I don’t have cable TV, so I’m the target audience for TV on DVD. I’m currently making my way through Project Runway and loving the hell out of it. I’m halfway through Season Three and don’t know who won, so please don’t say anything about the specific outcome of that season without spoiler-boxing it. Rather than the specifics of this season or that, though, I just want to give a shout-out to a really well done reality competition. The producers do a wonderful job of casting it, finding “characters” (in both senses of the term) who are also, for the most part, talented designers, making the show equally wonderful in the human interaction element and the results element (the latter area being where The Apprentice, of which I am a known fan, frequently falls down). Plus eye candy for all in the very handsome pairing of Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum, despite the horrendous ugliness of some of the latter’s get-ups. Michael Kors is a hoot.
Plus, I’m constantly impressed with the creativity of the challenges. There’s naturally a fair amount of design for this or that actress/celebutante/pageant queen, of course – but they find cool venues for “find something or other to make a garment out of” and come up with other interesting twists, like “use what you’re wearing right now” or “design for the mother/sister of one of your opponents.”
I’m gnashing my teeth that y’all are watching Season Five now, and am slightly bummed that Season Four isn’t out on DVD yet, though bearing up since I know it will be eventually. What a great freaking show!
I loved every season up until the current one. I’m still catching up on it, but it just makes me sad. These people now are technically designers, but really they’re Reality Show Contestants, and that was never the case in previous seasons. They make me feel gross.
I love shows like Project Runway and Top Chef because of the creativity needed to pull off some of the challenges. But I hate the drama and I hate that it seems like less talented people last longer on these shows because they give better drama. The shows deny that but I really don’t believe it. Still I love the shows and would much rather see more of the creative process than the drama but the producers think people want drama so that’s not going to happen.
Season Two is my fave (every so often I break into “Andrea, whatever happened to Andrea”). Last season was terribly weak so I’m enjoying this season more. Unfortunately it has turned into a reality show vs. a design show, so the emphasis is more on “personalities” than design. But it’s still fun.
They don’t really deny it – there’s the disclaimer at the end of each episode stating that the producers gave their input to the judges as the latter made their decisions. Wendy Pepper and Santino both made it to final three based on producer input, fer sher.
I thought Wendy Pepper made it in because of how Nancy O’Dell actually chose her dress, and so they pretty much had to let her in since she’d won the last contest. I think they all (producers, judges, etc.) really wanted it to be Kara Saun, Austin Scarlett, and Jay, though. Though I guess having Wendy around gave them a “bad guy” to hate on.
I also got the sense that they excused Santino a lot of real boners, though. Remember his lederhosen lingerie?
See, I don’t think Santino had any extra consideration. The judges certainly questioned his taste at times, but in general they are very forgiving of designers who have some sort of unique vision. Even if they don’t like it, they’re much more likely to kick off someone whose style is flat-out boring and keep the person with kooky style around so that they can temper it into something wearable.
The two things that are really guaranteed to send you home on PR are boring garmets and bad construction; any combination of the two and you can sure you’re out.
Talking back to the judges is a bad sign, too, but it’s not necessarily a death sentence.
The judges certainly had issues with what Santino was doing, but it wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t constructed poorly.
It’s kind of like what happened with (spoiler for season 5)…
Keith in the current season. He had his weirdo fringe style that the judges didn’t really like, but they only kicked him off when he turned in a basic, boring garment that was constructed poorly.
In general, good construction will take you a looong way on PR, even if you keep making the same garment over and over. That explains the longevity of (spoilers for seasons 3 and 4)
Laura in season 3, who made something like twelve versions of the same dress, and Rami in season 4, who made 10,000 draped dresses.
Yeah, true, I just meant that I read elsewhere that the producers were Not Happy with the fact that Nancy O’Dell chose that dress because they had really wanted the other three to show at Bryant Park, and not Wendy.
I just love Project Runway. There are so few reality shows that actually require some kind of genuine talent, and the cool thing about PR is that it’s a visual art that we can judge for ourselves whether we like it or not (vs. a show like Top Chef, which is a great show, but where the audience is pretty much 100% reliant on the judges comments to know what went on with the dishes). Fashion is an interesting art, because ultimately no matter what the artistic vision is, it has to be made marketable in one way or another. I love seeing the various contestants and how they respond to that (or don’t, in some cases).
Story about one of the winning designs from last season that made it to the stores (I’ll spoiler-box it for those who haven’t seen it):
I was at Steve & Barry’s a couple of weeks ago, and they had a huge rack of Victorya’s winning design still hanging around. For fun, I tried it on, even though it’s not the kind of thing I would normally wear. It was AWFUL. I mean, truly awful. It was the thinest, cheapest polyester you could imagine. It fit really weird…it was way too short for the width, IMO. I’m pretty average in build…5’6", about 135-140 lbs, and normally a size medium, so that’s the size I tried. It looked like an old-fashioned painter’s smock that you would want to wear pants with, because it was so short and wide. The arms were meant to be poofy, so they have a band around the upper arm, like puffed sleeves do, but the band was so tight I couldn’t get it above my elbow (it didn’t have elastic in it). Very weird. Maybe it would look good on a tall, skinny girl like the models, but it looked awful on me. Now, granted, I’m 41, and maybe this was aimed at the younger set (although Sarah Jessica Parker is older than me, and it’s her line). But no way would I ever wear it.
Argh! Just got an email from Netflix that my local center doesn’t have Disc 3, and they’ll be sending it from Columbus … tomorrow. This means that my two-disks-a-week schedule is in a shambles, and I won’t be able to turn Disk 3 around and get Disk 4 for Saturday. :mad:
I hate that. Especially since PR got super addictive…HAD to have my fix! And season 3 was, I think, my favorite. They had some really talented (IMHO) people, and a lot of them seemed really awesome as people as well.
And I, too, love to walk around imitating Santino from S2 and saying, “Andre? What happened to Andre?” “Designers, you bring me closer to god.”
Each episode is split into 5 parts on youtube, which is kind of annoying. I assume youtube sets a maximum length limit on videos. Anyone know? If not, why are long shows always split up like this?
I just checked that out – it looks as though not only are they chopped up in little pieces, they’re then shuffled thoroughly to make it hard to figure out what order to watch them in. Think I’ll wait for the DVD.
Especially since PR got super addictive…HAD to have my fix! And season 3 was, I think, my favorite. They had some really talented (IMHO) people, and a lot of them seemed really awesome as people as well.