Project Runway Recap: Plan B From Outer Space

Anyway. Heidi approaches the runway and announces that the challenge will concern what "[Los Angeles] is all about!" I will tell you right now the challenge is not about murders. Nope, as Tim Gunn will come to explain, the designers must choose a famous film genre, create a character that fits in that genre, and dress her. After an all-too-riveting selection process, including class-A groaning from Epperson, who ends up choosing the "Western" genre because it was the only one left in Tim's glitter sack, the designers get right to work mangling your memories of Film Noir, Action/Adventure, Science Fiction, Western, and Period Pieces. In better news, they beat the Wayans brothers to many of these.

Tim also notes that makeup will be a large part of the challenge, so he introduces the most boring makeup artist of the present eon, Collier Strong. "Collier is my partner...!" Tim says. Silence. I start thinking of easy ways to run into traffic and end myself. How did Collier win Tim over me? I have my youth and the blue eyes of a frightening Matryoshka doll. The injustice! I could be thinner, Tim! Then Tim concludes his sentence: "...For this challenge!" Phew. I stop purging. Well, at a speedy rate, anyway.

As the challenge progresses and the designers attempt to make un-costumey costumes, it becomes apparent that these people have never seen a movie before. Christopher and Carol-Hannah make a joke about someone having stolen Louise's bobbin, and they emulate what I suspect was meant to be detective film music. Close, guys! That was actually the theme to Bowser's castle. Well done. Thanks for everything. You guys were born in 1997.

Ra'mon starts dyeing his "science fiction" garment the same mutated-foliage green that the judges really loved a few episodes back. He declares it "fabulous" as he pulls the infected moss out of the basin, and to my eyes it looks like aged Ecto Cooler. We love the movies too, Ra'mon! Epperson, meanwhile, has figured out a way to make a "Western" dress look contemporary, and thank God, because dreadlocks in mid-tantrum are rarely pretty. (An embarrassing white TA from my college Musicology class once exhibited this best.) Gordana expresses delight that for her "period piece" look, she can choose any period she wants. I suggest the kind of period that has guns and will fire at Irina, who now says to the camera that Gordana doesn't belong in the competition. Irina, I have almost exhausted every possible permutation of Chekhov joke with you, and I will start moving into "scalding borscht on your smart little face" territory next.

Tim's tour around the room produces a few prized Smokin' Gunn reactions: "No, Christopher, bared arms are not Victorian or 1800s. Jackass,"; "Epperson, these frills really seduce me. I almost want to call them 'Collier Strong in a teddy.' Just kidding. [Winks at camera.] Hey, babygirl Louis!" and "Now, Louise, I want you to take your DNA as a designer and really push it. OK? Push it out a window. Into a fire. Michael Kors has been standing outside smoking for four weeks, and the flames will really wake his umber ass up." Tim also commends Nicolas on his white "ice queen" science-fiction dress that, to me, looks like the ghetto, community opera version of Candyland's Queen Frostine. I have likely made that simile here before. In the last hour, Ra'mon also makes an entirely new dress because his original was "Kermit the Frog gone wrong." The world concurs.

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