During a better time (Season One), Project Runway aired its last episode of the season as a two-hour event. In every year since, producers ditched propriety and aired both hours as separate episodes, which means the first half of the finale is always uneventful and designed to prolong suspense until the following week. Well, here we are, getting all up in our uneventfulness and passing around Koosh projectiles waiting for something to happen, whether that something is a killer final runway or the revelation that Carol Hannah's "stomach virus" is a metaphor for her feelings, which Irina mangled months ago.
At the top of the episode, Heidi hooves it to the runway where three half-smiling designers await -- Althea, Carol Hannah, and Irina. Oh, are they cheery!
Heidi: Well. Can you believe you made this far? Without cancellation? I sure can't. Now comes the greatest challenge of all, where you must create a 12-piece collection for $9,000. I understand this will mean a lot of additional math for Carol Hannah, which will hopefully be fun for the viewers. Now, let us bring to the stage someone you have all grown close to, a man who wants you to succeed only as much as you do, the smashing Tim Gunn.
Tim Gunn: Sew some outfits, please. Worst season ever. Bye, Los Angeles, and... mankind.
Heidi: Tim, don't!
But before Tim can sprint into traffic and utter his final gay sigh into the front of end of a speeding Range Rover, Heidi halts him and the two conduct a cute, awkward dance-off behind the shadowy Project Runway screen. Heidi can really dance! Tim has to manually move his arms and legs.
The designers pack up, go home, and start designing and constructing their final collections. After some months pass, Tim Gunn visits each contestant at their mysteriously good-looking abodes, which is usually a great cinematic treat when 1) the designer is a middle-aged woman with frantic, boll weevil-attracting eyes named Wendy Pepper, 2) the creations are worth looking at. You will notice neither of these tenets in this episode.
Tim first visits Carol Hannah in a New York City suburb, where she shows him some clothes, and Tim just grimaces and replies with a "comme ci, comme ça" hand gesture for the duration. Sensing defeat, Carol Hannah exacts revenge and forces Tim to meet her boring family, tying an apron on him as a way of saying, "In the south, you would be received as a woman." While Tim dons the apron and helps prepare dinner, Carol Hannah's family remarks that they are proud of her. Did you know can shoot my face off right now? I will allow it.
Next Tim visits Irina.
Tim: Irina!
Irina: Tim! I won!
Tim: No, not yet! Wait until next week.
Irina: I forgot. Come on in.
Tim: Sweet digs. I'd attend a key party here. Let's see the winning, er, competing garments.
Irina: I'm inspired by Coney Island, where I grew up. That's where my sisters and I would just be kids and make fun of poor families to their faces. Do you like the Coney Island print I made?
Tim: Irina, you're going to win this season because Carol Hannah and Althea are making their collections out of Glad bags and Crayola Washables. Don't worry. That said, I just got a text from the bureau of Let's-Be-Fucking-Real, and that Coney Island print is totally stolen. You can't use it in your collection.
Irina: Boo! Superiority makes one forget the law. Oh well. Let's meet my identical family members.
Tim: Hot.
That goes well. Lastly, Tim meets Althea in her hometown of Dayton, OH, where things get really jacked up.
Althea: Tim! I am inspired by sci-fi movies for some reason. And what does a proper sci-fi heroine need? You guessed it, a pencil skirt and a blazer. Tah-dah. What do you think?
Tim: Is the science fiction that someone would buy these? Eerie. May as well have Nicolas make us a collection with his beaming-down-Bai-Ling ideas. See that purple thing you made? That can't walk the runway, Althea. And those over there? Basic. You need to strike a balance between Talbot's and whatever all that Close Encounters shit is. Otherwise, well, I'm getting Irina on the phone, and we're going to call your forehead fat. Actually, we're going to do that even if you produce a cure for cancer. It really doesn't matter.
Althea: OK! That's the objective eye I needed!
Time flashes forward again, and now the designers fly to New York to prepare for the Bryant Park showing. Heidi shows up to announce they have to complete a 13th look, and no one even considers that Heidi might just be a hologram from Season Two. There's a particular I-Hate-Daniel-Franco glint in her stare. Also, Carol Hannah has a terrible stomach ailment, and she throws herself by a toilet for our viewing pleasure. Irina and Althea call each other idea burglars again.
And lastly, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia show up and give the advice these designers really need.
Michael: Irina, Althea, Carol Hannah. Do something exciting for once. Give us a range.
Nina: Try. Or something. I don't know. Actually, keep in touch with the producers. No one will hear from you again if you don't get a spin-off series.
Michael: Seriously. Even Christian's licking the Bunim-Murray power taint.
Nina: Do we make ourselves clear?
Irina: Yes! Victory is mine!
Carol Hannah: Yes! Victory is Irina's.
Althea: Yes. And now to receive more inspiration. Emperor, transport me! Glorb glorb! [Zaps to other planet.]