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If ever there was an indelible image of whimsy and hope, of all things good and jovial in this world, it was the one we saw last night. I am, of course, referring to a be-suited and be-helmeted Tim Gunn riding a tandem bicycle in Portland with mousy hipster Leanne. It just sends shivers of joy down my spine and a funny/sad lump to my throat. The semi-host of the fashion competition series consistently proves himself a national treasure. As for the rest of youse people on the show? Well, I'll get to you now, I guess. Our four self-satisfied semi-finalists were Jerrell, Leanne, Korto, and the nefarious Kenley as strong a collection as this weak ass season could hope to assemble for the storied finale. Of course Heidi came hopping onto the runway and trilled like a Bavarian songbird that oops! there was one final challenge (which turned out to be a lie, but I'll get to that later). Yes, all four fools had to design a wedding dress for their collection, and it would be assessed upon their return to New York in two months to determine which of the four would get the boot, sending the other three to competition in Bryant Park. Everyone was kinder pissed off by the idea, but of course they had no choice. So off they went!, enormous suitcases bumbling behind them. And off our intrepid Tim sailed, as he does every season, to visit the finalists in their natural environs. First was Korto, who was working at a studio in the middle of a snake infested wood outside Little Rock. The idea of Tim Gunn in Arkansas is just... sort of beyond. But anyway! Her collection was fun and bright and "ethnic" and Tim was happy with it. He met her charming family and friends and little be-skirted daughter. Tim talking to little kids as if they were adults is also very fun. Next up was Leanne (I think, whatever), who mucked her way back to Portland, Oregon where she lives with her cute boyfriend and her cute tandem bicycle. So she showed Timbo her collection soft, aquatic girly waves of things. It was pretty, though the wave motif was a bit literal. Tim seemed less enthused than I thought he would be, but then he and the animal took their charming velocipede adventure and they were the bestest of friends again. Then Jor-El who was in Los Angeles, his collection was garish and hideous and Tim met his nice family and Jor-El cried about his pop who is a truck driver and rarely home and it was a touching moment. But, again, the collection was urgly and poorly made for the usually tailor-savvy dude. Finally Tim trudged across the East river to some enclave of north Brooklyn where Kenley was holed up. What a cute apartment, Tim remarked. To which Kenley replied: "I know." Grr. She showed him her girlish, Katy Perry-esque collection of cutesy short poof dresses and it was just sort of... yeah, all right, figures. She also revealed that her grandmum was a 40's pinup which informs so much about her aesthetic. Then it was back to midtown and some awkward moments when everyone arrived at the swanky penthouse condo. Kenley, blasé and nasally as ever, weakly apologized for "being a bitch or whatever." The rest of 'em gamely accepted her truce and got to work on the business at hand. Which, hah, as it turned out involved another challenge. They had to make a bridesmaid dress to go with their wedding gown; those two looks would determine who went on to Bryant Park and who didn't (even though, um, everyone through Joe got to do a show there). But they all persevered and no one's was really a trainwreck and Michael Kors said Kenley's dress was the "cutest damn dress" he'd ever seen and they made Korto cry and then Jerrell was sent packin'. Honestly, it wasn't much of an episode. I'm sorry I can't be very funny about it; it's just... not much happened. It was conflict-free. The designs that we saw in full really weren't that bad. So... sigh. The really good moments came from Mr. Gunn, especially when he teared up and wished them all luck and urged them to work hard and said that he really did care about these four folks. You could tell he meant it and you just wanted to give him a big ol' hurrrg. So yeah, I feel kind of warm about this episode. The bicycle, the crying, the exciting spirit of wedding dresses and happy occasions (and sad ones too), and new chances and new beginnings, and the largeness and sprawl of our country and the loveliness and variety within it and all the different silhouettes and shapes of people who roam it, people who can sometimes, under the strangest of circumstances, tumble together and make something wonderful, and the thrill of coming to New York and the thrill of leaving New York, and bursts of creativity and passion and the bittersweet joy of what it means to be fully alive arms open, heart racing, chasing down big dreams alive. Which I guess, at its red satin core, is what the show is all about. That and the Saturn family of cars. What fine automobiles.

Join Max Silvestri as he takes you through the best moments from Tuesday night TV including House and Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency.

Catch up on The Young and the Restless with the daily recap for Tuesday, September 30, Episode #8990. Author: CBS Keywords: cbs daytime soap opera episode recaps video Added: September 30, 2008

Catch up on The Young and the Restless with the daily recap for Monday, September 29, Episode #8989. Author: CBS Keywords: cbs daytime soap opera episode recaps video Added: September 30, 2008

Am I a crazy person or was last night's episode of The Hills kind of, um, really good? I mean, the meandering reality soap, about the moaning ruins of Los Angeles youth, was still silly and staged for the most part, but there were a few moments last night when I suppressed a gasp and thought to myself "this might actually be real." It was both unsettling and thrilling, like a boring party that suddenly tips to one side and becomes drunken and weird and, yes, a good time. The first hit came in the land of Heidi and Spencer, who still bicker and mug at each other, probably so tired of one another and yet still mucking through this charade so the cameras will still circle them forever. Oh and Heidigger, Heidi's listless older sister, was also there, cooking up some kind of birthday surprise. That surprise turned out to be the Mother Montag, who tumbled through the door and immediately stirred some shit up. Like daughter like mother! Spencer who, by basically just sitting on the couch and spouting off bitchy one liners in every episode, has become the show's Sofia Petrillo mixed it up right back, and the two agreed to have a private lunch so they could hiss at each other some more. The lunch was sad and awkward, with Spencer barking and sniping on autopilot and Heidi's mom desperately trying to do... something. I don't know what. Why is this woman on the show? What's going on? Has she drank whatever laudanum-laced mojito-flavored Kool Aid that the producers feed the rest of the cast? It's just sad to see a mom, a real-life non-LA mom debasing herself like that. Well, so I thought until she had lunch with Heidi, and complained that Spencer was condescending and mean. Then she began to cry, real tears, a real terrible fear that her daughter could be slipping from her grasp, lost to this sprawling mini-mall of a city and its many pitfalls and sand traps. It made me wonder how many people are wandering around LA who have devastated parents somewhere else, parents who feel that they've lost something something huge and indescribable forever. Then, of course, there was Lauren, who was still dealing with the fallout from last week's revelation that her supposed friend Spencerina had gone out on a date with her ex, Doug the Frozen Burrito Heir. She confronted Spencerina about it, who sputtered and stuttered and told half truths and made up things about deleting him from her phone and I just put my head in my hands. What is the point of lying if you're being filmed all the time? Does she really think that producers or camera men or whoever else is constantly surrounding these people aren't going to whisper something into Lauren's ear? It's just mind boggling. Anyway, we found out that Spencerina has, in fact, continued to see Douggles. The Pinto Bean Prince confessed to his chief Broseph Brody that he wasn't all about it but man this chick was sending him crazy texts about watching movies "late night" and shit so what's a brah to do, you know? Whatevs man, my grandpaps totally invented frozen burritos, so that makes it all right and pretty fuckin' cool of me to act like a total chach all the time. It's all good, bro. It all ended, absolutely everything, with a barbecue, of course. Lauren was bemusedly pissed off that Spencerina decided to come and said some funny things to Whitney about walking the hour home, in a sheer dress down Sunset Boulevard, if she had to. All was OK, a detente if you will, until Brody decided to sidle up to Spencerina and yell at her for being a sneak or whatever and she just, again, sputtered weakly and the whole thing was just untoward. It only got worse though. Later at the party, when they'd moved inside, Spencerina was in a nearby bedroom while the others were in the living room, bellowing about the whole kerfuffle. Doug, probably about twenty Bud Light with Limes in at this point, was saying "I don't care about her, I just felt bad for her, blah blah blah" and Spenc Stephanie heard the whole thing. And, yes. This seemed genuine. She was obviously very hurt and began crying. She tried to leave secretly but Lauren caught her and comforted her, sort of, and the camera was shaky and it all felt very real. Stephanie tried to offer up more silly excuses and Lauren just stopped her dead in her tracks with one "Steph..." coupled with a withering, pitying, baleful head shake. I guess she just wanted to end the charade, end the embarrassment, end it all. I may be crazy and overanalyzing, but I thought I saw some shift in Lauren, something whirring and clicking that wasn't whirring and clicking before. Last week I fantasized that Lauren would escape to Italy, but now I think she might rescue herself in a far simpler (and yet somehow so much more complicated!) way: by taking a deep breath, putting one foot in front of the other, and just growing up. And wouldn't that be something to watch?

Ian and Moe were on Gossip Girl last night! Well, their names were at least. As the camera panned over Blair's carefully planned seating chart for her mother's Fashion Weeks show, there among other New York notable types (Tory Burch! Anna Wintour! Adam Moss! Leanne Marshall from Project Runway!) were Moe Tkacik and Ian Spiegelman, two of my very own esteemed Gawker colleagues. I'm so jealous that they got invited to a teen soap's imaginary fashion show. It's also just really fun when GG acknowledges the media that is so often acknowledging GG and the circle game continues in its weird, delightful, though admittedly incestuous way. Maybe next year I'll get to go! The clip featuring the seating chart is above, if you care to try to pause and find other names. Vanity Fair has a nice close-up, too. Read on for more recap. It's tough to know where to start on such an overstuffed (in a good way, I think) episode, so I suppose we might as well start with the grownups. Lily and Bart love each other in a brittle, Connecticut way that involves jewelry and expensive art collections that one buys to impress the other almost like a roommate would, freshman year of college, with like Sublime and Scarface posters or something (old person!) Anyway, in the end Lily found out that an old nude photograph she'd taken, a Mapplethorpe, had been confiscated by the circle-the-wagons Bart. She was upset, until he showed her the entire dossier he had on his Nordic bride. One envelope in particular, whose contents are still a secret to us, seemed to shut Lily right up. Meanwhile her daughter Miss Serena was budding into a young socialite, traipsing about town with something hilariously called Poppy Lipton. She continued to (inadvertently) woo away former queen bee Blair's bitchy posse of friends, wowing them with paparazzi photos in which she did some awkward pose that looked like enormous strawberry face minus the enormous strawberry. All of this made Blair upset, especially when Serena was invited to sit front row, with her gaggle of vague "socialites," at Blair's mom's little fashion show. Shrieeeeekkkkk!! They were supposed to watch backstage together, it's their most cherished tradition. But times change, young Blair. Time and people and places zoom away from us faster and faster as we get older, and no amount of screaming and double crossing can stop the terrible march. But it doesn't hurt to try! Yes indeed Blair was in full scheme mode, pulling an innumerable amount of stunts at her mother's show's expense. She fucked with the seating, she chased away the models, and she switched out the final dress worn poutingly by, of course, van der Woodsen. Oh, and that green Lisa Turtle cocktail party frock? Designed by Jenny. Wicked, bobble headed Jenny, who has insinuated herself into the Waldorf fashion world faster than you can say "child labor laws." The only, heh heh heh, problem is that she hasn't been going to school and Pa Humphrey is mad mad mad (because he pays a bamillion dollars for the silly school, because he is an idiot, or maybe the kids aren't all that bright, I mean, they couldn't go to Stuyvesant or any of the other good New York City public high schools? I mean, I know, the public school system is nowhere near perfect, and some high schools are probably not in great shape, but c'mon). He set up a meeting with Headmistress McCarnadoogle or whatever and Jenny told the old battle axe that she was fleeing academia with no intention of returning. Her brother, meanwhile, was being mentored by Noah Shapiro, the editor of the Paris Review. He grizzled and growled stories about real writing, and encouraged Dan a 17-year-old boy, still beholden to his parents, by law to go and do something dangerous. Have someone shoot at your head! Drink something! Take something! Zanily insert your penis into something! And who better to provide such opportunities than old Chuckles Bass (Charlie Trout, in Dan's story)? So yeah, the two boys went gallivanting around town drinking whiskey and eventually getting arrested for punching some dude out. In the jail cell Charlie Trout revealed a terrible, sad secret: his mum died while giving birth to him, which makes his dad, Bart, despise him. It was a true and bitter moment for Charles Catfish, and Dan seemed upset for him and maybe, just maybe, he seemed to be feeling those first tugging pangs, that strange chipmunky flutter, of love. Just maybe! (Chaz Sturgeon did ask him earlier if he was gay, after all.) But then Tuna Steak found out that Dan had been writing about him and so he angrily left him to rot in jail. Noah Shapiro to the rescue! Sort of! Dan parted ways with the crusty old mentor and set off to not write a story about Ma Flounder's untimely demise. Lessons about writing and integrity sort of learned in a pat kind of way. (Oh, and look. If you were missing Chace Crawford this episode, he and the other two gents are on the cover of Details this month, talking about their fleeting fame). Um, yeah. There were also tons and tons and tons of bitchy references to things like Kirsten Dunst's rehab stint, to Tinsley Mortimer (who made an all too brief cameo along with Michael Kors!), to Marc Jacobs' drug problems (cruel!), and all other manner of zingy little one liners that began, I must admit, to feel a little exhausting last night. It's just tooooo muuuchhh. I like a little winky winky sly reference here and there, but dag. They laid it on pretty thick last night. Though, what's important is that in the end Serena told Blair to grow a pair and stop being so damn insecure, Jenny enraged her father, and Dan made sweet, tender love to Chuck while the music swelled and two halves became whole. OK, that last part didn't actually happen but it would have been really funny because Dan is maybe the most tiringly earnest character on the show and Chuck is the most ridiculously devious so to see their union would be like watching Jimmy Carter get it on with George Bush. Or something. Next week it looks like we finally get our Blair/Serena catfight, in the midst of some disastrous college visits. If you look closely at that photo, you can see a desperate Blair, clinging to her old friend, her eyes shut tight against the world, wishing beyond wishing that everything could stay the same. But it can't, dear. It can't. But it's still a fight worth fighting, Blair. A fight called Life.

What ineffable mists of strangeness were those that wafted o'er The Hills last night? Ah yes, they were summoned by the fact that Lauren, the star of this muddled reality show about Angeleno fashion zombies, was away in Italy, leaving the lesser characters to rush in and fill her void. And fill it they did (metaphorically speaking, ain't nobody up in LC's void foreal). Audrina and Lo palled around, Audrina and Heidi palled around, and Spencerina went on a verboten date with Doug the Frozen Burrito Heir. Yes, Lauren zipped off to Italy for reasons unknown, leaving Audrina and Lo not the best of friends! to their own devices. Evidently they decided to: drink strawberry mojitos and tan, eat lumpch at Fred Segal, and go to Goa. So they decided to lie down, drink, and eat. That is exactly what I do with my enemies. And my friends. And myself. Perfect. Though at Goa they "ran into" Spencer and Heidi, Lauren's tiresome enemies, so Audrina chatted up Heidi and talked about way too serious stuff to be shouted at a bar and Lo looked disgruntled and the music "nnyyuhh nyyuhh nyuhhh"d like it does and we went to commercial. Oh! Oh! Before that, Audrina was all blissed out in her kitchen, chopping aimlessly at some sort of food product, when Spencerina, Spencer's angular sister, showed up for a visit. "Um... Lauren's not here" Audrina said awkwardly when Spencerina first rang. But the pointiest Pratt was there to speak deliberately with Audy. About Doug the Burrito King. Lauren's Doug the Burrito King. See they'd been hanginnnn' out and Doug asked Spencerina to dinner. So, zoms, should she go? Audrina sort of dodged giving an answer. Rather she just stared dimly off at some unknowable fixed point and issued an inaudibly high call towards the seas, hoping her dolphin friends would come rescue her. Sadly for Audrina, they did not. Because Audrina does not have the ability to talk to dolphins. But she won't believe it. No matter how many times Justin Bobby tells her. Nicely. So Spencerina took Audrina's "episode" to heart and decided to go on with her bad self and agree to the producers' romantic invitation to go on a date with ol' Douglas Rice 'n Beans. So there they were, minding they business, when a great rumbling came up throughout the restaurant and the floor opened up and out skibbled some stretched and tanned creature of the night. "It's Brody's mom," Spencerina intoned. Busted! They chatted for a while and then when the mom and her friend left, Spencerina looked glum. Glum because she knew she'd been caught. Not caught by the mom but caught by the producers. It was a setup. It had all been a trick. None of it was real. Doug didn't like her. And Evan Conners probably doesn't really want to take her to prom. He's just going to throw eggs at her and laugh and laugh and laugh. Well she'll show 'em. She'll go to art school and become famous and no one will play tricks on her anym Hi! Sorry! I, like Audrina, sometimes have episodes. But it's over now. What's important is that Lauren came back from her trip and got all the skinny, after informing us that the whole of Italia was "like a construction site." In that the men whistle a lot. Anyway, she got the details on what went down and she was not happy. Not happy that Audrina spent time with Heidi and Spencer, and especially not happy that Spence's sister may have gone a'courting with Doug the Microwave Prince. So she went to dinner with Brody and he told her about what his mom saw and Lauren looked furious and sad and I wonder just what she was thinking. I wonder, and I hope, that she thought of Italy. Of that first exhilarating bite of real gnocchi or parmigiana. Of the hum and glitter of lights and people in the Piazza Navona. Of the slow glide of the pontoon planes skimming Lake Garda. And I hope that on her trip she took time, as her bus rumbled over the shadowy hills of Umbria, to realize what a beautiful and heartbreaking world this is. Maybe, at that moment with Brody at dinner, she was deciding to send the producers a letter. And all that would be on it would be the Verdi quote "you may have the universe, if I may have Italy." And that would be that and these particular Hills would fade in the distance and a villa, and un ragazzo named Giovanni, would await her on the other side. And at least one of these people would be saved. But, somehow I doubt it.

Who knew going back to school would be so much fun? Last night's episode of bitchy teen soap Gossip Girl saw the children of the New York elite returning to their fancy pants school after a summer of lazing about Europe and the Hamptons, and a true return to form for the show's writers who were... I dunno, lazing about their couches all summer. Relationships crumbled, secrets were revealed, and, most importantly, there was drinking. There's this imagined New York that I adore, in which 16 and 17-year-olds can sidle up to the toniest bars north of 14th street and just order up any damn drink they please. Half-full martini (perfect for sexy sloshing!) for Serena? Sure! Scotch on the rocks (or whatever) for lunky Larry Lacrosse from Dalton? Absolutely. It's hysterical and I love it. I just hope the real kids don't think it works that way. Anyway, yes, there was a bar. It was the culmination of a series of bitchy miscommunications involving a dopey girl with bangs named Amanda and Serena's bitchy former posse of friends. Newly broken up, Serena and Dan were awkward on their first day of school. Then The Troubles began. Dan was seen chatting with Bangsmanda, Serena got sad, her friends got mad. Bangsmanda was invited into the crew by a be-field-hockeyed Blair, then instructed to stay away from Danny. Bangsmanda said no, dragged Dan to a bar, Gossip Girl found out, everyone was mad and sad and Dan was confused and such a boyyyyyy about it. So Serena said "eff it, let's the three of us go out" and so they did but Bangsmanda was acting the fool about Rilke and Dan was guffawing along with her so Serena a woman after my own heart decided to get wasted and hit on people. Meanwhile those two little lackeys (the black one and the vaguely Mediterranean one) decided to be wicked and pour Nair on Bangsmanda's beautiful nest of hair. It started falling out, Serena acted innocent, Dan flipped out and said that she was, at heart, a Mean Girl, and that was the end of that. Bitchy Serena was back. "From now on, everything goes through me" she said icily to Token and Jimmy the Greek. Oohhh. It was wonderful! Though, Serena's character is written so hilariously inconsistently. I think she maybe has some sort of personality disorder that will haunt her terribly in her later years, but for now it's fun! Meanwhile Chuck was scheming about something. Blair, in her yearly tradition, was interviewing the new crop of wannabe lackeys (one was a black girl whose father was the doctor for the Knicks! did anyone else think of Blair Underwood's character on Sex and the City? is he her father? no? just me? gunshot!). Chuck handed her Amanda's dossier, which Blair assessed as "Dan with boobs." Which is true, except that at the end we found out that Bangsmanda was a secret agent, working nefariously for Chuckles the Clown to get the Bitchy Serena back so Blair could be dethroned as queen bee. This is all, we assume, some convoluted way to win back Blair's pulpy heart. It was nice to see the writers laying groundwork for an extended plot line. Though, I'm sure it will be resolved next week. Blair was busy with other things for most of the episode anyway, namely learning from a snooping Vanessa that gasp! Catherine, The Last Living Civil War Widow, has been putting the skins to her stepson Lord Foppington, Blair's fey fake-British lord of a boyfriend. It was a funny moment that we probably all saw coming. Blair was teary and furious when she saw the camera photos, and told Vanessa to shut up and stay out of it. She'd take care of it. Of course Vanessa didn't fully understand Blair's technique, so she went and blabbed to the Duke, ruining the deal that Blair had arranged with Methuselah With Boobs that she would pay for Nate's dad's restitution (is that the right word?) and leave town, thus solving everything. Nate was sad with Vanessa and Vanessa was wearing brightly colored clothes and I wanted to urge her to get back to the set of Roundhouse before it disappeared for another 15 years, like Brigadoon. I suppose I can mention Jenny because there was a tiny bit with Erik last night. He was having breakfast with the family (oh! Lily's back! Kelly Rutherford is good as ever, even when paired with Singles extra Matthew Settle!) and Chuck was talking to Serena in front of him and said to Serena "you're a born queen" to which I shrieked "just like your brother!!!" and my roommate didn't think it was that funny but I laughed a lot. So yeah, there he was. So I can say that Jenny is still being tormented by Token and Jimmy the Greek. I'm curious to see what Jenny's Phoenix from the Ashes moment will be. I suspect it will be in next week's Fashion Week episode. Because, you know, Jenny does fashion. (That's her thing. Everyone needs a thing. In high school, my thing was smoking. Still is! What was your thing?) Anyyyyway, it was a great episode, full of twists and turns and intrigue and barely any Nate (though sadly, no bare Nate) and, again, the teeny bops getting drunk at Swanktown Bistro. I hope they can keep this pace up. They really seem to be hitting their stride like Bart Bass walking in flip flops on some faraway sand. Uncomfortable and looking at his feet at first, then eventually getting the hang of it. Secure in his flip flops, in his new comfortable rhythm, as he strides gaily down the beach.

Catch up on The Young and the Restless with the daily recap for Thursday, September 18, Episode #8982. Author: CBS Keywords: cbs daytime soap opera episode recaps video Added: September 19, 2008

At what point does love turn to ambivalence, and ambivalence to hate? I would suggest that, in the case of Project Runway's awful Kenley, I began to seriously cool on her last week (ambivalence!) and really just couldn't abide her anymore last night (hate). Which was funny because I actually kinda liked two of the other people I've normally disliked. The world is upside down! Project Runway is lurching ever closer to the end of its final Bravo season! Last night there were moms short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones, even ones with chicken pox and their daughters. The challenge was to give the recent college-graduate daughters a head-to-toe makeover to prepare them for the professional world. No mind was paid to the fact that this country is currently a scorched, burnt-over land where no one can get jobs, no matter how smartly they are dressed. But, no matter! On with the challenge. Korto talked a lot about her daughter and then made a coat out of a potato sack. Her girl, a 22-year-old (I think) who looked significantly older, seemed to like the look. Perhaps she is presciently planning a career as a boxcar hobo. She's just one pickle barrel away from the Complete Look! Leanne, turning very slowly into a mouse so she can meet her boyfriend, Luke from The Witches, made some sort of school marm frumpy dump jacket that covered up her Contempo Casuals Signature Collection dress. She received necessary criticism and will hopefully rally next week, even though it appears to be a hip hop challenge and Leanne couldn't be whiter if she was made of snow and drove a Volkswagen. She is my favorite to win it, so hopefully she'll bounce back. On to Suede, who made something very sad and strange and reminiscent of a time that never quite existed. Sure, you saw jackets like his with shopping mall-daring flared sleeves and tacked-on purple stripes in the pink cardboard boxes of Barbie doll fashions and on the overly-lit soundstages of shows like Saved By the Bell and California Dreams, but no one in the history of the known world has ever actually worn such a thing. Which is why it was such a wrenching bit of industrial horror techno to watch his poor model/real girl tromp on down the runway in it. Nina Garcia was appropriately tight-lipped about it. I think if she'd opened her mouth, wasps would have flown out of it and the skies would have blackened and all that would have been left would be a candle to huddle around and the vague hope for some kind of merciful god. All that said, though, he didn't go home. Which is fine, because he said some funny things this episode. Yes Suede did. And then Jerrell who, bless his skinny heart, endeared himself to me by calling himself weird and not being arrogant and designing a lovely dress for a lovely girl. He gets both points on and points off for wearing his Pan, nymph of the forest headdress on the runway and in his victory lap Elle photoshoot. For shame, Jerrell. But also: good for you Jerrell! I suspect he'll be joining Leanne in the finals. You know who won't be joining Leanne in the finals? Ol' Joe Schmo, our regulah guy friend from Deeetroit, Em Eye who would have won this competition soundly had it been fought in 1988. He was, as the acerbic and wonderful (come back any time!) guest judge Cynthia Rowley put it, completely out of touch. He made an ill-fitting stewardess' uniform that Diane Keaton wore in Baby Boom 2: Sam Shepard's Not In This One. Yes he has daughters and it is sad that he has to go back to them empty handed, but it is also good that he has daughters and that he went home to them. He still got to show at Fashion Week, so I consider it something of a victory anyway. And then. And then and then and then. Do you remember that girl you knew in college who was fashionable in this timid, darting way. Who things never seemed to go quite right for until they really did and there was something so smug and self-satisfied about her success. And then you'd see her at parties or in the dining hall and she was always talking to boys, only boys, perhaps one out-of-her-league fellow in particular, in this cloying and sad and infuriating way. She would get a little too sloppy at parties and quietly profess her sad love for this boy who probably played club lacrosse or rowed crew and had some family money and was kind but aloof to her and she would glare at any girl in a shrill passive aggressive way if she felt encroached upon. That girl was someone you felt bad for, sure, but mostly you couldn't stand her. Because she was a poor representative of Women, the kind of deliberately damaged goods (I don't mean mental imbalance I mean put-on modesty wrapped in over-confidence swathed in self-righteous anger) who made boys thinks that "chicks are crazy, man." That is Kenley. And that's all I'll say about her. So yes, we rumble on toward the finale. Everyone in last night's episode did in fact show a collection at Fashion Week last week, so they're all winners! Except for Kenley who is a miserable annoyance who laughed cackled, really at Joe's misfortune during the judging. She blows. Evs. At least she seems to be getting hers in next week's episode. OK. I'm going to stop writing now, lest I become another Hedda Lettuce.

There was a moment in last night's episode of Project Runway in which the contestants were in legendary fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg's personal fabric room, tossing very expensive fabric around, moaning and complaining and crying. And it was just so indicative of this limp season, a moany group of people rattling around more talented folks' territory. Though last night wasn't all bad! There were some lovely designs. I have nice things to say, I promise. This week's challenge began with the gang trudging into the deepest bowels of the Meatpacking District, sent off by Tim Gunn to meet a "fashion legend." Little gay rutabaga Blayne hoped it was Mary-Kate Olsen. Doesn't everyone want to marry her ("other than Tim Gunn") he wondered. No Blayne! Only you. The legend turned out to be the decidedly more legendary than MKO Diane von Furstenberg who though looking increasingly like the head witch from The Witches (it's the hair! a "CVS Halloween aisle fright wig," my costume designer friend calls it) was a welcome dash of poise and class. Her challenge to our bumbling boobs was to design an outfit within the theme of A Foreign Affair, an old-timey talkie about Marlene Dietrich being a singer and sort of a spy. So that was fun. 1940's intrigue! (Though the movie is actually a Billy Wilder comedy, not some smoky suspense film.) Mousy little Leanne took this as a cue to skulk around the design room, pretending to be a spy. Like a crazy person. I think she said "Leannimal" at one point and then I fell off the couch and did a sad, slow Three Stooges walk around the floor. She's so weird and kind of annoying! When I righted myself and brushed the dust and bottle caps off my shirt, I saw that Joe had apparently tripped balls back to the drag queen challenge, making the same damn pink thing. Korto made a nice bright frock with a strangely fitting jacket, Jerrell once again tailored well and designed awfully, Terri did her old pants and jacket soft shoe, our live blogger's predictions were correct and Kenley wept and wept and wept and wore feather epaulets (and made a nice little Chinese kaleidoscope dress), Suede's gonna do what Suede's gonna do, and then there were other people, probably. Leanne won for a very pretty dress and coat ensemble that was, gasping for air!, almost like something from one of the earlier, better seasons. (That's my nice thing.) The really important people to talk about, however, are grizzled old Rizzo the Rat(bones) Stella and the microwave-reheated pile of French fries Blayne. Stella had good intentions with her pantsuit, but then she took some Austro-Hungarian leap into the shadowy Danube with that stern-looking trapeze cape. And, you know, the pantsuit was poorly made. Plus Stella is just kind of a crazy and urban-zombie-esque. Blayne. What to say of Blayne's Gummi Bears-inspired, jodhpurs-meet-culottes blunderbuss of a "garment." One of two things is going to happen. Either Blayne will meth-scratch his Circus Peanut face off, or he'll design something so spectacularly awful and crazy and inexcusably approved-of by the judges that the universe will fold in on itself and we'll all wink out of existence. I, for one, am hoping it's the former. Anyway it doesn't matter because ol' rickety Madame Bones Stella was sent to that giant roadhouse in the sky, where she'll dance drunken rockabilly tarantellas with Ratbones, swigging ice cold homemade beer from the bottle, happy to be back where the boots scuff the floor and the toilets don't have doors. Meanwhile Blayne will hum and glow for at least another week, his strange emanations hurtled into space, warning away any would-be alien invaders. And for that, I guess, we should be thankful.

Have you ever been at a birthday party for a girl whose brother and brother's girlfriend you absolutely hate and then those two people showed up and sort of smirked and said awkward things and you felt so slighted (how dare she invite her brother to her birthday party??) that you abruptly left the party—and your camera crew—behind? Oh, right. That only happens on a show like The HIlls, which vacillates between nothing happening and very little happening. And last night, on the second episode of the MTV reality show's fourth season, just that very little happened. Spencer—enemy of Lauren and "separation of face and beard color" activists—and his dim assistant Heidi stormed the gates of his sister Spencerina's birthday party, much to the chagrin of his sworn enemy Lauren. (Spencer later opined that the two sides were like Iran and Israel in their potential for ever getting along. Pessimist! Also "if there are two ships, that's jumping ship.") Oh and his former bromancer Brody seemed real upset too as he said he just wanted to "have fun and party" rather than sit there with his long lost fried and feel sad. Spencerina tried to suppress her "look all this drama is about meeeee" gleeful grin, and her helium-filled birthday balloons bobbed in the air, occasionally bumping into one another. A metaphor for the entire show, really. Elsewhere Whitney continued to succeed at work, where she is some sort of assistant something-or-other to the terrifically scary Kelly Cutrone. That poor girl Jessica from last season, the one who couldn't seem to get anything right, was (sob!) fired, and now Whitney will live a bi-coastal life as the successor to the position. So good for Whitney and good for MTV's possible Whitney spin-off. Bad for poor Jessica—though did anyone else notice what looked like Jessica winking to Kelly after the fearsome PR maven gave her a thorough chewing out at the company dinner? Maybe she's got some sweet back-end deal set up. Or, you know, maybe she was just twitching, realizing she'd soon be fired and forgotten. Lo continues to be insanely evil, purring to Lauren on the way to the club that only the people "who matter" are getting along with their third roommate, Audrina. We're not exactly sure what her effing problem is with Audy, though it might just be the role she was cast in. "Hey Lo, you doing anything down there in Laguna? No? OK, well how's about you come on up to LA and act like a bitch. We'll give you twenty grand a week." Who would say no to that? And I don't know. Did anything else happen? Doug the Burrito Heir showed up to the party and acted beefy and Lauren ended the episode by saying that she maybe doesn't quite trust Spencerina. Because, again, who dares invite their brother to their own birthday party? Even if powerful TV people command you to do so. Just outrageous.

It's a widely known fact that drag queens are magical space fairies, sent to this Earth to rescue most events (Thursday nights out, birthday parties, brises) from gloom and boredom. So it was disheartening to witness last night a situation that was so fraught with misery and frustration that even the drag queens' faggy cosmos magicks couldn't salvage it. Of course it's Project Runway of which I sing—un-watered hanging Babylonian garden of a once great series that it is. At least the judges demonstrated their impeccable taste and kicked one of the season's chief annoyances out on his bedazzled behind. The challenge was drag queens, as introduced by a Flight of the Valkyries-costumed Chris March, the lovablest contestant from the ridiculously superior last season. There wasn't really any context to the challenge or, rather, there wasn't really any NBC/Universal marketing tie-in so that felt both refreshing and, admittedly, a bit strange. I couldn't help but feel that there was nothing timely about the whole smoosh—wasn't mainstream drag queen mania birthed and put to bed in the 90's by movies like The Birdcage and Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything IRS, Love Wesley Snipes? Whatever, it brought Chris back so that was fun, but then he didn't even get to be the guest judge! What hooey! It was nice to see RuPaul alive and well and living in Stevie Nicks' hair, at least. Design-wise, there weren't too many surprises. Jerrel, though he is so so so annoying, can make clothes well. The trouble is he has no taste, as witnessed by his strange mess of greens and blues this week (and his floppy dustbowl prom queen ensemble from the Olympics challenge.) Those brown haired girls are proficient enough, but so sleepytime. Stella fell down some stairs in Detroit in 1976 and hasn't been the same since. Suede's design was capable if uninteresting, like the designer himself. Terri's was fabulous, probably because she was the most excited about the damn dairy queens and she chose the hardest one. It was nice to finally see someone take a risk rather than lashing together some little cocktail dress. Speaking of lashing together, Keith fashioned another of his car wash fringe debacles and Blayne did something involving wings and Silly String that was so bright it made a 10-year-old girl from Tokyo blush (I know it's drag queens, but this was just urgly.) Also, Blayne continued on his Quest for Catchphrases, prancing around the design room saying that if he was a drag queen (rather than the tree burl dipped in buffalo sauce that he is now) his stage name would be Neonlicious. Because, I guess, what? Farrah Moans. There's a funny, punny drag name! Neonlicious is that new flavor of Mountain Dew you can vote for over the phone. Tranny Ferocia—or whatever Christian's chosen wrestler name was—was even cleverer. Someone put Blayne in a drawer, please. And then, pfffft, Joe won for his infantile "Ann-Margaret on The Love Boat" sailor pantsuit. For some reason, the outfit, and the way his model wore it and walked in it, made me really uncomfortable. It was like watching Shirley Temple, fifty-years-old and drunk, doing some kind of Charles Nelson Reilly pastiche. Or something. (I'd been drinking at this point.) At least Daniel went home for once again failing to complete the assigned task, choosing instead, as always, to make one of his poorly-crafted, boring frocks. No tears shed for the loss of his "high-end glamor" aesthetic or whatever it is he's peddling. So yeah, if I seem exhausted it's because I am—with drag queens, with this show, with August (and everything after.) I switched over to the Olympics once the show was done and there was competition that felt fresh and exciting and genuine. And those damn things have been around for thousands of years. Though, they didn't try to have five competitions in three years, now did they? Oh, and look. Love. Blech.

Hey guys. Your usual Project Runway reviewer Joshua David Stein is out today, because he's a dirty hipster who doesn't have cable television and was unable to watch last night's episode. So you're stuck with me and I feel a bit like Eeyore, because I have nothing good to say. Yeah, that's right. I think this season of Project Runway stinks and I'm going to tell you why. It's actually pretty simple: the designers are annoying and, compared to last season's crop, depressingly untalented. I'm mad at everyone. I'm mad at Jerell who constantly looks like he's smelling something bad. Perhaps it's his own shatteringly unfunny self. I'm mad at Suede ("wackadoodle!") who just needs to shut the damn fuck up. At least he wasn't around much of last night's episode. I'm mad at Blayne for having a meth problem that makes him scratch his face all the time. Stop it Blayne! You're going to kill yourself! Also he did not know "what" Sgt. Pepper was, which made Tim Gunn sad. And he does not need more of that. Though kudos to Blayne for his soul-crushing joke about tanning and getting the bronze medal. That made my heart hurt in the right kind of way. Moving on. I'm mad at Stella for crawling out from under her bridge or leaving the gypsy caravan long enough to audition for the show. I'm mad at buck-toothed McGee, even though she went home, for designing a uniform for the United States—FOR THE GODDAMNED OLYMPICS—that included NO RED, WHITE, OR BLUE. If that's not the most spectacularly stupid thing you've ever seen on this show, then I've missed something that you've seen. Because, damn. And Daniel... skinny little minnow that you are. Epic fail. Not epic fail? Michael Kors on your stupid, poorly made shitbox of a dress: "Where is she from? The Republic of Cocktail Land?" And later "If her event is drinking then it's a good dress." Withering, Korsy. Withering. I guess I liked a few things. Kelli's outfit was adorable, as was Kerri's little boatsider ensemble. Stella's Space Mission to Mars Olympics 2100 outfit was fun to laugh at, as was Jerell's insane (crotch and otherwise!) be-hatted mishmash that looked exactly like this: Korto shouldn't have won for her ill-fitting vest thing. The scepter should have gone to aww shucklesworth straight guy Joe, who rightly asserted that there were "too many queens" in America's gayest kitchen and later went on to design the only outfit that, ohhhh I don't know, correctly completed the challenge. I don't really know what else to say. Apolo Anton Ohno looked good, I guess. My friend Sarah insisted that his face looks like a vagina. I heartily agreed. My friend Cathy said she hated Kenley's flowers in her hair (she is going to San Francisco, one assumes). Sarah agreed and said she would like to punch her. I scrawled in my notebook: "This season blows" and then I underlined that a few times. At some point during the whole blatant NBC Olympics tie-in of a clusterfuck Korto intoned: "We're back in high school. I just want to get to college." I know exactly what you mean, love. I know exactly what you mean.

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