WARNING: Punching this image will only hurt your hand and your computer screen. But I understand if you want to punch it anyway.
Wow. Where to even START. Last week I struggled to come up with anything to say at all, and this week… Well, it’s hard to narrow it all down and not jump straight ahead to the end.
So, screw it. I’m jumping ahead to the end: Did you guys watch the “After the Runway” show? Did any of you even know that was on or happening? I actually didn’t, and missed the first 10 minutes or so because of DVR pausing and then! Suddenly! There’s more! Everybody is sitting on couches and discussing the episode, because we’ve randomly decided to start a reaction show just in time for the eleventh episode of the season.
Laura Bennett (who blogs the show at Lifetime, and who, full disclosure, I have met and hung out with several times) showed up to serve as the viewer’s surrogate and ask the designers some questions. She lobbed softballs at Bert and Kim, and then turned to Josh, all “WHAT IS THE AIR-SPEED VELOCITY OF AN UNLADEN SWALLOW?” And called him on his bad behavior and pattern of bullying, making excuses, apologizing, lather, rinse, repeat.
“I don’t do that,” he said, meekly, right before a montage rolled of him doing exactly that.
Laura kept on him, because BULLSHIT, and Josh reacted the way Josh always reacts to people questioning him: He freaked the fuck out. He claimed that Laura was bullying HIM just by asking him the question, he insulted her age and her Chanel outfit and said her blog was the meanest thing on the entire Internet and hurt his feelings and he couldn’t even read ANYTHING now because she said his breakdown over his mother did not necessarily absolve him of his horrendous behavior and then he vaguely threatened her, saying he hoped their “paths never crossed” in New York. Viktor said something about Challenges Of Being Gay In The Gay-Friendliest Industry Ever and Bert was all, “STFU, child,” and then the uber-uncomfortable host wrapped things up and thanked everyone for coming and Josh got up and stormed off before the show was even fully over.
EPIC TANTRUM IS EPIC.
(I tried to find a video of it but the video section of Lifetime’s website keep freezing and crashing. Way to win at the Internet, guys.)
It seriously overshadowed the actual episode for me. No amount of producer-mucking and twisty-turns are ever going to be as interesting as watching a famewhore drama queen lose his shit on TV.
Not that they didn’t try, for oh my lands, this was the muckiest, twistiest episode in a very, very long time.
THIS CHALLENGE REQUIRES A FLOW CHART:
BIRDS! Use one of these squawky awful things as inspiration for a dress.
BUT ALSO LOREAL MAKEUP PALETTES LOOK HOW PRETTY AND SPECIAL-EDITION-Y. Bleeeargh.
MONEY MONEY MONEY. The winner gets $20,000. Don’t fuck it up, sleep-deprived-hanging-by-a-thread people!
UH OH BUTTON BAG. You’re in teams of two! But no one gets to pick their teammate.
UH OH BUTTON BAG AGAIN. You also don’t get to pick your bird. The button bag will tell you what to be inspired by, bitches.
BUT WAIT. You’re actually not working WITH your teammate, but are competing against one another.
BUT WAIT HOLD THE PHONE. Make a second look.
BUT WAIT POLLY PUT THE KETTLE ON. Kidding! You’re only showing one look. Pick which one, now that you’ve probably simplified your original design and hustled to throw together a second design and might not necessarily be thrilled with either.
Whew. I feel like I still missed a shocking! twist! or two in there.
KIMBERLY GETS HER EDIT:
The parts of the episode that weren’t spent talking about the Loreal eyeshadow palettes (seriously, why did they all have to endure a “consultation” with Collier when they just had to re-explain what they wanted to the actual make-up people on the day of the runway show?), were spent documenting Kimberly’s emotional breakdown. Two minutes into it — long before the sad shot of the closed bathroom door with the sounds of a still-mic’ed Kim sobbing inside — I called Winner’s Edit. By the time she injured her finger on the sewing machine and started bleeding, she might as well have been wearing head-t0-toe Heidi-proof Kevlar.
After a dress that she didn’t even like very much got burned on a glue gun (LOVED how she claimed it was an “iron” on the runway instead), she whipped this dress up in three hours. There wasn’t a finished hem or seam on the thing, but the judges gave her the head-to-head win because THREE HOURS! UH-MAY-ZING.
Three hours is the new only-been-sewing-for-four-months. That’s it. I’m auditioning for the show under the premise that I have never successfully sewn anything more than the occasional button, and plan to teach myself to sew on camera, but probably not until the third or fourth challenge.
Viktor claimed Kim copied his look, because he mumbles something about half-cheating every damn week. Dude is practically becoming his own drinking again. His dress was impeccably made and moved beautifully, but the longer I stare at it the more it looks like she rolled around in something sticky with Big Bird.
JOSH LEARNS TO EDIT:
Nobody benefitted from the two-looks-to-one twist more than Josh, who happily abandoned a horrible, overworked green thing that reminded me of those potholders I used to make using a plastic loom and stretchy loops. He managed to make a really pretty draped dress…
…that he still felt compelled to tackify with extraneous frippery. (Also, what’s going on with that front hem? Why does it remind me of a pillowcase?) He didn’t get the $20,000 overall win because of it. He probably blames this harrowing experience on why he all but ripped Laura Bennett’s head off with his eyebrows on the aftershow. He’s sorry, you guys! He just…sob.
ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, AND NOW BIRDS < ANYA
Anya had an eventful little episode…despite EVERYONE (except Viktor) rallying around her last week after she lost her money, she kicked things off by refusing to lend Josh any extra fabric. “It’s a competition,” she said, and then attempted to defend this decision on the aftershow with a rambling string of nonsense about some people in the world not having maps and as such for example she didn’t want to offer tangible help but intangible was different and money was intangible or something blah blah blah.
Viktor and Josh were both very upset that Anya failed to include any type of zipper or opening in her $20,000 winning dress (which I quite liked), and so the model had to be sewn in and cut out of it. Which I kind of doubt is all that unusual even at “real” runway shows and I know isn’t against any rules of the show. If I were Viktor, I would have maybe spent my bitch-energy on the fact that her look so closely resembled his outfit from the Dress Nina Kors challenge. Two! Two copiers! Everybody do two tequila slammers and go to bed, the rest of this recap is just gonna make you angry.
ERRRGH. ARRRGH.
Has Laura sent ANYTHING good down the runway? Anything at all? Maybe just one decent thing that I forgot about in a drinking-game-fueled blackout? Because I do not like this at all. The pants are all bunchy and wrinkled and that jacket is a Laura Bennett-slash-Seth-Aaron-slash-Olivier rip-off with bird-ish motifs. I felt sure she was going home this week, and I was beginning to imagine the finals as shaping up to be Anya and Viktor duking it out for the presumed win, with Bert as the come-from-behind wild card who would wow everyone with a strong collection, and maybe they’d keep Josh around as a shocking! final four! just so he could fuck it up spectacularly with his inability to edit out ALL THE THINGS.
Bert claimed that he completely screwed up and that the judges made the right decision. And while this definitely wasn’t the best look I don’t think it was worse than Laura’s. The judges said the bodice was dated but the instant I saw it I thought armor = strong woman = Amazon = Amazon Parrot. I kinda saw what he was going for, combined with the hidden pops of color in the skirt. Which didn’t work as well as he planned, granted, but…Kim’s Top 3 look seriously just had a giant unfinished slit cut up the front with scissors and Josh’s dress was visibly coming apart at the chain detail. I thought this was more interesting than Laura’s MY JACKET IS A BIRD, YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID look.
But what do I know? I’m just a giant Internet bully, according to Josh. Fuck this, I’m storming off this recap in a huff.
NEXT WEEK: I forget. Stuff. Sewing. Shocking twists. HP LOREAL PIPERLIME NEW BALANCE MARIE CLAIRE CHAPSTICK.
About Amy Corbett Storch
