The claws came out on last night's episode of Project Runway, in another group challenge that featured vicious words spat out, most notably by Joshua (wow, he has a wicked side), Bert (at this point openly hostile towards his fellow contestants). It got dirty. There were tears. And sorry to say, they belonged to Portland contestant Becky Ross. Ouch. And then the camera followed her into the bathroom where she was crying in a stall. OW.

Oh, the drama. But first: OMG, WTF. We have to see the part again in which Olivier could not make it through a single lap around a track without biffing spectacularly (props to Heidi and Tim for managing not to laugh, at least not in the final edit), skinning his knee and passing out/suffering a panic attack as paramedics attended to him.


Oh jeez. Well at least that broke the ice after Cecilia's dramatic exit. More on that, and everything else, after the cut.

In last week's episode Cecilia made a big deal about how sure she was that she was going to be the one to go home, and apparently couldn't live with the guilt of enjoying what she considered and undeserved break. So right before the designers took their unexpectedly eventful trip around the track, she sidled up to Heidi and Tim and straight up said she didn't want to be there. And poof, she was gone. Nobody seemed all that shaken up about it. If you don't want to play, don't play.

This week's challenge was to design a sportswear/activewear (it was muddy) look around Heidi's leather and denim sneaker designs for New Balance:

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The winner of the aforementioned foot race was Joshua, who was the first of four team leaders. Because Cecilia boged out, the numbers were brought back to even by the resurrection of Josh C., who is now back in the running. Of this I feel neutrally. If it wasn't yet apparent, this challenge made plain the designers' general inability to work well together, evident in both the multitude of hissy fights and the results on the runway. First the hissy. Here's how Joshua insulted Becky to the point of tears (then turned around and—in yet another twist—became one of this challenges two winners).


Okay that was bad. I am not a fan of Joshua's management style. As one of my viewing companions pointed out, it's more effective to use the "insult sandwich" technique: something nice | INSULT | something nice. Nonetheless, Joshua came away as—in another twist—on the this week's two victors. I honestly didn't like the three looks they came up with all that much, but WHATEVER.

Okay, that was kind of funny, Joshua. You're coming back on my good side. The other winner was Victor, and the leather jacket he turned out, IMHO, was the best thing on the runway last night:

As you see, Danielle did not fare so well this week. I've been pretty indifferent to her clumsy chiffonery, but Anthony is damn lucky that the judges (joined by the intensely feline looking, gorgeous Erin Wasson) decided to judge based on the designers overall history rather than limiting it to just the results of this challenge, because UM:

As for Bryce, he garnered some much-needed compliments from the judges on his simple, breezy dress (though I have to say that after the motorcycle jacket/dress look, his teammate Kimberly's jacket was my second favorite garment):

Stay tuned for next week, which I'm kind of excited for. These guys haven't really had an opportunity to go avant garde, with a lot of freedom; an opportunity for designers who don't do as well under funky circumstances to show what they're about and capable of. I'M LOOKING AT YOU BRYCE AND BECKY.

Stay tuned next week for the Wrap Up!