Project Runway All Stars Season Two, Episode Nine: More Miserables!

[Spoiler alert: everyone living in France in the nineteenth century is now dead. If this is news to you, please don't read any further. Everyone else, I would appreciate it if you would sing this week's post as loud as possible.]

The episode opens in New York two hundred and twenty three years after the start of the French revolution. The designers are working away in the Brother sewing room:

Designers: "Look down, look down, you'll always be a slave. Look down, look down, you're standing in your grave."

The designers in the Brother sewing room

The action moves out to the street:

Joshua: "How do you do? My name is Josh. These are my people, here's my patch. Not much to look at, nothing posh, nothing that you'd call up to scratch. This is my school, my high society, here in the slums of the Upper East Side. We live on crumbs of humble piety and 'moderate' dresses that cost seven hundred dollars. Think you're poor? Think you're free? Follow me. Follow me!"

Josh leads the designers up Fifth Avenue, where they meet Elie Tahari:

Elie Tahari: "Come in, designers, for you are weary and the day is cold out there. Though my beginnings were very humble, what I have I have to share. There are touchpads to excite you, there is fabric that is fine. A corner office you can work in. Work in peace and do not whine."

The designers steal all of Elie Tahari's fabric. Joanna enters the design room and is ready to arrest them and send them back to jail, but Elie tells her that he gave them the fabric:

Elie Tahari: "Now remember this, designers, see in this some higher plan. You must use this precious fabric to 'wow' as best you can."

Joanna is moved by this act of kindness, but she has some words of advice for the designers:

Joanna: "All Stars, in your multitudes, scarce to be counted, filling Lifetime with drama and light. You are the sentinels, loud and sure, making clothes in the night, making clothes in the night. You know your place on the show, you hold your course and your aim, and each in this season has returned and returned and is always the same. And so it has been, and so it is written on the doorway to the studio that those who falter and those who fall must be eliminated. This I swear by the All Stars!"

The designers go back to the hotel, where they talk about their day:

Anthony Ryan: "At the end of the day we're another day older. And that's all you can say for the life of an All Star. It's a struggle, it's a war, and the viewers they just keep complaining, and we just keep hanging around, what is it for?"

Uli: "One day less to be living."

They give a toast:

Emilio: "Everybody raise a glass!"

Joshua: "Raise it up Carolyn's [bleep]!"

Emilio: "Everybody raise a glass to the host of the show!"

And they remember their friends who are no longer there:

Ivy: "So my friends, my friends don't ask me what your sacrifice was for. Empty chairs at empty sewing machines, where my friends will sew no more."

The next day the models are sent to the L'Oreal hair and makeup studio, where they have their hair cut off, their teeth extracted, and are then turned into prostitutes. Just like every week. Time for the runway:

Uli made another white dress:

Uli: "There is a castle on a cloud. Everyone there is dressed in white. Colors at all are not allowed. Not in my castle on a cloud."

Emilio wanted to do color-blocking but ended up changing his design:

Emilio: "Orange: the color that I wanted. Purple: my world if it's not there. Yellow: the color I ended up with. Purple: the color of despair!"

The judges fall in love with Anthony Ryan, while Uli loses this week's prize:

Judges: "A heart full of love, a heart full of song. Anthony Ryan can do no wrong."

Anthony Ryan: "Do I dream?"

Judges: "We're awake. A heart full of love."

Uli: "It was never mine to lose."

Judges: "A heart full of song."

Uli: "Why regret what could not be?"

Judges: "A single look and then we knew."

Uli: "These are words I will not hear."

Anthony Ryan: "From today."

Judges: "Every day."

Uli: "Not today."

The bottom three are Emilio, Joshua, and Ivy. Isaac pleads with the other judges to spare Emilio:

Isaac: "He's like the son I might have known, if God had granted me a son. The seasons come one by one and I am old and will be gone. Bring him peace, bring him joy, he is young, he is only a boy. If I die, let me die. Let him live. Don't send him home. Don't send him home. Send Ivy home!"

Ivy is fading away and she skypes with the spirit of Casanova:

Ivy: "Casanova, you are here again beside me. Now I can be eliminated in peace for now my life is blessed."

Casanova: "You will stay, Ivy, you're going to stay. It's too soon, too soon for you to say goodbye!"

Ivy: "Yes, Casanova, forbid me now to die. I will obey. At least I will try."

Ivy fails and is out. She sings to the spirit of Casanova as she walks off the Runway:

Ivy: "Take my hand and lead me to salvation. Take my love for love is everlasting. And remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God."

Casanova: "huh?"

We leave with the designers singing about the finale:

Designers: "One more week to final challenge! We will see this season through! We will cry and we will panic. We will 'sew' our clothes with glue! Next week we will discover what the judges have in store! One more challenge! One more auf! One week more!"