small town boy makes it big

Project Runway aired its finale last night, two hours of Wendy, Kara Saun and Jay spatting, stressing and showing off their homes to Tim Gunn and the world. During the entire show, my two friends and I were proudly displaying our "I Hate Wendy Pepper" badges (which unexpectedly served as shirt protectors since we were eating messy Indian food), hooting and hollering every time she said something annoying or made that face. One friend refers to it as the turtle face, while I call it the platypus face.

Of course, as soon as we saw Wendy's line, we knew she didn't have a chance in hell, so we settled down to figuring out whether Kara Saun's or Jay's lines would have more of an impact on the runway. I was rooting for Jay since day one--he reminds me of a lot of people I grew up with--so I was hoping he'd shine. The shoe issue was a nice twist, especially since the shoe/dress combination on Kara Saun's lead model caused "the dress to fail" and it led to a great hissy fight between KS and WP and even provoked Jay to wish KS got comeuppance for trying to get away with something.

Part of the way through the episode, when Wendy and her daughter, inexplicably named Finley, were cavorting in the Pepper basement, I realized that Finley was Stuart from MadTV. If you're familiar with that character and his unnatural relationship with his mother, you'll understand why I immediately got a major case of the heebyjeebies.

Anyway, of course it came down to KS and Jay at the end of the show. Both were praised and told how well they did, but Jay just had the best collection, the most creative vision, and the best damn skirts I've seen in a while.