Project Runway Canada – “Episode Six”

“Hope Springs Eternal”

March 3rd, 2009

So, I want to first off apologize that I was nowhere to be found for last week’s episode of Project Runway Canada – I wasn’t able to watch the episode live, had a heck of a time getting it to stream on Global’s website, and then once the decision became clear I just didn’t have the drive to write about it. I did, however, converse with a few people on Twitter about it, and the consensus seems clear: with Sunny running away with the competition, and the rest of the designers failing to bring anything to the table, there just isn’t anything that the show can do to convince us that we’re watching an honest to goodness contest. What we’re left with is, well, the Sunny show.

The thing is, though, other than Danio’s tragic early exit (followed in time by his tragic passing from Cancer), the people who have gone home all deserved to go home until we hit Baylor, who was unfairly punished for a mistake that, while certainly not minor, was not on the level of the episode’s other competitors. It’s not like the designers are just getting rid of all of the talent, it seems like it wasn’t there to begin with and that’s a problem that falls on the producers and not necessarily the contestants themselves.

But this doesn’t mean that this week’s hackjob, where only three contestants really get anything close to praise from the judges, is in the hands of the producers: this was quite honestly the most clear challenge that we’ve had in the show’s run so far. A spring dress, made for commercial outlets, that goes from day to night – they’re buzzwords that these people should be able to work with, and yet again people just go around ignoring them all over the place. And this is the kind of challenge where you show that you can do the most simple basic tasks…and if they’re failing here, what does it say about their future.

It’s all adding up to a lack of desire to really blog about this show when, in the end, it seems like a foregone conclusion, even though we saw a potential competitor emerge.

This will be quick, since it’s really simple. Nothing complex: spring dress, day to night, winner gets their dress sold at Winners.

Actually Good: Sunny and Jessica

Yawn – we get it, Sunny. You’re good. Very good. And you could basically take your dresses from the competition thus far and turn them into a collection. This is both a plus and a minus – I want to see him step outside of his comfort zone a bit more, but everything he’s done has fit the challenges, and the judges are pretty much out of comments at this early point in the competition.

For Jessica, though, this comes after a few tough weeks where things didn’t really come together with her, and she bounced back from an early pleating mistake to create something very simple, very elegant, and that perfectly fit the challenge. That she won was really about surprise more than anything else: she hasn’t been this close to being competitive in a while, so it was good for her to bounce back.

Of course, she still doesn’t have Sunny’s diversity, and I seriously doubt she’ll be able to compete with him later in the end, but for now it’s good to at least have something close to a three-horse race.

Temporarily Redeemed: Kim

It was simple, it met the challenge, and it wasn’t butt ugly. Kim achieved what she didn’t last week, wherein she bombed horribly, so that’s a plus for her.

Struggles with Conception and Execution: Jason, Adejoke, Genevieve

Jason took the transition part of the challenge a bit too literally, and did it in a way that pretty much gave the “Winners Woman” nightmares about the tight fitting top and the massive amount of snaps. “But where will they snap it? How will they know it’s right? They won’t know how to make it pretty!” It was all pretty reductive, but Iman hated the snaps, and it wasn’t the day look they wanted from him.

Adejoke, meanwhile, had the right idea but unfortunately couldn’t execute it – she apparently hadn’t worked with Jersey, and it was puckered and all over the place in terms of the way it came out. However, it was conceived really well, so she’s able to keep skirting through.

For Genevieve? It was just not a day dress, in any universe, and while conceived reasonably well it just didn’t come out in the end.

Utter, Complete Failure: Jeff.

Seriously? He drew on cross-stitching. And then lied about it when the judges weren’t close enough to be able to call him on it. And his dress was literally just a white dress with post-it notes glued onto the front (it’s like he was preparing for the next challenge!). And it was reversible to become the same dress without the post-its, but with more fake cross-stitching. He was frantic the entire week, and while Kim and Genevieve needed to dial it back a bit they were obstensibly right: he really didn’t have any business being there based on his creative output.

Overall

It just wasn’t a fun episode to watch because people were failing more than they should have – good for Jessica for winning the challenge and getting back into things, but it was unfortunately no one else is coming up to Sunny’s level.

Cultural Observations

• Next week looks like a return to one of the show’s epic challenges wherein creativity is the most important thing, which is going to be a really interesting contrast: will Sunny be as solid there as he was with more traditional challenges, and will someone like Kim (who talks so much about her creativity) really step up to the plate? I honestly don’t even know, so at least there’s some unpredictability on the horizon.
• I have to wonder whether or not the producers would have told the judges about the drawn on stitching – we know the final decisions are done in consultation with producers, and it sounds like the kind of thing they might tell them.