project runway makes worst of 06 list

Annie Wu on tvsquad.com has this to say about this past season's Project Runway:

God, Project Runway was just plain painful this season. Not only did we have to put up with Vincent and Angela for an ungodly long time, they were brought back for an additional challenge! Then, Jeffrey, the designer with the worst collection of all (well, in my personal opinion), won the whole competition. Livid, I was. I definitely expected better taste from what I've long considered the classiest reality program on television. Click here to read her full review.

Now don't get your panties in a bunch about this.

First, she's a funny reviewer (read what she has to say about Flavor of Love and American Idol in this article). Second, this is about her having high expectations of PR. She's saying she's disappointed in the show, not that she thinks it is worse than everything else on tv, and frankly, I agree with her criticisms.

However, Wu neglects to account for the bright spots of this season. Like Laura. Over time the judging stupidities and blowhard personalities of this season will fade from memory while we tune into the new hit show: What would Laura do? (tag: And how the hell does she manage to do all of that?) Getting Flash with Michael Knight (the nice boy takes the street). The Robert and Kayne Show (tag: Barbies, Beauty Queens and Bitching). Malan Breton from Taiwan (it doesn't get any more fabulous than that).

Speaking of crazy man V: on VH1's "Best Year Ever" Vincent's tirade was one of Doug Benson's choices for getting a rose. There's no way to explain this joke. You just have to have seen it . . and like that offbeat kind of humor.

precious moments

the sweetest thing
Who didn't enjoy Alison's assertion (and didn't we just know she would say something like this?) that:

"Animals make me happy."

Of course they do, sweetheart. Of course they do.
And you make animals happy too.

(see also
http://kora-in-hell-pr.blogspot.com/2006/10/all-my-alisons.html
all my alisons post.)

moving from the sublime to the ridiculous . . .

the fluff and fold tantrum
Vincent's "fluff and fold" meltdown over a laundry error (he was reimbursed for almost twice as much as the value of the item) was completely unacceptable behavior. Rather than talking him into staying they should have shown him the door. That said, it was also completely and utterly hilarious. My top three moments from that film clip are:

• When he channels Rodney Dangerfield and says, apropos of get-over-yourself, "No respect." News flash: respect is earned Vinny.
  
• When the camera turns to the producer (Rucker I believe) who just shrugs his shoulders. God love him. And just off camera we hear Vincent whine "it's not funny!" Oh, but it is, Vinny. It is.
• Vincent's plaintive cry at the end of the clip when he, incoherent with rage, emits this inchoate sound of "why why wha wha whaaaaa ??!!!!" Normally I don't find someone's suffering to be humorous, but every time I hear that it makes me laugh.

don't get too comfortable
This precious moment captured the irate Keith telling Heidi and Tim that he was the victim of a conspiracy concocted by the crew. In the pause that followed this assertion, while everyone stared at him, dumbfounded, he spat out: "Uncomfortable isn't it?"

Actually "uncomfortable" wasn't the right word. Gobsmacked might have worked better. My guess is that they were not made uneasy by his accusation in the sense that they felt implicated by it, they were simply too surprised to think of what to say. They needed time to recalibrate the new information. That new information was not his bizarre theory that producers planted the books on him. No, the new information was that Keith had become delusional if not barking mad.

as a followup:
Keith's ranting letter to BPR begins: "Seems like everyone is bitter that I might be actually telling the truth." Again, there is a usage problem. No one is bitter about this incident but Keith himself. Everyone else is just entertained. Nothing more. Sorry, Keith. It is a tv show. It is entertainment. The antics on it are just not that important.

(Click here for more on KM's "book burning"charges.)

and while we are on the subject of vocabulary usage . .

circuit circus
Because this reunion focused on Tim Gunn's fancy schmancy vocabulary (jesus wept) I have provided a brief but no less irritatingly pedantic discussion of what appears to be Tim Gunn's misuse of the word "circuitous":

At the risk of sounding like the pedant that I am, "circuitous" was not actually the right word to describe that staircase. The staircase was in a circular form, a spiral staircase to be specific, which is not the same as being circuitous. The route they were following may have been complicated and indirect and thus was circuitous. In standard English, however, the staircase was not. The etymology of the word is from circle or round but its meaning has shifted so that it is associated with indirection more than circularity. Ironically, one usage is to indicate an artificial form of speaking.

The man makes so few missteps that it is pissy to call attention to them. But I don't trust someone who appears to be completely flawless. I like him better this way.

a question of taste
Laura's response to that cheesy Publisher's Clearinghouse episode was one of the best lines of the show. We have Michael Kors -- Mr. Impeccable Taste -- impersonating Ed McMahon in order to present Michael with a check for the viewer's choice award. The sheer tackiness of it all did not escape Laura's notice and just as the excitement was hitting its peak she did what she always does: she calls 'em like she sees 'em:

behind the masks

. . . there was some serious ugly going on this season.

On the face of it, the designers started out resembling human beings, but it didn't take long to have doubts about a few of them. Who am I kidding? These guys seemed creepy from the start. The masks cracked from the get go. And it wasn't pretty.

the three faces of keith :

the three monsters of the runway :

click here for the original story using this image.

&
the most fearsome of them all

The hiss.
The swish.
The disdain.
The utter indifference.
And the infuriating fact that, try as they may, they just cannot knock her off of her feet.

She sees them for what they are -- creeps and bullies -- and calls them on it. With one whip she can put them in their place and they skulk away licking their wounds and whining "she's a bad mommy."

And it makes them SO MAD when women refuse to be their mommies!!

But when the mask comes off
the kitten comes out to play.

(click here for halloween costume ideas from jay mccarroll.)

I wonder if . . .

. . . project runway used a point system?

(note: you can click on the chart to see a larger version)

What difference would it make?
Of course it is impossible to know all the variables that could change the outcome. However, for the sake of argument, here are a few of the things that might have been different had they used this kind of scoring:

• Vincent would have been out in the first weeks (note how he is the lowest scorer Every Single Week! Even after he won!!
• Malan probably wouldn't have been auffed in the second week; he may have recovered from his error and stayed on quite a bit longer.
• Alison probably would have stayed on longer (and had a good chance of getting to the finals): she was tracking with the top group (Laura, Uli and Michael).
• Jeffrey could have made it to the finals but it would have been much harder for him.

What difference wouldn't it make?
If they had used a point system such as the one above this past season the following things would most likely remain the same:

• It would not diminish the role of the judges: the judges would be just as important but they wouldn't be able to make outrageous decisions that ruin the credibility of the show.
• The producers could break ties but they wouldn't be able to intervene in a way that makes the judging look like a joke.
• It still could have come down to the same final four but there would be some serious competition from "wild cards" like Alison and Malan.
• At a commenter's suggestion I'm putting up another chart (click here to view) that attempts to put the designers in the order that they would have been auffed using this system. What it actually shows is that there is really no way to predict this most of the time since there are so many ties. I think that they are all close enough that there would still be a suspense about who would be auffed. For example, with the point system Jeffrey could have been "auffed" early on or he could have made it to the end.

How this chart shows why Alison's auffing was bogus:

• At that point in the season Alison was one of the highest scorers: when she was "auffed" she was tracking in the top group with Uli, Laura and Michael.
• She had twice as many points as Vincent.
• In the epsode when Alison was auffed there were three designers in the "worst" group: Alison, Vincent and Kayne. This was Alison's first time in the "worst group." This was Vincent's 5th and Kayne's 3rd.
• Whether you like her or not, I think it is valid to say that her auffing was a bogus decision.
  

Would this system have made the show more interesting?
On the one hand the answer to this question is: "it's a matter of taste."

• I think it would have been been lighter and funnier if we had people like Malan and Alison instead of Vincent and Jeffrey.
• There may have been more focus on the reparte of Kayne and Robert and Laura.
• If Bradley had been on for longer there would have been more goofiness.
• And remember -- for the first half of the season we didn't think that Michael was very interesting but once the cameras spent more time with him everyone fell in love!

The producers obviously thought that it would be more interesting to keep people on the show who would cause a lot of conflict. I'm not convinced that those people really did make the show more interesting. They just made it more irritating. But there may be people who prefer the bickering and drama. Chacun à son goût.

If you don't want the designers' past work to be a considered in the judging then you wouldn't want to use this point system. The problem is that while the judges claim they don't consider what the designers had previously done, in fact, the do. It is just that they aren't consistent about it. The judges often commented on what the designer had previously done (for better and for worse). The problem is that they gave the "benefit of the doubt" to some and not others.

On the other hand, whether or not you liked the fighting, I don't think very many viewers were happy with the way the show was being so obviously manipulated. As a result the show lost a lot of credibility. Using a point system could be a way of making sure that doesn't happen again.

It is all hypothetical of course. It' s not like Bravo producers are going to read this and say: "Why yes! That's brilliant! Let's change something that involves millions of dollars because some random cranky blogger suggested it!"

It's just a thought. What do you think?

repeat offenders

or, getting the old in and out

The producers' defense of the episode 10 gimmick is that they didn't know ahead of time that the two returning designers would turn out to be the two most annoying (read Andy's Blog). On the other hand, it is easy to assume that the two returning designers would be those who were most recently kicked out. Presumably they would be the next best designers. Of course they were not the best designers because the producers wanted to keep around the nut cases for "drama."

Vincent and Angela's return was pointless. Everyone knew that neither one of them would win. It was also annoying. They had already overstayed their welcome. We'd finally gotten rid of them and no one--least of all the viewers--wanted to see them darken the door of Parsons and the Atlas again.

I don't say this with malice: Angela seems like a fine person who is open minded but sticks to her own fleurchon-festooned jubilee jumbles creative vision. She has been amusing and baffling to viewers but in the end she proved to be a remarkably generous-spirited person. And she lives her life in keeping with values that are very admirable. It is too bad she is lumped together with Vincent who is truly disturbed and evokes in viewers a mix of loathing and pity. (See also "for the record.")

My point is that by the 10th episode we'd seen what they could do -- they'd had more than their fare share of chances and of lucky breaks.

Anyway, it seems like in order to be "fair" they set up a criteria that lacked the flexibility they needed to have the episode make any sense at all. And I'm not sure how fair they were either.

Just for the hell of it, here are a few of the other ways they could have approached this challenge.


THE FIRST TO GO: STACY, MALAN, KATY (KATHERINE)

Why not just pick those designers we haven't recently seen?
The ones who had the least chance to show what they could do?
The ones who didn't get the benefit of the doubt?

This also deals with the "Keith Factor" : that is, the three designers who were kicked off before Keith during the period when he was violating the rules.

(This is particularly an issue for Katy.)


STACY

Look at the two outfits to the right and you tell me which one is insanely hideous?

Enough said.

Think of all the trouble wrought by this first of a series of bad decisions.

What ever happend to the old chestnut "we're concerned about taste level"???


MALAN

Malan made the fatal error of not buying enough fabric and his gown was too short.

His dress was flawed but it was also ambitious, as opposed to a basic sheath with minimal fitting and even that was done badly. It also did not have ridiculous shoulder wings. Nor did it look like a bad prom dress project from the early eighties.

He also demonstrated that he could work collaboratively and be a team leader: it was not "the biggest nightmare of [his] life".

He also is a quirky personality who could have provided the show with a great deal of drama and personal interest and hilarity. He's odd but not creepy. Or certifiable.

Malan is a talented and experienced designer who very conceivably could have made it to the final 3. He didn't but he didn't need to. He landed on the runway at Fashion Week anyway.


KATY

There is also the matter of Katherine. In the episode when she was auffed it came down to a choice between her and Keith. Keith was soon asked to leave for violating the rules.

As it happens another set of rules that Keith felt did not apply to him were the requirements for the designers that week. Katherine did.

Her dress was considered too simple.

I thought it was adorable.

it was one of my favorite designs of this season in terms of something I would buy for myself to wear. (I want one in every color!).

She didn't have time to make the hoodie but she showed a "sample" on the dog which was a cute and funny solution to the problem. And it was adorable.

But there was another dress on the runway that was even simpler and lacked any style whatsoever and a major part of the look was leggings that the designer didn't make. The look was then topped off by a beret and sunglasses that just screamed 1983.

You could put together a whole group of people who were kicked off when Vincent should have been. That would be a solid group of designers!


ROBERT

The criteria for who was chosen to return wasn't even consistent. If Angela could get another chance then why not Robert who also worked on a winning team?

Perhaps Robert wouldn't have won without Kayne but it is also clear that Angela would not have won without the help of Laura and Michael.

I'd also like to point out that Robert's design for Jackie O -- for which he took so much heat -- is really not so off base as everyone seemed to think.

Click here for more.


ALISON

Alison was the viewers choice for who to bring back. She had the most controversial "auffing." There is little question that she was one of the most talented and promising of all the designers.

If they wanted to scare the bejesus out of the remaining designers they should have brought back Malan and Alison.

Perhaps the criteria could have been to bring back the two designers who clearly had the talent and skill to be in the final three but they were cut before they had a chance to really show themselves.

In both cases they were also cut instead of Vincent and Angela -- choices that were debatable if not completely wrong-headed.


NOBODY - or - AVOIDING THE SHARK

The problem with these sorts of gimmicks is that they look desperate and run the risk of being a "jumping the shark" moment. This whole season may turn out to be the "jump the shark" year, given that it is when PR moved from being different from other reality shows to being just like them : focused on annoying dysfunctional people bickering and sniping. One might even say that the decision to have someone like Vincent on the show was a shark jump in and of itself.

One shark jump rule might be that it a reality show has jumped the shark when it reaches down to the ethical dregs and casts a person who is seriously in need of medical attention for psychotic symptoms: e.g., hearing voices, manic activity that includes comments -- or worse -- that are sexually inappropriate, and possessing delusional, exaggerated and paranoidal beliefs that are profoundly and visibly incommesurate with reality.

Just a thought.

the return of the repressed

Just when we thought we were safe . . . .

they're baaack!

The worst part about bringing back Vincent and Angela was that it was boring. It added nothing of interest to the show.

Speaking of which, Vincent didn't make his usual e-z kwiky sheath dress. He made something even easier:

Can we please move on to real fashion design now?

-----------------------------------------

a commentary by
Insouciance & Apéritif
two lovely french models and kih fashion critics

- Mon Dieu! Zay late zee cahrayzee man back in?
- Zat lunatic?
- Plus zee madame de beaucoup fleurchons.
- Quelle horreur!
- I don't like zees at all.
- Mais qui. C'est une idée idiote.

NOTE: Insouciance & Apéritif highly recommend the french department, a new language resource for non-french speakers available in kih | letters.
-----------------------------------------

the biggest nightmare II

Continued comments on the Entertainment Weekly interview with Vincent:

EW: What was your favorite part of the Paris trip?
"The boat was fun. There was a cute girl with red shoes and a tattoo. I have a lovely wife, but I was getting a little bit nosy with her . . .

He was getting "nosy" with her? Isn't that what dogs do? Speaking of which, he states that the reason for his unseemly fawning over CM was because he thought she looked like Anouk Aimée. And she does:


Gee, I wonder what film icon she thought Vincent resembled?


It's uncanny, isn't it? But alas, this match was not to be. Why? Because CM, like everyone else, found his behavior creepy? According to V the problem was that:

. . . Catherine [Malandrino] was a little bit too old for me. . . .

This bit of grotesquerie comes as no surprise since we've seen that he has issues when it comes to dealing with grown-up women. They have such terrifying attributes. Like opinions.

The other one wasn't. [i.e., too old for him] We wanted to meet later for a drink — Jeffrey and I and she and her girlfriend. We invited them to our room just to have a nice bottle of champagne, but unfortunately they canceled on us."

This anecdote about meeting up with the two French models is rich. Weren't they supposed to have learned that lesson when they were 20 years old and travelling for the summer on their Eurail Pass? (What woman hasn't done this to get rid of some guy who wouldn't leave you alone?) Vincent and Jeffrey. Oh yeah. They're hot. And this was his favorite part of the Paris trip. Honestly, it's so sad it's funny.

Can you imagine what those girls were thinking? Let's try for a moment.

brûlez dans l'enfer
[go to hell]

The conversation between Insouciance et Apéritif, two lovely French models (at right) who were on the boat ride with Vincent and Jeffrey:

- Zees Americain mayn, zay are so gauche.
- D'accord. Et zee old nozee wan, ee eez, ow you zay? Ca-ray-zee?
- Mais qui. Trés Fou.
- Et thee leetle wan, zee poseur rroke stahhr?
- Ee est le azzhole, n'est-ce pas?
- Com pleet ay mon.
- Je m'ennuie.
- Ma tête est malade.
- We zay zat we weel go to zee soirée ahd zen we deetch zeez imbeciles.
- Et zen we stop mahking zee bahd français.

Note: there is a translation in the comments section for those of you who don't speak the Monty-Python dialect of French.

- bloody hell -

I know that it isn't nice to make fun of someone for being ugly -- it can't be helped -- but in this case (a) the inside and the outside match and (b) he is under the impression that he is too good looking to go out with beautiful women like CM. As if. She looks at least a decade younger but he says she's "too old" for him? That's just asking for trouble.

I'll admit that Vincent knows enough about women to know how to be vicious. Which just adds many ways that he makes my skin crawl. He knows just what to say about a woman who works in the fashion industry: she's too old. Oh boy. The gloves are off. In fact, I think it's time for a "walk off":

Let's compare their recent runway shots.

CM with Mary J Blige last spring
- vs -
V on Project Runway this summer.

Who's looking a "too old" now, paunchy?

Don't mess with smart, sexy middle-aged women. They rock. And you don't stand a chance.

"the biggest nightmare . . . "

Was [working with Angela] as horrible as you said?
"It was totally the biggest nightmare of my life."

Here are a few highlights -- with some editorial commentary -- from the Entertainment Weekly interview with Vincent:

Regarding his role in the group:

"I was more of the older guy who would help everybody. I grounded the rest of the guys and let them see reality. . . .

If you think about it, he's quite functional for someone who is that insane.

. . . I said, ''Let's all hang in there.'' . . .

Except for the time that his dry cleaning was screwed up and a producer had to convince him not to quit.

. . . I was kind of the elder statesman. I brought out a lot of camaraderie."

He's a uniter, not a divider. Of course we know that everyone could agree on one thing: that Vincent was barking mad.

[note -- I moved my discussion of the boat trip to its own entry. See Part II above.

EW: Among the designers who are left on the show, which one do you think is worthy of winning?
"Myself. I love the truth, and I'll say this: If you look at the show and you know anything about design, you can see clearly who the designer was. They are amateurs. This show is full of amateur designers. I think one was way, way above and alone on the show. But I don't do the ego thing. It's not my style. But I love the truth."

What?! He makes less sense than Lupe. (See Season 2 reunion if you don't know what I'm talking about.) Knowing about the "Dunning-Kruger Effect" may be a way of understanding what is going on here.

Regarding the judges' criticism of his work:

"When judges see something new, they get intimidated themselves. With Catherine [Malandrino] and Michael Kors, I think there was a little bit of intimidation. I might frighten other designers."

Indeed.

The statements above are amusing but I am most interested in his assertion that working with Angela was: "totally the biggest nightmare of my life." I have a few things to say about this. And that means it is time for another installment of "bloody hell" (i.e., kora's rants):

A couple of days working with someone you don't like is "the biggest nightmare" you have ever experienced?! When I first heard Vincent say this I thought, "Well, how nice for him. I guess he's led a pretty easy life." I also reasoned that he said this immediately after he worked with Angela when he was still upset so he made this crazy exaggeration. Of course it is possible that he was using it in some ironic fashion (e.g., see the title of the previous posting) but he doesn't seem to have much capacity for irony. It has been months now and he is still saying that this was his biggest nightmare and I suspect that he actually means it. And that is scary. There is something profoundly wrong with a guy who has reached the age of 50 and thinks that having to make a dress with someone who isn't being helpful enough was "totally" his biggest nightmare. This is what takes him to the brink? Get a grip. It was an annoyance. At worst it was an unpleasant experience. You didn't work well together. Your personalities didn't mix. This is not a nightmare. And I seriously doubt that Angela was the most annoying person to work with. Ahem. PR is a glorified game show. It simply lacks the depth needed to create a "worst nightmare." A bad dream, maybe. For the viewers. Or perhaps some indigestion. He always looked rather dispeptic. It probably just gave him some bad gas.

Note: Deleted parts of this entry have been reworked into another piece called "The Nightmare" (click the title to read) which has been posted in the arts section of this blog. The changes do not affect the general meaning of the entry and therefore should not invalidate any of the comments that were made prior to these changes.

our long national nightmare

is over

"non! non! non! non!"
I'd like to thank Catherine Malandrino, because I'm sure Heidi and Michael would have kept Vincent around (after all, this week's crap was just the same as every other week's crap). Thanks to her vote we have been released from our suffering.


don't let the door hit ya . . .

. . . where the good lord split ya!

it's so easy it's Simplicity

. . .

Here is the pattern for every dress Vincent has made: just 3 easy pieces.

By the way, I was very disturbed by Vincent "rubbing off" his pants last week. This from a man who "gets off" on his creations. There should be a law against that. At least they should be required to notify the neighbors.

And where was he going in that "jetsetter" outfit? It was the antithesis of jetsetter. It was clothing for someone who isn't going anywhere. Who may not even be getting out of bed.

While I'm getting ramped up on this subject I might as well let loose the dogs of my invective with my first installment of "bloody hell" (or, kora's rants):

The producers might argue: "We didn't do anything; he was already smug, dispeptic, delusional and creepy when he arrived." That may be true, but they have nourished this creature in an environment that rewards the petty, the unpleasant, and the unoriginal. His ego has grown, like a cancer, under the tender salve of Heidi's warm supporting smile, and her defense of whatever he coughs up on the runway each week. As the skilled and talented are banished, he remains, always doing what is easiest, what requires the least. But they knew that when the chose him, didn't they? You can't tell me there were no other candidates who weren't better than Vincent. That is why the spoiler rumors that he is in the final 3 don't surprise me. They must have done some market research and found out that loathing is a big audience draw: viewers prefer to watch characters who make their skin crawl. In the episode tonight he offers his critique and advice to Michael. The man now thinks he's Tim Gunn. Does Tim know about this? (I love Tim's podcasts; he clearly detests Vincent.) Vinny's self-satisfaction has been bubbling over, and now it has burst, like a cyst, and all who are exposed to this noxious pus have become infected. Symptoms include a profound sense of demoralization from the confirmation that in the world of television it takes less than 3 seasons for things to devolve towards the lowest common denominator and for the most obnoxious and least skilled and talented to come out on top. On the other hand, most programs take less than 3 episodes to get to this point. It is reality tv. This is what I deserve for getting hooked. I need to go to detox . . . .