Tag Archives: Runway

September 26, 2009 · 12:53 pm

The Game vs. The Players – A Cultural Learnings Reality Roundup

RealityRoundup

The Game vs. The Players

A Cultural Learnings Reality Roundup

In our weekly glimpse into the world of Survivor: Samoa, Top Chef, and Project Runway, it’s important to distinguish between the game and the players of that game. Every episode of all three shows is essentially about the way the producers construct the game (the challenges, the conditions, the time limits, even the casting itself), and the players are forced to interpret and operate within that game as they see fit. So when you find yourself frustrated with a fairly boring season of Project Runway, or impatient with a season of Top Chef, or find Survivor’s villains too much to handle, you need to ask yourself if this it the result of the game or the people who are playing it.

In all three episodes of these three shows this week, we saw situations where the game took control of the players, and where their sewing, their cooking and their scheming felt so clearly defined by the game that I was simultaneously interested and bored. It’s the ultimate test of any group of reality contestants, though, to be forced into a situation the producers have designed: do they strike out on a unique course, indicating that they’re a real rebel, or whether they fall right in with the expectations put in front of them.

It’s a process which makes me doubt Runway, trust Top Chef, and change my mind about a few Survivor players.

Continue reading →

Project Runway Season 6 – “What a Woman Wants”

projectrunwaylogo

“What a Woman Wants”

September 10th, 2009

Just as I checked in on Top Chef yesterday, I figured it’s about time to revisit the sixth season of Project Runway currently airing on Lifetime. After much hullaballoo about the move to a new network, this season has been the precise opposite of noteworthy: there’s no real standout personalities, and to be honest no one is really setting the fashion world on fire either. There just hasn’t been a real sense of innovation at play, and the design aesthetics in that work room are not standing out as they’re supposed to in a competition like this.

There’s a few reasons the show has been lacklustre this season, and in some ways I thought “What a Woman Wants” helped things at least to some degree. We got to see contestants handle a challenge that combines the client-designer relationship (always good for bringing out the best/worst in designers) and a chance for them to test their own aesthetic in terms of presenting something the judges are going to enjoy and also please their clients.

At the same time, it also highlighted why I think the season is ultimately struggling. While I think there were some issues with casting, I think the real problem is that the show seems to be finding more personality in its models than it does in its designers, and even in their guest judges more than their normal ones. I actually like what these changes have done to the show in some ways, but it seems as if they’ve diverted our (and the producers’ attention) away from the designers themselves and onto elements of the game. They came into this season with the challenge of distracting us from the lawsuits and production changes, and yet the problem is that they’re ignoring the designers themselves.

Which, you know, is deserved in some cases, but needs to be handled a bit more carefully.

Continue reading →

The 2008 Television Time Capsule: Project Runway – “Season Four Finale”

timecapsulerunway

“Season Four Finale”

Season Four, Episode 14

Airdate: March 5th, 2008

I was watching Definitely, Maybe over the holiday break, a charming film that I quite enjoyed, but it fell into a rather frustrating cliché. Narrating a story to his daughter about the dark ages that were the early 90s, pre-internet and pre-cell phone as it was, he adds that it was also a time without reality television.

I am aware that the vilification of reality television is neither new nor entirely unwarranted, but I remain perplexed that people are still unwilling to differentiate between good reality television and bad reality television. This idea that it is some sort of scourge was, indeed, a potential truth when every network was parading out show after show, but that pattern seems to have largely ended: not only is America’s taste for the genre subsiding, based on recent trends, but what shows have survived have for some reason stood the test of time.

I decided to limit myself to one reality television show for the time capsule (partially as a punishment for the Emmy hosting disaster), and the decision ended up being easy: Survivor has the ratings, The Amazing Race has the Emmys, but Project Runway has a Peabody Award and the distinction of being the show that perhaps surprised me most in 2008. While it was late last year that I discovered it for the first time, since then I’ve watched five seasons (if we count Project Runway Canada) and continue to be impressed.

Yes, the fourth season was far superior to the fifth, and the show is not immune to some of the casting issues that plague most reality series, but by the time the designers get to Bryant Park I care more about fashion than I ever thought possible. More than any other reality show I’ve seen, talent is a deciding factor: while some challenges lead to unfair eliminations based on some wacky expectations, both seasons airing in 2008 ended with winners who felt like they had been on a journey and matured as a designer along the way.

In picking a single episode, it is very easily the show’s fourth season finale, the victorious moment for flamboyant Christian Siriano. The show’s youngest and most cocksure designer, he emerged as a true sensation: talented, entertaining, and full of one-liners and catchphrases. The show’s fifth season largely felt so dreary because everyone, compared to Siriano, felt like an imitation.

But Runway never feels that way, charting its own course in the reality television waters and being all the better off for it. The show is also memorable this year for its off-air wranglings, with Bravo and Lifetime fighting over rights to the series and delaying Season 6. When that is eventually resolved, let’s hope the series stays on the right track.

Related Posts at Cultural Learnings