Daniel, you are almost completely on the floor.
Oh, my friends and loved ones, joy has returned to the television dials. Truth, and Beauty, and Meaning, and Love, and Bliss, and Deeply Abnormal Creative Types.
I am speaking, of course, of Project Runway: Season 2.
As you may recall, I was entranced by season one, having caught it almost in it's entirety during one snowed-in Sunday afternoon. A snowed-in Sunday afternoon that changed my life. I laughed. I cried. I cheered out loud.
Though I generally avoid reality TV like the plague it is, I have a longstanding and embarrassing weakness for Bravo's assorted "reality" endeavors. I saw every episode of Boy Meets Boy, people. We won't even discuss Blowout. It's like I think that because it's on Bravo I don't lose any snob cred by watching Showbiz Moms And Dads. Nice thought, right? Don't burst my bubble, I beg of you.
So yeah, I am powerless in the face of a second season of Project Runway. I was a bit worried, though. How could anything replace the transcendent weirdness of Jay? The delicate gender-bending beauty of Austin? The lizard-like vileness of Wendy? Here's what sets Project Runway apart from most of the rest of "reality" dreck. The contestant/competitors are not the usual band of bottom-feeding famewhores. They all have talent, and ability to do something more profound than eating cow eyeballs or surviving eight weeks without a shower. Not that I think fashion is terribly deep, but it sure is a bit more than out-skanking a dozen interchangeable hairdos for the hand of a square-jawed lunkhead. Each designer shows up with a vision, an idea of what is beautiful and how to express it, and they are competing with each other based on that idea and how well they can execute it. Part of the reason the Wendy came across as so hideous and unlikable in the first season is because she was clearly the only person there who thought of the show as a game in the was that Survivor is a game. She was strategizing and manipulating and seeming to be the only one who was doing that while everyone else was creating and designing.
Reality TV does not, by and large, showcase the best of humanity. Aliens from outer space encountering transmissions of Wife Swap would see no reason not to vaporize our planet in order to make way for, say, a new galactic interchange. On Project Runway, you regularly see competitors helping each other, offering sincere advice, or teaching each other technique. When he was voted off last year, Austin's final words were about wanting to make the world beautiful and being an example to all those who are harassed for being different. In the reunion show, the hosts tried so very hard to get him to say something mean about Wendy, who had at various times backstabbed and mocked him, and he simply refused. He's strange, stubborn, and perhaps not entirely human, but I don't think I've seen a classier guy on TV in recent memory.
They aren't all Angels Among Us, of course, and every last one of them needs to get the world's biggest stepladder and get over themselves. And perhaps take a deep breath and realize: it's fashion. Not, you know, world peace. And maybe, just once, design something that an earthling would ever wear, much less an earthling weighing more then eighty-seven pounds.
Anyway, the new season is shaping up to be just as good as the old season, despite my fears. The cast of characters is just as compelling and (thankfully) no less weird. Here's my predictions:
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