What you need to know about Project Runway’s second episode

Posted by Dan July 26th, 2006 at 11:48am In Project Runway

A power outage in Maggie's apartment and flakiness/procrastination by the rest of us have resulted in there being no Project Runway recap for episode two.  And now, here we are.  It's Wednesday and we're all ready for Tim to tell us what's working and what's not, for Heidi to tell us who's in and who's out, for Nina Garcia to crush a dream or two.  And we haven't even told you what happened.

Well, fear not, here's the gist of what happened on episode 2.

They're designing a dress for Miss USA to wear in the Miss Universe pageant.  Heidi introduces Miss USA, a girl named Tara from Kentucky, and she breaks the news that she'll be wearing one of the garments in the pageant.  Kayne damn near snaps in half at this news, as he owns his own personal sequin factory in Oklahoma.

They designers work in teams of two with varying degrees of success. After being given a half hour to sketch, the designers all pitch their ideas to Tara who then selects 7 team leaders.  Then, the team leaders get to pick their partner.  The teams are (leader first) Laura/Michael, Malan/Katherine, Kayne/Robert, Uli/Bonnie, Keith/Bradley, Jefferey/Alison and Vincent/Angela.  Vincent is the last to pick a teammate and Angelas is the last one available.  He tries to be a good sport, attempting to ignore the fact that people smell the scent of failure on Angela, and says "I would love to have Allison as a partner."  And then everyone laughs, even though they really want to die.

Angela and Vincent are completely dysfunctional.  But they both act equally like freaks so no one is really in the wrong. Angela hates Vincent's design and pretty much pouts about it the whole time.  Vincent is a control freak and won't let Angela help when she tries to lend a hand with his crappy dress, which (to me) looks like a gremlin.

Malan tell us about his gay Dickensian childhood. Well, it's probably not Dickensian, because that implies poverty.  And I don't think Malan would recognize a ramen noodle if it fell on his patent leather shoes.  It's more of a Mommie Dearest situation, but even gayer.  He talks about how, as a child, he had drawn several fashion designs and shown him to his mom.  She then tore them up and said he'd never amount to anything.  Now, he's on Project Runway so he can prove himself to her.  Or tell her to suck it.  One of the two.

Kayne wins, with help from Robert. And thank God, because if he didn't win I wouldn't want to experience the shrieky bender he would go on.  In any case, since Robert was the helper, he is merely 'in' and he walks off the runway, flashing his waxed chest all the way.

Malan is out.  It's surprisingly depressing.  It came down to Angela and Malan.  Angela had spent the episode not sewing, not sketching and not designing.  She may as well have been looking for four leaf clovers in Central Park.  While Malan made a dress that Tim Gunn (aptly, of course) said looked like it was made out of a log.  He honorably fell on his sword for Katherine, saying that it was his design and if anyone had to be out it should be him.  It's kind of a shocker that he got the boot, considering how little Angela did throughout the episode.  In his closing moments he talks about how he has never had many friends and that in participating in Project Runway he felt like he was a part of something.  And then he turns out the light and everyone feels weird that they're saddened by the weird fake British guy.