Launch My Line: Bad Romance Edition

Photo courtesy of NBC

It's been a couple weeks since this recap appeared, thanks to the holidays and their anti-fashion emphasis on bulky red and green sweaters. But Launch My Line kept right on airing, bummed inside itself with the knowledge that if you were ignoring it already you'd continue to ignore it right through Christmas. That Christmas Eve-Eve episode featured some naked people to help inspire the designers. I can't remember why nudity was supposed to spark them beyond the idea that most people would rather go without clothes than wear just about anything created by any contestant on this show. But the net result of the skinspiration challenge was that the young woman who looked kind of like Lady Gaga (sorry, already forgotten your name, not going to go look it up) got sent back to her gig as an event planner.

That gave the show room to bring in the actual Lady Gaga for what was supposed to be the "avant-garde" challenge. Of course, the only avant-garde anything in the entire 60 minutes of airtime was Gaga herself, and even she phoned it in by wearing a seen-it-before severe dress with some pointy shoulders. LG walked around, introducing herself, giving lost-at-sea friend-of-Oprah Marilyn some really good fashion design advice: Maybe you should have some ideas about how to design a dress that has a shape.

This advice bounced right off Marilyn, who began talking about creating a "mardern" (aka "modern") evening gown to wear to the White House. Marilyn's designer Coco, talented but thin-skinned and annoyed to be cast on a reality show with a person who can't explain what she wants except through giant hand gestures or pronounce words like "modern," sabotages the process by shutting down, getting passive-aggressive and calling pow-wows and hug-it-outs until it's too late to design anything but a long lean gown with a big gross patch of giant plastic jewels on the ass. Their fighting (marred by silly tears, but at least it was still some fighting, which is all you ever want to see on shows like this anyway) was the highlight of the episode.

And by this point Lady Gaga had blasted off in a jetpack to wherever Grace Jones lives, but not before throwing a tiny kink in the challenge, forcing everyone to incorporate some screaming red vinyl into their design. Marilyn, who was also about to blast off in a jetpack, however involuntarily, was annoyed by the Gaga demands, took the fabric, cut out a little red circle and stuck it to the uppermost inside hem of the gown's thigh-high slit, making the entire outfit one big slinky product placement for Kotex.

Next Week: The return of Project Runway!

-- DAVE WHITE

Previously > Launch My Line: Blame It On Big Money Bob the Llama