Project Runway: S14 E9 "Make it Sell"

And then there were six. They were the right six at least, though I still miss my ginger teddy bear from the first episode. But given what we've seen in these last few weeks since most of the dead weight has been cut from the show, can anyone truly deny that these are the best six contestants this season has to offer? I don't think you can, but I also think that that says more about the talent level of this season than it does about the contestants as a whole. Because after this episode, I'm also left wondering if we've ever seen such a lackluster challenge to determine the top six. And that statement is as much an indictment of what came down the runway as it is of the challenge itself.

Everything opens up on something about school and learning and a classroom setup. The challenge is to create a look that's inspired by one of the "personas" of a Just Fab shopper. Now I'll be the first to admit I've never been on the Just Fab site, but are we really supposed to believe that all those feminine stereotypes shops there. I say stereotypes, but I think I should also point out that I've never heard of "Femme Nouveau" before and think they made that up. But my main question about this segment of the episode is Why? Why the classroom setup? Why the blackboard? Why the stupid hints about classroom stuff and all the confessionals about how much the designers hate school? What did any of this have to do with the actual challenge? If the designers had been contracted to design a new school uniform for some stupid New York prep school, that'd be fine. But otherwise it's stupid and pointless and took me out of that portion of the episode.

Moving on. Candice won last week and has immunity and gets to pick which stereotype she wants to design for. Kelly talks about how much she wants Trendy, then Candice picks Trendy off the bat, and Kelly's world ends. Candice, as last weeks winner, also gets to pick stereotypes for all the other designers. This happened last season too with Sandy picking everyone's fabrics in the "A Suitable Twist" episode. You can check back and see that I bemoaned the decision as being unfair to the other designers and offering Sandy a ridiculous advantage. That was my first thought when I heard them doing it again here, but I relented a bit for a couple reasons. First, I think there's a huge difference between choosing a vague stereotype to design for and choosing specific fabric to design with. Second, at the top seven, everyone left should be able to design something nice for each of those stereotypes; it's not the same as doing this for 13 contestants as they did last year. Not to mention at 13, the designers still don't know each other well enough to know who'd do well with what fabric whereas at seven Candice is better able to choose something based on who she knows her fellow designers to be. And that's just what she does. There's no shady attempt to sabotage anyone, she legitimately picks things she thinks her competitors can do well and would maybe even pick for themselves.

Kelly get's Trendy like she wants, so there's a crisis averted. Swapnil and Edmond get Bombshell. Ashley gets Girl Next Door, Laurie gets Modern Classic, and Merline gets the made up Femme Nouveau. Everyone except Merline and Edmond seem to be pretty happy with their assignments, and I think that's a testament to Candice's good job at picking for them. So no complaints there.

The looks are to be produced and sold on Just Fab, so they have to be inexpensive, and thusly everyone has $100 to spend at Mood. It's the third (or fourth?) trip to Mood this season, and we don't even get to see Swatch, so I don't feel the need to comment on it really except to say that Ashley buys some of the ugliest fabric on this side of creation. She doesn't even seem all the jazzed about it in the first place but somehow resigned to using it. There's still time, she can keep shopping and find something else that works, but instead she settles. I felt like there was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy at work here whereby she'd pick a fabric that she didn't like and that way she could justify being in the bottom by blaming the fabric, and then she could sure up her continued feelings of worthlessness and not deserving to be here. Which, by the time you've made it all the way to the top seven, should really not be an issue anymore. I know it's easier said than done to just develop a sense of worth over a couple weeks, but still. At the very least, pick a fabric you like and if you go home on something you believe in, all the better.

But I digress. Back to the workroom where people work and get some things done before Tim comes in. Edmond's chosen a fabric that he loves, and that I love too I might add, but he can't figure out what to do with it and hot to get it to bunch and drape the way he wants. Tim let's him have it for not encompassing his stereotype more. Swapnil already has his dress done by the time Tim comes in, and it's about as Bombshell as it can be. Leopard print, tight and short with an open back, and available in just about every store with a Hooker-Chic section that has ever existed. Tim calls him out for not producing something unique and then chides him when Swapnil says he gave 200% last challenge and was only safe. Tim seems to think that Swapnil didn't give that much effort and stands to give more. Which...I don't know. On the one hand, sure; it's a mentor's job to push you and to see more in you than you maybe see in yourself. On the other hand, who are you to tell someone else that they didn't give the effort they think they did? Is this based on something Tim saw that we didn't see, or is it only based on the final product that Swapnil sent down the runway last week? A final product that was, I think, better than the judges seemed to think it was. Either way, questions about Swapnil's effort level continue into this week, and it's a storyline I think we're all tired of.

Tim doesn't really like much of anything he sees except for Kelly's look which is my least favorite at this point, but I think there's an interesting dichotomy setup here that I'd like to talk about, and it's between Edmond and Laurie. Laurie has an idea at the start of everything and she buys fabric to support that idea. Tim doesn't really like where she's going, but she tends to stick to her guns a bit. We've seen this from her before, and some of the other designers have talked about how she doesn't take critique all that well. Similarly, Edmond has an idea, and sets out to achieve it, but is criticized by Tim as well. They both move forward a bit only to find their looks truly crashing around the time the models come in for their fitting. Edmond still can't get his dress to do what he wants it to, and Laurie can't get the fabric to fit right on her top. This is where the two of them diverge. Edmond has a small amount of a second fabric and he decides to scrap his first idea and just go with making a little red dress. Meanwhile, Laurie flaps in the breeze unsure about what to do next. She ends up borrowing some organza from Candice and throwing a new top together slapdash. They're two totally different designers: Edmond has an idea, it doesn't work, and he scraps it for something else, something better, and creates a new look in hours. Laurie has an idea and holds on to it for dear life and when it fails, she's stuck and lost without being able to come up with something new. Neither approach should work; how many times have we seen designers in the past scrap a look after Tim's visit only to go home for the quickly slapped together outfit they sent down the runway? But that's not the case here, and hasn't been the case for Edmond all season, but for more on that let's head to the runway.

The Runway:

Swapnil: A few weeks ago when I was clamoring for Swapnil to get his first win, I never thought I’d be saying this, but I’m ready for him to go home. This half assing it each week thing simply isn’t going to cut it. I find this look boring. The shawl, which EVERYONE told him to ditch, keeps it from being “Bombshell” to me. The gold butt tassel thing is weird. I don’t like the odd bunched up fit around the neck. I don’t hate the back, but I don’t like it either.

Kelly: No one in their right mind would be caught dead in that vest. I hate it. Other than that, the rest of the look is OK. It certainly screams her, so there’s that. The problem with the pants is I keep thinking about the pants Edmond made last challenge and how perfect they were in every way, and these don’t measure up to those, so it’s a distraction. I also don’t like the print, but I do understand that there are people who would, so that’s just subjective. I don’t think the whole look is horrible, but it’s also not my favorite. 

Merline: Oh dear God. The fit of the top is horrible. The back of the top is all loose and poorly fitted and an eyesore. And whatever she had in mind for the skirt was a total failure. Bad bad bad.

Candice: I hate the the second layer to the skirt. I hate the way it looks tacked on at the last minute. She had a vision and I respect that, but the skirt doesn’t work for me. The good things about this look are that 1) I can at least see how this could all be something people would be interested in, so it embodies Trendsetter more than Kelly’s does. 2) I really like the rest of the outfit. I think the top is really adorable.

Ashley: I’ll admit I’ve never been on Just Fab’s website, so I don’t know anything about their particular aesthetic, but something about this outfit does seem like what I would expect to find on there at least. I still hate the fabric for the two pieces under the jacket, but I do like those two pieces, and I do like all three of the pieces together. 

Laurie: She lost the bra and just left her model’s tits all out again. It’s not a horrible look except that two challenges in a row she’s sent an exposed model down the runway, and it's boring. I like the fabric on the skirt, and I wish she could have made it work on the top too, or at least bought a supplemental fabric to use. The neckline is the worst part about it to me. 

Edmond: YES YES YES YES YES!!!! The lacing detail is perfect. I can’t tell on the runway itself, but he did that on the back too right? If so then the biggest problem with this look is that he didn’t style his model in a way that would have shown that off, and he should have because it really makes the dress for me. But to know that he pulled this off in the amount of time he did, and it actually screams bombshell, really sells me on this look. Easily my favorite of the night. 

So given their two approaches, Edmond succeeds in creating something great, and Laurie fails, as mirrored in the two of them winning and losing the challenge respectively. The judges aren't unanimously in love or hate with any of the looks, and I think some part of that has to do with Ciara (who honestly isn't relevant anymore, is she?) being there and offering her pointless and lukewarm responses to everyone, but her tastes also seem to align more with Heidi's, which I'm sure throws everything off a bit. Without Heidi being outvoted by cooler heads like Nina and Zac, things can get out of hand.

Zac makes the same point about Candice's skirt that I made saying it's just poorly placed, which made me think maybe if it had been moved up a couple inches, I'd have liked it more. Nina doesn't like the over sized lapels, but I think they're a nice touch. Either way they're split. They don't like the fabric Ashley chose for her top and skirt, but they do love the jacket, they hate the vest Kelly made, but like the rest of it mostly, they think Swapnil did too much and they hate the shawl, and they love Edmond's look except for Zac who thinks it's not innovative enough. So many mixed reviews and most of them negative. Though the biggest complaint for everyone is that their looks aren't actually producible or sellable for Just Fab. The only things that could be put on the site and sold right now are Edmond's and Ashley's outfits. So on top of no one producing anything that's all that great, they also didn't follow the confines of the challenge. 

Again I'm left to ask what's up with the casting this season? Is this the worst and most scattered top seven we've ever seen? And are they also the least talented? It sucks to think so, but this entire thing was a bit of a cluster fuck of an episode. I never really thought that this show required big personalities to shine, but now I'm starting to think differently. In the mad dash to the finish, I find myself no longer really in love with anyone left. 

Loose Thread:

--There's a twist to this challenge that the designers have to create a label for themselves and print it out on a shirt to wear and explain on the runway. It has NOTHING at all to do with the looks they're creating for their models. It doesn't have to go with or compliment those looks in anyway, it doesn't have to even take all that much time to create and the printer does all the hard work. In other words it serves no point or purpose of any kind beyond being a plug for the printer itself. It's also probably important for the looks that do get put up on the web somehow, but it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of the episode. Project Runway isn't even trying anymore, and it's sad. 

Project Runway: S14 E5: "Gunn & Heid"

My dear runaways, I'm horribly sorry it's taken me this long to watch the episode and to get a review
up. Partially because I hate it that you all had to wait so long, and partially because that was a whopper of an episode and I can't believe I'm only just watching it. I love the challenge, I love the teams though I've said that before, I love that Kelly Osbourne is the guest judge! It was one of the better episodes this season. And away we go!

After waking up and chatting for a bit, Amanda decides she's done being in the bottom three as she has been for the last few challenges. I think she said something similar at the beginning of the last episode too, but this time you can tell she really means it and all her fortunes are about to change. Blake's not nearly as annoying after his first win of the season as I expected him to be, so there's that at least. Then it's off to the runway for Heidi and Tim to make some horrible puns about the paintball guns they're toting, and to pick teams. And so the drama begins. It's a school yard pick, which is the easiest way for the show to craft drama from teams, and it doesn't disappoint. Ashley has a confessional moment explaining why she's sure Candice, who is the first person to pick a team member after Blake, will surely pick her, and of course then she picks Amanda. From there, it just snowballs until Ashley's worst nightmare is confirmed and she's picked last, and still ends up on Candice's team.

For her part, Heidi points out what all of us are thinking which is that it's ridiculous that Ashley wasn't picked earlier as she's the only contestant here with two wins under her belt already. Tim points out early on that the teams were easily grouping off into boys vs girls, but it felt more like an observation than a judgement on his part. For me, I was all judgement since that made it obvious from the start that teams were being chosen based on who's friends with whom instead of on any strategic level. But it also left me confused in this sense: is no one friends with Ashley? She's been nothing but sweet and lovable this whole time; is there something we aren't seeing? I don't want to jump to the easy assumption that they really are just all a bunch of mean girls and they've been keeping her at arms length because she's heavy, but I can't think of another explanation. Maybe they resent her for her two wins and early successes? To her credit, Candice at least seems to have a reason for picking Amanda. It's a dumb as fuck reason since she's basically looking at her like a charity case, but it's a reason nonetheless. But as I said before, the teams have nothing to do with strategy, and that's how the person who's been in the bottom so many times consecutively gets picked over the person with multiple wins.

From there it's off to field where the teams are going to play a kind of capture the flag with paintball guns. They're firing off shots and paint grenades at the opposing team while said team tries to run up and collect fabric from a few big steel drums. I think there might have been a mention about having to rush back to the start if you get hit with something, but I also might have missed that because I was honestly impressed with the construction of this challenge. It was fun, enjoyable to watch, and seemed like a nice spot of bonding for the teams. I know we haven't gone to Mood much this season, and I certainly miss Swatch, but they seem to have figured out ways to make fabric selection more interesting than just following designers around a store, and I appreciate that.

Turns out Ashley has a lot of practice with paintball as she used to play with her brothers, so yet again we see how someone picking her would have been a great move. But whatever, she at least seems to take some of her frustrations of being last picked out on the guys all trying to run in and get fabric. When that's all over, Tim tells them about the next twist which is that their main fabrics will be the ones they're wearing and not the fabric they stole. This I also thought was brilliant. Both that someone thought this up from start to finish and that they had the foresight not to tell the designers, leaving them with truly random textiles. Blake of course was too much of a princess to run out and get pelted with paint, so his jumper is as white and clean as ever, but once Tim announces this twist, it doesn't seem like his inaction was a bad idea after all. At the very least it gave them a purely white fabric to work with. The teams then have two days to create a nice and cohesive collection.

The boys and Merline hit the ground running and quickly have ideas, inspiration, and plans on how they're going to go forward. The girls, not so much. This is another aspect of what bothers me about the teams being split down gender lines: it gives the girls the opportunity to conform to some stupid stereotypes. From the earliest moments of picking teams that seemed to be happening, and it never really stops. Granted, that's not a fault of the editing or the episode itself, it's just that these girls all seem to be rather shitty, and it sucks. Ashley can't ever seem to get a word in edgewise, and to make it all worse I don't think she tries very hard. I can't blame her since being picked last always sucks, but the nature of the schoolyard pick is that someone is going to be picked last, and the hope should always be that that person still shows up and tries their best to help their team. Merline was picked next to last and she didn't seem to take it as hard as Ashley did. But I also assume (and maybe it's not fair of me to do so, but hey) that this is yet another moment in Ashley's life where she's been left out of a schoolyard pick, and at this stage where she's more than proven herself to be worthy of greater consideration, it might just hurt a bit more than it did when no one wanted her on their dodgeball team.

Either way, it all goes about how you'd expect: the guys work well together, communicate, all get a hand in on each design somehow, and cruise through the challenge, and the girls are the opposite. The guys have a seamless meeting with Tim where he loves it all, and the girls get ripped a new one and kind of start all over, deciding to use purple as the thing that unifies their collection. The guys get their models into the looks early and with ease, while the girls don't even have anything to put on the models for the fitting. The writing is so clearly on the wall about who's going to be in the top and who's in the bottom that there's really nothing left but to get to the runway.

The Runway:

Blake: Yes! Actually the best thing I've seen from him thus far.

Joseph: This look screams Flight Attendant to me. Actually, what it screams is Stewardess. It isn't modern enough to have achieved enough equality to just be a flight attendant. It isn't horrible, but it certainly looks like Joseph's.

Swapnil: POCKETS!!!! And the hang of the skirt, and the intricate nature of the top, and the general beauty of it all. My God this man needs a win already!

Jake: No glitter, no sequins, no sparkle of any kind, and it's the best thing I've seen from Jake thus far. I wonder if those things might not have something to do with each other.... Either way, I like the cape, the collar, and the fact that it's a look with pants instead of another dress. It all came together well.

Merline: I thought that this was the most interesting piece in the collection, it's not that it's necessarily good, but it's certainly interesting to look at. I don't hate it, and indeed I like the asymmetry of it, and the ombre effect on the dress, and I like the collar. But I don't like belted dresses in general, so there's that.

Edmond: WOW! That just kind of took my breath away. The construction is impeccable, it looks like something a lot of women would love to wear, and it's just beautiful. I love it!

Ashley: Oh, no sweetie. Just no. It looks cheap and crafts-y to me.

Laurie: I don't know. I love her and am kind of blinded by my love for her, so I want to like this, but I don't think that I do. Outside of a team setting, it'd probably be safe and we wouldn't have to talk about it at all, but it's not my favorite.

Lindsey: Get the fuck out of here with that shit! No! Never do that again!

Candice: Oh man, execution is a big bold no, but the thought and the design I at least enjoy. I can see what she was going for, and maybe with more time (which is stupid given how much time they had) or better fabric she could have done something workable with it? As is, it certainly isn't good at all, but I'll give her credit for ideas while still lamenting the lack of execution.

Kelly: .......hm......

Amanda: What a nice maternity poncho. I didn't know anyone was in the market for maternity ponchos, but maybe Amanda can corner that market with an entire line. Granted I would have assumed that ponchos were immune to issues of pregnancy, but I guess I was wrong since this one is clearly meant to be worn by a pregnant woman. Also the back reminds me of the stupid parachute like back Blake won with last time and I think she tried to mimic that instead of coming up with her own idea. Either way, I hate it.

So the boys' judging goes as expected with the judges being nothing but impressed all around. There's credit given to everyone, and no one on the team can overstate just who hard they worked, but also how great they worked together, and it's a bit lovely. And then it's the girl's turn, and holy fucking shit does the fur fly. There was a moment earlier in the workroom between Ashley and Laurie where Laurie told her if they were in the bottom, the other girls were pretty much all probably going to throw her, Ashley, under the bus, and boy did they ever. After being soundly handed their asses for the lack of cohesion and the lack of vision on who their girl is, they're asked who should go home and almost universally say Ashley. It's understandably painful (but also admittedly manipulative) to watch her stand up there crying as they lavish so much unearned hatred towards her, but what got me the most about it was how gutless it all was. For them to all stand there and look at those garments and really say that Ashley's is their least favorite and should go home is ridiculous. In the face of Amanda's piece of shit look and her multiple trips to the bottom, as well as Lindsey's bore-fest 2015, and whatever the fuck that was from Kelly, anyone suggesting Ashley should go home has got to be insane. It's not that Ashley's look is any good, far from it, it's just that it is not at all the worst thing this team put on the runway, and it's tragic that she has to put up with this shit.

Kelly Osbourne calls it the bitchfest that it is, but no one took it the step further that I would have had I been a guest judge this week and called them all cowards for not actually picking Amanda's piece of shit look and citing the fact that it's ugly and that she's been in the bottom so many times as the reason she should go home. It's not that Kelly treats them with kids gloves as we've seen other guest judges do in the past, it's just that she wasn't as mean as I had hoped.

Leave it to Nina, however, to say what we're all thinking and to rightfully point out just how useless Amanda is. She waits until the closer look at the dresses segment to do so, but in the face of Heidi seemingly wanting to claim that Amanda's look isn't the worst thing out there, and seeming to be trying to keep her around a bit more, Nina goes for blood and points out that at this point they're just keeping around dead weight and it's time for Amanda to go.

Nina wins that argument and Amanda goes home while Edmond wins. Which....OK I guess. The truth is that Edmond's look certainly took my breath away when it turned the corner, so I'll give him credit for that, but do I really think it was the best look out there? It was certainly the most well made, and he gets credit for that. But I think the moment he mention what Swapnil did with the shoes in creating the lace up for the corset top, I was sold on that being my winning look. Swapnil is the opposite of Amanda at this point in the competition: he continues to be in the top with other people getting wins. But he also seems very gracious about it all. I only watched the hour long version of the episode so if I missed anything, please let me know, but if there was a single moment thus far where Swapnil has pointed out that he deserves wins and isn't getting any and he's frustrated by it, I haven't seen it yet. His seemingly gracious humility only makes me love him more, and he needs to win one already!

Loose Threads:

--Heaven help me for saying this, but I actually kind of loved Blake this episode. His idiotic and slightly racist comments from earlier in the season haven't been forgotten and are still grating on me, but the way he was ready to stand up for Ashley in the greenroom, coupled with the fact that I honestly liked his look this week, all combined to make me love him a bit. It's probably just the edit's fault and I'm sure he'll be back to his usual idiot self next week, but snaps to him for being cool and so worthwhile this go around.

--Swapnil used the shoes they were wearing for the back of that corset top! I'm sorry but that so bears repeating.

--Nail consultation in the middle of the episode was about as useless as you'd expect it to be. What did that have to do with anything?

--I don't want to call for any kind of lessening of trips to Mood, but I also would like to seem them add these sorts of fun elements to the fabric selection more often. I don't know how to balance that, but they should certainly figure it out.

Project Runway: S14 E2: "It's All in the Cards"

I'll start this recap off with a question: If you were a producer on Project Runway's 14th season, would you try to edit the show on an episode to episode basis or try to craft some kind of season long edit that worked week in and week out? New York Fashion week isn't until the beginning of September, so they don't know who's won this season yet, but they surely know who's in the finale by now. That's not to say that you'd want to craft the season in such a manner that leads people to guess who makes it to the end as early as the beginning, but maybe you could look at the footage ahead of time and decide on an edit for the first episode that might have some bearing on the second? This is brought to the forefront of my mind in this episode for two reasons: 1) the episode is pretty boring and predictable and left me with a lot of room to think about stuff other than what happens on the screen. 2) Merline doesn't seem to be nearly as loud and annoying this week as she was last week. Is it just an off day for her, so she's more reserved, or was what we saw of her last week more about first day jitters than actual personality traits? If the latter, then was the edit of the episode wrong, or was my interpretation of the visual information just wrong? I guess only time will tell, and if Merline is back to being her chatty and annoying self by next week, then this whole paragraph is for nothing. But still; after 14 seasons, it's pretty clear that Project Runway edits on a week to week basis, and I'm not sure if that's a strength or a weakness.

This week offers us the first unconventional materials challenge with the contestants going to Hallmark and making outfits out of greeting cards. At this point, I feel like paper is the standard unconventional material for PR challenges, so the fact that these are hard card stock with stupid, I mean sentimental, images and sayings on them didn't do enough to make this challenge feel interesting or exciting. Swapnill, however is every excited to be in a Hallmark store which either means that his New York tourist experience has very different stops on it than mine would, or that Hallmark is much bigger over in India than I ever imagined.

After they leave the store a mess for the underpaid, unappreciated workers to clean up and set right again, it's back to the workroom to start coming up with ideas. A lot of trading of cards and offering of certain kinds of help happens here and it becomes clear that they all really like each other. Or well, mostly at least. Edmond makes a big deal about pretending to not have any ideas because he's worried his ideas will inspire someone else. It's stupid, but it's certainly one way to go. Here's the thing, I love Project Runway, but let's not pretend like this game is on the level of something like Survivor. Strategy doesn't really play a part in what goes on on this show, and pretending like it does gives it a level of complexity that it doesn't really deserve. But that's neither here nor there.

The biggest thing to happen during the workroom segment is that Blake shows himself to be even more of a stereotypical young gay boy by being racist towards Swapnil and playing it off like his annoying qualities are actually cute. The problem with Blake is that he's not smart or interesting enough for a full on Villain edit, but he's just young, stupid, and self-centered enough with just the right amount of privilege to make him an asshole. So he's honestly a bad person, but he's not the kind of bad person that will make for interesting TV (think previous contestants like Jeffrey Sebelia or Irina). So we're just stuck with him until the judges get bored enough with his cliche aesthetic and send him home.

To Swapnil's credit, he handles the situation well, and the rest of the designers seem to be appropriately annoyed and disgusted by Blake's remark, but that's pretty much the last we hear about it. Blake could have earned a lot of capital with me if he'd had the slightest bit of self-awareness and apologized for what he said, but if that happened at all, we didn't see it, and I'm back to thinking he can go fuck himself.

The most obvious edit for the episode is David's swan song. In my notes, I wrote that he was pretty much either going home this week or he was going to win, but I was leaning towards going home. He got a teary conversation with his husband, a reaming by Tim Gunn during his visit, and then totally scrapped and remade his look all in the course of a few minutes. Couple that with his confidence in what he made in spite of how obviously it didn't fit the challenge and you've got How To Be A PR Loser 101. After 14 seasons, it's sad to me that PR hasn't quiet figured out how to make these things a bit more seamless and mysterious, but I guess there's something to be said for consistency.

Before we move past the lackluster middle portion of the episode and jump to the runway, I do want to take a moment and talk about Tim Gunn. His visit is about as stock as you'd expect and doesn't add much to the episode as a whole, but it left me wondering a bit about how his role as mentor is at odds with the show’s need for him to manufacture drama. There are two moments in his meeting with the designers where the things he says, or at least the things we see him saying, are more about adding drama and cringing drums of doom to everything than they're about actually trying to help or offer some kind of construction to the proceedings. When he talks to David, he insults his look in every way imaginable, but did he ever once give him a single suggestion on how to fix it or what direction to go in? He calls back to him as if in an afterthought that he shouldn't forget who he is as a designer, but what does that even mean?

Likewise in his meeting with Amanda he offers increasingly panicked and grave pronouncements about the fact that she doesn't have a skirt for her look yet, but no real help beyond telling her she doesn't have much time left as if she doesn't know how to tell time. I love Tim Gunn forever, of course, but if his sole purpose is to come up with ever more colorful adjectives to explain how bad the bad designs are, then maybe "mentor" isn't actually the best title for him anymore. On to the runway.

The Runway:

Swapnil: Cute. I think there’s a skill and sophistication to it that I like. And I appreciated how fun and playful the bottom was matched with how sophisticated the top is. It's possible the judges will think there's too much going on, but I think it blends together well. 

Ashley: What the everloving fuck? No! I just want to shake a roll of pennies at it. No!

Joseph: That’s hideous and very crafty. The construction of the skirt is all wrong, and the top is boring. I can’t believe he stands by this on the runway. 

David: It’s cute though I think it’s a little pancho-y. Which is bothersome. But of course the other problem is that it doesn’t embody the challenge at all. It’s cute, but he could go home for that. 

Jake: I respect that he stuck with his materials and what not after Tim’s visit. The sparkle of it stops it from looking too much like roof shingles, and ultimately I think it’s cute, if a bit simple. 

Candice: She set out to do something specific and she did it. I can respect that very much. It’s a nice look. It doesn’t appeal to me on a personal level, but I certainly can see and appreciate her vision. 

Han: If it moved more, I’d like it more. It looks like she stuck her model in a paper sack. And she keeps using the word young to describe her looks and I’m honestly starting to question if she actually knows what that word means. 

Gabrielle: Oh no! I thought she was going to go for a kind of ombre effect from the shoulder down across the diagonal of the dress. But instead she put that hideous looking thing in the center, and I think Ashley’s claim of vagina is right. I hate it. It feels like a solid idea gone horribly wrong. 

Laurie: I like it. Don’t really love it, but I like it. 

Blake: The truth is I don’t hate it. I don’t like it, but I also don’t hate it. For a dress that he just glued a lot of glitter onto, it’s fine. Very sparkly, but not as busy and distracting as his last look. He still needs to know when to edit and tone it down, and it also doesn’t feel like much of the point of the challenge is in here, but I don’t think it’s the worst thing we’ve seen so far. 

Lindsey: hm…… OK I guess. There are things about it that catch my eye and I like, and then things that just bore me. I find the front boring, and the weird scarf thing to be out of place and off putting, but the back is cute. 

Kelly: I’m digging it even though the cutout on the front reminds me a bit much of like the Power Rangers or something. In fact, all of it feels a bit Power Ranger-y to me. But I like it. I think the hood on the back of the top really makes it into something special. The skirt I could take or leave. 

Amanda: The really striking and pretty top is totally undone by that horribly skirt. Everything about it from the construction to the patterns in the cards she chose just don’t work. I wish she could have had more than just the one good idea. 

Merline: No!

Edmond: I like it a lot. There are some kind of leaves or petals on the skirt that look like tape to me and they are distracting, but other than that it's a really strong look made all the more strong by the fact that it’s just paper. 

Heidi says that they have four top looks and two bottom looks this time. Swapnil, Edmond, Blake, and Kelly all get top honors while David and Amanda are in the bottom. Though, given the reactions to Kelly's look, I think it's safer to say she's in the middle and could have been replaced with another bottom look such as Joseph or Gabrielle's. Ashley is called out for there being too much muslin on her dress, but I can't help but to think that if that's Heidi's only complaint about that paper-potato-sack of a dress, then she needs to try harder. 

The judge's Q&A is simple and lackluster just like the rest of the episode. It's pretty obvious from everything they're saying that the winner is between Swapnil and Edmond, and maybe instead of four top looks they could have gone with two tops and two bottoms and called it a day. They have nice things to say about Blake and Kelly, but it's so obvious neither of them are going to win that I don't see the point in them being there. They are, however, oddly complimentary towards David's look, Zac goes so far as to suggest it'd be a top look if he'd only used the cards for the body of it instead of fabric, while only having nice things to say about Amanda's top while then ripping her dress to shreds. It's an interesting dilemma having to choose between the girl with the ugly and poorly constructed look and the guy whose look is nice but doesn't embody the challenge at all. It's a question I never really have a consistent answer for. I generally am more interested in the show finding someone capable of thinking up great designs than I am someone who can follow instructions properly, but that's not to say that following instructions isn't important either. 

In the end, Edmond wins and David goes home and there's no real complaint to be made about either choice. It's all a simple and straight forward episode of the show. A bit boring and predictable, but at least not as bad as we've seen it be in the past. The struggle PR has currently and for the foreseeable future is in crafting drama without casting contestants who do nothing but yell, fight, and throw shade at the judges every time they get a negative critique. The truth is after only two episodes, I'm not sure how to suggest they go about doing that. We don't care enough about anyone one way or another to really care about who goes home week to week, so they're really at the mercy of their contestants. And while I'll take a season with less aimless fighting and yelling than the one we had two years ago, I also think a bit more personality than we've got this year is in order too.

Loose Threads:

--Links to photos of each dress will be coming when Lifetime finally puts them up on their website. but as it's already past midnight and I have to be at work in the morning, I'm not willing to wait around for it. 

--In honor of Blake's racist bullshit, I would like to say that if I ever hear the phrase "I just don't have a filter," or "I just say what other people are thinking," again, I'm going to lose it. I know he doesn't say the second one, but I think they go in the same ball park and I hate them both. Why should not thinking before you speak be commended? Esp when the things you say after not thinking are racist and stupid. If someone and responded to his "I don't speak Indian" comment with "Oh that's ok, I don't speak Fag, so I can't understand you most of the time either," would he have found that as cute as what he said? What a fucking asshole!

--I meant to mention this last week with some of Han's scenes, but shows offering subtitles when a contestant is speaking English really fucking annoys me. They might have thick accents, but at no time have I found it so hard to understand what David, Swapnil, or Han are saying that I need subtitles. And guess what, if you do need subtitles, it's 2015 and all TVs had a closed caption option. I find the subtitles to be just as demeaning as what Blake said. 

--Lindsey’s hope that the unconventional materials challenge would come later in the season makes me think she’s never watched the show before. Has there ever been a season where there wasn't an unconventional materials challenge in the first few episodes?

--Did anyone else notice that it looked like one of Kelly's tattoos was being blurred out? It's on her forearm, and I think it was during her meeting with Tim that something looked smudged in that area. I could have just been seeing things, but that's at least what it looked like to me. I wonder if it's just a personal thing or if it's something offensive, or too adult to get by the censors.

--The edit of Amanda’s Glitter rant followed by the close up of her pro-glitter shirt was great. 

--Anyone catching the Lifetime commercials? If so, who was really waiting for the Full House introspective that they've been pimping so hard? I mean really, is this a story that needs to be told?