Fluff and Fold

I usually fast-forward through the opening credits. This is because I feel like someone fed Laura the line "I'm fabulously glamorous!" and hearing Jeffrey say "I got mad skills" is like passing a group of 14-year-old white teenagers at the Glendale Galleria as they call each other "nigga." And I always cringe when I hear Alison saying "I'm going to win." Because she's not. She's out. But she should be in the top four.

So, welcome to the "Everyone Sits on a Couch" episode. Please, please, please let me get what I want, which is one or more super-high people--like Guadalupe from season 2--talking crazy shit. But I have a sense that we're about to get some heavy sharing of sensitive feelings from the likes of Angela. She'll want "closure" with Jeffrey, no doubt. I hate people and their dumb feelings.

There they are, minus the top four, sitting on couches. I can't even remember some of these people's names. Who's that chick sitting next to Kayne? Was she on the show? Faces are camera-scanned while Tim and Heidi talk about how we're going to find out the identity of the winner of the Audience Favorite contest. The winner gets a check for $10,000. Heidi says, "That's a lot of money!" At least that's what she hears lately from random poor people she encounters when they come to clean her pool or take away the recycling.

Heidi asks the designers how it has felt to be recognized in public since the show started airing. Bradley's unruly hair and beard are gone, so he claims to never be recognized. But I could spot that oceanless squid anywhere because he's always got on the same sweatshirt with the stretched-out neck.

One of the female contestants whose name I've already forgotten relates an experience about being yelled at by a stranger. The stranger yelled "You suck!" and ran away. I can't remember a single thing about this contestant, so she must have sucked. I suppose I could go back to the archived recaps and find out who she was and what dopey little name I gave her. But fuggit.

"How about you, Vincent?" asks Heidi.

He responds with, "Knowing who your fans are and why they like you is a beautiful thing." Where are these alleged fans? I want to see their faces. Then they turn to Malan, who apparently showed at Fashion Week without any help from Runway. Ha-HA! His nefarious plans are slowly taking shape. Soon he will control everything.

Heidi turns her attention to Angela. "How has been the public reaction to you since the show has been aired?"

Her answer: "Wow, um, especially after the Mom episode, I couldn't walk through the streets of Los Angeles without getting mobbed. People giving me their sympathy. And I've loved every second of it."

OK, first, LIE. No one gets mobbed in Los Angeles. I live here. I've seen big-deal, totally famous movie stars: in shops, on sidewalks, at restaurants, at the supermarket, everywhere. And they don't mob you here unless you're being like Sally Field in Soapdish and running down to Grauman's Chinese Theatre and standing on top of your own star yelling, "Hey, everybody! Lookee over here! It's me, Tom Cruise!" It doesn't happen. Second, "sympathy"? For what? Your awful designs? Your relentlessly autistic use of fabric flowers? Your sob-sister demeanor? And third, of course you loved every minute of it. Because you're out of your gourd.

Next, Heidi wants to know who the designers felt should have been in the top four but got kicked off anyway. Vincent decides to sing the praises of Kayne, who can't cringe enough. Because seriously, some endorsements you just don't want. It's like Jeffrey Dahmer for Calphalon.

They bring out the top four: Michael, Uli, Jeffrey, and Laura. Laura and Heidi compliment each other on their mutual fetal fatness. Then blah blah blah clips showing how the top four wound up being the top four. It's dull except for the camera cutting to Alison, who is totally doing what we do at my house every week: air-drumming slowly to the you're-out doom-pounding. Reality show losers! They're just like US!

Cut to Michael talking about something; I have no idea what, I'm too busy trying to check out his orthodontia. I need to warn him about those tiny rubber bands and how they will just snap inside your mouth. It hurts, Michael. Be ready for that.

OK, time to bring out Keith Michael, the cheater. Heidi wants to know how he's been. All of Keith's friends have been very supportive, he says. Well, that's nice. The clip of Keith Michael's expulsion is replayed, the one where he says, "My image has been tarnished forever [Ha-HA!]... I'm off the show [Ha-HA!]... and I'm going to be a laughingstock to my friends. [Ha-HA!]"*

How does Keith Michael feel now? His response: "I'm obviously upset. You can see it in my eyes and my face I'm upset. So do I think the outcome was fair? No. I don't. It wasn't in the contract that we couldn't bring books."

This statement is met with a chorus of "Oh, yes, it was" from the other designers. "Big black letters," says Angela. Oh, good one, Angela. Out of your gourd still, but good one. But of course, Keith Michael probably didn't read the contract. If you're pretty, you figure that details like that are for other gross people, not you. The chick sitting next to Kayne talks about how outside material would have triggered a "whole slew of ideas" for her. So it's clear that she didn't bring any of that with her, because I think she was first to get auf'd.

Keith gets all Who-shot-JFK and claims that his books were taken away from him at the beginning--did he wonder why that happened, since he had no idea books were not allowed?--and then returned to his room without his knowledge. Basically, he's claiming sabotage. "Uncomfortable, isn't it?" he says. Ooooh, I think I see it all clearly now. Malan has Manchurian-Candidated Keith and is controlling his vocal cords now via a trained monkey holding a remote in Malan's secret Alpine mountain compound. Keith has no idea he has spent the last several months sewing Malan's Fashion Week collection for 20 hours at a clip, getting one 15-minute Starbucks break a day. Malan has also programmed Bradley to shave and Jeffrey to go to an AA meeting every day and say things like, "I think anyone could have been in the top four."

Heidi and Tim Gunn are shocked by Keith's assertion and claim that "the producers don't play hanky-panky." I believe Tim Gunn on this one. One of the show's producers lives in my apartment building and this person doesn't seem like the hanky-panky type. But I think I should go downstairs and ask all the same, like the top-notch journalist I am. Keith gets combative. Tim Gunn asks Keith if he thinks he was "set up" and if there is a "conspiracy." Keith backs down a bit, saying he doesn't know how the books got into his room. Then he claims that a production assistant told him that he could leave if he felt like it. "She pointed towards the door," he says.

Cut to Laura shaking her head and rolling her eyes and crossing them all at the same time. This is the sort of multitasking you excel at when you have eleventy children.

Tim Gunn: We could talk about this for 24 hours.

Keith Michael: We sure could.

Heidi: It's getting too hot. We'll take a break.

Keith Michael: I thought so.

Dang, that is a last-word-having gay. You know, he's the guy who ends every argument with, "Mmm-hmm. Sure. Oh, big words. Oh yeah? Well, good. I meant to do that. Uh-huh. Sez you."

Commercial break: They air the commercial for The Queen, starring Helen Mirren. I saw it last week and it's really good. Just FYI.

Tim Gunn's time on the hot seat. His crime? Using big words. A clip reel runs, highlighting the most SAT-ready examples of his well-chosen, contextually appropriate, multisyllabic dialogue.

Here is the list:

Mitigate

Faux-bois

Consternation

Sturm und drang

Caucus

Circuitous

Ambivalent

Placate

Constructivist

Amorphous

Contrivance

Misapprehension

Egregious

Quotient

Anemic

During this list we're treated to people giving him blank stares. Well, guess what, dopes? These are not difficult words if you graduated from high school and paid attention for more than five minutes a day. Book-learnin' ain't a crime!

Clips about Laura's overuse of the word "ugly."

Clips about Robert's overuse of the word "boring."

Clips about Vincent's overuse of "turn me on."

Clips of Bradley making funny noises. Give him the $10,000 check!

Vincent's comments to EW.com, slagging Tim Gunn, are brought to light. He also slagged the other designers, calling them "amateur." Laura calls him "delusional," but my favorite moment happens when Uli says, "Vy are you hee-ahh? You're 50 years olt!" [sic, obviously]

Clips of Kayne talking a mile a minute, setting a land-speed record for gays. He's a one-man Gilmore Girls episode.

Commercial break: Ad for Flags of Our Fathers, a movie to distract you from the gross war of Now and remind you about the one from Then that we can all feel good about.

It's Malan's time to talk about his family's lack of support because of the whole gay thing, his accent (he's a citizen of the world), and his supervillain laugh. Heidi mimics his laugh and they show a clip reel of Malan cackling maniacally. With every giggle, he grows stronger and more invincible, radiating evil domination rays through his teeth.

Which challenge was the best? Everyone agrees that they liked the doggie challenge the best. And then everyone agrees that the mom challenge was the hardest. Because of all that fat. And because Jeffrey and Angela's mom threw down so hard. Clips are replayed showing Angela's mom "crying" her fake-ass croc tears. Ha-HA!

Jeffrey and Angela get a chance to air their grievances. Jeffrey's not sorry. Angela's still hurt. I want them to bring out Angela's mom so she can demonstrate her crying technique, because it's a great way to get what you want.

And finally, the best part of the episode: Vincent going ape-shit over how his laundry was done. He's volcanically angry about the fluffing and folding of his dumb shirts. It's a symphony of profanity and bleeps and Mommie Dearest insanity. Why didn't we see this when it happened? What else are we being denied? I go back and watch it again and again because it's just that good. There are more "fucks" per-second in that half minute of TV than you could fit in a whole episode of The Sopranos.

Time to award the $10,000 check. It's Michael's, of course. Is anyone surprised? Now he can pay that orthodontist. The check is my favorite kind: 5 feet long and carried by Michael Kors and Nina Garcia. I wish all my checks arrived that way.

A discussion of scoring the outfits ensues, with Nina and Kors's input. It's not terrifically interesting. In fact, the debilitating ennui I suffered from last week is surfacing again. Nina! Don't. Bore. ME. And then we cap it all off with a clip of Jeffrey passing gas on the runway and Vincent calling him a pig and Daniel from season 1 popping up to announce that Daniel Franco is going to take season 3. This, of course, means that I could win season 3 myself. And I really like that idea. I have these little fabric flowers I'm going to use to cover everything.