Project Runway Season Five, Episode Four: Rings of Glory (a.k.a. Glory Holes)!

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

Tim: "Oh, good lord! Are you even wearing a skirt?"

OK, so last week Emily got eliminated and Kenley won with a dress that hurt my eyes. I want to apologise if it seemed that I hated her dress. I didn't. I actually liked the silhouette, I thought it was well made, and I totally appreciate the 80s influence. I even understood where she was trying to go with the fabric; I just don't think she got there. I hated that fabric. But I think in a slightly different fabric I would have liked that dress. So anyway, congratulations, Kenley!

Tim takes the designers on another field trip:

Blayne: "Oh, please be a tanning salon! Please, please, please!"

Tim: "Uh, yeah, it's not a tanning salon. But if you really want to tan that badly, I encourage you to stick your head out of the window of the moving car. Lean out as far as you can."

Tim takes them to a track and field center:

Leanne: "This is going to be a really different challenge."

Or will it actually be EXACTLY THE SAME?!!!

The designers are so excited to see Sasha Cohen skating up to them! Except it turns out to be Apolo Ohno.

Tim: "Apolo Ohno has nothing to do with the summer Olympics so we thought he would be the perfect guest judge for a challenge that won't really have anything to do with the Olympics in China this year. You will be designing uniforms that nobody will ever wear. Good luck!"

Seriously, what's the point? This is a combination of the Sasha Cohen challenge and the postal-carrier challenge. They will be designing uniforms for the opening ceremonies of the summer Olympics, which is a great idea, except they should have gotten someone who actually participates in the summer Olympics and they should have forced the US Olympic team to actually wear the winning design. I'm sure Heidi has the power to make that happen.

Anyway, most of the designers really do not get the concept of a uniform. Uniforms can be interesting, fun, sexy, cutting edge, or even weird. But they need to be fairly simple and they have to look good in groups and at a distance. In other words, you have to imagine 100 people standing together wearing the exact same outfit. A perfectly nice outfit can look really bizarre if a whole group of people are wearing the same thing. And if there is too much going on (too many different colors, too much pattern, etc.), a whole group is going to look messy. That's not what you want with a team uniform.

So the designers look at past uniforms and, of course, pick all the wrong inspirations. Instead of looking at what would be appropriate for recent games, they seemed to be basing their designs on completely anachronistic ideas:

Remember that year all the women wore burkas?

How about when the entire track team wore space uniforms because the Olympics were being held on the moon that year?

Or remember back in 300 B.C. when everyone was just naked?

The designers shop for fabric at Mood. Tim gets passive-aggressive:

Tim: "Oh, god. You're using black?"

Stella: "Is that a problem?"

Tim: "No, no. I'm just asking."

Back in the design room, Kenley is laughing. What an inconsiderate bitch. Can't she see people are trying to be miserable? She's ruining it for everyone.

Tim has to explain to Blayne what Dr. Pepper is:

Tim: "It's this soda people used to drink that's kind of like Mountain Dew except that you don't have to go bungee-jumping in order to drink it."

Blayne: "Tim is so old."

Joe is complaining about all the queens. What is it with homosexuals and their constant need to re-thread sewing machines? Will the madness never end?

Joe: "That sewing machine was my muse!"

On to the runway:

Korto created a pretty nice, simple outfit with a full pant and sleeveless top. It's white with red and blue trim and it works as a uniform, although I'm worried the top would not look great on a woman with really muscular arms.

Pleather created a cute red, white, and blue dress that might work as a cheerleading uniform but seems wrong for an Olympic athlete.

Kelli created an outfit that would probably work for a community-theater production of Oklahoma! but wasn't quite right for this challenge.

Joe created an excellent, sporty outfit. I think this should have won. The only complaint I would have is that it almost looked like something an athlete would actually wear for competition and they might want something slightly more formal for the ceremonies.

Leanne's outfit was fine.

Daniel screwed up royally with a royal blue cocktail dress and should have been sent home. The dress was totally inappropriate for the challenge. Most super-muscular women would look terrible in it. And a big group of women all wearing that dress would look like they were auditioning for a really bad Robert Palmer video. Inexcusable.

Jerrell's outfit just had too much going on and the hat was ridiculous:

Other Eric: "Oh, my God. It's Wallis Simpson!"

Yes it is!

Stella's outfit was OK but you would have no idea it was for the US team. I would guess it was for a team from some fictional communist country. Like the Republic of Vladistan.

Keith's outfit was fine. The top was pretty nice but his signature poofy miniskirt didn't work for this challenge.

Terri's outfit was really good. The jacket looked very well made and I think it would work as a uniform. Other Eric points out that this look could easily be adapted for the men's team, as well. The only problem I have with it is that I think there are too many different stripes that would be distracting on a large group of people. The scarf needs to go.

Jennifer thinks her yellow striped skirt really represents America:

Jennifer: "It's surreal."

Well, that's for sure. This was a very close second for worst garment.

Shockingly, Blayne actually created a very good outfit. It looked like a stylish version of a jogging suit. The pink stripes made it impossible to tell what country it represented but I really thought this was one of the better ones.

Kenley's outfit is something you would wear to brunch, not to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. However, it squeaks by in the middle of the pack because some of the others are so much worse.

Korto wins! Congratulations, Korto. It could have easily been Joe or Terri, however. All three were very good.

It is also hard to pick a loser, as the three bottom designs are all horrific. Daniel, Jennifer, and Jerrell just did not get it. As I said, I think Daniel's was the worst. But it was only just barely worse than the other two. The judges are completely confused by these garments.

Michael gets all Yiddish on Jerrell's ass:

Michael: "It's meshugener!"

I think meshugener actually mean "crazy person" and I suspect Michael actually meant that the look is meshuge.

Now for the controversy surrounding Daniel's blue fabric. Who thought it looked blue? It absolutely looked royal blue on our television. And it did not look the same as his shirt, which did look purple. Fabric does change color in different light but there isn't much he could do about that:

Heidi: "You should have brought the fabric back here and held it under the runway lights and then gone back to Mood and picked different fabric."

That really wasn't an option, Heidi.