Project Runway, Season Five, Episode One: Tablecloths are the new black!

[Click here for my Shear Genius recap]

Heidi: "This is Project Runway!"

Uh, yeah, duh; that's why we're here! So, Heidi and Tim are back for a new season!

Heidi: "Hey, Tim, is this skirt too short?"

Tim: "Well, I can't quite see your coochie, if that's what you're asking."

Heidi: "Darn . . . how about now?"

OK, so first let me just say that 16 contestants is exactly the wrong number of people for my tiny brain to comprehend. I was able to remember the 12 contestants on Shear Genius almost instantly but I'm not going to remember anyone on this show until a few people are eliminated.

I'll provide a little list here but I'm telling you right now I've already forgotten all of them. The descriptions, as usual, will mainly relate to their hairstyles:

Jerell used to be a model. He designs for a very exclusive group of clients. In other words, he doesn't have many clients.

Blayne is very tan. He is obsessed with street culture, hip lingo, and skin cancer:

Blayne: "Sup holla!"

I think you mean "S'up, holla."

Blayne: "Huh?"

Never mind.

Joe is a dad. He has facial hair.

Stella has severe black Cher hair because she is a rocker. She says she designs for Blondie. I'm wondering whether she designs for the whole group or if she really means she designs for Deborah Harry.

Jennifer has long brown hair and likes a surrealist Holly Golightly Salvador Dali look. Obviously.

Stella: "Hey, Jennifer, I just hope I don't get sent home first."

Jennifer: "Hey, Stella, could you possibly think of a more boring thing to say?"

Kelli has long blond hair and is very cute; she reminds me of Thora Birch. She has a Betsey Johnson aesthetic.

OMG, it's Donna Summer and she looks fantastic! Oh, wait, no, it's Terri. For some reason Terri doesn't tell us anything about herself during the introductions.

Jerry tells us that he is almost famous and he doesn't really need us to validate his talent but he decided to go on the show anyway. His designs are really pretty cool even if he does seem to be one of those designers who makes all black or all white clothes.

The next designer has a name that is so stupid I refuse to repeat it here on my blog. I'm just going to call him Pleather:

Pleather: "Pleather got tired of making millions for other people and finally decided that Pleather needed to start talking about himself in the third person."

Eric Three Thousand is totally down with that.

Keith has a buzzed head. He don't need no education.

Korto has a fabulous afro and is originally from Liberia. She now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. Apparently on purpose.

Kenley has dark hair with bangs. She appears to be going for a Bettie Page look.

Leanne has long brown hair with bangs. She usually wears glasses. People are going to underestimate her because she is from Portland, Oregon.

Emily has wavy dark brown hair with bangs. I can't tell you anything more about her right now.

Daniel and Wesley are cute young guys with dark hair. Daniel's hair is longer than Wesley's. Did I mention that they are cute?

And, of course, the final designer is Daniel Franco. Oh, come on; you knew I was going to do that.

The designers go up to the roof to see if they can kill pedestrians with champagne corks:

Tim: "You are the most diverse group of designers we have ever had on Project Runway. In other words, you are not the most talented group of designers we've ever had. But you are diverse. Actually, you what? You're not even that diverse. But we love all our groups of designers equally. OK, that's not true, either. I have an idea: let's get drunk!"

The next morning Tim wakes the designers at 4:00 in the morning. And Tim doesn't look like he just rolled out of bed so who knows how long he's been up:

Other Eric: "That's just not right. The designers deserve it but how can they do that to Tim?"

Well, let's just hope he was out partying all night and hadn't even gone to bed.

Tim leads the designers to the grocery store from the first challenge of the first season. The season five designers are apparently the only people on earth who haven't given a great deal of thought to what they would have done for the grocery store challenge. I'm mean, we all know what we would do, right?

Tim: "You have $75 dollars."

Damn. That rules out my idea of making a trench coat out of filet mignon.

We watch the designers running around the grocery store. Stella's leggings are making me a little nauseated. Most of the designers are getting really boring materials. They are mostly getting tablecloths. The only interesting materials are plastic cups and mop heads. Oh, and a dodge ball.

Jerry doesn't want to do anything interesting because he wants to be taken seriously. He upsets environmentalists by telling us he usually just throws away everything he gets at the grocery store.

Stella buys garbage bags and then spends the rest of the episode complaining that her garment is going to look like trash or garbage:

Stella: "My fabric is garbage."

That's because it isn't fabric; it's a garbage bag.

Blayne is trying to make "girlicious" this season's "fierce" but it's not going to happen. However, he may soon be associated with the term "tranny mess." I'm not promising him anything but it is a possibility.

Tim comes in and starts freaking everyone out by pointing out the obvious fact that their designs all suck. Then everyone starts furiously plastering various pieces of crap all over their tablecloths.

Stella finally starts making something awful out of her trash bags:

Stella: "If I'm the first eliminated designer, I'm going to look like the biggest jackass on the planet."

Oh, don't worry about it. Your hair already took care of that.

The next day, the designers are finishing up their work and preparing for the runway.

Blayne is having a little trouble fitting his model:

Blayne: "This fit the mannequin. Why doesn't it fit you?"

Model: "Unlike the mannequin, I actually have genitalia."

Blayne: "OK, gross. Well, we're going to have to cover that up. Do you mind if I sew this directly to your vagina?"

On to the runway:

The judges, of course, are Michael Kors, Nina Garcia, and the late Yves Saint Laurent.

Emily's look is kind of blah. There's lots of crap piled into a big collar but that's really all there is to it.

Jerell's is also just OK. The skirt is fine, the top is almost cute, but they don't go together.

Leanne just glued a bunch of cookies to her tablecloth dress. It's not the worst but it's pretty dull.

Korto also made a tablecloth dress. Here's the big difference between hers and the others: It is a gorgeous dress! I really love it. And, instead of working against the stiffness of the paper, she actually used it to create a silhouette that wouldn't be possible with a softer material. I thought the produce was a pointless addition but Yves Saint Laurent liked it so who am I to complain?

Jennifer made a paper-towel dress and it was fine.

Daniel made a very cool plastic cup dress. It was very impressive. Yes, the silhouette was not exciting and I usually hate sweetheart necklines, but it was actually very appropriate because of the curved shape of the cups. This should have won.

Terri made a woven mop-head top and I loved it! Unfortunately she didn't have time to do anything for the bottom.

Pleather made a very boring sheath dress from a tablecloth. I like the effect of the blue squares he sewed onto it. But they're just bits of blue plastic. Nothing is added to the look by knowing they are doggie waste bags. I supposed that's meant to be edgy.

Stella's garbage bag dress is really not as bad as I expected. But is that enough to win? Just kidding. But seriously, is it enough to not lose?

Joe made a skirt with pasta. The pattern is actually really cute but I'm seeing an awful lot of muslin.

Kenley's outfit is not bad. I like the dodge ball top. It makes the model's breasts very bouncy.

Jerry's outfit is just strange. I feel like it could have been interesting but it just didn't work. It made the model look pregnant and you definitely got a scary vibe from it.

Wesley made a dress out of a yellow tablecloth and stuck a bunch of yellow things on it so you couldn't see them. He thinks the judges will be impressed because they'll have to look twice to try to figure out what the things are. The problem is that they won't bother looking twice.

Blaine's "garment" is a tranny mess. There; I said it. I agree with the judges that it was ugly but I don't agree that it was interesting. I think ugly can be interesting but I don't think ugly automatically makes something interesting. I found this both ugly and boring.

Kelly made a skirt with vacuum-cleaner bags that she stained and bleached to make a beautiful material. I don't love the overall outfit, however; especially the coffee-filter top. This would have been my number two.

Keith made another incredibly boring tablecloth dress.

Kelly wins! Congratulations, Kelly!

Jerry is out.

Nina: "Jerry's outfit looked like what Michael wears when he kills people."

Michael: "Nina! That's supposed to be our secret!"

Nina: "Oh, please; like everyone hasn't guessed that already?"