TVSquad

It's finale time! We are down to three: Chris C., Princess and Liz. It seems likely that the two annoyances will cancel each other out leaving Chris as the champ.  Princess thinks Liz shouldn't win because she can't make patterns or sketches but Liz does have a more classic style. The standard reality moment of having the rejecterinos come back to help brings all of the cut Cutters back and each of the final three gets to choose two helpers. Liz gets Wes and Felix, Chris C.wants James and Deanna and Princess selects Chris and Rob (what no one wants Crazy Jeff?). As usual Liz gets most of her ideas from her team while Princess listens to no one.  

I'm finally back to watching The Cut after a few weeks when it was pre-empted here on the West Coast. There are four aspiring designers remaining: Princess, Liz,  Felix and Chris. Their assignment is float around on a garbage barge for two hours and scavenge things to use in clothing design. Although the designers are supposed to work on their own Felix and Liz help each other out (or rather Felix helps Liz).  They then have dinner with Tommy Hilfiger and no one really seems up to the task of simple dinner conversation. Felix and Liz continue to work together while Chris and Princess have a respectful friendship but see each other as competitors. In the Style Forum, the Princess/Liz rivalry heats up. Then it's time for the designs. Liz does her usual classic design style (pretty but we have seen her do this before) while everyone else's outfit is a hodgepodge. Chris gets points for his red satin skirt and short blazer. Princess gets in trouble for the half-skirt pleated thing she made (and the barely-clothed model) and Felix loses points for his plaid shirt and ugly vest. In the end, Tommy says he was looking for the designers to create something beautiful so Felix gets the boot. Next week we finally get to see who Tommy choses.

The pivotal moment occurs in this episode when the one-and-only strangely magnificent, deliciously creepy Karl Lagerfeld shows his face to judge a photo competition. Seeing Lagerfeld slither across the room is nothing short of fabulous. Can someone please give him a reality show?

No more teammates tonight, everyone goes solo. The Tommy wannabes are on their own to design their own ad campaigns. Deanna plans a girl who takes on the establishment. Wes plans a baseball extravaganza,  Liz decides she wants her model draped in American flags in Grand Central Station, Chris wants his girl to be lost in Harlem, Princess puts her model at the New York Stock Exchange and Shauna basically lets her photographer decide everything. The episode is a total snooze until Lagerfeld shows up. Lagerfeld takes a look at the pictures while the stylies shake in their boots. Lagerfeld issues style dictums on each picture. Lagerfeld says Liz's picture is the most beautiful but Wes and his bubble gum baseball player was the most iconic. The stylies are nearly weeping after this audience with Lagerfeld. Liz wins and Deanna, Felix and Shauna hit the pit. Deanna is in trouble for having a photo that looks too much like Paris Hilton, Felix says he didn't understand the assignment and Shauna is in trouble because the taxicab is iconic for DKNY and because the idea wasn't her concept. Thankfully Shauna gets the boot which makes sense because she is completely devoid of hustle. 

We start off with the high drama this week as Chris lays into Liz for being an idea stealer.  The task this week is to sell embellished Tommy clothes on the streets from the back of a truck.  Felix and Rob are the team leaders.  This week Deanna is chosen last.  Back at the pad, both teams take to mimicking Liz, she hears and goes on the attack and only Rob defends her (or at least doesn't admit to finding her snobby).  Princess finally gets frustrated with the yelling and goes off on Liz.  The teams manage to get down to businesss and start work but Felix loses the key to his truck.  Instead of being apologetic he completely loses his mind.  Somehow the team manages to pull it together and eventually gets selling. They sell everything for $5 which is of course, an obscene deal so the clothes fly out of the truck. Russell Simmons goes with Hilfiger to check out the goods. Felix's team wins because they sold more and Russell Simmons seems to feel that this is an unfair way to judge the competition. Tommy puts on a show of being angry about the price gouging but considering how many of his products end up in discount stores it's probably not such a big deal to him.  He puts Felix's whole team in the pit because their pricing and location was wrong and goes to great lengths to interrogate the team.  Rob gets the walk of shame for choosing the wrong location. He probably deserved to go by now  but it seems to be a trumped-up reason. What is becoming more and more clear by watching this show is that Hilfiger is not a designer who thinks about the beauty of clothing as much as he thinks about the bottom line.

Deanna and Chris Cortes are team leaders this week and the project is a plane. Princess gets picked last again but then gets shipped off to a spa with Tommy. Liz and Shauna are pretty much of out commission with stomach flu. This gives them the chance to commiserate about how over-educated and under-appreciated they are. Meanwhile Princess laps up the sun and the Tommy-time.  Deanna's team paints the plane themselves while Chris's team outsources the labor. Deanna's team uses a wild vibrant design with bricks, graffiti and a picture of Tommy while Chris uses an icon approach.   In the Style Forum, Princess gets points for acting liked a lady.  Tommy doesn't really like the design of either team very much but he gives the win to the graffiti plane if only because he likes the TH logo on the tail of the plane.  Rob gets in trouble for doing the same old thing with his art. Tommy gives Jessica the boot not only for painting the bottom of the plane black but for being young and inexperienced. While Jessica did need to go, it seems sad that Liz and Shauna don't get in any trouble for missing the entire competition.

The two teams get choose looks for rock bands. Wes and Liz choose up teams and for once Crazy Jeff isn't last, Princess is.  But Crazy Jeff is still odd man out when the five person team takes on a four person band.  Both groups get a taste of the "rock star" lifestyle  (which mainly means getting tipsy).  Rob gets a bit hurt when the jacket he works on doesn't get choosen.  The bands are a little the worse for the wear in the morning but manage to get the job done.  Then both bands play.  Next up it's time for Style Hell.  Tommy decides that "God or Julie" was too generic all in black and that "Unisex Salon" with the tie-skirt idea is much more rocking.  He blames Liz for choosing the wrong team and saying that she shouldn't have chosen Princess the seamstress last.  Finally it's time for Crazy Jeff to explain himself.  He tries to explain what he contributed but Tommy sends him into the pit with Liz and votes him out.

The two teams have to create their own stores selling re-imagined clothes from Goodwill but the competition seems lopsided from the beginning making for an episode that is even more oddly paced than usual. Deanna and Crazy Jeff's team name their store Comme Undone while James, Liz and Princess's team calls their store the Garment Gallery. Jessica gets the flu and her team is already missing team leader Felix who is on the jet with Tommy and Shauna on the way to Sundance.  Comme Undone opens ahead of the Garment Gallery even with Crazy Jeff fighting with just about everyone.  The Garment Gallery realizes they have no decorations and opt to use paint rollers and ladders to portray an art theme. Jamie Lynn DiScala and Simon Doonan visit the stores to do a secret eval for Tommy. Out at Sundance, Felix makes a tool of himself going on about his accomplishments while Shauna demonstrates her usual smooth interviewing skills with the celebs.

This week our shivering fashionistas head to the Southwest to create a little Western design, two outfits for each team. Deana and Princess are the team leaders.  But there's a catch, only part of the team gets to go to the Texas or New Mexico, the rest have to execute the design from instructions they receive on the phone.  Princess decides to stay in New York whereas Deana heads to the field. Crazy Jeff hires a tailor to make an excellent denim outfit, thereby temporarily redeeming himself but when the team returns money is tight. Jeff and Shauna get into it. And Jeff runs off to get another jacket, nearly missing the deadline entirely.

The New Mexico team look like they are wearing Native American costumes and then wrapped up with blankets.The Texan team looks good but bland and the team immediately starts fighting over whether Jeff was in the right to hire the "denim specialist." Tommy H., a jeans man himself, applauds Jeff's decision (looks like we'll get another week of Crazy Jeff).

Finally, a design competition! The teams have to design dresses. The teams are headed by Wes and Little Tommy.  Once again, Crazy Jeff is the last picked.  This week's invitations are to Hilfiger's party in Soho.  Chris and Rob, Deanna and Wes snap up the invites. They are given $500 each to buy outfits.  Rob feels guilty for spending money that he should give to his children. In the cutting rooms, Little Tommy dominates the others in making the dresses, deciding to ignore the pattern Princess cut. On the other team, Liz is her usual difficult but driven self, Julie turns up her nose at the idea of any dress that exposes too much cleavage and Jeff generally annoys everyone.

Seeing snow fall during a reality show just makes me feel as if it is even more out of step.  The challenges on tonight's episode, to recreate The Cotton Club and Studio 54, are a bit more intriguing than last week's pimp my Navigator episode but wouldn't it be better if the "designers" were allowed to choose how they wanted to do the two clubs rather than just researching the past? This week James and Felix are in charge and pick teams.  Crazy Jeff gets last picked.  The invitation is to a party in the Hamptons (in the winter). Crazy Jeff and Princess and James and Jessica pick up the invitations. On the Cotton Club team, Liz seems to be dividing the team into factions. The Studio 54 team works together much more smoothly.  Little Tommy seems quite certain that his knowledge of the Studio 54 era will help his team but when he gets paired with St. Louis Julie trouble starts because she is unused to spending time with gay people.

I'm waiting for this show to find its groove but tonight's episode just didn't seem to gel.  Tommy just doesn't make becoming a designer seem like a desirable thing and therefore his teams don't seem to have a lot of hunger.  As much as Trump's displays of extravagance can wear on a person at least he makes his lifestyle look worthy of envy.  Hilfiger seems to be stressing the difficulty of his life rather than the joy of creativity. The two teams were assigned to trick out a pair of Lincoln Navigators for rapper Fabolous.  Chris and Jeff and Vlada and Princess are assigned to meet with Fabolous. Princess feels this is her chance to shine and makes eyes at Fabolous.  She seems to be planning the car more for herself than for the rapper, choosing python and fur.  The other team goes for a more subdued approach and Chris keeps Jeff and his monster ego in check.

I was hoping that this show would be an intriguing mix of The Apprentice and Project Runway but what we got was mainly The Apprentice with a more fashionable cast.  And Hilfiger unfortunately is no Trump.  His attempt to be a hardass falls flat.  He just doesn't have the swagger to command the camera.

Tommy begins by meeting his 16 aspirants in Hilfiger HQ.  He immediately critiques their outfits.  Some folks are glammed up while some look a mite scruffy for a fashion gig.  Tommy picks the two most overtly fashionable, Julie and Rob, and has them pick teams.  Once they choose teams they learn that their first assignment is to design billboards for Hilfiger.    One team chooses a neon-striped skyline, the other chooses to make an abstract canvas and add on some Tommy insignia.  Basically it comes down to a new idea executed a bit cryptically versus an old idea done a little slapdash.  Once done with the billboard, the teams party it up and we are treated to Russian sexpot Vlada covering herself with bubbles for no real reason other than to get attention.  At the elimination, Hilfiger admits that he's a bit underwhelmed with both billboards but he likes that the use of the logo the 50th St. Team chose for Tommy NY and picks that team.  Next the standard boardroom "who-did-what" grilling of the losing team.  Tommy choses to eliminate personal shopper Amy saying that she is "out of style"(and I thought nothing could be worse than Heidi Kulm's 'auf weidersen').

The breakout annoyance seems to be Jeff (already referred to as Crazy Jeff by his teammates). Jeff starts out heavy on the hubris stating that he will win this and that "God probably took all day on me" and it only goes downhill from there.

I'm glad David Bauder put this list together. I think I would get really depressed talking about all these crappy reality shows premiering this summer. OK, obviously they won't all be crap (and we need summer programming to get us through til the fall season), but I've just overdosed on all this reality. There's one good thing about so many reality shows on the air: maybe it will make their eventual demise come earlier than later. Though I doubt it. See the list below for a quick rundown.