"It's a Mother F***ing Walk Off" - 
by EdHIll
Up until now Project Runway has been credited with being the most honest reality show out there. Granted, all reality shows have a certain element of playing to the cameras and fake drama. For instance, I don’t think there is one second of the Real World-Road Rules Gauntlet 2 that isn’t faker than any night of WWE Raw, but the beauty was always basking in the horribly amateur way they all play to the cameras (“I surcomb!�), thinking that anyone over the age of 13 believed that nonsense. The only thing real on that show is T.J.'s utmost respect and reverence for the Gauntlet. You can't fake that.
But Project Runway eschewed all those trappings and based a reality show on skill and talent winning the day, not reality-show backstabbing “villains� and phony alliances. Well, that veneer has begun to crack ever so slightly with this episode. The end results are still based on talent, but we now have this season's Wendy Pepper, i.e. the woman who will pull reality show gimmicks to get ahead. Zulema. What, pray tell, did she do this week to send everyone into a tizzy? Two words. Two magical words.
Walk Off!!
But before we get to that let’s set the stage - or the runway, to be more apt. After another (sadly metaphorical) close shave with Santino last week (Why is this one note DEE-signer still on this show?), it's truth time. "What I made for Sasha was pretty ridiculous and horrible," he tells the camera. This time he will heed the advice of the judges and try to tone it down more. We’ll see.
When they are all brought before the judges we see Heidi and her cute little bump, which we all know carries the dreaded moleman baby. This challenge, she says, is all about inspiration. And to give a talk on inspiration, as well as a contractually obligated in-show plug, we will go to Michael Kors' studio where he will give them a talk about what inspires him, and tell them all about their next challenge.
But first let's bring out the models in their sexy black slips. Zulema won the last challenge and her model was Rachel. If she decides to go with Rachel than Shannon is out. Or she can have them bring all the models out on the runway and choose a new model. This has been one of the new “twists� this year, whereas last year every week the designers got to choose a different model. Up until now this twist has backfired with every designer staying with their models from the beginning. But not now. Zulema is here to play a game. She is going to switch models. Which kinda makes sense since her model, Rachel, has a cottage cheese ass and can’t walk. When everyone realizes what she is going to do we get all sorts of stunned reactions from the DEE-signers, including the obligatory Andrae face, which I’ve seen so many times I’m starting to think it’s not so much an expression as a weird form of palsy that he can’t control. Daniel V. says it best when he tells us “It’s a mother f*$&ing walk off.�
Zulema wants the walk off to be between Danielle, Tarah and Shannon. After we see the girls strut their stuff, Zulema decides to go with Tarah, who has one of the best walks of all the models (but nothing close to the legendary coked-out Morganza from season one). Tarah was Nick's model and by the expression on Nick's face, he looks like he wants to take all his marbles and go home. He's about to cry. I haven’t seen a gay man this upset since Crash beat Brokeback Mountain for Best Ensemble Cast at the SAG awards. (There, my weekly Brokeback joke quota is fullfilled.)
Does Andrae even have any other expression? Seriously.
But first we need Michael Kors to explain this week’s challenge to us. Time for another field trip! I guess Bravo can’t afford a bus. Next season they should totally get a bus and paint it like the Partridge Family bus and we can watch them drive all over the city and even get a theme song. When Mike meets us at his studios he brings them all together and talks about inspiration. And lo and behold he has his new spring designs there to show them! What an amazing coincidence. His inspiration is Doris Duke, a tobacco heiress from the 40’s known for her floral prints, and not the dead wife of Uncle Jesse Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard, because then the whole spring line will be done in dungarees, and we all know they don’t breathe well.
Michael then has a present for each of them. It’s an Olympus Digital Camera! Yay product placement! Their job is to spend an hour walking the streets of New York taking pictures. From one of the pictures they take they are to design a dress using the picture as their inspiration. I have to admit, that is a neat idea.
As we walk the streets we get a glimpse of everyone’s pictures. Chloe takes a lot of pictures of buildings because she likes lines. Kara takes pictures of construction signs because Kara sucks. Santino finds a picture of some overlapping graffiti, which makes me fear for another Santino ruffled explosion in our future. Daniel's picture is a vase with orchids in it that was in Michael Kors' lobby. Gee, way to really phone it in, Daniel. Why not just take a picture of the Olympus Digital retail box and use that? Andrae takes a picture of a grimy puddle. His theory, he tells us, is that he likes to take things that are considered ugly and apply the “charm gun� to it, which is the only gun Andrae will most likely ever hold.
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