Recap: Top Design: Nice Guys Finish Fast

Calvin wasn’t only gorgeous on the outside, he was the sweetest human being I had ever met. I don’t usually trust nice people. They’re either feeling guilty about something and trying to hide it with thank you cards and kind nods to old people in the street or they’re crazy and they want someone to sit there and listen to them ramble on. Calvin donated his time to actual. Charities. He was an enigma. I waited through seven dates filled with stories of helping out crack babies in South Central and global warming before I went for the full on pass at him.

10:32 We make out. Fireworks. 10:37 He falls asleep with a huge smile on his face and I hightail it out of there with a doggie bag of the dinner he made. Great cook. I felt awful listening to him cry on my voicemail all the next week. Too bad he didn’t spend less time being so sweet to everyone and more time learning to rumble with the big boys. He could have been the one.

This week, Top Design taught us luxury is painful, don’t get cocky til’ you rocky, and nice guys finish fast. Only three weeks left, and the four remaining Designers are ancy. Gay Dad tells Goil that he’s feeling like doing something crazy this week! Well you already married some poor woman and made a confused baby. I think you should calm down on the crazy. Andrea is flat out drunk with pride. She’s tired, but that makes her want to fight harder. She says she’s competitive, but no one sees that side of her. Oh, we see it. Your ambition glares brighter than your scalp. Goil has wiped the mascara tears off his face and bucked up. He is grateful he was given another chance after being in the bottom three last week and is determined to do better. And not get crushed by things.

Never gets old.

The Designers meet the puppet at the Viceroy Hotel first thing in the morning, and Gay Dad freaks out. He cut pictures of the hotel’s interior out of a magazine and put them up in his room next to pictures of the Rock and Justin Timberlake, so he’s thrilled that he actually gets to see the lobby in person. The hotel was designed by Kelly Wearstler, and it’s hot. I give her a free pass to dress like a complete asshole for the rest of the season. Like she’s waiting for a pass from me.

Today’s Guest Judge is Linda O’Keefe, the design and architecture director of Metropolitan Home Magazine. YIKES. I can’t help but wonder what she would look like if plastic surgery had never invented.

Today’s Challenge is to design a high-end hotel suite. Felicia must be kicking herself and scrunching up her uneven brows right now. Tilt. Goil has never designed a hotel room, but he says he’s been in a few of them. I’ll bet you have, you little tiger. Each Designer chooses a card with one of the Elements listed on it. Andrea picks Earth, and she’s not happy. “Earth isn’t a word I really even respond to.” Oooh, goody. Andrea’s stressed and tired. Will today be the day she comes out of the closet as a Design Uber-Bitch? I pray long and hard. Come on, Reality God. Feed the people. Oh yeah and world peace and blah blah blah.

Goil threatens to go with a disco theme when he chooses Fire, but then he laughed his maniacal giggle. He was just kidding! Silly little Goil. Carisa gets Air and Gay Dad is psyched to pick Water. He’s a Scorpio and feels like it was meant to be. Gay Dad is in an extraordinarily good mood today. Is he finally putting the hot carpenter to use?

Andrea and Goil are worried. Andrea goes over every different shade of brown ever invented and tries to not throw up while Goil tries to grasp Fire. When they start talking in the workroom, the Designers realize that they have all designed pretty much the exact same layout, down to the lamps. Gay Dad refuses to change, so the other three start re-sketching. Goil starts whining. He has to do Fire and he has to re-sketch? No fair! Wipe your nose, Mary. Gay Dad has decided to stop pretending that he’s a decent person and divas out, telling us that everyone here has their own individual style, but his happens to be the best. AARRGGGHHH. Hating. Him. Please let Gay Dad bone it today! PLEASE!

Shopping seems like it would be easy with a budget of 30,000 smacks, but at the PDC that can buy you about 3 items. Sir Elton John doesn’t throw his Oscar party at Target, people. Goil is flying blind today, and it’s sad that a guy who loves hot pink belts doesn’t know how to elicit flames. He chooses as many different orange and red fabrics as he can find, and even if he doesn’t know what the hell he’s gonna do with any of them, he’s glad he has a hodge podge to choose from. Gay Dad tries a nonsensical haggle with one of the clerks. “If these lamps were silver, I’d snap them up.” She nods her head like she is talking to an idiotic child. “I knoooow!” He stares at her waiting for a better answer, like he really expects her to turn them silver. Dickwad.

Back at the workroom, the carpenters come in for their instructions and…no hot carpenters. We’re left with Taylor Hicks and his rag tag group of competent, not hot help. Yuck. Bravo, you are seriously pissing me off. Carisa’s planning on building big screens as dividers in her room, and Andrea’s trying to explain to her carpenter that she wants to make something provocative with a bunch of pieces of trim. I am excited to see how that turns out, cuz it sounds pretty busted. Trim is generally not provocative. Gay Dad is speaking gibberish to his Carpenter. “A lot of baseboards and profiles…are you scared?” We all are, dude. Gay Dad has made a whole bunch of crap in my eyes, but the Judges always seem to love his bony ass, so let’s just move on.

Goil tells Dykstra that he wants “a gold, glittery curtain thing…that moves.” Uh-oh. We’ve already seen his fabrics and they’re pretty gnarly. Now he’s adding glitter? I have money on you, Goil. Don’t fuck me. Dykstra nods and says “ok!” which is what she always says, and fear creeps up my spine. If she was a true confidant, she would snap that rubber band on his wrist and tell him to come back to Earth and drop the glitter.

Back at the loft Gay Dad and Carisa confer with each other about their designs. Every time Goil tries to get in the conversation, they just keep talking and pretend that he’s not there. Aaawwwww! Goil’s feelings are hurt. He says that it’s not fair that he’s in the final four too and no one perceives him as any kind of a threat, but it’s hard to see you as a threat when you’re always crying and telling everyone how you can’t do anything. Butch it up, girl. No one fears a ninny. Well, almost no one.

Andrea tells them that she is gonna do something modern and not go too far with her Earth theme. “I’m not gonna make wood chuck pillows and put an axe in the middle of the room!” They said Earth, not a hamster cage massacre. She tells us that Gay Dad and Carisa hit the lottery with their Water and Sky assignments, and grouses on about getting a shitty assignment. Oh, wah. She gets up at four in the morning and starts sketching, saying she loves hotel design and is afraid that worrying so much is going to ruin her project. What’s her plan of action? “I hope somebody tanks.” Spoken like a true professional. Please, Goil, figure it out and stomp these bitches!

The next day in their workspace, they lay out their plans for the carpenters. Goil tries to explain to Dykstra that he wants his Fire to represent the fire of birth and creation. Umkay. I don’t know about you, but when I go to a fancy hotel the last thing I want to stew in is the pain of childbirth. He is representing this idea with horizontal stripes, I guess because so many straight people give birth. It’s a stretch, but at least he’s not crying. Yet.

Carisa and Taylor Hicks, meanwhile, are bitching at each other and having a whole lot of not fun. He is visibly over her, and she won’t stop nagging him about every little thing. She drolly tells us “Taylor Hicks does not play well with others.” I take my fifth shot and scream at her “That’s called KARMA, heifer!”

I usually fast forward through the commercials, but I couldn’t find the remote. This ad for Top Design comes on and tells us that we can get behind the scenes text messages from all the axed designers. Ooooh, sign me up. I’m already missing Judge Wiggum Kid.

The next day, no one’s any nicer. Goil is still confused about what the hell he’s doing, Gay Dad is dissing Andrea’s suite behind her back and Carisa is dissing his to his face. She says his baby blue and white looks like a baby room. LOL, Carisa. She isn’t really one to talk, as she has gone back to variations of the blues that got her in trouble last week. Gay Dad tells Andrea what Carisa said about his room, which for whatever reason makes her mad. She tells us that she is surprised that Carisa is even in the final four because her designs are muted and simplistic. She says the word muted to Carisa, and it brings out the insecure chunky girl who talks really loud and repeats the same thing over and over again to anyone who will listen. “I LIKE my room! I really LIKE it!”

As the projects start pulling together, Goil is lookin’ screwed. He brings in his curtain of rectangular metal pieces and I squeal and laugh. Sorry, Goil but come on. He asks Dykstra if she likes it and she says “Well…it’s definitely unique!” Even she thinks it’s tacky, and she wears a tool belt the size of El Paso. Carisa continues to nitpick Taylor Hicks, who has decided the best thing to do is to just put his head down and pretend she’s not there. Kind of like how we all dealt with his album. She follows behind him as he paints her huge wooden room dividers and says “These look like crap. No offense.” None taken, Rosie on a Bus.

There is an extra day to work on this Challenge, which is a lucky thing for the Designers, because none of them are even close to finishing. Goil is running around in circles with red things, freaking out. He has done another wood floor that looks exactly the same as every floor he’s done in every other challenge, but hey, it’s worked so far. The orange and red, not so much. Andrea isn’t having much better luck and she knows it. She says her room looks like a horrible Smurf ice cream bar you would buy at an amusement park. Well, at least she has a chance at Wearstler’s vote. You know that woman’s hungry as hell.

The Sock puppet makes the rounds to check up on the Designer’s progress. Gay Dad, there’s nothing in your room! He explains that he was going for clarity. It looks blank to me, but the Judges will call him brilliant. I feel it.

Carisa’s room is coming together much better. Her screens fit over the blue rectangles she has painted on the back wall, and Todd’s impressed by her modern approach. He doesn’t have much to say to Goil, and I don’t blame him. That room looks like a bowling alley in Hell. He just nods, smiles, and says “Good Luck!” He’s a sock puppet, not the Miracle Worker. And then the BIG DRAMA happens! The chop saw, the screaming Goil! Blood everywhere!!!! You know that shit was a lie, right? Gay Dad’s carpenter hurt his finger and was rushed off to the “hospital”. I put hospital in quotes because of Bravo’s horrible health care reputation. Remember when Mikey from Top Chef was sent to a tiny back room dentist in the ghetto of LA for dental surgery? I imagine the poor carpenter getting his finger staple gunned back on in the Men’s Loft. Poor not hot carpenter!!! Cut to the Designers being fed Panda Express. Come on, Bravo. Chip in some of your own money and at least feed your people.

Closeup on the bloody chop saw. Puhleeze. I’ve bled harder after a single line. Gay Dad says he feels guilty about his carpenter, but he’s smiling from ear to ear. Probably because, just in case the Judges agree with Carisa’s assessment of his room, he can point to the not hot not shirtless dude without a digit. Asshole. Too bad, cuz the carpenter comes back with a stitched up thumb and a pail full of enthusiasm. Gay Dad looks momentarily shocked. “Are you sure you’re ready to come back?” LOL, Gay Dad. The Carpenter says he just pushed his thumb into the blade, no biggie. “You’ll still have me back, won’t you?” Come on Gay Dad, don’t discriminate against the handicapped. Well except for blind people. Suckas! “Would I want anyone else?” I don’t know, would you?

And now it’s time for the Frenzied Stampede of the Girls montage! The sock puppet comes in and shoots off his little cap gun. “Last fifteen minutes! Yay!” Carisa bosses Taylor Hicks around and rolls her eyes a lot while Andrea hurls brown at anything not depressing enough yet. Goil furiously staples as many different hideous red fabrics he can to padded panels for his walls. “We need to dress the room!” He’s feeling the pressure very dramatically, telling us how he’s pushed. And pulled! I could watch little Jan Brady push and pull and struggle and fret all day long. His room is a disaster area, from the looks of it. Dykstra’s lucky she’s not assigned to Gay Dad. He’d cut her leg off if that mess was his room. The other designers rush around throwing blankets on couches and tilting lamp shades like they were disarming nuclear missiles while intense ER music pumps through my apartment. Run, Goil! Run! Dykstra puts together the bed. Very, very slowly. Move it, Billie Jean King. Five minutes left! “Glade! Glade!” Did I just hear right? Sure enough, Goil was sending Dykstra after Glade Scented Candles. Cuz that smell’s fancy. Throw in papazan chair and unicorn mirror and you’ll have yourself one classy hotel room, kid. TIME!

Gay Dad is confident. Andrea, not so much. She says that she was trying to make a room that the Judges wouldn’t call depressed (again) and instead she was standing in the middle of an unfinished mess. (sad horns) Now’s about the time to take out your little notebook to write critiques on your peers, girl.

Yay White Room! The puppet welcomes the Designers and reminds them that whoever wins this week’s challenge gets a spread in Metropolitan Home Magazine and an interview with Jonathan’s ginormous tie of the day.

Wearstler looks like a hooker that’s been chased for blocks after being roughed up by a psychotic John in an eighties horror flick. I was a little sad she didn’t break off one of her heels to make the outfit complete, but I’ll take what I can get. The Judges Panel in general looks more ghoulish and campy than usual. Nice work, Panel. I think the addition of Vampire Meemaw has completed you! Give her a contract!

Carisa’s room came out really well this week. Whatever negative vibes she had goin on with Taylor Hicks didn’t show in her Air finished product. Her screens and different shades of blue contrasted really nicely with the fresh white over her curtained wall, couch, and bed. I thought the sixties blue and green pattern she chose for pillows would look tacky, but it ended up bringing certain areas to life. Definitely the best work out of this girl so far. Of course she just can’t keep her mouth shut. She nods to Kelly and says that she loves 60′s mod, and Wearstler gives her the brown nose signal.

Carisa tells us she’s in love with her suite and wants to move into it. She’s confident she has a chance of winning this whole thing and if she gets eliminated tonight she will be “shock and awed”. Ah, humility. Carisa, I’m trying to like you, but you’re making it extremely difficult. When she winks at the exiting Judges, I throw an empty Diet Coke can at the TV.

Goil starts off with the sweet wide eyed kid routine, and I hope for his sake he can keep it going and not cry while the Judges walk through his suite. He sells the shit out of it. He wasn’t originally gonna use red, because fire is more the color of flames. He lights a match to prove his point and Kelly jumps back. A small blaze within a block of her hair could create an inferno. Crisis averted, he goes on to explain that he ended up using red to represent passion, but bangin’ someone on that bed with the metal shard curtain headboard sounds dangerous to me, and time will tell if the Judges bought it.

Goil drops the facade in alone time and says this is the first time he hasn’t finished a room. Aw. But honestly, what else could have been added to that room? More red? By not finishing, you stopped the bleeding. Be grateful and don’t cry. Yet.

Andrea tells the Judges that she was going for more of a fresh, fun look today, but then she got morbidly depressed and spilled brown pattern everywhere instead. Someone got that room in shape after time was called, but I’m glad because I would rather see it finished even though it’s technically cheating. All I can really say is cream, brown, and really bad pattern. She built a tiled bench along the wall with a patch of grass at the end. For guests who bring pets. Andrea looks like she is about to attend a funeral, and this would be the perfect suite to mourn in. I am surprised, because she usually has it more together than this.

Gay Dad’s room is classy and light. He did a great job, which makes me mad because I wanted to see him throw his carpenter to the wolves. Aw. Betrayal averted. Boo! His suite is pretty, but it’s not very original. He says it would f in rock to be in the final three, and he lets the naked cockiness show on his face. Wow, your inner a hole is a second chin.

Back in the White Room, Jonathan’s tie compliments Carisa’s bright, fun Air Suite and she seconds that. She thinks she is amazingly wonderful and wishes that she could sleep in her suite tonight. Ugh. The Judges are very sweet to Goil. They like that he made a room that was actually functional, but the metal curtains and the red padded wall were a bit much. Vampire Meemaw asks him if he considered his suite luxury, and he says that he has a different idea of luxury. This is the second challenge he has used that line, and feel bad for anyone who books a room in Thai town. Only ten people sharing a room? How luxurious! Mmmmmm. Cold concrete! Margaret continues the soothing, saying he had the most difficult element as fire and hotel suites are words that should never ever be used in the same sentence. Well, maybe just this once. She, too, thinks that his interpretation is too literal. A comfortable bed would have taken him a lot further than the ream of hideous fabric. Poor Goil. He makes it through another segment without breaking down, so I think he should win.

Andrea’s brown and white room wasn’t too well received. You’re assignment was Earth, why wouldn’t you use green? She says she was scared of green, which was awesome because Jonathan’s jacket helps make her point. There are some truly scary shades of that color. Kelly liked her four poster bed, but what was up with the tiled bench with grass plots? Andrea doesn’t try to stick up for the doggie rest areas. Thanks for that small favor.

Gay Dad’s room was popular all around. The mirrored drawers weren’t practical for long term hotel use, but besides his too dark rug color, the Ghoul Panel has trouble coming up with problems to point out, so they move on to public backstabbing! YAY! Jonathan asks the Designers who they are most afraid of in the competition. Carisa says Gay Dad, because he’s the most competitive. Gay Dad snaps and rolls his head. She meant that he’s competitive in a girly, funny way. Oh, ok. Andrea also names Gay Dad, but she also avoids complimenting his design skills, saying she worries about his “quiet confidence”. And that double chin can be a total bitch during work hours. Gay Dad says he doesn’t think anyone there can stand in his way. EW. He could have lost control of his bowels right there in the White Room and I would have felt less disgusted than I do right now. Down with Gay Dad!

Goil says that he is afraid of all of them (groan) but he thinks Andrea is the most talented, even though she made him feel like Jan Brady. Aw! Forgiveness! That’s WJWD, people. But don’t forget, he also got crucified.

In alone time, the Judges all agree that Matt and Carisa’s rooms are the top two, but it’s hard to tell which way they’ll sway. Both of them are assholes, so bringing personality into it won’t help. They all love Goil, but no one could stick up for his room. Margaret says “He really really tried!” Andrea was depressing again, and no one was too thrilled with her either. PLEASE get rid of her. PLEASE!!!!! At least keep one sweetie pie on this show! And come on, who doesn’t want to see Goil get crushed by his materials through at least one more episode?

Vampire Meemaw names Gay Dad the winner. Jonathan calls his work fabulous and says the Judges are going to have a slumber party there later. Now that would be an entertaining hour of TV. I’d pay to see Margaret get her underwear frozen s she slept while Vampire Meemaw painted a moustache on Wearstler and Jonathan cuddled with his tie. Carisa came in second, which leaves Andrea and Goil in the bottom two. No big surprise there. The Ghoul Panel axes Goil. Noooooo!!!!!!!! Argh. This is the second Bravo reality competition in a row where we are left with a solid group of completely unlikable people. It’s gonna be a rough last two episodes. I am taking Stoli donations.

Goil finally let’s his inner Jan out and cries in his last confessional. He feels like he’s the only one in the competition that has put so much of himself into every challenge. I dunno, Carisa uses a lot of plastic, Andrea’s work is sad, and Gay Dad’s room is flamingly homosexual, but you are definitely the nicest person here, kid, and you finished way too fast. Love you, Goil!

Next week, the remaining Designers ream each other out and Jonathan says “I would love to hear about one solid relationship that you have!” Oooh, Carisa finally gets her due!!