"You've become the designer that it's fun to $%# with."

Says Andrae to Santino on last night's "Project Runway." Santino's rude arrogance and dedication to a somewhat flaky personal vision amuse me no end. People keep telling him his designs have "too much going on," but he won't stop. He thinks he can go wildly astray and then talk a good game:



Speaking of Andrae, he's been so hysterical in the past that it was nice to see him focus when the overlock machines failed. Who gives up his own time to fix the machines everyone needs to use? I liked that.

The task is to make a skating costume for Sasha Cohen, and that's a weird task, not just because it involves stretch fabric and therefore the dreaded overlock machine, but because skating costumes are in such perverse anti-fashion taste. What does it mean to be good in this category? Pleasing the client? And there's the whole aspect of needing to be able to skate in it. But they're worry that the models will "pop seams" just walking down the runway. And how can a model look right in a skater's costume? Aren't the skaters tiny little women? We see Sasha Cohen sitting there as one of the judges. She really is tiny. Really pretty too.



Spoilers follow.

"It's not easy to be vulgar and dowdy, but he managed to do it." That was said of Emmett's "Starry Night" creation, and so it's Emmett who must leave, not Santino with his crazily befeathered phoenix-rising-from-the-flames monstrosity:



Santino, saved, turned as he walked off to whisper "Emmett, I'm sorry." Can it be that he's humbled now? It's hard to picture him changing, listening to advice, toning it down. But maybe he wants to win badly enough that he will. I think we saw Andrae evolve this week. Maybe next week there will be a new Santino.

Oh, and poor, poor Emmett, forced to wear that skater shirt, deprived of any way to hide his gut.



UPDATE: Here's the Television Without Pity recap: "Emmett is sent home for showing too much 'tootie.' Three cheers for the use of the word 'tootie.'" (Unusual slang, no? It refers to the lower front of the costume.) TWOP also reminds me of the part where Robert Plotkin from Season 1 of the show makes an appearance as the delivery guy. Kind of like when Bill Rancic appears in post-Season 1 episodes of "The Apprentice." Except -- in so many ways -- not. Well, I couldn't understand why they brought Robert back in Season 1 after he'd been eliminated. All I can think is that someone behind the show thinks the guy has major appeal. I tend to think it's a judgment on the other guys: Robert's the genuinely masculine contestant, so they send him out when they want some masculinity. There's something allusively pornographic about the role of delivery guy.