Project Runway 2/20/08--Reunion summary

It’s reunion time! Have you noticed that after the first couple of seasons they stopped giving everyone alcohol? And then the reunions got boring? I know these are real people and I shouldn’t want them to get trashed and make laughingstocks of themselves. But the drama is so good! As it is I think the best I can hope for is that Victorya will get offended at Heidi and Tim and walk off the set. Which would be completely justified and still awesome. (click for more)

We are teased with a tiny bit of casting footage as they introduce the reunion. It makes me sad. I missed the “Road to the Runway” show. Heidi jokes about how everyone seems calm and relaxed. They remind us that someone is the “fan favorite” and will win $10,000. Kevin says it’s weird back in the real world because they still have jobs and everything and it’s strange for people to recognize him. People even recognize Simone. Kit is getting scans of designs from 8 year olds. Elisa says people fawn over her and say that she’s awesome. Jack Black told Sweet P she was his favorite. I can see that. Everyone claps for Victorya’s show. She is really calm about it. As in, lack of excitement. Heidi makes everyone tell who they thought would show at Fashion Week, and Marion says right away that Carmon would show. Steven thought Rami would be screwed because he was draping and not cutting, and then all of a sudden you turn around and there’s a dress there. Heidi grows bored and declares she’s cutting to the chase. Christian comes out first and she makes fun of his hair. They all get to pose behind the scrim but it‘s not that exciting. I must say that I covet Jillian‘s patterned stockings. And then Tim describes (and we see a clip) about how Rami and Chris have to compete for the final spot. There is a shot of the couch, and I think that Chris has his hand on Rami’s knee and then Rami has his hand on top. Oh yes, that’s what’s going on. INTERESTING. And then they cut back and Rami is awfully snuggly. (Kmanpat: “Noo!!! He is supposed to drape over mee!!”) Chris loves his collection, as does Rami. Rami loves his own collection, I mean. I guess they haven’t had that final decision yet. As they talk Chris keeps putting his hand on Rami’s knee and they keep touching each other. I am good at watching body language, you guys. Do they live near each other? Do they hang out now or what? Because I can see Chris being all touchy-feely and always touching people but Rami is certainly not uncomfortable about it.

Heidi changes the subject so we can talk about Jack’s departure. God, I forgot how bad he looked when his face was swollen. Jack’s about to cry rewatching the footage. Sweet P is crying again. Man, everyone is crying. He says it was serious but he’s fine now. Christian says he felt close to Jack (generally when someone carries you into the room you are close to them) and he’s glad to see him now! Tim says that Victorya was upset…giant pause to cut to Victorya with her arms crossed and not speaking…maybe angry also. Victorya was upset but not angry, she says: “Upset was probably the key operative word in that situation“. She didn‘t have her arms crossed before they started talking to her. Why did Tim say she was angry? Heidi says Victorya was always uptight, and Tim agrees, and I am gratified that you can hear crickets. They just called her uptight to her face! That was rude. She is pissed. I think that Victorya falls under the category of “Only here because I signed a contract, which I am now regretting”.

Some viewer asks if Kevin is sure he’s not gay. Hee. He says he’s been hanging out with Jack a lot and going to gay bars. Tim is not entirely convinced. They have “great footage”. Why didn’t we see any of this before? I think almost all of this montage is new. He’s talking to his girlfriend about his other “girlfriends”. Jack teases him that he’ll be speaking gay by the time he leaves. Jack tells Kevin that he’s “always nude” and “doesn’t like clothes.“ Why the hell don’t I know any hot men who don’t like clothes? (Kmanpat: “For real!“) Heidi calls his menswear design “fruity” and lets him know that she wouldn‘t let her husband wear that. Kevin responds in confessional that if he had been making it for Seal it would have been fruitier. Hee. When Kevin complains about sleeping alone in his bed someone offers to sleep with him. I think it was Steven. Tim says if being on the show didn’t turn him gay nothing will.

Another viewer asks the designers who will win “Fan Favorite”. Everyone says “Chris”. Alrighty then. Now for some reason people ask if it’s as grueling as it seems to be on TV. Uh, duh. Christian says that they work hard and eat Chinese food a lot and so some people have gas. Victorya looks pissed. Everyone lost weight and so forth. Elisa makes a joke about where women lose weight from, which is their chest and hips. True. Dead silence. These people are on tranquilizers or something. Either that or they don’t even feel the need to pretend to laugh politely. Ricky and Carmen are pretty much rolling their eyes and waiting for her to shut up. Seriously people. Pretend you like her. You don’t have to talk to her after this is over. I like Elisa, she is Daniel Franco crazy but not Vincent crazy.

Now is the time for the Elisa montage to show how crazy she is. She talks about spit marking her fabric. There is some random babbling about sewing and making piñatas? She jokes about being an alien. Kevin describes her as Mork. Hee. There are fun noises. Chris tells her to keep her brain waves off him. Hee. I love Elisa. Then she insists that when she spits on things there’s a blessing that goes along with it. There’s a short conversation about how she writes backwards, but then Heidi cuts her off with the next question. What was your favorite challenge? Kevin right away says the weight loss challenge, because it was so inspiring. Christian of course loves challenges he won.

Ricky crying montage! He looks pissed off. Oh, you knew it was coming. You can hear a producer prompting him in an interview but he has to get hold of himself first. At the reunion he’s rolling his eyes. Tellingly in an interview he accuses the producers of pushing his buttons. However the montage does let us get a good overview of his hats. He didn’t think he was going to cry “like a woman“. Carmon kicks him. He doesn’t care about what people think. Rami stands up for him too, saying he sees beauty in being honest in your emotions. (Me: “And now he sounds like our priest, and now he’s all yours.” Kmanpat: “WOO!”) Tim says that he was so thrilled when Ricky won, but he even turned that into a crying jag. I think one other person laughs. Tim’s kind of a bitch tonight.

Oh, drama time. Someone asks if anyone is pissed about anything people said and Carmen has been waiting for this. After she was gone, she was so upset that Sweet P was like, well at least I didn’t go, and Kit was all, her outfit would have sucked anyways even if she had finished. Kit comes to hug her, and Jillian is very genuine about missing her and getting thrown off because she went so soon. Jack says he knew how much stress they were all under so he just shrugged it off. That’s it? Damn promo monkeys, making me think that there was an awesome argument coming.

Chris montage! Heidi makes fun of his laugh first though. Heidi and Tim are both bitches tonight. It begins with this scene of Rami and Chris in the sewing room where Chris is saying “Even mothers have to love ugly children,” in a deadpan tone. When Rami agrees he laughs and says, “Not my mother.” Several people imitate him. Apparently it was fun hyena laughing for a while but now it annoys everyone. Heidi commands him to laugh them into the break and Rami and Kevin tickle him until he does.

Nina and Kors show up. I guess Bravo was too cheap to pay them for the whole hour. Apparently out of all the challenges in all 4 seasons, the WWE Divas challenge caused them all to lose it. Kors starts it, and he can hardly breathe, and then everyone else laughs, and they have to stop the show so that everyone can look disapproving when the models come out. But each model is doing some silly thing just before they leave and it’s setting him off. He says this is the first time he ever cracked up. Then Tim says they tapped into their own personal divas. Oh really? Remember how everyone had diva names? OK, remember how they showed us that Sweet P, Chris, and Christian had diva names? Everyone else did too, so we get a montage of everyone‘s names (including the first three) along with cheap-ass “Blind Date“ level special effects. Jillian’s name is “Tuffie” and she shows us an excellent pirouette that she uses to kick a poor dress form. Ha, they dug up the photos of Chris as Wonder Woman. Rami’s signature move involves draping fabric. Sigh. His name is “Ramilicious” (Kmanpat: “I’ll say!”) and…something about kicking people and pinning them to the ground? (Kmanpat: “I’ll say!”) Ricky is the “Mexican Jumping Bean”. Tim’s diva name is “Polysyllabicus”. HAHAHA oh man that was great. Christian thinks Heidi was the toughest judge this season. Nina’s hair is an odd light shade today. The judges say that this season the designers were so good they had to be extra tough, or something. Someone calls Kors out on being “a top American designer” but always wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. He says it’s easy to get ready in the morning, and we’d die if we saw pictures of him at 18 and OH MY GOD Bravo found one. He has long curly blonde hair and aviator sunglasses and he is not orange. And then there is an even BETTER one where his hair is even longer, like, down to his shoulders, and he certainly looks older than 18 at this point. He’s talking about leg warmers and shawls, or something, I’m not listening. HAHAHAHAHAHAA. He loved to be “young and ridiculous in fashion” but now he has his few staples that will take him anywhere.

No one bothered to ask Heidi a question, but they still have a montage anyways. Jillian does the best impression of Heidi I’ve ever seen. Lots of shots of her critiquing stuff. She says that she’s been dangling a sausage in front of them and who is going to eat it?!?! Elisa and Kit crack up. Classic.

Tim asks the judges which designer had the worst single design. Ouch. Kors said that the hardest challenge was the menswear. Everyone talks about the one with no shirt and Carmen is like “Thank you, Heidi” and she rolls her eyes. Are you still pissed about that? No one said your name, I had forgotten who had done that until you rolled your eyes. Their favorite was the avant-garde challenge, with the great avant-garde looks and the real-world aspect of it too. Carmen is still wiping her eyes from how one person mentioned how her menswear outfit had no shirt. Sweet P hated her diva challenge outfit. No one really argues. Someone makes Tim admit that he did not agree with the judges. Awkward! He says that the judges don’t know what he thinks, they don’t know what happens in the workroom. Nina and Kors don’t want to know about the workroom anyways. Now the designers are allowed to ask the judges questions. All during the reunion there are these random shots of people, that I guess are supposed to be reaction shots, but everyone looks pissed. Does no one want to be here? Marion does some avant-garde and he didn’t get to do that so he would have liked to stay longer.

Someone directly attacks the judges and says that Kevin shouldn’t have gone home in the prom challenge. They reiterate how sucky it was, and he’s like, Ha ha, not funny! OK shut up! Next question! Only laughing the whole time, Carmen. He wanted to squeak by. But even then he knew that Christian had more in him and wanted to see what else he could do. And Christian knew he might have gone home. He trashes his model again, which, I deal with people like her everyday and they can be dealt with. Shush.

Tim pretends that their character is being judged. Victorya says what they do on the show, or who they are, isn’t the same as the real world. There are a bunch of people in a pressure cooker, asked to do crazy things.

Fan favorite time! It’s…Christian? Jigga-wha? He’s even surprised. Everyone was looking at Chris. Mychael Knight is back to deliver the check. Holy crap Christian is so short. He is buying drinks for all. I’m still wondering, who was voting for Christian? Mychael is making perfume. Fun! Christian montage. Jillian is proving to have the best impressions of people. She is hilarious, why did they only pick the monotone sections? Oh, right, Christian. Something about the moneymaker being the face? Then he says “fierce” about 18 million times. Jillian seems about to kill him with some pinking shears. I’m with you, sister.

Prediction time! Of course there is at least one person who thinks each of the designers left will win. Well, except for Chris. Jack and Elisa are the only ones who think he might pull it off. The best quote? A toss up between Elisa saying that if she herself would wear Jillian’s clothes then that’s saying something, and Carmen saying that “America” is more ready for Rami, which is so ridiculous because that would mean America was ready for Jay and Jeffrey.

Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reunion show, for any reality show, where so many people were still pissed off about stuff that happened months ago, still hated the same people they hated months ago, and obviously didn’t want to be there at all.

Next week: home visits, Tim freaks out at both Rami and Chris, Jillian is sick of Christian, the final challenge between Chris and Rami. I would hope for a Wendy/Karasaun/Jay sized smack down between Jillian and Christian, but I’m sure it won’t happen.