Project Runway 5 - Episode 3 Preview

We took some heat for putting both Suede and Stella in our top three last week, but vindication is ours! Not that we thought Stella's Saturday night special belonged in the top three, but there she was. We had Kenley for the win, but she was second, so we weren't too far off.

We were also told there was no way Wes or Leanne would go, (we predicted Leanne), but sure enough, they were the last two designers left standing when it was time for someone to be aufed. Did Wes's short-tight-and-shiny dress deserve to go over Leanne's "design school" piece? That's a tough call, but we were pretty sure Korto's Aquagirl dress was worse than both of them. Seriously, "now with wings" is not a phrase you want to hear on the runway.

But Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle (above) decided Suede rocked the place and Wes didn't. Hasty lobago, Wes. You were...well, you were pretty anonymous, actually. Time to move on to this week's episode.

SPOILER WARNING - As always, we have no real knowledge of winners or losers beyond what we see in the Bravo preview clips, but we are going to talk about the challenge and guest judge...

We here at Gratz Industries are becoming aware of a particularly strong, shall we say, "interest," among gay bloggers in regard to Keith (above). And we here at Gratz Industries are secure enough in our respective sexualities to get that. More importantly, those who cry out for "more Keith!" are going to get their wish in this week's episode--for better or for worse.

This week's episode, starring guest judge Sandra Bernhard, is called "Bright Lights/Big City," and it appears to be a riff off the Season Two challenge where the designers were set loose on the streets of New York with digital cameras and told "seek ye inspiration." This season's designers are given the same charge, but the twist, you see, is that they're sent out to Times Square at night. See what the producers did there? They mixed things up.

In the first of two preview videos we get this week, the designers are released into the neon-bathed wilds of Manhattan, where Keith (there he is already!) somehow finds a way to butt heads with Stella and/or Kenley. Note to Fafarazzi players: Keith will be the first designer this season to utter a variation on the infamous, "I'm not here to make friends" line. Ah, reality TV gold, and worth two points at Fafarazzi. And if it's a verbal argument that spurs the line, Keith may be worth four more points.

Back in the workroom, there is a lot of black being put on the dressforms--and a lot of neon-inspired colors. Hmm. Color us concerned. From the clips, Kenley looks to be working with (gasp) a print, while Blayne is making something either spectacular or spectacularly bad with colors pieced together inside a black dress. Meanwhile, Daniel seems to be channeling Rami with a gray draped piece--or maybe he's channeling Andre, who almost won the previous incarnation of this challenge with his homage to gutter water.

It's good that we have a few clips of the designers in the workroom, because the second video, the one that usually gives us clues as to who will be in and who will be out, is pretty sparse. We can see only four of the six designers who will be kept behind: Terri, Keith (!), Leanne, and Emily. But which of them are in the top, which are in the bottom, and which two designers not shown will be joining them?

While we felt pretty good about last week's predictions, we're feeling totally lost here. As Terri has gotten kudos from bloggers for her unrecognized designs the last two episodes, we're going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she finally makes the top three, even though we don't have a clue as to what she's designed.

Based on what little we saw of her material in the workroom, we're going to go with Kenley in the top three as well, even though she doesn't show up on the runway in the video clip.

And believe it or not, we're going to go out on a limb and say Leanne will be top three this time. Heck, why not? Sure, she was one more oddly-draped piece from being aufed last week, but tomorrow is another day, right? And frankly, we like the look of what she's putting together in the workroom.

Our bubble guy was the infamous Keith, who is twice shown acting mildly surprised at things said to him on the runway. Is he nodding and saying "whoa" to being told his work could appear in the pages of Elle right now, or is he "whoa"ing because Michael Kors has just said Keith's dress looked like "toilet paper caught in a windstorm"?

At first, we were leaning toward Keith being in the top three--perhaps even winning. Then we went back and searched the videos for a dress that might have inspired Kors to compare it to Charmin. No one, but no one, is working with white in the workroom (at least that we can see), and there are only three designs we never catch a glimpse of: Terri's, Joe's, and Keith's.

Except that in one of the runway shots, Keith's model is just slightly in the picture.

And she's wearing a white top.

Danger, Will Robinson.

So, with rather circumstantial evidence, we're putting Keith into the bottom three. Based on the testimony of a worried Kenley, we're also putting Emily in the bottom three. We haven't heard much about Emily, and there might just be a good reason for that. We know she's on the runway at the end this time though, so one way or another we're going to get to know her better.

So who to lump with the losers? We've already accounted for everyone we know will be on the runway, so we're totally guessing here...but we're going to say Stella. She's hammering grommets into her dress the whole time in the video. Grommets, people. And in behind the scenes interviews she's telling us she's rock and roll and she's going to stay rock and roll, which sounds an awful lot to us like the kind of thing you say when you've been booted off the show for being too rock and roll.

So, to recap:
Top three - Terri, Kenley, and Leanne.
Bottom three - Keith, Emily, and Stella.

For the win? It's between Kenley and Leanne, and Leanne redeems herself with a win.
Aufed? It'll come down to Emily and Stella, with Emily gone and Stella still rocking.

Not that we're big fans of Stella here. Or Leanne, for that matter. Despite telling us in the first episode that she hopes PR will allow her to break out of her mold and do different things, all Stella seems to want to do is put people in leather, grommets, and laces. Uck. And Leanne needs to stop whining and start editing. We'll see if anything either of them does this week makes any difference.

If you're playing Fafarazzi, we still recommend playing for the six-points you get for the winner--although this week, you might do well to add Keith. As long as he isn't aufed, you've got two points in the bag for him not wanting to make friends, and possibly another four if he gets into an argument with someone in Times Square. If he's gone though, it's all a wash.

But who knows? He could win the whole thing this week. Heck if we know what we're talking about...