And this is the second to the last episode.
It's Rich that describes them as a family, and by tomorrow, two of them will be gone.
Yeah, my stale M&M heart gets melty; it's a sweet sentiment that shows more personality that the producers have allowed on camera all season.
Frankly, we could have used a little more of it, because as we round the corner on the second to last episode, I could care less who goes home and who stays. I don't hate anyone, but I don't have a favorite, either. It's kind of like being at a Mormon buffet. There are six different kinds of Jell-o salad on every table, and you don't really want any of them.
This week's challenge is to be inspired by an insect, and the crew takes a trip to Evolution in NYC, a store that sells skills, butterflies and beetles. It actually looks pretty awesome and reminds me of Paxton Gate in SF. So here's a bright spot! The next time you go to NYC, stop at Evolution. It that nugget worth watching an hour of this show? No, but it's better than eating Jell-o salad, which really should be felonized. There's nothing misdemeanor-ish about canned pears, horse's hooves and flavor of lime.
Moving on. Each contestant picks an insect, and Rich is VERY excited. He's picked an enormous, horned Hercules beetle. "I've been collecting bugs since I was a kid," he explains excitedly. "I almost made my fiancé's wedding ring out of beetle legs."
Oh, yeah. I saw something like that in Bride Magazine under the headline, "Signs You Could Be Marrying Someone That Keeps Heads in a Basement Freezer and Might Have Booger Collection."
"Want to see what Rich Santomino does?" he asks wickedly. "Watch this challenge."
Brian picks another beetle with an enormous wingspan but a beautifully spotted body. Torso? Husk? I don't know what you call it, but the thing is big enough to lift puppies off the ground. Christina chooses a leaf bug in shades of gold and green, Nina goes for a spider, which she is deathly afraid of, and Diego, soft, European Diego, he goes promptly for the butterfly.
Christina jumps into a dead-on impression of him, essplaining why he-a picked da buttafly, because ees so.... bootiful. (He's Italian, I'm Italian, and it's okay if I say that. Really. Eeees ogay.) It's hilarious, and something that she's been clearly spending a lot of time in the mirror doing. I'm beginning to like her. A little.
Brian starts to get competitive when he says he realizes how close they are to the finale and "what it would mean to their careers." Personally, I think he's stretching just a bit, unless he means something other than be recognized as the guy who sliced off that unicorn's magic horn and made a purse out of it won on that shitty purse TV show. He has mounted his beetle on discs of leather, and then gets a wild, if not a $100,000 idea: He will pour resin all over it.
On Project Runway, this would be the equivalent of Christian Siriano saying aloud, "Yes. I think I will let the nipples show on this one. Fashion is a revolution. I heed the call, Nina Garcia!"
So Brian starts pouring, and if it's not immediately apparent to him, it's quite apparent to us and others in the workroom: he has just entombed his inspiration beetle in a chunk of what looks like petrified snot. But, ever the magician, he believes he can resuscitate the destruction by putting icicles all over and claiming that the bug "has flash-frozen."
Christina, who I am warming to, is all aflutter after deciding she's going to make a small purse, called a minaudiere, (min-oh-dee-air, not min-oh-dee-ay, and honestly, I wouldn't have known that if I didn't look it up, but you also don't see me tossing around fancy French fashion words like Pillsbury croissants) and, according to Merriam-Webster, mispronounces the word fifteen times in six minutes.
My sudden love is cooling like the resin all over Brian's suffocated snot bug, and then, I see that Christina's shirt is cut far too low for a woman who has not wholly supported herself and her assets in the course of her lifetime. I get a glimpse of a floppy sideboob and I shudder. It's not over fast enough, but my new-found love is flash-frozen, although I really do blame her mother.
Now to the runway!! Brian Atwood and Rachael Roy are the guest judges, along with SAKC (Social Activist Kenneth Cole), Ariel Foxman, the editor of InStyle, and The Brain Molly Sims.
In a nutshell: Brian's stuff is a disaster. DISASTER. When queried about it, he replies, "I chose the Goliath Beetle. All of the nature programs I watch--I found out one or two specimens are going extinct every week. So this piece to me represents the extinction of--a beetle--by the death of it through freezing."
Clearly, Brain has spent too many hours watching the Bullshit Channel, because it clearly freezes a lot in tropical forests where huge beetles (specimens!) like that are found. Like Africa. I guess 2012 is a documentary on Brian's cable.
It only gets better when The Brain Molly Sims giggles and says, "I think you made your model look like she was in Hurricane Irene."
Oh, yes, I remember. The ICE hurricane. That must have been on the Bullshit Channel, too.
Rich's model walks down the runway with his dissected Hercules beetle, which is thankfully still at room temperature, on every piece he's created. The judges go bananas, and Ariel Foxman pompously implores, "What is that? What is that new shape I'm seeing?"
They love love love Rich. If his model wasn't covered in dead beetle that's been soaked in some funerial preservative, they would have eaten her up.
They're not so nice to Christina, as SAKC calls her leaf-bug antique comb "underwhelming" and refers to the comb as Pocahontas.
Nina's spider web necklace and cuff are a little creepy, but beautiful at the same time. It resonates with all the judges, and she is commended on standing up to her spider feat.
Diego, however, isn't about to get as good of a reception. Ariel Foxman does everything to keep his hands at his sides when he exclaims, "I want to ignore the headpiece," he says, referring to some little thingy Diego made and put is buttafly on it. "I want to pretend it doesn't exist. On my card, I wrote, 'Cup and saucer landed on head.'"
He's the editor of InStyle. I'm going to say it again. He's the editor of InStyle. True, that explains the abundance pictures and very few letters, but still. HE'S THE EDITOR OF INSTYLE. "Cup and saucer landed on head." That deserves a slap from somebody, don't you think? Even though he'd be within the character count, even Twitter would tell him to be more clever.
"You have made it very difficult for us to choose who sucks the most," Molly Sims might as well have said, and she pretty much said something similar. But honestly, it's not the artists that suck, it's everyone else involved in the show aside from them.
In the end, it's Christina and Diego that get shooed away, and Rich, as he predicted, wins the challenge. Nina and somehow Brian round out the final three for the bragging rights of being the winner on the suckiest of television shows. Only one more show to go.
In the meantime, does anyone know what the numbers of the Bullshit Channel are?
