Project Runway Kicks Its Meth Habit and Goes to Space

In space, no one can see your seam.

Oh my God it's back. After months and months (over a year, even) of delays and setbacks and lawsuits and Harvey Weinstein standing on the deck of an old wooden battleship during a storm at sea and screaming at the heavens, Project Runway has finally returned. And sure it's lost some luster over the years--threads have frayed and come undone, collars flattened and wrinkled--but darn it if the old girl didn't clean up nicely enough last night. It was probably just its long absence making my wine-soaked heart a little fonder, but I don't care. I was glad to see crazed German inventor Heidi Klum teetering in her high heels and saying words in her funny little accent again. And there was beloved old uber-mensch Timothy Pippolotta Gunn, our wise and warm fairy godmother, looking a little uncomfortable in the glaring Los Angeles sun, but still looking happy. It was like a reunion! And then the new kids came and ruined it all.

Oh noooo, I'm just kidding. They didn't ruin it all. But the contestants this year are... drab. I'm sure a select few will emerge out of their garment bag cocoons in a few weeks' time and reveal themselves to be glorious, strange, idiosyncratic butterflies. These things do take time. But because we live in the here and now (get your head out of those clouds, dreamer), we must focus on what's in front of us. And what's in front of us is a pile of jangled nerves and strange awareness that just doesn't seem fresh. "We waited over a year for them?" was my despairing thought last night. And I guess that's not really fair to them, it's not their fault that Bravo and old Harvey waged a terrible and bloody war of attrition that killed many this past year. But still. The show is slightly overburdened by its expectations. Though I'd had my doubts and for a long time thought I wouldn't even watch this season, wouldn't let that old lover hit me and hurt me again, the minute that intro music started up I was once again sold and hooked. So I was hoping to be in love with someone. I was hoping to hate someone. I was hoping to step into the show and wear it like some fitted pants. But the show was baggy. Comfortable, but baggy.

The cast is your usual menagerie of feathery little gay creatures, over-compensatey straight dudes, and a cross-section of lady-America. There's the sassy black plus-sized designer whose name is Qristyl. Which sounds like medicine. "Honey, did you take your Qristyl? Dr. Feldstein says you really need to take it twice a day, unless you want to have that ulcer forever." There is a weird German lady named Gordon or something who lives in South Carolina. What kind of weird German ladies live in South Carolina? It's a very peculiar thing. There was some other blonde chickee from the same town as Gordon who wants you to know that even though she's blonde and from the South she's still intelligent and... um... uh... huhhh.... erm... Yeah, she trailed off and forgot what she was saying, and where she was, immediately after calling herself intelligent and it was such a sad little moment. A small child marching bravely into the woods only to become lost and scared the minute the trees swallow up the sunlight behind him and there he is, alone with all the cawing and creaking.

There's also a rube-like boy from Minnesota who has a big, smiley chip on his shoulder because he never done went to college. But he wears his cap at a sassy angle and has the square-block ruddy features of an early '90s boy-bander, so don't you worry about him. Just because he didn't go to college, don't count him out. He didn't go to college, guys. No college. No dorms. No padding to the dining hall while a hangover gives you a bear hug. No skipping classes to smoke cigarettes in a junior's off-campus apartment, talking about boys and feeling like a little adult. None of that. Just baseball caps turned up and to the left. Just driving slowly by the local campus and rolling down the window and wistfully sighing, the top 40 station playing softly on the radio, a particular March day unfolding, thin and mossy. That's all there is. A terrible story.

Speaking of terrible stories. There's a dude on the show who really, really likes to talk about his former meth addiction. Let's just say this right off the bat: kicking a drug habit is an extremely hard thing to do, especially with a drug like meth, so we should all congratulate him for doing it. Seriously, good work. Now please stop talking about it every five seconds. Personal life is personal life and work is work, and this here show, despite all the lights and fancy apartments and German robot model ladies smiling strangely at you, is work. So get to it. Eventually he did, but at first he seemed doomed. And he seemed grimly strategic. What kind of person, five seconds after they've met someone for the first time, just up and says "I had a meth addiction"? The kind of person who wants precious camera time and sympathy immunity, that's who. You don't watch five seasons of this game and not figure out how some part of it works. This dude--freighted with genuine struggle and strength as he is--has figured out that one little part. Sigh. A big sigh to that.

Anyway! The challenge! The contestants weren't asked to bring anything from home or create something from garbage or groceries as they have in early challenges of seasons past. No, instead they went up to the Emmys red carpet and were told my Timilee to go on with they bad selves and put a ring on a damn red carpet dress. Could be for Grammys, could be for Oscars, could be for the Dayton Arts Association Community Theatre Awards (at which Lisa Kritzger is a favorite to win for her stunning and almost completely memorized portrayal of Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes," which she also directed and costume designed and sorta stage managed after Gary broke his foot moving those risers). So it was a really open challenge. And a really fun challenge: Make a gown. Make something glamorous. Make something stylish and exciting. A perfect, put-it-all-on-the-table big beginning.

Too bad everyone bombed. After barreling around Mood (there's a Mood in LA! Maybe it was built just for this show, maybe it was actually a soundstage) for a while, everyone ran back to their swank headquarters at FIDM (which is, ahem, where Lauren Conrad met the moon-faced Handbags Pratt on The Hills and where Nick from season 2 teaches). Johnny, who is the fellow with the very public meth problem, immediately broke down and wept and couldn't do it, just couldn't do it, until the cameras swooped in close and Tim arrived in a plume of white mist and smoke to place his feathery hand on Johnny's knee and whispered sweet reassurances into his ear. So, Johnny got what he wanted, which was a lot of personal attention, and the producers got what they wanted, which was dramz, and Tim got what he wanted, which was to touch a meth head on a couch in Los Angeles while being filmed. Everyone wins.

While that whole scene was going down, everyone else was hard at work making really ugly, shoddy garments. Qristyl (may cause anal failure) had cut up an '80s beach umbrella and sewed it onto a California Raisin costume. This pixie type girl named Ari who was horrible and from the future had taken the honeycomb insulation out of her spacecraft and affixed it to some hotpants. There's this strange idea of a person named Malvin who is just... just about the worst in the world... who took some potato sacks and bunched them up in his hands for a while then presented the huddled mass and said, in an ethereal whisper, "Dressss." Malvin had earlier stated that there wasn't language yet to describe his art. It made me wish I'd upgraded to that Slap! OnDemand cable service where you press a button in your living room and the annoying idea of a person on the TV gets slapped. I wish someone had thought to ask Ari if in the future there is language for Mavlin's art, but I guess she was too busy having an acid alien baby pop out of her stomach and falling over dead.

A couple other characters did some embarrassing stuff too. There's a little teddybear from Savannah named Wendy or Mitchell or something who, instead of going to Mood with the others, went to a cemetery and dug up Gloria Swanson's corpse and took the muumuu she was buried in and brought it back to HQ and slapped it on his horrified model. It had a ruffly collar and was sheer and beige and was covered in dirt and dead actress bits and you half expected Tim to walk up and say "You may want to accessorize over at the Miss Havisham Cobwebby Wedding Cake Accessory Wall."

Needless to say, when it came time for the runway show the judges were none too impressed. Oh! And! There was a special guest judge on hand! Yep, two nice orderlies from Cedars-Sinai wheeled in a gurney and then helped up a thin tuft of red hair that used to be known as Lindsay Lohan. Everyone clapped sadly and Michael Kors finally realized that his skin is the color of her hair and felt embarrassed. No, I kid, I kid. Lindsay was actually smart and lucid and gave some real criticism, and, snap, she looked fantastic too. So good for her. Does this mean she'll become a movie actress again? No, probably not. But at least she has a bright future in reality show guest judging gigs! Better than we're doin'!

So all the sad models trundled down the runway and looked at their watches wishing it was time for Models of the Runway and Nina Garcia did her adorable thing where she frowns with her eyebrows and Heidi sang German nursery rhymes to herself in her head ("Die kleine Katze, die kleine Katze, oh, wie ich seinen hübschen Hut liebe..."). Everyone seemed pleased with their garments, as they always do, except Wendy/Mitchell who, like the models, was also anxiously looking at his watch. Though it wasn't become he was looking forward to Models of the Runway (no one but the models was looking forward to Models of the Runway), it was because he needed to get that dress back to Gloria's grave before sundown or else her skeletal remains would rise out of the earth and come and kill him in his sleep.

Once the judges had murmured seductively to each other about fashion and the complex plot of I Know Who Killed Me, they sent a large swath back to the couches. My favorite dress, the beige lace-topped gown made by Irina, was in the chewy middle. I was surprised. Left on the runway were: Qristyl (consult your physician), Weeping Johnny (made a bright red bed sheet), the former med student named Ra'mon-Lawrence who had made a tasteful but kind of boring dark blue Oscar dress, the proudly be-degree'd sad and degreeless Chrissy Minnesota (made a cocktail dress out of candybars), bleep-blarp spacetalk craaaaazy Ari, and Wendy/Mitchell.

As always MK had some really funny turns of phrase (Ari's geodesic silver top was "a disco soccer ball"). Nina was a bit crisper than usual, which is just fine by me (maybe she's still stinging from the whole Elle fiasco?). Heidi just keeps getting better every season. And Lindsay said she liked how things fell in the back. (After the show everyone went backstage and Lindsay fell down. Heidi pointed and shrieked "You fell in the back!" and it was wonderful). They liked Ra'mon-Lawrence's, Chrissy's, and Weepin' Sue's the best. They did not like the other three. So after dispatching Suzie Cries-a-Lot they named Chrissy the winner. And see! See?? You don't need some fancy cat skin just to make nice fashions! You don't need to know no professors or nothing! He's just fine. Just fine. Now, darling, can you pleeeeease stop talking about how you didn't go to college? No one cares! Lots of people go to college, lots of people don't! Please don't make that your "thing", your desperate attempt at camera-time attention. Please. For your sake.

Anyway. Ra'mon-Lawrence was safe, which left the bottom three shivering and shitting there in their silly fashion designer clothes. I really wished that Malvin had been up there too, but his garment was, I guess, at least well-made. They didn't like Qristyl's mash of color and bad sewing (and also that she may cause retinal bleeding). They didn't like that Wendy/Mitchell's nightgown thing was see-through or that he'd violated at least a dozen state and federal interment laws to make it. And they didn't like what was ultimately Ari's big stupid problem: all of her klee-klax blorp-boop space talk was just a sad little charade. She was just another lonely nobody on a reality show, trying to stand out. Plus it didn't help that she looked exactly like Samantha Ronson. Lindsay glared at her with fiery eyes (and fiery crotch). And that was that. The deal was done. Papers signed, rights waived. Ari the Atari was sent packing and Tim pretended to care while he was mostly revolted that he was being hugged by a Sam Ronson impressionist who was dressed in a silken hooded tunic made of space fabric and that he was doing all of this in goddamned Los Angeles. It's gonna be a long season, Timmy.

Yeah, it's gonna be long! But it's also gonna be fun. You know? It's just a fun show. And though it won't have the sparkle that earlier seasons did, it's still twice as entertaining as any other reality competition show currently on the air. And heck, my formerly TV-averse roommate walked into the living room during the judging and was immediately fascinated. "Don't delete this!" she exclaimed. "This is so interesting." She'd never seen the show before. And suddenly, though us old-timers are jaded and cynical after five thorough seasonings, there last night was a newbie thrilled and riveted.

Which means they made it work. They really did.