10th season of Project Runway

Project Runway's tenth season just started! They keep congratulating themselves on their "tenth anniversary" despite the fact those ten seasons took place over just eight years. 

The big story far has been Gunnar Deatherage, the person with quite possibly the highest ratio of badassness in name to badassness in person in the entire country - as in, approaching a divide-by-zero error.  He was eliminated at the very beginning of last season, so he gets another chance this time.  He then completely blows any goodwill from this circumstance by acting like a spoiled, entitled brat and engaging in a pointless, random feud with doppelganger Christopher, who promptly wins the first challenge, thus earning immunity from elimination for the second.  In the second episode Gunnar puts on a fake, sticky-sweet act and goes around praising all the designers except Christopher, and talks non-stop about what he would be doing instead if he had won immunity.

Racing Gunnar to the bottom of the appealing personality list is Lantie, who not openly admits to wanting to work with only pretty people and being overly defensive in the face of criticism, but seems to be proud of both. Fortunately she's eliminated in the second episode.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Nathan, who has a heartwarming quote about his father.  Apparently he never understood his son's interest in fashion, until he saw the first season of Project Runway - "this really is a real thing! An actual industry!" - and so Nathan credits the show with restoring his relationship with his father.

In the first challenge, the designers have brought one outfit from home and must make a second to go with it.  Beatrice, despite being the favorite of Project Runway All-Stars champion (and beloved-of-fans) Mondo, is eliminated based on two very blah outfits.  Christopher wins with a pair of ruffled dresses. Lantie narrowly escapes elimination despite getting called out for making the same dress for each of her models (and herself!).

The second challenge is to use materials bought at the fancy candy store run by Ralph Lauren's daughter, who then gets to be the guest judge.  The selection of the top three and bottom three were especially baffling here.  Andrea's ridiculous Victorian candy clerk costume was safe, somehow appealing more the to judges than Elena's retread of her previous design and Buffi's lumpy, slumpy pink confection - mediocre as they both were.  Lantie is eliminated for her crazy grade school craft project dress, and even though I despise Lantie I still think it was better than Andrea's!

Severus Snapes', I mean Dmitry's, beaded-looking dress was also unaccountably in the middle rather than the top.  It was certainly better than Sonjia's top-heavy dress with unflattering flappy peplums that the judges somehow put in the top three. Ven picks up the win with his pastel stained-window-esque crushed candy decoration.

The judges also continue their consistent history of inconsistency, by knocking Melissa's all-black entry for "taking the joy out of candy."  Uh, shouldn't that be considered creative? The challenge was just to make things out of candy, not to embody the Spirit of Candy.  Fabio wins the Shock & Awe award for making Tim Gunn swear when he agrees - "it's a glue the $#!+ out of it moment!"

Next week, the show continues the tour of the usual challenge types by forcing the designers to work in pairs. DUN DUN DUN. Who wants to bet the producers will make them "randomly" pair Gunnar and Christopher?