Project Runway Recap: Klum and Doom

In a form of playful torture, Heidi Klum made herself the client on this week's Project Runway. Terror! She told the designers to make "active wear" that you can wear on a trampoline, at work, and at a haute couture dinner party with Karl Lagerfeld, Prince Charles, and Versaces you aren't even allowed to know about. Seriously, this challenge was a riddle wrapped in a wrap dress. Let's make fun of everybody involved!

Mondo, having won three challenges in a row, is peacefully smug. Meanwhile, Gretchen leans back in bed and thinks about how peaceful it is now that her annoying best friend Valerie is gone. "It was always about what's going in [Valerie's] head," she says. "It was nonstop. I wanted to die. Seriously awful. She's a great person."

You can tell Gretchen has been told she's an awesome person for much of her life, because she excuses every barb that flies out of her mouth. She is every student council president ever. She says she cares about how you want an ice cream machine in the cafeteria, and she actually just wants an internship at a downtown theater company. Every. Single. Time.

Out on the runway, Heidi has horrifying news.

"Hello! I'm your client!" she clamors. The six remaining designers set themselves on fire just off camera. "You'll be making 'active wear' for my Amazon.com clothing line! You can buy it at Amazon.com. Here come your models wearing the generic yoga clothes I'm talking about. Fancy and gray, no? Wham, bam, thank you m'Amazon.com."

This challenge was almost senseless, as you may gathered from my interview with this week's losing designer. Heidi wants active wear that fits in with her preexisting collection, but she also wants the designers to be dee-zigners with their own visions, ideas, dreams, and freakishnesses. Also, she doesn't actually care for real "active wear." If you'd like to make a marvelous ball gown, that is kind of active to Heidi. She once won a hula hoop contest wearing an Edwardian collar and sheath dress, so go ahead and make that non-active thing, if you'd like.

Crazy ho. After the designers pick out the gray, off-gray, and subversively gray fabrics they're allowed to choose from, Gretchen says she's worried for Christopher. Chief among her doubts is that Christopher, for all of his personality quirks, is not Gretchen. Before long, Heidi joins the sextet in the workroom and decides to offer constructive criticism.

"Mondo!" says a beaming Heidi, with Tim Gunn trembling and peeing at her side. "OK, so, so, what in the hell? These don't look like my clothes. Were you trying to make your own clothes? Why did you do that to me? Wait, have you tried to introduce a second color into my collection? I am so confused. You charlatan little midget. I just. I just am so angry."

Mondo storms backstage because "it's so hard being here and dealing with these personalities. That critique with Heidi was the icing on the cake." Oh, Mondo, shut up and win the challenge. Heidi goes on to pepper April and Andy with praise, Gretchen with delicious doubts, and Michael C. with a hilarious one-liner.

"I forget, who was it that told us you can't sew?" Heidi asks. "Oh that's right. She's not here anymore." Well done, Lady Seal. Except then Heidi heads to the front of the workroom and voluntarily angers everyone, eradicating light-heartedness like a Ghostbuster.

"Hey, also!" Heidi calls. "I need you to make TWO MORE LOOKS. TWO, idiots. That will bring you to A TOTAL OF THREE LOOKS. Yes, THREE LOOK. TWO plus ONE, ultimately. FOUR MINUS ONE when you think about how nice I'm being."

So that's ludicrous -- but fear not, Heidi tells them they'll have additional help. Before you anyell, "Stop it, Bunim-Murray, I don't want to see Ivy today," here come the six previously eliminated designers through the workroom doors! Valerie, ~ <3 Ivy <3 ~ , Michael Drummond, Casanova, Peach, and AJ all pile in. About two of those people are actually helpful. Each is paired with a competing designer, and the only pairing that matters is Christopher and Ivy -- because Christopher was excited to pick Ivy. What the what? Christopher, we like you, get over this debilitating sickness you've suddenly acquired. It's bothering me.

Now that 12 people are sewing in close quarters, Ivy (who's been back in the workroom for three minutes) exacts vengeance on the man who made the judges hate her and that man is Ivy herself, because she made something terrible Michael C.!

"Michael, what's it like to be in the competition?!" Ivy says, pretending to plug away at a sewing machine.

"Um, I guess it's fine. It's, uh, tough," Michael replies.

"Why, because you cheated?" Ivy says, allowing the camera to point right at her face.

She says it loud enough that Tim Gunn is called into the workroom to explain that Ivy's claim, that Michael used double-sided tape to keep his Jackie Kennedy challenge dress in place, is invalid because no one cares, Ivy. Tim calls her claim, "Hearsay," and she stops hearing or saying anything for the rest of the episode. Back to work, everyone.

After all looks are "finished" (trust me, plenty looks unfinished), the designers head to the runway where guest-judge Norma Kamali is the third visitor in three weeks to be a terrific critic. Unfortunately her talents are wasted on a load of gray sweatsuits and generic yoga pants. Here's all that stands out about this week's looks.

· Andy used stripes that kind of look like a skull. Nina Garcia calls it "Halloweeny," but chic.

· Michael Costello tries introducing orange swishy pants to Heidi's active-wear line, that two-timing color-enjoying bandit. He is shunned.

· Christopher got too caught up in his winsome attractiveness to make anything memorable.

· April used black instead of gray and the judges danced!

· Gretchen put eight different separates onto each of her looks, and her models look like drug mules trying to escape their homelands with all of their clothing. Maria Full of Disgrace, more like.

· Mondo used a cute pink and made his models wear freaky headbands.

The stripes have it, and Andy is declared the champion. Awesomely nice Christopher, who hasn't produced much of note this entire season, is dismissed like the Klum-repellent bourgeois trash that he is. We're now down to five designers -- Andy, April, Gretchen, Michael C., and Mondo. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? A Gretchen-Mondo-Michael C. final three, dear sasstronauts. I'm calling it now. Put on your best active wear and prepare to sprint away from a finale that will feature Michael C. Bank on it.