Homeward Bound

Darlings, if you're a long-time minion, you know how much we enjoy what we call the "homeward bound" episode at the end of every season. You can read our original thoughts on why we love it so much here. Basically, what we love most about it is that it fills in the blanks on these designers and gives us a glimpse into their "real" day-to-day lives. Plus, they look better because they got a full night's sleep and had time to do their hair and put on makeup.

Also, we get the high-comedy of seeing Tim driving a Saturn, a sight we once described as "about as believable as a scene depicting him making out with a woman."

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Case in point.

Sometimes the staging on this show gets awfully silly.

First stop: KortoLand. We have to say, we thought she looked utterly fabulous and we thought it was cute that she seemed a bit nervous about what Tim was going to think of her work. It must be strange for the designers. They got used to having Tim come in and critique them in the fishbowl of Parson's but to have him come into your home and personal workspace to offer his criticisms must be awfully daunting.

Korto honey, why didn't you just stop here? We don't fall-down love it but it's a hell of a sight better than the final product.

And God, how beautiful are those colors? She said she wanted a collection that was "ethnic but not too ethnic" and this peek shows that she's definitely on the right track.

He said "snapshot" you dirty birds. We refuse to believe that Tim would ever use the word "snatch" unless he was talking about grabbing something.

LOVED the drumming session. How awesome was that? Of course every year with every remaining designer, they attempt to paint some hardship picture. Witness Santino's homelessness. Jeffrey's addiction, Uli's black-and-white East German childhood, Jay's smalltown homosexuality, etc. But damn, "We had to leave Liberia during the civil war because they would have killed my entire family" is right up there with Chloe's Laotian refugee tale.

Is that not the cutest fucking thing you've ever seen? We got toothaches from it. Tim in a widdle helmet! We're dying here!

Like his visit with Korto, it came across to us that Leanne not only really values Tim's expertise and opinions, she also seemed to just enjoy seeing him and chatting for a while.

Tim responded to her collection exactly as we expected. Having seen it ourselves, if he'd been underwhelmed or too critical, we would have been VERY upset. Of course Daddy came through for us.

NerdLove is so cute, isn't it? Could these two possibly be any better of a match for each other? We met Nathan at Bryant Park and he's an utter sweetheart who reads the blog regularly. He's also, like our Alex, a cartoonist. Clap loudly and tell him you want him to submit a strip for us.

We have to say, we're not loving the goatee, which makes him look a little like Marvin Gaye. Not that there's anything wrong with looking like Marvin Gaye, but we thought he looked cuter without it.

Tim's critique was hard to watch because it was sorely needed and we could tell it was falling on deaf ears. We're all for designers being true to themselves but this is a competition and if you're not going to curtail your more out-there impulses in order to stay in the game, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

Yes, he introduced his SignOther as his "love interest," which we thought was pretty clever but some people seemed to think it was a little weird. We just think it was Jerell being Jerell.

His family seemed sweet and supportive too.

Maybe we're reading too much into it but Kenley seemed like she was a nervous wreck meeting up with Tim again.

We suspect being cast as this season's villain caught her way off guard and for someone who's naturally defensive under the best circumstances, the realization that seemingly 99% of the internet has negative opinions about her must have been pretty damn hard to handle.

Of course she immediately reverted to form and got defensive at the slightest critique.

Not just unattractive, it's plain weird.

And Tim, we're dying to know where you stand on the whole "ripoff" issue. Knowing what we know both about this show and about Tim, we wouldn't be a bit surprised that he brought it up but it was edited out so the judges could be the ones to tell her they've seen it before.

As for the little reunion in the hotel, clearly the producers wanted a blowup in the Wendy/Kara Saun manner, but none of these people are extreme enough in their personalities (not even Kenley) to pull it off. Instead we got a lot of immature passive agression that evaporated with one half-assed apology followed by alcohol for all. Oh well. Hopefully there'll be a fistfight in the tent in this week's episode.

[Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]