Project Runway: The Beginning of the End

• The challenge happens at the Getty Museum, a place that really encapsulates the day-to-day experience of trying to go somewhere in Los Angeles. First you make a parking lot reservation, then you drive a hundred miles, then you get there and see if you're on the list to park, then you pay $15 to park, then you get on a tram and monorail yourself to a forbidding looking modernist castle on top of a hill that you can't get to any other way. Then they're closed. Then you drive another hundred miles back home and stop at In-N-Out Burger on the way. George Clooney is standing in line ahead of you. You pretend you don't know who he is. When you get home you post about it on Facebook.
• Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa shows up because he heard there was a camera somewhere that needed his face in front of it. He talks to the designers and crows, "[Los Angeles] is leading the way in fashion!" In flip-flops.
• Two Cindys join the judging. Cynthia Rowley, who's been there before, and Cindy Crawford, who to my memory has not. What's good about her is that she has no game face and throws some excellent grimaces right at the camera when the mostly barfy outfits come down the runway. I like her for that almost as much as I like Prince's old song about her from The Black Album called "Cindy C." He calls her a "super-fine heifer" in that song. Never fails to make me smile.
• Christopher, about to be evicted, makes a passionate and tear-filled speech about how passionate and tear-filled he is, and how very much like an algae-covered fountain he and his garment are. "That's me!" he sobs, algae-like. Heidi's response: "Thank you for sharing, Christopher."
• Gordana also weeps because she's still in the running towards becoming America's Next Top Crying Person and will be damned if Christopher takes that away from her in the reunion episode when past season waterworks-master Ricky arrives, train conductor's cap now permanently affixed to his skull, to deliver the decoupage plaque commemorating the honor. Then Gordana gets eliminated alongside Christopher and all emotions drain from her face. Tears stop and the wheels of commerce audibly crank and spin in her head as she plots her next move. "Is okay," she thinks, "I make good money luring tourists to that hostel."
• Tim Gunn, apparently also sick of everyone's lackluster bullshit, announces that in this final challenge he wants Nina Garcia's shoes to blow off her feet and shoot across the runway. He'd have better luck wishing that one of them would turn into a skateboarding bulldog.

--DAVE WHITE

Previously >Project Runway: Stop Copying Me!