I can hear my neighbor Jill watching this week’s episode because both of our front doors are wide open. It’s almost October and still way too warm in Los Angeles. Everyone else in the civilized world gets to wear jackets already. Not me. I spent this week sweating through T-shirts. Who wants to trade me my glamorous zip code (I’m one over from 90210, y’all -- I know, exciting) for 25 fewer degrees Fahrenheit, starting right now? Anyway, I can hear Jill. And she’s at the point in the episode where Kenley gives Tim Gunn way too much lip. So I walk over. Who cares that I’m wearing a ratty T-shirt that’s soon to be a dust rag and a pair of boxer shorts? Not Jill.
I enter her apartment and she’s chopping up apples because she’s about to make some kind of baked apple crumble thing. “I hate that fucking Kenley and here’s why,” she starts. “Number 1, she’s a megalomaniac. You probably like her for that.”
“Uh…”
“I knew it,” she says. “I knew you enjoyed that about her. You live for evil. Also? She’s so mean, laughing at other designers on the runway, being rude to everyone, never saying one decent word to Tim Gunn, not even ‘thank you.’ Nothing. She’s awful. And number 3, her voice. That nasal, pouty whine just cuts right through me. I want to see her get punched in the face. I say that as a woman. I’m embarrassed that she’s one of my people. She is, I guarantee you, an only child.”
I can’t argue with Jill. Kenley is a brat. But still, I want her to stick around because she livens up the show. You simply can’t count on Korto, Leanne, and Jerell to be cruel to one another. But you can count on all of them to hate Kenley. And that’s why I’m here. If I want real fashion, I’ll go watch runway shows on the Internet.
“I need to step up my game or I’m gone,” says Suede, who opens the show wearing a black leather vest. I get the feeling he bought it at some BDSM emporium hoping to butch it up a little, maybe scoop himself a cigar-chomping Daddy to bankroll his line. Korto, meanwhile, is wearing jeans that really show off, for I think the first time this season, the level of booty she’s maintaining. If her ass were math it would be:
Badonk + adonk + Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” video + one of those hydraulic things they lift your car up on to change the tires.
It’s a stunning achievement in buttocks. Normally I don’t like to comment on the bodies of reality show contestants, especially the ladies, because even though I’m a gay it still seems sexist when you criticize, and I’m not that kind of asshole. But this is praise, so I feel OK about it. She’s been hiding her coolest feature this entire season.
Next? Model-stealing time. Heidi meets them all on the runway and trots out the nameless women that no one really cares about. Jerell stays with his model, but Leanne takes Suede’s. The Leannimal is loose! She crouches! She attacks! “Childish!” pouts Suede on interview cam, and Korto says, “You’re a heartbreaker, Leanne.” But Leanne doesn’t care. And why should she? Suede’s going home this week anyway. Everyone can feel it in the air. Because even if he and Kenley have competing badness on the runway at the end of the show, who’s better TV? The brat or the lump? I vote for the brat.
Then it’s off to the workroom, where Tim Gunn is going to explain the challenge. It makes me feel a little cheated out of Heidi time, but I’ll recover. I have to start weaning myself off her anyway; the show only has like three episodes left. I don’t even think we’re going to get a fighty reunion episode and that annoys me. Thanks for nothing, Bravo.
Tim explains that they’re going to design for each other -- so all that model stuff was even more filler than usual -- and that the designs have to reflect a specific genre of music. I wish I had a little link to a sound file you could click on to hear Tim Gunn say the word “genre,” because he fancies it up like he’s actually French, pronouncing it “Jeawwuhnruh,” not elongated necessarily, but swallowed way into the back of his throat. I hit the TiVo repeat several times to hear him do it. I love that Tim Gunn.
Suede gets Jerell as a model and rock as a jeawwuhnruh. His response: “Suede is gonna win and get Tia [his model] back!” Ha. Wrong and wronger. Kenley gets Leanne and hip-hop. Korto gets Suede and punk. Jerell gets Kenley and pop. Leanne gets Korto and country. Everyone gives a mild chuckle over that one. Translation: “You’re black so this is hilarious.” Jerell is excited. He’s going to make Kenley look like a rockabilly Jawa. Suede explains that he’s not punk rock at all, in spite of his lame blue fauxhawk. And somewhere off camera back at Atlas, Stella is putting her fist through a wall.
I sit on the couch with Xtreem Aaron (sorry, but the husband/partner/whatever has been traveling for work a lot or missing episodes because he’s out at movie screenings for his job, so if you’ve been missing our warm, loving, longtime companion interplay, you’ll just have to wait until next week, I guess -- or American Idol -- I don’t know what to tell you) and we discuss what Leanne’s taste in hip-hop might be:
Xtreem Aaron: She likes Mos Def.
Me: I was going to say Talib Kweli. Maybe Common.
Korto grins as she is "countrified."
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