Project Runway Episode 2 (Still Boring!)

I dunno. This is the second boring challenge in a row. And the second straight time the kooky guy has been eliminated. I applauded that the first time through, but now I'm worried that contestants who might be able to wow us are being cut in favor of the dreaded middlebrow.

Both episodes also featured new favorite Mitchell in second-to-last place. I know he's not long for the show, but, man, what a treasure chest of material. From admitting he didn't put time and effort into his first design to his hangdog face while on the cusp of elimination...Mitchell is ok by me.

The second episode opens up with Hillbilly James Iha (nee Malvin) eating an apple while covered in drapes. This is shorthand for wacky! Mitchell admits he isn't taking this seriously and, huzzah, off to the runway for the second challenge. The challenge sucks. Make a maternity dress for Rebecca Romijn and her Slider spawn. Ugh. I want to see some clothes made out of breast pumps and baby formula. I loved the simplicity of the first challenge, but doing something so open-ended two weeks in a row? Why? The budget for this was $100 and the cameras focused on one of the still-generic contestants exhaling after being charged $99.50. That led to this exchange with our in-house expert, Kelli Martin:

Q: Ok, this kind of applies to all shows with budgets....but tonight's episode showed a contestant at a Mood register being relieved that she cashed in 50 cents under budget. If you're at Mood and have a few extra bucks to spare, what do you do? Like, do they have stuff behind the counter? "Throw in that sash!"

A: First of all, nothing at Mood has prices. You never know what anything costs, you just grab and factor it out later. When I came back later in my season, Korto and I were gathering leather hides, and I TOTALLY though that we would be auf'd because she was piling everything on! I felt like I strategically grabbed all my supplies when I was on the show, accounting for the cost, when really...it doesn't matter, they will "make the price work for you." I wish I would have know that sooner! It would have saved me A LOT of time!

I find this disappointing. I was hoping they'd get to spend their last dollars on smokes or copies of US Weekly.

Kelli also had this to say about the challenge:

They "casually" mention that the designer's all have 2 days to create the look! We had like half a day! So you give them more time, the audience won't notice, and they magically create better garments. Yuck!

Good catch. I missed that.

But, wait! Kelli's not done. Regarding guest judge Rebecca Romijn-not-Stamos:

Yeah sure, they have MUCH better judges than our "thrown-under-the-bus" season. Who can be excited over Brooke Shields and Sandra Bernhard? What do they know about fashion again????

To be fair, Brooke Shields was a model once upon a time. So, same qualifications as Ms. Romijn. I have no retort for the Sandra Bernhard thing.

More judge snark:

[Second guest judge Monique Lhuillier] is a graduate of FIDM (as am I), and I assume that the proper top 3 were chosen because she replaced Michael [Kors]

So the designers put little tummy pillows on their mannequins and get to work. By now, I have decided who two of the villains are.

1. Nicholas. Nicholas hasn't been top-3 or bottom-3 yet. The only thing he's accomplished is being incredibly annoying in the interviews. I hate stuttering, stacatto laughter. And he seems to find his own jokes pretty funny. I don't like this guy at all.

2. Louise. She hand-dyed some lace this challenge. Neat! But she said she was going for a 1920s aesthetic, and not to judge a book by its cover, but I expect we'll be getting a lot of that from her. Like Kenley with her princess dresses but, hopefully, with more self-awareness. And it looks like she has a barbed wire tattoo. Lamers.

Kelli has her own intuition on who the bad guy will be (and since this is Lifetime, never downplay women's intuition):

I feel like Sherin is a talented Kenley, and I don't think I like her.

Everyone hates Kenley! Somewhere there is a tugboat captain itching to defend his daughter.

Well, I like Sherin. Mostly because her dress and jacket:

was clearly the top design this week. I loved everything about it. Even Sherin doubter Kelli thought that this was a top-3 dress.

The dresses were nice, if not a little boring and I hope this doesn't become a theme. Certainly better than last week. But the bottom-three dresses were truly disasterous.

Before getting to the Bottom Three, Harmony wanted me to call extra attention to a dress that made it past eliminations without additional comment. Quacks's:

I don't think this deserves a spot on the bottom-three. It's horribly boring, but not a disaster. Then Harmony reminded me that Quacks's thing is "plus-sexy." She does plus-sized outfits and this is the best she could whip up? This should have been right in her wheelhouse and she blew it. Quacks will be gone by week six.

Now the true disasters.

Check out Ra'mon's:

Oops! Wait a second here...

There we go. To be fair, anyone could have made that mistake.

Even Mitchell, who we'll get to in a second, said the belly looked like a bowling ball bag before backtracking behind platitudes.

And Mitchell is a joke. Harmony, Kelli, and myself all agree that Mitchell needed to go. The man can't sew shorts. The best part of the Lifetime experience last night was the beginning of the show about the models. They were horrified that Mitchell got to keep his spot.

MITCHELL CONSPIRACY THEORY

So, based on the preview of next week's episode, someone gets dragged across the coals for not knowing how to sew. I wonder who that will be?

Why keep this dude on if he can't sew? The answer: To raise a big, deserved middle finger to Bravo's The Fashion Show for having designers who can't sew. If you missed it (and you should have), one of the designers had a big hissy fit saying this was The Fashion Show, not the "Sewing Show." He made it to the top-4.

Project Runway is oh so gently reminding us that The Fashion Show sucks.

Anyways, the losing dress:

Yes, it's that bad. Yes, it deserves to be singled out for ridicule. No, it wasn't as bad as not knowing how to sew shorts.

Although Malvin lost all of his sympathetic value when he called himself a philospher and complained that this design was too complicated for America. Really? The American market is the problem? Are you stoned?

Hopefully next week we'll get a better idea of who the better designers are. Two weeks in and it's still a crap shoot.

Kelli!

Ok, so after the disaster that was using AIM (the instant messaging system, not the clinic for porn stars) during the season premiere of Project Runway, absent guest star Kelli Martin decided to just e-mail me her thoughts. So, here they are slightly edited for spelling and clarity (my brief, unintrusive comments are italicized):

They all [the contestants, obvi] seem soooo nice! I know that it is the first episode, but I feel like there aren't any "drama queens" (yet), and there seems to be nobody trying to sell a gimmick (yet).

Solely based on personality (or the 5.3 seconds that we see of it), I am drawn to Ari and Malvin [aka Hillbilly James Iha]...they would have most likely been my friends. Johnny cries first, but aside from that, FOR SOME REASON, he seems like a nice dude. Gordana stood in front of me at my Season 5 tryout and bragged the whole time how she was a "shoe in" for Season 5...not my fave. [Inside gossip!]

I would have LOVED the first challenge, although most of the designer's seem to REALLY hold back. Either that or are they really that boring? Is it just me, or did EVERYONE chose basically the same fabric?

I LOOOOVVVED Christopher's lil' mini dress, and the "dirty white" ruffles, made it so much better! If he wouldn't have won this challenge, I probably would have thrown my booze through the tv!

Other honorable mentions were: Carol's dress. It wasn't crazy, but it was interesting. Nicolas had a good thing going (if only I could see it better!); Irina's dress was "pretty"...other than that, nothing stood out for me. It all seemed like a HUGE array of gunmetal and champagne! [Accurate burn...but at least it's better than everyone using tablecloth, right, Season 5?]

Now for the losers: I felt so bad for Ari. Seriously, her dress was funny looking, but AT LEAST she had a good attitude and made something different! (Even if it was REALLY odd.) If she had not cut the pieces into soccer balls, she may have pulled it off! The hood looked really cool! (Just remember Ari, its better to have been auf'd with something that was different, than something boring!)

Sadly, if we are questioning "taste," Qristyl [Quacks!] should have gone. That dress looked like half DOTS reject, half Emmy dress rag, circa '93. [Ouch] I am interested to see what she does next. Maybe she will make me put my foot in my mouth, but, somehow, I doubt it.

Although I showed some previous love for Johnny, WTF?! His dress was HID-E-OUS! The drape was awful, the trim was ridiculous, and the whole thing had no shape! [Harmony, Kelli and I all agreed that this dress was terrible. So, of course it got ranked top-3. Probably because it had the audacity not feature champagne or gunmetal.]

Finally, where are the tattooed mo'fos??! I need to see some spunk!

END KELLI TRANSMISSION

Well, Kelli, your tattoos plus my barbed wire tat and Harmony's dolphin on her ankle give Lifetime, Wow more than enough spunk to carry us through the season.

Thanks so much for your input and for your restraint. If I were you, every sentence would have began with, "When I won the first challenge."

Harmony and I, of course, will work on making this all run smoother for Episode 2.

Project Runway, Episode 1

UGH.

No Kelli!

She didn't show up on the AIM. That's right. AIM.

Now, admittedly, it's AIM. I haven't used Ye Olde AIM since college. I could have been doing something wrong. That is a definite possibility. (Editor's note: Yup.)

But Harmony and I were still AIMing in the same room. So instead of insight, you get, uh, just the regular Lifetime, Wow shtick.

Sorry.

Harmony: Where is Kelli?
Rusty: we are ditched
Harmony: hang on, bald guy on meth

And with that, we are off!

The meth guy's name was Johnny. He loves talking about meth. Other interests: crying about meth.

rusty: "if i didn't overcome the addiction, i'd be dead"
rusty: yes
rusty: that is how those things work
rusty: if i didn't stop eating, i'd be fat
Harmony: Why is he bald with a goatee?
Harmony: That bothers me more then the meth thing

We also have a guy that Harmony referred to as "hillbilly James Iha" and the unfortunately named Qristyl, who doesn't do "plus-sized." She does "plus sexy."

rusty: plus sxy = booty clapping
Harmony: I'm tired of spelling quristiels name so I am going to call her "quacks"

So the challenge is to make a red carpet dress and, to be fair, that's a good challenge. A bit predictable, but lots of room for different visions and something iconic of L.A.

If only there was someone who could give us an idea of what it's like to not only participate in a first challenge, but to win it! Hopefully Althea from Dayton, OH wins this challenge so we can invite her to chat with us about winning during the Season 7 premiere.

Oh yeah. The show is in L.A. now. They mention this. A lot. Did you know the weather is better in California? Also, the Garment District is, like, seven times the size of the shitty New York version.

So we have a red carpet challenge and Johnny freaks out because HE DID DRUGS.

rusty: addiction
rusty: what an asshole
Harmony: God, they probably had to edit out all the times he mentioned how Jesus taught him to put down the crack pipe and pick up a sewing machine
rusty: GO DO SOME BLOW, ASSHOLE
Harmony: Maybe he'll have an epic breakdwn during the runway thing
rusty: what if he fails again?
rusty: then what?
rusty: speaking of failing, AIM, everyone!
Harmony: He'll come in covered in coke like Scarface and hand his model a ripped up sundress he stole from Kohls
Harmony: AIM sucks

So, the dresses were all blah. I would love to paste photos of them, but Lifetime has made this extremely difficult. To their credit, that's because each picture magnifies when you scroll over it. It's some kind of Flash Player trick. Neat.

Let's give this a shot...

Ok. I can do this.

First the losing dress:


I am so, so happy that this dress lost. The designer, Ari, said this dress would be appropriate for the 2080 Video Music Awards as well as the Nobel Prize. My first reaction was, "there's MTV in 2080? Ew." Second reaction: "shut up, Ari."

Last season, Stella lasted longer than Kelli. I do not mean that as a dig at Kelli. It was a disgrace. Stella made for fun tv. She was not a good designer. Not at all. But she was wacky!

Fuck that. Let's cut that wackiness right in the bud and focus on the designs. If designs like that are not punished, the season will suffer.

Speaking of things that hurt the show, the less said about guest judge Lindsay Lohan, the better.

rusty: "lindsay, what do you think"
Harmony: I love how Lindsey needs tov be prompted to talk
rusty: no one has ever said that before
rusty: ever
Harmony: hahaha
Harmony: "Lindsey, do you think? is that a thing you do?"
Harmony: If anyone appreciates being rejected by a savage marketplace, it's Lohan Harmony: *does 37th Herbie movie, dies of Adderal overdose*

So, the winning dress:


This dress is also pretty bad. I mean, it's light years ahead of the disco soccer ball that got eliminated, but this is boring. I would put that on my "worst dressed list" if someone actually wore it.

Sixteen dresses is too many to post here, so just check out the dresses on Lifetime (here's the link again) and wade through the mediocrity.

So, Season 6 premiere: Sort of disappointing, but Lifetime didn't butcher the show or anything, so, hurray! The show's good enough for me to miss a special theater screening of Magnolia next Thursday, so that's something.

Hunger Point

So, I will be reviewing this Thursday's Project Runway with help from Terri and a former show contestant. Huzzah! If I had known such a windfall was coming, I would not have bothered firing up MyLifetime over the weekend. Oh well. I watched a film named Hunger Point, which I chose on the criteria that it would be an awesome name for a movie about a killer shark. To my disappointment, it was about anorexia.

Hunger Point centers around the Hunter family, who are as WASPy and dysfunctional as any other TV family but unfortunately far less entertaining. If you've seen a Lifetime movie before, you've already met these folks, but let's break it down anyway. Marsha Hunter is the cruel matriarch of the family, a career-driven former chubster who is obsessed with keeping her daughters skinny at any cost. As any fat person can tell you, there is nobody more cruel to the plus-sized then those who who have left their ranks. She makes fun of the other kids at weight loss camp, slaps her daughter's hands away from pieces of food, and generally vamps about like a mix between Maude Lebowski and Cruella DeVille. I'd say she acted so hard that she ate the scenery, but it is hard to imagine her character eating anything without angrily spitting it into her napkin.

Her daughters are portrayed with equal fervor and equally terrible performances. When we meet Shelly, she is in the throes of an eating disorder. Those familiar with anorexia or bulimia will recognize Shelly as the stereotypical Patient A: a young woman under pressure with an intensely distorted body image and a need for control. Unfortunately for Shelly (and us), the film doesn't give her a character besides A Girl That Has Been Interrupted. Any time that could be spent establishing a character for her is generally spent dwelling on Franny, whose chubby childhood has given her a persecution complex and a bad case of the passive-aggression. All of her interactions with others are as follows:

Franny: Hey Mom, you emotionally crippled me by taking my ice cream away when I was little, you dumb skank.
Marsha: Seriously?
Franny: GOD MOM I WAS JUST KIDDING I DIDN'T MEAN ANYTHING BY IT WHY DO YOU HATE MEEEE *pause for 10 minute monologue about the evils of mocking kids in husky pants*

Franny sucks, but for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, she is the heroine of the film. Why, movie? Couldn't we have focused on the mom, or god forbid, the person with the eating disorder that the movie is supposed to be about? Shit, I would have even accepted the emotionally distant patriarch as a protagonist. At least he wears a cowboy hat sometimes.

Many TV movies about anorexia have the following plotline:

1. Special girl lives too-good-to-be-true life. The non-specials are admiring, but suspicious of her constant need to hide things and vomit.
2. Special girl is discovered to be anorexic. Blame is ascribed to beauty magazines, inadequate parenting, and whatever else the writers are pissed at this week. We are yet to see a movie that blames anorexia on terrorism, but I am confident someone will have the vision to make this happen eventually.
   
3. Treatment begins. This can range from meeting with a counselor to full-on hospitalization depending on the amount of time left in the film.
   
4. The family deals. The movie gives us an infodump on How To Deal With Eating Disorders, and all of the mothers of teenage daughters watching it have quiet panic attacks.
5. Treatment is working. The anorexic girl is suddenly full of life. Sometimes she eats salad.
   
6. BONUS ROUND! If the credits didn't roll after step 5, our anorexic is going to relapse. She will either realize what they are doing wrong and have a tearful confession that leads to further treatment, or die of a heart attack. Either way, a lesson is learned.
   

Hunger Point follows Shelly through the above plot arc, but it makes the unforgivably stupid decision to make us observe it from Franny's point of view. Franny is incapable of thinking of anyone other then herself for more then 5 minutes, so needless to say, this is not an effective narrative device. When her sister is hospitalized, she spends every visit flirting with cute doctors and whining when people on the psych ward won't dance with her to a song on the radio. When her sister finally is well enough to leave the psych ward, she is pissed that nobody is paying enough attention to her and yells at her Mom for making a welcome home cake because "skinny won't eat it". When her sister finally dies of a suicide-attempt-induced heart attack, the movie should be over. Instead we are forced to sit through 40 more interminable Frannytastic minutes of calling her mother a whore, complaining that she had to go to fat camp, and eventually settling down with a nice boy she meets at a nursing home (no, really). Both Franny and her mother are so spiteful and cruel that there's no emotional redemption available. You just want them to stop interacting so they can't call each other fat bitches anymore.

Awesomeness: 1

This movie was as bleak and dull as a trailer park. Actually, trailers in those parks usually have things like pinwheels and windchimes to decorate their yards, so a trailer park would actually be marginally more fun then this film. It would also contain just as much depressing crazy, but the ubiquitous coolers full of Natty Light would help one cope.

Star Power: 7

This is where the film really disappoints you: there are some decent actresses in this piece of shit. Marsha is played by Barbara Hershey, who was nominated for an Oscar in 1997 (for fucks sake). Shelly is Susan May Pratt, who has been in 10 billion TV movies and played second banana in some well-known teeniebopper flicks like 10 Things I Hate About You. But brace yourself- Franny is played by Christina Hendricks, AKA Joan Holloway in Mad Men! It's a bit of fun irony that she went from being an insecure whiny idiot that hates her body in a TV movie to a sympathetic, interesting character that flaunts her curves in Mad Men.

Lifetimeliness: 4

All 4 points are because the film deals with anorexia. Every single female character in this movie is awful, and there is no fun Lifetime-flavored campiness to temper the edge. Jesus, couldn't we at least have had a lesbian social worker or a frank discussion about panty lines to ease the tension?

12. In short, this movie was dull and unrelenting and impossible to properly mock. Every time I try to think about it I just hear Franny's whiny voice buzzing in my ears like a dentist drill. My head hurts. It's not funny. Fuck this movie.

Come back on Friday, when we'll be discussing something much more entertaining with someone much more qualified to discuss it.

Lifetime, Wow Welcomes the Input of Project Runway Contestant Kelli Martin

I moved to Columbus a little over a year ago. Which worked out, because the last season of Project Runway had some definite C-Bus roots. Two contestants from that season, Kelli Martin and Terri Stevens, could be seen around town. They were both favorites in the Rusty household and, in my opinion, they both got jobbed.

Season Five came and went and then there was the winter period. The hiatus. I spent that time finding full time employment, playing Rock Band, and buying a coffee table.

But not just any coffee table! A secondhand coffee table. From Kelli. Because of some ridiculous construction north of campus* where she kept shop, her store closed. And in the fire sale, I got myself a table and an in.

(*In Columbus, any detail beyond just "campus" is redundant.)

When Lifetime finally got the rights to Project Runway, I was saddened because Bravo did a pretty good job of it. But I was also ecstatic that I could write about one of my favorite shows. The problem was, well, me. I love the show but I don't know a god damned thing about fashion. Or fabric. Or style. I still wear sweater vests and carpenter jeans for Christ's sake.

So to write about Project Runway, I knew I would need help. So, I thought, maybe Kelli will help me. Couldn't hurt to ask, right?

Well, hurt it did not. Ms. Martin has graciously accepted my invitation to talk about the episodes with me (and Terri [my girlfriend, not the former contestant] and Harmony too). I hope to get more insight on the level of difficulty of the challenges, of the editing tricks the producers are using, and, of course, what a former contestant thinks of the fashion.

So please look for updates here every Friday around noon to see what we think. Worst case scenario, is that this partnership doesn't work out and you get more of my ramblings and some pictures of dresses up on this piece. And is that really so bad?

ANNOUCEMENT

Sorry for not checking in, folks. Rusty is alive and doing well. And he has been doing some behind-the-scenes work on making this blog a little bit better.

As you are probably aware, Project Runway makes its Lifetime debut on Thursday, August 20th. I love Project Runway. And since this site is Lifetime, Wow and not Bravo, Wow, my self-imposed restrictions are met.

But there are thousands of blogs that write Project Runway recaps. And although I am in love with my own writing, that may not be enough for the average Project Runway fan.

So I hope to bring in some help.

More details soon.