Project Runway 5 - Episode 6 Preview

Boy oh boy, did we miss a call last week. Yes, we guessed Kelli's aufing right, and we had Keith second, not first, but we dropped the ball on Blayne and Jerell. Lo and behold, Team Jerell and Stella (henceforth Jerella) didn't combust, they combined to produce something really terrific. We were stunned, frankly, when Ms. Shields named Keith the winner over Jerell. (Tim's Take revealed that Brooke really really really hated that belt. But still!) Not that Keith and Kenley's dress wasn't pretty darn good too.

He's a little bit country, she's a little bit rock and roll.

So we owe a big apology to Jerell. Not only did he rein it in this week, he proved himself a true gentleman the way he handled getting Stella. He was gracious when she was the last person in the assistant pool, he was awesome about setting her a task she could succeed at, and he stood by her--with his arm around her no less!--as a true partner when Tim came around. Jerell earned big style points with us this week. We're still a little nervous about what he might send down the runway next, but he's a true gentleman in our book.

Dude. Skin tight Bermuda shorts and cleavage down to her belly-button just screams boardroom.

The other person who won big style points for us--personality-wise, certainly not fashion-wise--is Blayne. Yes, we too are over blank-licious, and this week it looks like it gets worse before it gets better. But when that boy sent that wind-swept blind bike-courier ensemble down the runway, he stood by it. He told them he was taking a chance, got rightly called out by Kors for not taking it further, and gave the only answer he should have given as a team leader when asked who should go home for his outfit: himself. He even held his chin high when it was down to him and Kelli, and we get the feeling he was ready to go home and ready to stay, both on his own terms. Kudos, Blayne. +1 for respect points.

BFFs--until Heidi asks which one should be out.

Kelli on the other hand...wow. Way to throw your partner under the bus! Hey, let's ignore the fact that the fashion disaster that earned a "slutty, slutty, slutty" from Kors was your design. Yes, someone who is routinely on the bottom may become an inevitable aufing at some point, the same way a baseball umpire doesn't call an obvious strike for a pitcher who's been all around the plate for five innings, but it's still always about the worst outfit on the runway at that moment. Whether Kelli's or Blayne's was worse is certainly debatable--but offering up Daniel's track record into evidence was just low down and dirty! And he was your assistant! -1 in respect points, honey. (And hey, who came in a close second the week you won, Kelli? Daniel. We're just saying...)

So Keith and Jerell break out of the basement, while Daniel and Blayne sink farther into the abyss. Let's go to the Gratz Industries Big Board of Shame!

Kenley: 11 points (One 1st, one 2nd, one third, two safes)
Suede: 8 points (One 1st, four safes)
Terri: 8 points (One 2nd, one 3rd, three safes)
Korto: 6 points (One 1st, one 3rd, one 3rd worst, two safes)
Joe: 6 points (One 3rd, four safes)
Keith: 5 points (One 1st, One 3rd worst, three safes)
Jerell: 4 points (One 2nd, One 3rd worst, three safes)
Leanne: 3 points (One 2nd, one 2nd worst, three safes)
Stella: 2 points (One 3rd, one 2nd worst, three safes)
Daniel: 0 points (One 2nd, one 2nd worst, one 3rd worst, two safes)
Blayne: -2 points (One 2nd worst, one 3rd worst, three safes)

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Kelli: 3 points (One 1st, three safes, one auf)
Emily: -2 points (Two safes, one auf)
Wes: -3 points (One safe, one auf)
Jerry: -4 points (One auf)
Jennifer: -5 points (One 2nd worst, two safes, one auf)

Scoring: Win (4 pts), 2nd place (3 pts), 3rd place (2 pts), Safe (1 pt), 3rd worst (-2 pts), 2nd worst (-3 pts), Aufed (-4 pts)

For the purposes of this week's scoring, we gave third place to Kenley, as she was the assistant on the winning team. Similarly, we gave 3rd worst to Daniel for being the assistant on the losing team. That means that though both Stella and Leanne, while on a top two team and bottom two team, respectively, each got a +1 "safe" from us this week. (And honestly, Stella made a belt and Leanne was just the assistant on Blayne's "vision." Neither deserves too much credit or blame.)

Notes of interest:
- Daniel continues his spiral downward. He now shares the basement with Blayne, who is our only contestant currently in negative figures.
- Blayne is also the only designer left who has never made the top three for any challenge.
- Keith and Jerell leapfrog the stragglers into low mid-table standings.
- Suede, Terri, Korto, and Joe hold steady, all with safeties, while Kenley slightly strengthens her lead.
- Korto and Daniel now share the "Doesn't Play It Safe" Award with only two "safes" each.
- Suede and Joe make the "Safety Patrol" this week with four free passes apiece.
- Kelli becomes the first aufed designer to survive with positive points, qualifying her for the dubious title of "Most Talented Designer Kicked Off This Season."

Just looking at the table, Blayne and Daniel appear the most vulnerable. Hmm, I wonder if that's a good segue into this week's preview?

SPOILER WARNING: As always, we have no real knowledge of who's going to win and who's going to lose (ahem--see last week's Blayne kerfuffle) but we sure like to make guesses. We also talk a lot about the challenge and the guest judge, so if you're not fond of such things, stop reading now.


This week promises to be a fun challenge, if not necessarily the most fashion-forward one. "Good Queen Fun" features the return of Chris March (yay Chris!) in his Brünnehilde costume--four-foot tall horns, disco ball brassiere, and all. (Seriously, those horns start over Heidi's head, and she's no dwarf.) Poor Chris doesn't appear to be able to move his head much under that helmet, but he's able to tell the designers that their challenge this week will be to dress some drag queen friends of his.

The girls are brought out on stage and introduce themselves. They have names like Farrah Moans, Miss Understood, Hedda Lettuce, and Sharon Needles, and each of them, need we say it, is pretty well so over the top that all you can see beyond the rim are their bouffant hairdos. Let's just hope that Terri doesn't question what these ladies are packing, as she did of Suede last episode.

This girl gives good head.

The designers' reactions range from giggly (Kenley, of course), to tongue-licky (Terri), to open-mouth bassy (Daniel). It's clear from the start that many of the designers are quaking in their boots. Worse, Heidi has Ye Olde Velveteen Bag, which probably means that she's going to (gasp!) randomly assign designers to the drag queens, the same way the models were chosen in last season's Weight Loss Makeover episode. Last season, no one wanted the wedding dress. This season, I suspect no one wants Acid Betty:

Acid Betty supports the right to bear arms.

But the queen they'll be glad not to have is Hedda Lettuce, who gets paired up with Suede. Yes, we know, Suede talks about himself in the third person too often. But we like Suede. For all his reality show posturing, he seems like a really nice guy underneath, and a fair designer to boot. We're just going on record now as saying we think Suede will be with us for a long time yet, and that by the end we'll all be pulling for him.

That said, Suede totally gets the shaft this episode. Hedda puts him through the ringer, making him add sleeves, lengthen sleeves, remove gloves. Putting dressing on this lettuce is going to make Suede wish for the salad days of his episode two win. (Sorry. Had to do it.) Still, foremost among Suede's talents is tenacity, so we figure this is just good TV, not foreshadowing.

Lettuce remember the aforementioned "salad days."

Otherwise, the preview videos are heavy on the drag queens, and on Blayne's "-licious"ness. Is Blayne getting a loser's edit? Well, his is one of the outfits we do see, and we hear Tim's take on it too: "It's like a gay Jurassic Park." And yeah, it is pretty hideous. But this week is all about being over the top and theatrical. Will this hot tranny mess get a pass!?

We only see four designers on the runway clips. We know there will be six held back, so that's two we're going to have to completely guess on. Those we do know get held back are Jerell, Daniel, Korto, and Joe. Wow. Now there's a mixed bag for you!

The easiest limb to go out on this week is to say that Daniel will have difficulty with this challenge. Daniel has falling in terminal descent for the past couple of weeks. After a second place showing in week one and then two safeties in a row, Daniel has hit the skids: almost getting aufed for his "Republic of Cocktailland" dress in week four, and having to once again defend his "impeccable taste" with a bottom-two team finish in week five. The boy looks like he could use some Peptol. And doesn't it also look like he's constantly having an internal dialogue with himself on the runway? We think it must go something like this:

Daniel: I--I don't understand how I'm on the bottom again.
Daniel: I know. You have impeccable taste.
Daniel: I know. You do too.
Daniel: Thank you. I just--I don't do this kind of thing.
Daniel: Me either. Wait, is Kelli throwing me under the bus...?

In some great preview screengrabs over at the brand new "Inside a High Schooler" blog, you can see Daniel's dress. Our fellow prognosticator has it listed as Joe's dress, but we're pretty sure it's Daniel's--that's him wearing the brown pants and tan shirt from the model selection shots. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Daniel's dress is just...a nice dress. There's nothing particularly over the top or theatrical about it, which makes us think that the comments in the previews from Heidi about wanting to see something more "theatrical" are aimed at Daniel. He's also making excuses about not wanting to send something out that looks Vegas or Cirque du Soleil. Cue the ominous bell music...

The other call that screams to be made is Blayne on the bottom. The image from last week's episode-ending preview--of a hot pink and teal mess, with tasseled wings--is truly ghastly. Will this finally be the uglicious that send Blayne home and ends our long national nightmare? Difficult to say.

"Joe, I'm sorry, but there's a limit on how many episodes straight male designers are allowed to stick around, and you've reached it, my friend."

We need one more victim to round out our three bottom-feeders, and this week we're going to go with Joe. First, if Joe thinks there have been a lot of queens around in the past stirring up the drama, we fear his head might explode when all those big ladies storm the workroom. Second, well, we just haven't been all that impressed with Joe's outfits so far. We know he has his fans out there, but we think he's, well, a pretty Average Joe. He's been skating by with some lackluster stuff, and now that the cast is dwindling he's going to be more exposed.

Third, and perhaps most important, of all the outfits we can see in the previews, Joe's is the one we never see best. By process of elimination, we think it's a hot pink suit with a kind of pillbox-looking hat that disappears off the screen right as Tim is calling all the models and designers to the runway. It looks to us like this might be the dress Kors is having himself a hearty laugh over, declaring it "a bar mitzvah moment," or "something my aunt would wear." Just a shot in the dark here, but if that's Joe's dress he's talking about, Joe's in trouble.

So on to our guesses for top three. We know Jerell and Korto are there. Can Jerell put together a second top three design in a row? You know what? We'll give him the benefit of the doubt this time. Jerell has shown the ability to edit, to produce what's called for, and be gracious under fire. We can plainly see his dress in a couple of the shots--a green and brown number. No idea who he's designing for, or whether it's over the top or not, but whether we're right or wrong, we're pretty sure there's going to be uglier stuff walking down that runway this week.

As for Korto, it looks like she's the designer behind the big, and we mean big, poofy red dress a large and in-charge blond drag queen is wearing on the way to the runway. Korto's told us before she likes to design for women with curves, and boy do these girls have curves. As long as that big poofy red dress fits the drag queen's character, we see Korto drawing raves.

What? Me again? Awwwww, you guys!

Which of course leaves us trying to guess which unpictured designer joins the winning threesome. Well, judging just by glimpses of things in the runway, it probably comes as no surprise that Kenley has put together something with the potential to win. It's certainly over the top and theatrical--her model is wearing a white gown with huge white plumes of feathers sticking up out of the back. If Kenley lucks out and gets the woman who wanted Hollywood glamor, Kenley might just take home another win.

So here's who we think guest judge RuPaul will be complimenting and dissing this week:

Top three: Korto, Jerell, Kenley
Bottom three: Daniel, Blayne, Joe

For the tops, let's say that Jerell gets third place, Korto gets a "good job, Korto, you're in," and we'll take Kenley for the win.

As to the bottom three, we think Blayne will be sent off first. (His is, at least, over the top.) That will leave Joe and Daniel on the runway to sweat it out. This will be a tough one. Does Daniel go home for a relatively simple but "tasteful" dress, or does Joe go home for making his Drag Queen into a Bar Mitzvah mother? The second sounds more egregious, and we think it will be Average Joe who gets sent home in a shocker.

For those of you playing Fafarrazi, our mix-up with Jerell and Blayne last week has left us vulnerable. It's time for you to move in for the kill! Suede seems like a very good play this week, as he has trouble with his model, curses a few times, and doesn't appear to be out. (Bear in mind that we're totally guessing on those other two designers who aren't shown though!) Stella looks to be safe again this week, so you could always bet on her laying down a few bleeps. The real points though, as always, are in picking the winners. Here's hoping your guesses are better than ours this week!