Okay. So. My 15-month-old was up with a cold last night, all night. I am barely powered up here on maybe 45 non-consecutive minutes of sleep. So if the sense of much I am not making so good, I apologize.
Also, I do not remember signing up to recap The Apprentice. And yet here we are.
Whatever. I guess it was a fun idea? Except UGH, teams. And UGH, those shirts.
“Welcome to RuPaul’s Drag Race! I mean The Apprentice. I mean America’s Next Top Hipster. I mean Project Stanford Prison Experiment.”
It didn’t help that the show gave the Project Runway designers all of like, 20 minutes to “design” tank tops using nothing but kindergarten art supplies. But the production schedule has been huffing helium all season, so I’m not surprised. Just like we all collectively begged Top Chef to let the chefs stay in the goddamn kitchen for one solid episode instead of cooking saltines in cow patty fields in under 30 seconds week after week after week, I’m ready to officially implore ProjRun to LET MAH PEOPLE SEW.
Or at least give them more than six hours. (Which is about what these “one day” challenges actually boil down to, after trips to Mood and individual interviews and other assorted staged shit.)
Anyway, back to what actually happened on the show. Nine designers remain. Eight of which already showed collections at Fashion Week, yet they will all spend the rest of the season yammering on about how important it is to make it to the finale so they can show a collection at Fashion Week.
Blah blah team challenge go hawk shirts on the street and guilt people into giving you money for a sparkle-puffy-painted Fruit of the Loom. Somehow (“somehow”) this resulted in the teams raising HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of dollars for fabric. Blah blah again teams of three design two looks blah maximum ego drama blah.
Team Overdog raised the most money and got along just fine. (Probably because Darkest Timeline Britta is skinny and does not offend Asshole Ven’s husky sensibilities, and Fabio is just happy to be there, no “i” in team, givin’ hundred an’ ten percent, etc.) This means they created boring looks that absolutely did not look like $800 worth of fabric. There were some see-through pink shirts and camel toe and a shapeless housecoat, and they were promptly dismissed by the judges so we could get the focus back on the crazy people.
Awwww, look who likes each other now! The Great Epic Yet Mostly Inexplicable Gunnar vs. Christopher Feud has come to an end. (Twenty bucks and a glue-gunned tank top says they hate-fucked it out, or at least had a long teary late-night discussion about how it feels to show up and see someone wearing YOUR EXACT HAIR on a show where Weird Hair has officially become everybody’s primary defining characteristic.)
Anyway, congrats guys! They really did have the best and most-expensive looking looks of the night, and Sonjia’s win was well-deserved for her jacket, which I covet rather covetously. Gunny rocked it out for his team and managed to actually sew two dresses that FOR ONCE didn’t look wonky or hoopty or held together with bias tape. (Thirty bucks and a bottle of neon spray paint says he got a lot of patterning help from his teammates.) And Christopher’s coat was cool, yet suitably weird. (A sleeveless camel trench coat. For those days when your torso is freezing but your arms are just a little too hot.)
(Note to Elena, who called Christopher’s sleeveless coat an “ugly ass Snuggie:” A Snuggie is a blanket WITH SLEEVES. That’s kind of the entire selling point of a Snuggie. INSULT FAIL.)
And finally, Team Eastern European Dramaz with a side of crunchy apathy. Whatever. Dmitry railroaded everybody, basically defecting and doing his own thing. “FUCK YOU ELENA” practically oozed out of his pores with everything he said or did. Elena (in between her various “PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEE” fits of drama) railroaded Alicia by relegating her to making boring basics that would be mostly covered by her coat. Alicia stared into space and blinked uselessly a few times.
Elena’s coat actually looked better unbuttoned, shape-wise, though it did reveal the lack of a lining which makes it look automatically cheap. I can’t really muster up an opinion about anything else. Dmitry made another tight pencil-skirt dress with doo-dah detailing at the neck, and I’m just not really a Big Flappy Shawl person, so I have no idea if he made a good one or not. I feel like that fringe would be perpetually in my way, like overgrown bangs on a windy day.
And Alicia should have known she’d been coasting too long without wowing the judges. She should have fought for the chance to make one of the outerwear pieces. She should have known Elena would throw her under the bus in a white-hot minute, sisterhood be damned.
And so Alicia is auffed, pretty much like she should have been last week. But now we know that would have messed up the teams-of-three challenge that was already planned. OBVIOUS SHAM IS OBVIOUS.
(Lastly, Awkward Segue is Awkward: My deepest condolences to the lovely and talented Laura Bennett, on the passing of her husband Peter. I am so sorry for your loss, dear lady.)
About Amy Corbett Storch
