Greetings and salutations, PR fans. Before we get to the penultimate episode of Project Runway: 90210, a brief apology from me, your master of blogging ceremonies, Kevin Van Valkenburg.
My "other" writing job (sports) and a tragic TiVo malfunction managed to get in the way of recapping the last two weeks, which made me feel incredibly guilty. After complaining about Michael and Nina missing multiple episodes this year, I essentially became them by letting other interests get in the way of what's really important: bad fashion designing recapped with bad jokes.
Bad form, that was.
And sadly, perhaps in an effort to punish me in absentia, Heidi and the Weinsteins decided to eliminate my two greatest comic devices, Nicolas and Logan. A part of me already misses Nicolas' crazy cackle, Logan's raw sex appeal, Nicolas' phony sense of entitlement, and Logan's ability to use his raw sex appeal to coast through 10 weeks of shoddy designs.
It's pretty clear this has been a strange season for Project Runway. Sure, Irina has been a noble villain, serving as the producers' go-to designer for snark and sass in talking heads all season long. After all this time in Los Angeles, I'm starting to suspect she's actually Kobe Bryant's notoriously nutty wife, Vanessa -- seriously, look at the two of them here and here -- and that in the final episode, she'll strut off the stage in Bryant Park, slap a Kardashian (but hopefully not Bruce Jenner), and then sit down next to Kobe, Pau Gasol and the Beckhams.
There really hasn't been a counterweight to "Mean-a-Irina" (as Logan dubbed her last episode) at any point this year, which has made the season difficult to embrace. She and Nicolas traded a few barbs, but you mostly just prayed for mutual destruction whenever that happened. Personally, I would have loved to see Irina and Santino go at it for 12 weeks, if only because I'm certain Irina would have pointed out that Santino looks like a homeless orthodox rabbi, and Santino would have responded in kind. ("It's 5 p.m., do you know where Kobe is?") Alas, we'll just have to pray for a sequel to the Project Runway All-Stars show that aired earlier this year. By the way, you can order "Santino!" t-shirts off Rice's website if you like for just $40, which seems about $38 too much if you ask me, but who am I to say?
Let's get to the show, shall we? Time to find out who is going to Bryant Park!
The episode begins with Irina making excuses for why she's such a gigantic be-yotch. But instead of pointing out that she briefly joined forces with Althea to mock Logan's zipper turtleneck last episode, only to turn around and try to get Althea bounced on the runway by whining that her look had been plagiarized, she claims she's disliked by others because no one can handle her raw honesty. Also, for some reason, she won't get out of bed, preferring to lie there with the covers tucked to her chin so she can make evil eyes at everyone. (BTW, are we sure Logan isn't being held captive under those sheets? It would be just like Irina to belittle his designs but drug him and keep him in her bed to torture other designers like Carol Hannah.)
"I always say that I won't say anything behind your back that I wouldn't say to your face, but I guess people would rather you just say it behind their back," Irina says.
Christopher informs us that boys' room is lonely, and then he laments the absence of talented male designers like Nicolas and Ra'mon, and marvels at the fact that he's still in the competition and they're not. If I were Epperson, and I was watching this while drinking away my sorrows at an Oktoberfest bar, I'd be pretty peeved Nicolas got name-checked and I didn't.
The Heidibot 3000 shows up to give us her usual cryptic spiel that always, always begins with a short " 'ello!" and ends with "byyyyyyyyye!" I don't know why it just dawned on me, but I'm certain that some poor failed screenwriter actually writes these little oracle bits for Heidi, because there is no way she's up late the night before crossing out words and making notes in the margins. Not with four kids, anyway.
Carol Hannah continues to win the award given out by my heart for "Most Adorable" by telling us her own heart beats really fast every time she thinks about going to Bryant Park. I'm starting to wonder if her earnest, Southern politeness might single-handedly redeem the entire state of South Carolina for Mark Sandford's "Appalachian Trail" non-hiking, and the whole Joe Wilson "You lie!" debacle earlier this year. She's basically Amy Adams from Enchanted, which is fitting when you consider Irina is obviously Susan Sarandon, the evil dragon queen.
Continue reading "Project Runway: Can you hear me Bryant Park? " »
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