The Columnist Manifesto

The "surprise guests" on this week's Project Runway were Angela and Vincent, who were allowed to come back to compete in one more challenge even though they'd been eliminated in the past couple of episodes. The rationale was that they'd each won one challenge.

Kayne said, "They're like cockroaches. You stomp on them and they keep coming back." I was a bit surprised at his animosity, which seemed based only on the fact that they'd been eliminated already, but I guess with the stress of competition, it's understandable.

But I had to agree about Vincent, whose return -- after we finally were rid of him -- pushed me to the edge of quitting watching the show then and there. The man keeps getting trashed for his lousy designs, and finally got eliminated last week, and yet he keeps saying how talented he is. Good psychological survival skills! Kind of like... cockroaches!

The judges are finally catching on to the fact that some of the designers -- Uli, most of all, with her flowy psychedelic print dresses, and Jeffrey, with his tedious repetitions of a bullshit "rock star" look -- keep making the same thing over and over, and have begun to call the designers on it. Glad they read my blog.

Laura, who had also fallen into a rut with her squarish, architected designs, stepped out of her mold and won the challenge with a cute cocktail dress.

The show was very satisfying. Jeffrey, though he barely survived, got a well-deserved smackdown that fortifies us viewers to cope with his insufferable ego.

Kayne, who had long outlasted his meager talent, finally got eliminated. His incredibly tacky taste lends itself only to prom and beauty pageant gowns, and he had coasted for weeks on his early win on a design challenge to make (drumroll) a gown for a beauty pageant contestant.

The terms of Angela and Vincent's comeback required them to win this latest challenge in order to stay on the show. The challenge was very straightforward -- make a cocktail dress using only black and white fabric -- but as they turned in predictably subpar performances, they were dismissed without fanfare ... without even an air kiss from Heidi, in fact.

I don't know why Vincent got under my skin so much, but I found him to be the single most irritating contestant in all of Project Runway. Apparently it's not just me. Tim Gunn, who has warmed up his image by adding "we'll miss you" to "clean up your work station" when he packs off the eliminated contestants, omitted "we'll miss you" when Vincent was booted last week.

By the way, is it just me, or has Project Runway added more commercials in recent weeks? In the one hour slot, they have five commercial breaks. Basically, you get the show for 7 minutes, and then a break for 5-6 minutes of commercials. That's a lot of commercials, especially given a show that is half product placement to begin with. It's almost unwatchable and is pushing me hard toward TiVo.