Recap: Top Design: The Curse of the Ill Will Poison Pill

One day after eleventh grade, I had to help out at my Catholic School’s Church running choir auditions because I got caught ditching PE to smoke some MJ under the bleachers. My job was basically to sign in the old ladies trying out and tell them where the bathroom was. Every single one of them asked. There was one biddy who clicked her tongue every time someone new went into the Chapel to sing. “She doesn’t even know how to hum, how can she sing?” “No one who dresses that trampy is fit to sing for the Lord!” “She’s ancient! She’ll be dead before the end of the week.” Hideous.

When it was her turn, I listened at the door. She made my mom’s screechy shower version of “Manic Mondays” sound like a skilled, professional studio recording. When she was done disemboweling Ave Maria, the choir director stood up and said, as kindly as possible, “Margaret, I appreciate your moxy, but I think it’s time you stopped coming back. I just can’t use you.” She ran out of the building sobbing, and I spent some time watching her have a mini-breakdown in the parking lot while I enjoyed a smoke in my car. Wow, detention’s fun!

This week, Top Design taught us to stick to your loud, plastic, tacky guns no matter what, don’t trust someone who tells you it’s all gonna be ok, and you can talk trash all you want, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be taken out with it. Gay Dad says tells us that if he doesn’t make it into the top 2, he’s gonna get depressed and kill himself, cuz he’s the most experienced Designer and biggest woman there. Gay Dad would kill himself over Top Design. Nellie.

Carisa and Andrea giggle and pretend that they can stand each other at the breakfast table. Carisa says “Wow. Two girls in the top 3. I did not think that was gonna happen.” Neither, apparently, did Andrea, who tells us she’s surprised Carisa’s Rent-a-Room plastic aesthetic got her so far and she hopes that the next challenge won’t be something formal, so Gay Dad can get knocked out. Dream on, sweets. Gay Dad’s in. It’s between your two pasty asses now. I feel horrible pointing this out because it’s not nice to make fun of women’s bald spots (especially when I myself am a woman with a bald spot), but someone painted her scalp for her, which would have been an awesome idea…like nine weeks ago. Now I’m staring at the black glare and hating myself for it. Thanks, Andrea. Like crow feathers glued to an eight ball.

When Gay Dad thinks about his family and all the drama going back home, he feels guilty for secretly hoping he’ll win so he can get the seed money to escape those breeders and DANCE, DAMMIT! As he walks into the PDC with Carisa and Andrea, he compares the three of them to Charlie’s Angels. And he’s Farrah! Carisa agrees. “Yes, yes you are.” LOL, Carisa!

The Sock Puppet welcomes them to the workroom by anointing them a Mega Star Design Trinity. You clever puppet! You should be the Pope! Condoms and 800 thread count sheets for everybody! He leads them to a wall of framed Elle Decor covers and asks them to choose which cover most speaks to their design sense. Andrea chooses the blandest, whitest room out of the bunch. The most flattering feature of the room is the high ceilings and enormous windows that fill the space with sun and a backdrop of trees, which will be hard to re-create in a studio warehouse. The only deviation from stick up the ass upper middle class Pottery Barn-ism is a zebra skin rug on the floor. I hope the task isn’t to recreate this room, or she’s screwed.

Gay Dad goes with the most girlie choice on the wall, saying the clean empty space is what what speaks to him, but is it a coincidence that it’s the most like a prison cell?

Carisa wants to do something she hasn’t done, so she picks the cover with the brightest fire engine red and blaring patterns. Totally unique! Besides, the zebra rug was already taken. The challenge will be to make a luxurious living room inspired by the cover they chose. Great, a tracing challenge. Next they’ll make a show about purse knockoff sweat shop workers. Todd insists that they don’t have to make an exact copy of the covers, and the twist is that this is a Luxury on a Budget challenge, which means they will only get $7,500 for materials, paint and furniture. Gay Dad bitched about $35,000, so you can imagine how he feels about this.

Since their money wouldn’t buy them a light bulb at the PDC, the three Designers will be set loose on all of LA, which can be a very tempting place. Since Andrea is the only one that knows the city, she hatches an evil plan to drop Carisa at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles and Gay Dad on the cracked-out boy hooker ridden Santa Monica Blvd. Man, she’s one competitive bitch. Carisa is immediately freaked out, as LA is a huge place and using the internet to shop isn’t helping. She looks to Andrea for some guidance, but Eight Ball stares at her screen, blatantly ignoring her. Gay Dad asks how to spell Los Angeles. Wow. He was hot for just one second there. I likes em’ dumb.

Carisa and Gay Dad take their time in their cars to sketch, while Andrea tells us she wants to win this one bad. “I want to inspire fear!” Done! What will you do with the two and half days you have left? She makes her way to an Architectural Supply store and haggles her way into some great deals. Everything will have to be painted though, which will be pretty time consuming, but she’s confident that she will win this one and she imagines Carisa and Gay Dad blindly driving around trying to find a Target. She couldn’t be more wrong, at least as far as Carisa’s concerned.

Carisa arrives at Blueprint, which is a really killer store down the street from my apartment. Whenever I’m depressed, I like to go there and lounge around on the couches, talk loudly on my cell phone, and pretend like I’m alone in my phat ass living room. It makes the sales people really nervous, but I make my room-mate really nervous too, so it feels like home. There is so much beautiful merchandise, Carisa has a hard time wrapping her brain around it. She goes for a huge white leather sectional, which is a far cry from the bright red rounded chair in the cover image, but it’s good looking. And it’s easy to clean. There’s no sign of the orange soda I spilt on it last month. She frets, but finds another great store and buys a lot for her money. From the look of the mirrors and red rug, I’m guessing she’s going with the typical Carisa style. There’s just not enough plastic furniture in the world.

Gay Dad, on the other had, seems to feel the needles Andrea is poking into his voodoo doll. He whines and cries and pouts about not having enough money until he’s on the floor holding himself and rocking back and forth muttering “I don’t want to go home!” with snot dripping out of his nose.

Back at the work room, the Puppet gives Gay Dad some bad news. His carpenter, who chopped off his hand and almost bled to death last week, will not be here for this Challenge. Instead, Dykstra will rejoin the cast as a sub. A badly edited Puppet voice over says that if Gay Dad moves on to the finals, not hot carpenter will be back. Only reason for that VO is continuity, which means Gay Dad will be in the top two. Shocker. He smiles like he heard the voice over.

Gay Dad really likes Sarah, because apparently she’s married to someone of the opposite sex, too. Oh, you kids and your hiding. The only thing he’s a little worried about is that he got a lot of input from Not Hot Carpenter and he has a feeling Tidal Tool Belt might be lacking in tasteful advice department. Why is The L Word such a fantasy?

Carisa is planning on making Taylor Hicks build a fireplace and a sectional, since she didn’t buy the one at Blueprint. It was pretty, but my butt falls asleep on it in less than five minutes, so I yell “Good call!” at the TV. She also wants faux brick paneling in the back, which sounds super tacky, but he keeps his head down and his mouth shut. Good tactic when you’re dealing with a crazy person. Worked for my Daddy. She wants to plaster over the fake brick “much like I’m going to be plastered when I get home.” Hicks, still ignoring her, doesn’t get her joke and she rolls her eyes in an “awkward!” look to the camera. LOL.

Andrea hasn’t planned a lot of construction for her room, which surprises me. The Judges love construction. She bought two huge doors to mimic the windows in the cover picture and that’s it. I hope for her sake she bought some killer furniture, and I hope for my case she bones it hard. Her carpenter is bored with her plans, and isn’t very good at hiding it. I smell trouble, and it reeks of scalp paint.

Gay Dad gets along the best with his seamstress, who’s name is Wayne. Wayne is very supportive of Gay Dad, telling him he’s gonna make it, he’s talented, and it’ll only hurt for a minute. Just bite the pillow. His project seems to be coming along well, but the dramatic music starts to swell, so we know something big’s coming. Taylor Hicks doesn’t want to make a perfect box for Carisa’s fireplace. He wants to make something at a forty five degree angle. She refuses, saying she hates it. He insists that as a carpenter and failed musician, he knows to put fire boxes at an angle and twitch your head a lot to get votes, but she reminds him that he already won his competition, now it’s her turn. She tries the head twitch, but it just makes her jowls go crazy.

The Puppet comes around to check on progress and starts with Andrea. She is determined to shake the gloomy today and put a lot of heart into her project. She’s going to start by embroidering her base boards with grey yarn and continue by painting her own artwork. Yikes. Obviously, I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but as her Carpenter screws patio doors to her wall, I’m thinkin’ not too well. The Puppet thinks it’s gonna be great! Congrats! Aw, sweet Puppet. You’re sweetness is heartwarming, but a dose of reality might be best right now. Slap the bitch, tell her to get rid of the doors and get some sun.

Next the Sock moves over to Carisa, who is bitching at Taylor and trying to change her plans at the last second. Hicks flat out tells her no, which is hilarious. The Puppet suggests she build a little model of her fireplace before she blindly starts fauxing plaster onto the life-sized one, and she looks to Taylor, who says “She’s just gonna have to trust me!” The Puppet, sensing tension, says of course everyone trusts Hicks after seeing what he could do so far! Carisa stays silent and looks at the floor. LOL.

Gay Dad has taken a gorgeous silk couch and decided to rip it apart, paint it, and re-upholster it. He has fear of and awe for Margaret Russell, since she’s the only Judge that doesn’t seem to be on shrooms, and he wants to make sure he gets the couch right, as she touches everything in the room. I agree with him about Margaret, and think that because he respects her, he will win. The woman’s got it together. He is starting to get a little worried that Dykstra’s not done with his floor, but she assures him that everything’s gonna be ok. Heard that one before.

Andrea is painting her space a bright grey, and Carisa points out that it looks exactly like the blank room they started with. Andrea cheerfully disagrees, but tells the cameras Carisa has a bad attitude and she hopes she gets kicked off first. Good luck with that, Eight Ball. Ok, am I liking Carisa more today. I don’t know if am just used to her, if everyone hating her has changed my mind, or if the mere fact that she consistently makes me laugh is what’s done it, but there you have it. Throw stones at me if you want. I’m rooting for her to win this thing. Andrea realizes with one hour to go in the second day that Carisa was right (haha) and she’s painted her room the same color she started with, so she mixes her leftover colors and comes up with brown to be less depressing. Uh, I love brown. Cuz it’s depressing. Oh, Andrea. She fans herself and jealously takes a moment to watch Carisa work before applying more pasty base to her face.

Carisa and Taylor continue their bitching. He refuses to make the bricks that she wants, and goes on and on about why he’s shaping the rounded bricks the way he is. I am getting sick of these two’s drama, but the looks she gives the camera make it all worth it.

On the morning of the third day, the remaining three diss each other to the cameras. Andrea has nothing new. Carisa’s a hack. Carisa has never seen Andrea with a finished or beautiful room at the end of the day, so she prays that she doesn’t suddenly have an epiphany and pull it out at the last second. Gay Dad says he is the only one not doing a carbon copy of the cover photo and says flat out “I wanna kick both those girl’s asses!” LOL, Gay Dad! The second they see each other, they are all back to fake n’ bake, which killed me.

Fake N’ Bake

Tensions are running higher than ever. Taylor Hicks tells Carisa to stop talking to him like a fucking four year old, and she loses it and tells him to just paint. Gay Dad hounds Dykstra about finishing, and she tells him to just leave her alone. The Puppet, of course is sweet as ever and helps GD save his hideously upholstered day bed by showing him how to make trim on the fly. Aw! The French Doors Dykstra spent all day on look like shit, which sends Gay Dad on the war path. His tune has changed today as he tells the cameras this is the first time he had to work with a carpenter that didn’t pull through for him. To be fair to Dykstra, mirrors to replace the glass on French doors would look shitty no matter who did it. Andrea quietly works through all this with the first smile she’s shown during the entire three days. “I love hearing people freak out.” Man, go back to hiding the ugly side, please! Your shittiness is even making me uncomfortable, and I’m a horrible person.

They run around like a bunch of drama queens and Gay Dad cries and threatens to smash his own head in with a hammer because this is by far the tackiest room he’s made so far, but they all finish. YAY! Time for the Wearstler Eye Binge! BOOOOOO!!! She’s shown up tonight wearing a way less dramatic ensemble than we are used to. It’s not fun, it’s just ugly. It looks like she died and they tried to embalm her with Tweety Bird. What the hell, woman? This is the first week Wearstler has not fed the people, and I’m pissed.

Carisa’s room turned out ok, but it was definitely not a departure from what she always does. Her fireplace looked like painted cardboard and her home made sectional is waaaay too big. She balances it out with a wire desk chair and a bright yellow chill chair that looks like a swatch from Wearstlers dress. Not hideous, but nothing new. She says she went with her style on purpose, and feels it is still luxurious and beautiful. “I hope they get it!” They’ve seen it nine times now, sweets. We all get it.

Andrea turned in a very dull, tan, Earthy room. If she had done this last week when her assignment was EARTH, she would be doing just fine. She said then that Earth was the hardest element she could have chosen because she doesn’t “feel it”, and here we are in a sand trap. She’s feeling calm and confident that she’s in the final two. “I just have to be!” Man. You made Carisa look like Michelangelo. Unless Gay Dad’s room is a complete disaster, she’s in trouble.

Well, his room isn’t a disaster, but he was right in saying that it’s his lamest yet. He too went with Earth tones and creams, and his work looks unfinished. His black and white artwork is pretty cool, but there’s a pointless drapery rod against the back wall. The other walls are pretty blank, he has a couple of (what look like) old wine crates as tables, and he didn’t carry out the Puppets seaming instructions very well on his day bed. You can see them sticking up all over the place. Ghetto! And he was right to be pissed at Dykstra. The mirrored French doors are busted. The whole thing comes off like both a shrinks office and a patients room: the ink blot paintings seem to represent sperm and different shaped penii, and there are silver testicles lined up on a table, which might save his ass with Jonathan’s Ginormous tie of the week. That tie loves testicles. His floor is pretty cool, which will keep him in the running. Too bad he topped it with an outdoor rug. Doi.

Gay Dad says winning or losing is a life or death matter, “literally!” I had a friend in high school who threatened to kill herself so many times that no one even thought twice when she just stopped showing up to school one day. Don’t become a Kayla Gordon, Gay Dad!

Back in the White Room, Jonathan compliments Carisa on her back wall plastering and bright sectional and chair, but there were way to many chatchkes. Kelly and Margaret agree. She needs to learn to edit herself. Guest Judge Berman loved her color palette, and with those pants I’m not surprised. When they ask her what technique she used on the back walls, she almost takes credit for them but then does the right thing and gives Taylor Hicks credit. She disses him for making them all crackly, but admits that it turned out fine. Impressive. Is she growing up?

The regular Judges like Andrea’s room for the most part. The French doors were complimented, and Jonathan loved the weaving on the base boards. guest Judge Berman, however, says her work today was flat. All the furniture was at the same level and Kelly felt that while the big ass brown couch worked, the clunky chairs should have been more delicate. Margaret points out that her room wasn’t gloomy today, which makes Andrea smile from ear to ear. I think she misread the look on Margaret’s face.

Gay Dad’s room looks nothing like his cover picture, but Kelly thinks his furniture placement is flawless. Jonathan says that he definitely showed his signature chicness, but what was missing was his signature polish. What was up with the curtain rod on the back wall? Gay Dad says that was for personal use, but Dykstra screwed it to the wall and he was so busy futzing with his day bed upholstery that he didn’t have time to hit her and yell “NO!” The ink blot pictures were supposed to be hanging from the rod on cables and there was a missing mirror over his cabinets. Guest Judge Berman thinks that the room captured the essence of the cover picture (?) and he liked the linen on the chaise (up to now referred to as the daybed, you dumdum Gay Dad), but….nope. No but. The Judges loved his work today. Again, I think his whole style is like one big dancing poo, but that’s just me.

Since there’s a lot of time left in the show and very little personality to mine, Jonathan asks the remaining Designers why they deserve to stay in the competition. He starts with Carisa. She says that she has the most to gain, which of course prompts Jonathan’s tie to remind her that this isn’t a charity. “I would say I’m fabulous!” We know you would, pottery boy. That’s why we’re not asking you. She eventually stutters out that she is the most out of the box than the other two out of a box Designers left. And besides, who else could wear the same outfit in seventy percent of the episodes and not come in smelling like rotten onions? You win!

Gay Dad says that he has been the most consistent and too much of Carisa comes out in her rooms. Snap. It makes me crazy that this prissy queen feels the need to sling arrows at someone who just avoided being negative, but at the same time I am glad he looks like an idiot. He digs the hole deeper by turning on Andrea. While she’s a good architect, she doesn’t have enough experience to completely finish a room. LOL, shit head. Didn’t we just sit through five minutes of excuses about your unfinished room? ARGH. He goes on to make fat jokes and bald references. When he gets to Kojak, the Judges drop their notes. You win!

Andrea sticks up for being an architect, saying that she feels the two fields are very closely related. Carisa does the same thing over and over and Gay Dad doesn’t take any risks. Besides, who else painted their head for this show? Fine. You win!

Alone, the Judges discuss. Jonathan gets Carisa’s youthful, “pop” voice, and he digs it. Margaret shoots her down for a win because her room isn’t elegant enough to grace the cover of Elle Decor. Ouch. So you’ll pick one of the blah bs unfinished rooms instead? I know it’s her magazine, but I hope she gets overthrown on this one. Kelly liked the room too, and she was impressed by the lit artwork. Berman, the only one with a fresh eye tonight, says that she used excellent balance, and all agreed that the back wall was fierce.

Andrea’s room was liked, and she showed that she was more architecturally adept. Jonathan pointed out the base boards, but Margaret argued that while they were pretty, they were too subtle and wouldn’t really make an impression on a magazine cover. No one seems to hate it, but no one loves it. Berman loved Gay Dad’s room, even though Margaret feels the rod around the room is retarded. Decision made, they call back in the Designers.

Gay Dad wins!!! ARRRRGGGGHHHHH. I call Domino’s. And bs. I am interested to see what they do to that room to make it look less hacky on the cover of Elle Decor. He won last week’s Metropolitan Home Challenge and this one, which puts him in two magazines and makes him a virtual shoe in for the title. Grodie. When Carisa is congratulated for making the finals, I am glad that she doesn’t stop to hug Eight Ball. Haha, witch.

Jonathan tells Carisa that the Judges all love her exuberance, but she needs to grow up. Gay Dad is classy, but needs to sizzle. And butch it up, Mary! Your kid’s watching!

Now that Andrea has lost, she turns back into the sweet, humble girl we all liked in the beginning. She says she’s just proud to have made it this far and learned so much. Aw. Sweet! Let’s hope Eight Ball can stay on that righteous path and be nicer to people as she tries to make a success of herself in the big, bad world. Ill will is nothing but a poison pill.