Sweet Child o' Mine

...and sweet mother of God. Neck-Boy is so dead to me now that he's got a hideous Y-shaped incision on his torso and his internal organs have been removed, weighed and stuffed back inside his putrid carcass. I can't believe what a shit he was to Angela's mom.

And I can't believe that Laura is about to become a mom for the sixth time at age 42. More power to you, girl! (We're friends again; I can't stay away from someone who says about their impending baby, "I'll just throw it on the pile with the other ones." Hee!)

See, you'd think this would be a charming episode of PR: bring on the family members, mix it up to keep things fair (plus, I'm sure at least a couple of these folks have  made clothes for their own moms before), indulge the relatives with hair & makeup, plus all eyes on them as they work it on the runway. Sounds pleasant, right? So how did it become such an upsetting hour of TV?

It might have started with the model-selection process. In retrospect, I'd much rather the designers have been randomly matched with their models so the women wouldn't have had to endure being picked near the end, next-to-last, or last. That kind of scrutiny is rough on professional models, but especially brutal for just plain folks.

Perhaps as a consolation gesture, the group has brunch at Tavern on the Green. Champagne flows, Laura reveals her pregnancy -- to her own mom's apparent dismay -- and we get to meet Michael Kors' mom.

I love to imagine the two of them getting the mother-son discount at Mystic Tan.

We also get to see pictures of Kayne as an overweight young man (kudos to him for losing 110 lbs. -- that's 1.3 Olsen twins!) and Neck-Boy as a young douchebag with braces and blond hair (not that the braces or hair were at fault). This is Neck-Boy's mom:

She looks so normal, doesn't she? If my memory of The Omen serves me correctly, she should look more like this:

The crew returns to Parsons and work begins in earnest, as the designers meet with their new clients. Right off the bat, some of the designers are thrown for a loop by the challenge of designing for some of the mom-sized bodies. Robert, long accustomed to literally dressing Barbies, seems utterly defeated by Vincent's sister Patricia's generous frame. Look at the two of them here, bless their hearts:

I call it "I Give Up (Desk of Despair)".

In a pairing that I choose to believe was random, Neck-Boy is matched with Darlene, Angela's mom. On the one hand, Darlene strikes me as more than a little passive, which is a disadvantage in a client. On the other hand, I get the feeling that Neck-Boy was going to hate Angela's mom no matter what she was like. The size and shape of Darlene's body seem to disgust him -- plus, she's female, and we've established that he don't like them much at all. Darlene tells Neck-Boy that she likes deep green and deep purple, and he says he'll work with that.

Except not really. He gets a bunch of light blue fabric and a bit of dark purple and a crapload of black and goes on to make THIS. I don't even know what the hell this is. It's a long, shapeless dress with a sad little pseudo-collar and some purple thing and there's some kind of vest around it -- 'cause that's what larger bodies need: additional, pointless layers of clothing. This is, quite possibly, the ugliest thing that has ever been sent down the runway on this show in all three seasons. God, it's just hideous.

And Neck-Boy doesn't just assault Darlene with the outfit. When Tim Gunn (whose mother I would've dearly loved to have seen) asks her thoughts on the design halfway through the process, she tells him that she doesn't like the colors. Neck-Boy takes this as some kind of insult and gets nasty, rude, condescending and profoundly ugly toward Darlene. "I resent you being in this space at all," he tells her. Nice.

Now, bear in mind, not only is he being a vile turd to a colleague's mom while that colleague is within earshot, he's doing this while his own mom is in earshot. I tried to imagine what my mom would do to me if she heard me talking to someone like that, and I almost passed out from sheer terror. But Neck-Boy's mom Pam instead makes a bunch of excuses to Darlene: "This is very important to him; he's under a lot of pressure." She tells the camera that she's so happy and proud because Neck-Boy isn't a junkie anymore and that he's made so much of his life.

And suddenly, all the episodes of Intervention where an enabling parent makes a bunch of excuses for their addicted kid come rushing back to me. I mean, congratulations, you're off the smack. Welcome back to the starting line. You still have to become a good person, and Neck-Boy's done nothing of the sort. What he's made of his life, Pam, is a non-stop production of "Asshole! The Musical," and your chorus of "It's not his fault" isn't helping.

Ugh. Enough of Neck-Boy's pathology. Let's talk about the clothes instead, shall we? Michael once again does a fantastic job, creating a reversible shirtdress for Robert's sister Theresa. Laura does her high-waisted thing again for Pam. The thing is, most people can't pull off the high-waisted look. It tends to amplify whatever body parts reside below the waist (most of which need no help in that arena) -- plus, it makes you look short-waisted as all hell. Models look good in high waists; Laura herself looks pretty good in them. The rest of us look like this guy.

To my utter amazement, not only does Vincent win (win!) the challenge, he's rational and thoughtful throughout the episode. If you'd never seen him before, you might actually think he had his personal thing together. Maybe his sister was a calming influence. He points out that since most of the women buying the clothes will not be size-0 models, the designers should know, or at least learn, how to dress a variety of bodies. I know! Who is this man making sense, and what has he done with Vincent? It probably doesn't hurt that Vincent is designing for Uli's lovely mom Heidi. Honestly, though, the dress itself doesn't do much for me.

Instead, I'm far more impressed by Uli's outfit for Kayne's mom Judy. I wear mostly solids myself, but damn if Uli hasn't got me rethinking prints. Besides the gorgeous color scheme and the fantastic print on the chiffon over-thing, the pants make Judy's legs look slimmer and the semi-transparent fabric allows you to see that there is a shape under there. It's a fantastic ensemble, and for the life of me, I don't understand why it didn't win. Plus, Judy brought some wonderful spark to the runway: "I'm just gonna embarrass Kayne." There's a mom who knows her job.

Comments

[Lorraine]

'K, first of all, I'm going to make a new category of links on my blog for PR and you are going to be there because your analysis is dead on. The enabling mother/good for you for getting clean but you're still a shithead thing? EXACTLY what The Neighbor and I were saying as we watched. The loathing I have for Neck Boy actually rivals my disgust of Santino and I didn't think that could POSSIBLY happen.

Loved Laura's "throw 'em on the pile" line, loved seeing the scary freaky twinness of Michael Kors (who I think is such a bitch) and his mummy and yes, wouldn't it have been a dream to meet the mother of the Gunn?

You're fab.

[Swede And Czech]

Okay, I came here because Lorraine linked you. Your recap is right up there with Four Four. And thats saying something.

Great job!

[Cath]

That's sweet praise indeed. Thank you!