Austin, Mondo and Michael are joined by your girl Ke$ha on the runway, where she speaks in careful tones. Last week’s cleanse has done wonders for her demeanor and complexion, and most of the glitter has been hosed off. She looks and sounds like a presentable young woman, now that the whiskey IV has been plucked from her arm. So many spoilers up in here. Pictures, too. Only read further if you dare to be spoiled.
The challenge facing our boys is simple: make a collection of five “looks” that will walk the runway at the Mary Jo Kopegny Memorial Catwalk Foundation, located in stylish and oh-so-accessible Queens, New York. Keeping with the “that sounds impossible” tradition of Project Runway, the sewtestants have four days to produce these five looks. Four days, five looks, and then it’s off to the runway, you say? Balderdash! Poppycock! Can’t be done! Fortunately for reality TV watchers everywhere, our boys live to prove naysayers wrong.
In a move that no one sees coming, the boys head off to Mood to buy the very stuff of dreams, out of which they will fashion the winning looks in memory of Saint Kopegny. They each have $3,000 to spend, or $600 per “look.” After last week’s $1.98 challenge, that should be enough, yes? No? Yes. The fun part is, they still only have half an hour or so to shop. So, let’s have then run like frantic hoarders through the fabric store, grabbing bolts willy-nilly, negotiating with salespeople and hoping they select something they can actually work with. In previous season finales, they had days or weeks to select fabric, but not this time, no.
Back at Parsons, the boys see that they will no longer work in a common room, and instead they each have their own individual “atelier.” Austin and Michael immediately like this concept, and Mondo falls into a deep depression. He’s dead inside, his soul is gone, he just needs to put on a funeral shroud and lay himself in the ground. Don’t pay any attention to him, he says, he’ll just close his door and lay over here in the corner and die quietly. Apparently Mondo has been a Jewish grandmother all this time and we’re just finding out.
While Mondo was whinging about the difficult life of a reality TV icon, Austin was in his room, having “fits of glamour and beauty.” This seems like an activity that Austin schedules for 2:00 pm on a Tuesday, doesn’t it? Noon, lunch of lemon steam and a braised fiddlehead fern. At one, a full hour of Jazzercize™ to work off that steam and that fern. An hour later at two, “fits of glamour and beauty.”
Ever the industrious ant to Mondo’s grasshopper, Michael has already made 12 gowns. He has used up all the fabric he bought at Mood and is steaming the wallpaper off the walls so he has more raw materials.
As this madness goes on, Queen Marchesa, Isaac the Charming, and even Ke$ha her own self pay visits to the workroom, to suck up precious work time and to get themselves some camera time. Why not? It’s what television is about.
Queen Marchesa told the boys that she loves to have a good mental breakdown before she designs a collection, and Mondo picks up on that and says his finale show will have a mental health theme. Very hygienic of you, Mondo.
Isaac breezes in and tells the goils he’s got three “music bed” tracks they can use for their runway shows, which he picked up at the “Burn Any CD For 99 Cents Store” in Times Square. Three tracks, three designers. Michael and Mondo go off and listen to the tracks and then invite Austin over to tell him they have each picked a track, and here’s what you’ve got left, wench. Austin calls them out on this chicanery, but later decides he likes the track they left for him. And by the way, Isaac, CD’s that someone burned at home and labeled with a Sharpie? Really? Is it 1997?
It wouldn’t be Project Runway without a twisty twist, so in a very predictable move, Ke$ha tells our boys that they have to come up with a sixth look for the runway, but she brings back all the eliminated designers so each of the finalists can recruit some help. Mondo picks Mila (why?), Michael picks April (oh my god why?) and Austin picks Her Royal Serene Highness, the Princess Antoinetta. Flash forward to Austin showing Miss Sugarbaker what he’s done so far, and while he does, taking the word “quirky” and creating a whole new definition for it. “The theme is sort of Fragonard Madame de Pompadour meets 21st century rockstar slash Williamsburg Hasidic gentleman.” Have a quick look at this segment:
Miss Sugarbaker’s reaction shots? Priceless. Why didn’t they keep her around just for giggles? Better yet, they could have swapped her out for Mopey Mondo, who could then continue dying in a corner, unloved and alone.
Thankfully for Michael, the judges have the hangers models bring out laundry baskets filled with all the jetsam and flotsam each designer discarded from all the previous challenges. More raw materials! Michael has a joygasm since this means he can create at least eight hundred more garments in the next half hour.
Of course, since our jerdges and our hostess had all that screen time during this episode, we won’t get to see the finished work on the runway until next week, when this circus finally folds its tents and moves along to another town. Soon. Soon it will be over and Mondo can rest in peace. Until then, keep telling yourself it’s just one more week until sweet oblivion.
