Project Runway All Stars or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love this bomb!

Well, it’s a brand new season and you know what that means!

Daniel Franco: “No way! Leave me alone!”

Oh, come on, Daniel. I’ll just hold this football and you run up and kick it.

Daniel Franco: “You must think I’m really stupid! Every season you tell me you’ll hold the football and then I run up to kick it and you pull it away at the last minute! Well, not this season. I’m not falling for that again. Forget it!”

Daniel, I know I’ve done that in the past, but I won’t do it this time. I’m a changed man. I’ve been doing yoga with Elena. I have too much respect for you to do that to you again. Now, you just run up and kick the ball. I promise not to pull it away. I mean it this time. Look at me, Daniel. You can trust me.

Daniel Franco: “Well, all right. You seem sincere. I truly believe people can change. And what's the point in living if you can't trust people, right? OK, here I come!”

Daniel Franco: "...ooooohhh...my nuts..."

Daniel, I really admire your completely unjustified faith in humanity.

Thank goodness we got that out of the way. Now we can get back to my favorite subject: me! I swore I was not going to blog this season. I really need a break. The idea of spending every Saturday through January doing this makes me want to weep. But Other Eric talked me into it:

Other Eric: “What else do you have to do?”

Me: “How dare you! I’m a very important person! I have things to do!”

Other Eric: “Like what?”

Me: “Well, for one thing I have a DVR full of House Hunters episodes that aren’t going to watch themselves. And I need to get back to my Rosetta Stone lessons that probably don’t work anymore. And maybe I was actually going to read that David Foster Wallace novel I bought four years ago. YOU DON'T KNOW!!!”

Other Eric: “Besides, after this season of All Stars there will be a long break before season 13 starts.”

Me: “Really? Are you sure?”

Other Eric: “How should I know?”

Well, maybe just the dream of a break between Project Runway seasons will be enough to sustain me. The point is I might be taking some shortcuts this season. For instance, instead of finding the perfect film or television show to parody, I might just randomly use whatever damn thing I watched recently. Which brings us to this week's challenge:

For more than a year, ominous rumors have been privately circulating among high level western leaders, that Project Runway had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon, a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top secret Runway project to the perpetually fog shrouded wasteland of Manhattan island. What they were building, or why it should be located in a such a remote and desolate place, no one could say.

 

In order to guard against surprise nuclear attack, America's Strategic Air Command maintains a large force of B-52 bombers airborne 24 hours a day. Each B-52 can deliver a nuclear bombload of 50 megatons, equal to 16 times the total explosive force of all the bombs and shells used by all the armies in World War Two. Based in America, the Airborne alert force is deployed from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic Ocean, but they have one geographical factor in common: they are all two hours from their targets inside Parsons The New School.

The challenge revolves around the rogue host, General Alyssa Milano, who has just given the orders to attack, which will lead to All Stars Season III and end all life on earth:

General Alyssa Milano

Alyssa Milano: "Designers, have you heard of fluoridation? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? We have to wipe out this commie threat once and for all. So I'm locking you all in the basement of Mood to make punk outfits for Debbie Harry. It's the only way to protect our precious bodily fluids."

oh, my god. Alyssa Milano has completely lost her mind. What are we going to do?

Alyssa: "First let me tell you about this season's sponsors and prize package. Makeup will be done by the first Avon lady who happens to come by and ring the doorbell at Parsons. You'll have access to everything on the 99 Cents Only Store accessory wall. The prize package includes all your survival needs: one 45 caliber automatic, two boxes of ammunition, four days concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills, one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible, one hundred dollars in rubles, one hundred dollars in gold, nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactics, three lipsticks, and three pair of nylon stockings."

The largest prize package in Project Runway history!

Isaac Mizrahi: "Shoot, a designer could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff!"

Alyssa Milano: "That's right, Isaac. Now let's go kill some commies!"

Christopher: "Yeah, let's sew some stitches and cut some bitches!"

Isaac: "You're talking about mass murder, not a runway show!"

Alyssa: "Look, Isaac, I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed. But we have people to fix our hair, and I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops."

Isaac: "I will not let Project Runway All Stars go down in history as the greatest mass murderers since Adolph Hitler!"

Alyssa: "Perhaps it might be better, Isaac, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books."

Well, I think it might have been a mistake to give Alyssa Milano this much power, but apparently we're stuck with her, so let's make the best of it. The designers make their punk rock looks. I thought they made some nice outfits, though several of them did not look inspired by punk at all. 

The judges deliberate in the War Room. In attendance are Alyssa, Isaac, Georgina, and Debbie Harry:

All Stars War Room

Alyssa: "Uh, excuse me, Isaac, but am I to understand that the Punk Rock Ambassador, Debbie Harry, is to be admitted entrance to the War Room?"

Isaac: "That is correct. She is here on my orders."

Alyssa: "I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean... she'll see everything. She'll see the big board!"

Isaac: "That is precisely the idea, Alyssa. That is precisely the idea. Georgina, get Premier Kissov on the Hotline."

 

There is some tension in the War Room:

 

Georgina: "It's not totally punk to me."

 

Debbie Harry: "Let's try to remember that the looks are supposed to be inspired by punk."

 

Georgina: "Well I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

 

A fight breaks out:

 

 

The judges got the top three correct: Jeffrey, Seth Aaron, and Elena. They were all really good and any one of them could have won. I, personally, thought Jeffrey's was the best. It was a punk version of a red carpet look, which, now that I think about it, has really already been done by Vivian Westwood. But, whatever. It was still good. The twist, though, was that the winning look had to be something Debbie Harry actually wanted to wear. And of the three top designs, Elena's probably made the most sense. The black and neon leather jacket was not completely punk, but it did have some punk ancestry and it looked like a modern interpretation of an 80s look. I'm sure people will complain that it was Elena's model who suggested putting the jacket on backward, but I say, Whatever. A suggestion was made and she was smart enough to pay attention. Congratulations, Elena!

The bottom three were Melissa, Viktor, and Ari:

 

Ari: "Now, designers, we got three engines out; we got more holes in us than a horse trader's mule, the radio's gone and we're leaking fuel, and if we was flying any lower, why, we'd need sleigh bells on this thing. But we got one little edge on the competition, at this this height, why, they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain't gonna spot us on no radar screen."

 

Well, there were other bad looks that were missed on the judges' radar screen -- I'm looking at you, Korto and Daniel -- but Ari is a goner. But she goes out in a blaze of glory. If the worst thing about your look is that it was perfectly executed, then you're doing pretty well. Sorry to see you go so soon, Ari!

So long, Ari!

The bad news is that Ari's elimination sets off the doomsday device. Cobalt thorium G has a radioactive halflife of ninety three years. If you take fifty H-bombs in the hundred megaton range and jacket them with cobalt thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the runway for ninety three years!

But the surviving designers must carry on somehow. 

Isaac: "I suggest they go deep underground and stay there for the next hundred years."

Dr. Isaac Mizrahi

But look here, Isaac, that seems awfully long, even for a Project Runway season. And wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the eliminated designers and not want to go on living?

Isaac: "No, when they go down into the mine most of the designers will still be in the competition. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!"

We end with a montage of upcoming scenes, set to one of the hits from the brand new Blondie album:

Debbie Harry: "We'll meet again...

Don't know where, don't know when...

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day!"