island games to get the materials for the outfits. And tonight's guest judge: Kelly Osbourne.
Team Redhead: An avant garde look that would be amazing, if they hadn't made the gigantic green tumor on the side so gigantic. The swirling of the plastic waves of the dress is gorgeous, and the green swirl at the center is placed so well to be playful but not perverse. I even love the frothy brown shoulder strap with the fluffy cotton on it. They were safe.
Dom and Alexandria: Raver culture, Japanese street culture, and Domo Kun collide to make this fun thing that's very young and raver. It's edgy, but its just so....90s pulp raver/00s Burner that I can't get behind it fully. 2nd place.
Sandro and Sue: Cheap Plastic bags. Just meh. Inexplicably safe.
Kate and Helen: Sombreros make great fabric! The structure is great and the skirt most of all is very effortlessly Jetsons. It's amazing. Helen wins for the dress.
Alexander and Justin: No. It's cheap, it's too much. It's cheap. It's color clashy. It's cheap. It's got too many ideas. Did I mention that its cheap? Bottom two.
London and ToKen: I love this look. The vinyl pants are so well made and are like silken butter from the future. And the brown jacket and top are perfectly matched with the blue and this is the perfect, London twinged, fashion distillation of raver culture. Not that Domo Kun outfit. They were inexplicably safe.
Team Portlandia: A cheap Disney bathing dress with a crappy crafty vest on top of it. Lost.
In the confessional spliced in on the way to the back room, Sandro says a telling, damning thing on Lifetime, a network for women: "When a woman listen to a man...it's so cool." I don't even remember Sandro ever wearing that shirt. He wasn't wearing it on Day 1 or Day 2, and not on either of the next episode's days...Which means he was called in to make that comment.
In the review, Sustainidiot starts laying out the sob story of Megabitch's Mean Girl-ness, knowing that it worked for Helen last week. They fight on the cat walk to the embarrassment of all involved. It doesn't work, and Sustainidiot goes home (after being on the bottom for the past three weeks).
Stray observations
- Team Redhead didn't get any airtime beyond the critique of Tim Gunn
- Handlebar Moustache Guy is fucking dreamy with his crew top and he can say "kitten with a whip" and day of the week. *drool*
- Sandro, wearing some fucking overalls and country shirt shit thing that's kind of hipster and totally gay united aesthetic. And, to make Sandro into the Russian equivalent of Big Gay Josh, he has his shirt unbuttoned far enough to flash his a nipple.
- Token is wearing a red turban?
- Even back stage, Megabitch says that her attitudes made her feel like shit and pushes that Timothy's non-acceptance of her non-apology was making her feel like shit.
- Don't touch the unicorn after Sustainidiot took it home. It may not be...um...clean.
- Since this post was done well after the Downfall of Sandro story arc was completed, I can comment on the warning signs that the editors put in this episode. There is the rage against Zac Posen in front of Tim Gunn. There is Helen already getting in Sandro's face saying "You've already started enough today" (even though, Sandro was trying to cool off Megabitch). There is ToKen coming to Sandro's defense saying that he's probably a big ol' softy underneath trying to scare everybody with his big tough exterior. It's all really foreboding, and the editors this year seem to be on top of their game.
- Since this post was done well after the Downfall of Sandro story arc was completed, I can comment on the warning signs that the editors put in this episode. There is the rage against Zac Posen in front of Tim Gunn. There is Helen already getting in Sandro's face saying "You've already started enough today" (even though, Sandro was trying to cool off Megabitch). There is ToKen coming to Sandro's defense saying that he's probably a big ol' softy underneath trying to scare everybody with his big tough exterior. It's all really foreboding, and the editors this year seem to be on top of their game.
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