Project Runway's Most Dramatic Moments, S1, Part 2

We're not done with Season 1 yet, bitches!

3)Reunion-Gate

Oh Season One. How we miss the rawness of it all. What we wouldn't give to go back to those halcyon days when the designers had no idea what they were in for. The backstabbing, the fighting...

...the drinking on camera.

Just stop for a moment and remind yourself that they held the reunion IN A BAR. How awesome is that?

Let's put the inevitable Wendy beatdown aside for a moment and recall the ironic-in-retrospect Vanessa beatdown. See, before the reunion, Vanessa gave an interview for the Popgurls site. You can find it here. Go ahead and take a look.

What's so fascinating about it is, 4 seasons later, we can't imagine ANY of the designers getting so bent out of shape over such a relatively harmless interview. Did she smack-talk? Sure, but when we think of the kind of smack-talking that we saw in later seasons and in later interviews, we can't help thinking the people SERIOUSLY over-reacted to what Vanessa had said.

Look at Wendy's face there. Hysterical.

The thing is, knowing what we know about the show now, a lot of what Vanessa said was dead on. Even more dead on was her retort to Jay and Kara Saun's judgmental tirades that the only reason they were so defensive about it was because they made it into the finals.

In fact, it's particularly ironic watching Jay's hurt and offended response on behalf of the show when you consider all the bad things HE'S said about the experience in the years since.

In the end, Vanessa did what anyone would have done in the same situation (if they were drunk and had already spilled their wine all over the floor).

"I don't want to be here. This is bullshit."

She walked out, to Heidi's eternal delight. Vanessa, you're one of the few contestants on the show we've never met but we're here to say, you were (mostly) right and you didn't deserve the dogpile you got for it.

Of course, we have to move along to the Wendy dogpile now.

"I think people misunderstand my objective by coming on the show. I didn't come on the show to interact with fellow designers, I came on the show to win. I don't regret my approach. I just assumed that we were all doing the best we could in this difficult environment to get to the end."

"It's not about getting to the end, it's about how you get to the end."

You know, that's all well and good, and we're not really defending Wendy because she was pretty much a shithead through the whole contest, but for Christ's sake people, it's a REALITY TV COMPETITION. It really is astonishing to watch just how naive everyone was about the whole thing back in those days.

And in that vein...

4) HOTEL ROOM-GATE

Now, THIS, kittens, THIS was PRIMO DRAMA. The naivete of the Season 1 contestants allowed for some fantastic moments like this, where they simply let out every single thing they were thinking on-camera and with both barrels.

"It is a little bizarre that you live in a room with me and you don't speak to me."

"I'm not bizarre, how's that bizarre? If I think you're a backstabbing liar then I'm not going to talk to you, so to me it's not being fake, it's being real."

"Maybe if I coerce them to fight with each other physically, I automatically win."

Hey, what do you know, Jay? It worked!

"Wendy, everybody hates you. It's a fact."

So much for staying out of it.

"I've met people like you my whole life, who pretend to be your friend, who stab you in the back, who will do anything, I live in freaking Hollywood, do you understand that? You're going to need your soul one day, Wendy, and you don't have it."

"Don't sell your soul to get anywhere because you may need it one day."

Oh, come on. We're with Wendy on this one. Again, not to defend her, and we can certainly understand why Jay and Kara Saun were hurt and angry, but when you start talking about someone's soul in the context of a reality television competition, you're getting a little full of yourself. Especially since, Jay and Kara Saun, at this point, had absolutely no reason to be threatened by her. They had to know that she had no chance to win the competition, so why not just ignore her at this point? They would have come off looking a lot better, which is probably a lesson that was learned by all the designers in subsequent seasons because we were never again treated to such delicious drama as this on the show. Oh sure, there were blowups and personality conflicts, but nothing like this, where the full on hatred of the participants was laid out for everyone to see.

[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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