Ricky/Vicky
Smackdown '07!

Hey, check it out. This chick I know in the Internet way tried on a lot of Bitten clothes in a store and had such an excellent time doing so that she's written a letter to Sarah Jessy P. Here it is...

Dear Sarah Jessica Parker,

I am so disappointed in you. When I first heard you were doing your own clothing line I thought, Well, that makes sense, but when I heard it was going to contain stylish clothing for fat girls like me and all for under $20 a piece I nearly shat myself with excitement. Bitten! What a cute name!

I was even more excited when I heard a Steve and Barry's [Dave say: I still have no idea what this place even is] was opening in Dayton, Ohio -- the very store set to carry your lovely new line of clothes, right here in my town! Hooray!

Today, just a short while after Steve and Barry's grand opening, I excitedly made my way to buy as many fashionable new clothes as I could get my hands on. I went directly to the Bitten section (alive with the sound of the wonderfully reassuring Bitten promotional videos playing on flat-screen TVs every 20 feet or so), shuffling through each rack of clothes, handing pants and shirts and sweaters to my boyfriend to hang on to until I was ready to hit the fitting rooms. I was mildly amused (and mildly annoyed, but mostly amused) that many of the size 18/20 items were sold out. Fantastic, I thought, so many other fat girls are enjoying their stylish new clothes!

Cute sweaters, fantastic pants, adorable shirts, lots of layering items, dresses -- even the slightly hideous Project Runway winning outfit. Well done, SJP, well done. Well done!

Eleven shiny new Bitten items in hand (each one adorable and roughly $15 each), I made my way to the fitting rooms. They made me leave some items outside the room -- I was over the limit, I was so excited.

The first shirt I tried on was pretty tight across the shoulders and chest, but I figured it was just the cut of the shirt -- that happens a lot, and I kinda figured that particular shirt would be a little off ... but man, was it ill-fitting. Meh, must be the cut, I thought, Next shirt! Hmm, tight across the shoulders and chest again. Odd. Then the next and the next and the next. All tight in the same way ... just like every other stupid, half-assed attempt at making stylish tops for plus-size bodies. And the pants! All tight in the thighs and ass ... just like every other stupid, half-assed attempt at making stylish pants for plus-size asses.

I'd expect this bullshit from Old Navy, but not you, Sarah Jessica Parker, not you. You can't just take a shirt designed for a size-2 body and add more fabric. Clothing cut for an average-size woman WILL NOT fit a fat girl no matter how much you increase the pattern size. We just don't have the same kind of body. We need more boob room, larger armholes, more allowance across the shoulders, and a wee bit more length in our shirts and sweaters. In pants, give us more room in the thigh, more ass room, more forgiving waistbands.

The Bitten manifesto reads: It is every woman's inalienable right to have a pulled-together, stylish, confident wardrobe, with money left over to live.

Apparently, you didn't really mean every woman.

I was so, so excited about Bitten -- ask my boyfriend, I've been downright annoying in my enthusiasm -- and the time I spent today in that Steve and Barry's fitting room was the most depressing experience of my life.

You've made a valiant effort, SJP. The idea is wonderful, but you really need to consult a truly fat woman -- and I don't mean some size-12 secretary from Middle America -- I'm talking a size-20+ woman, jaded by years and years of extremely expensive, hideous, sack-shaped dresses and tops and pants with elastic waistbands -- a woman like me.

Bitten. Disappointment! Try again, please, SJP.

Sincerely,

Carrie

For me, the best thing about this letter is that it's from a woman named Carrie. And speaking as one of the fats, I'm also about solidarity in Clothes-Shopping Land. It's hard out here for the Heavy Ds among us. I went to my first big-and-tall store for men this year because I needed a new jacket and shirt that could be worn with a tie. Fortunately, we have a fancy(ish) one in Los Angeles where you can get Burberry and Ralph Lauren and some other straightforward menswear in big goon sizes, and I walked out with a cashmere blazer -- I'm a 50, and most stores only go up to 46 or 48 -- and a shirt with a perfect 20-inch neck. I look amazing in these items. But the thing? A BIG BOWL OF CANDY AT THE REGISTER. Not making that up. It's their way of thanking the customers. Come back soon, Fatty! Keep eating!

OK, the show. My fucking TiVo just cut off the tail end of Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas to get PR. I hope you people appreciate the kind of sacrifices I make to bring you these recaps. Larry the Cable Guy was just about to sing a carol with Mama of Mama's Family fame. And if you've been watching PR so far this season, you'll know that I'm not lying when I tell you that nothing as exciting as that has gone down yet. It's been, so far, a weirdly sedate season. They've managed to accumulate a group of people who seem more interested in working than in starting shit. I'm not bored or anything. I'm just saying that it would be nice to have a season-long beef along the lines of Jeffrey and Angela. That was a good one. He even made her mom cry, if you recall. At this point I'd settle for a Wendy Pepper-style annoyance thorn in everyone's side. Ricky's almost there for me on that one. But he's got to step it up.

The opening credits: I'm probably really late to the party on this one, but this week I heard someone describe Chris's ugly leopard-print shirt and shiny green necktie combo as "Fred Flintstone." My laughter gave way to shame when I realized I didn't think of it the first time I saw it. Oh well. Let's talk about bitchface. For someone who by all accounts, and according to the on-camera evidence we've been shown, is a stand-up guy, Jack gives you bitchface a whole lot. A whole, whole lot. Like during these opening credits when he says, "I'm in. They're out." It is, in fact, so much bitchface that it's jarring. If you didn't know that his hobbies include carrying around little gays in tote bags for fun and helping out the competition with their work and showing off his penis for the enjoyment of strangers on the Internet, you might think he wasn't nice. But he totally is. It's weird, and proof that gays can trick you a lot. Sometimes bitchface is just bitchface.

The day begins in the New Gotham Apartments, where the designers are living this season. Kit wakes up. Ricky, from the shower, asks Rami to hand him his toothbrush and toothpaste. Sweet P drinks something from a mug and says about Carmen, to the interview cam, "Better her than me." Rami is soon lounging with Chris, also drinking from a mug. Chris says, "Project Runway should have a perfume." Together, he and Rami conclude that it will smell like a mixture of tears, sweat, and Chinese food. From the couch, my husband/partner/whatever says, "Would those be the hammy tears?" He won't let up on Chris, my husband/partner/whatever. Corollary rule of thumb to go with the Jack commentary above: Sometimes there's bitch without bitchface. The next shot is of shirtless Kevin -- again -- and Steven dusting stuff. They have to do their own dusting?

Down at Parsons, Heidi walks out onto the runway. It's model-pickin' time. Bloopy model-pickin' music happens and -- oh wait, sorry, but I have a Bluefly.com interruption for the recap. Friend and housemate Aaron just walked out into the living room wearing a red-and-black plaid lumberjackish shirt he just ordered from them. "It's from the Marc Jacobs 'Mike Muir' collection," he says. "You're supposed to button the top button only." Also? Aaron doesn't have a Pepsi in hand, which completes the look. Is that joke too obscure? I don't really care if it is. Google shit. That's how you learn about things. OK, back to pickin' models. Two of them are out this week. I can't remember why, but they are. Heidi air-kisses them both goodbye. You know, they really amp up the volume on the smoochy noises on this show. That's kind of weird.

Heidi tells them that a familiar face is waiting in the back with Tim. And she's brought some old friends with her. Steven gets all giddy, thinking that it's SJP again. Sweet P thinks it's going to be senior citizens and begins mentally designing something with a special Depends zip-pouch. It turns out to be Nina. The old friends are a bunch of women dressed in shit from various Color Me Badd videos.

Nina says, "Elle magazine has been photographing the evolution of trends for decades now," as the camera pans over the photos of women in very ugly outfits. Nina doesn't say if the photos are from actual issues of Elle, but if they are, then that's kind of groovy and proves that everything you were ever taught about dressing is wrong. The designers have to pick one of the ugly, outdated looks as part of their design challenge. Jack's first because he won last week, and he decides to go with pleather, or as he says, "Britney Spears on crack."

"OK, first," says husband/partner/whatever, pausing the TiVo, "that's redundant. And second, 'on crack' is as tired an expression as 'from hell' and reached that status several years ago. When did gays decide that nothing mattered anymore?"

What the designers choose: Victorya chooses underwear as outerwear, Christian takes zoot suit, Rami poodle skirt, Kit fringe, Elisa cut-outs, Jillian overalls, Ricky neon (because weeping wasn't one of the choices), Kevin '70s flare, Chris shoulder pads, Steve dancewear, Sweet P baggy sweater. Sweet P expresses dismay over her constant last-picked status. And inside she's wishing that Marion were still around to help her make a baggy sweater. The challenge is to work in groups of three to create three looks that incorporate each chosen outdated trend. The collection must be cohesive and modern, which is kind of like saying that you have to make a white dress out of black material. Christian, on interview cam, says in his croaky, drowsy voice, "Ohmuhgosh. Ahmgonnadie."

The designers are given the opportunity to group up in threegies that suit them. Victorya "knew precisely who [she] needed to work with" based on the trends they had in hand. Kit picks Christian and Jack because "they're both so much fun, and that's why I'm here." I hope they design an outfit that contains a sidecar or a rumble seat for Christian to ride around in.

After teams are picked, Tim gives them the budget of $225, two days to complete the project, and an hour to sketch before they head off to Mood. During their sketching hour they also have to pick a team leader. Here's the breakdown of leaders and their respective slaves.

Team Chris: Steven and Sweet P

Team Jillian: Rami and Kevin

Team Ricky: Victorya (so Madame Fullcharge that she should just go ahead and be the leader anyway, but instead announces flat-out that she doesn't want to be the leader, a total strategy move because everyone knows that the team leader is the one who goes home if the team loses) and Elisa. And in a completely awesome foreshadowing moment, Elisa begins to talk to Victorya about something unrelated to the task of focusing on "cut-outs," a task that non-leader Victorya just gave to Elisa, and when Elisa does this, Victorya says, "Just focus on cut-outs."

Team Christian: Kit and Jack

Mood shopping: They have 30 minutes. My favorite quote of the episode happens now, courtesy of Christian, and I've spelled it out as phonetically as possible here, because to really appreciate Christian you kind of have to hear his Valley Girl Smoking Pall Malls delivery: "Are team ehhzzzz pritty fierce. But I just called everyone 'Team Star,' becuz 'Team Star' is like hahht, like star, like celebriteeee." And though "fierce" is as dead-horse as "fabulous" and "on crack" and all the other fag slang from 1991, somehow he makes it sound like it's not. He's concentrated magic, that boy.

Interview-cam time for Chris, who says that people think they have him pigeonholed: "Oh, there's Chris with a 10-foot wig and a big giant costume made out of 200 yards of fabric. But as the group leader I feel like I finally got a chance to show that I can design anything just as good as anybody else in the room." After a brief conversation with my husband/partner/whatever about the grammatical goodness or badness of that quote, I decide that my own pigeonholing of Chris is solely based on his ugly patterned shirts. I wish he'd burn them all. I wish he'd burn them all and then give them to Elisa to spit on and dress her marionettes in. Dude, come to Los Angeles. We have a good big-and-tall store here. I can take you.

I have a bad feeling about Steven's interview-cam quote, the one that immediately follows Chris's "I can make a garment as good as yours, etc." Steven says, "Chris keeps telling me, 'Girl! This jacket's gonna be hot. Don't worry about it [insert Steven rolling eyes to camera], OK."

Are we meant to figure something out from that piggybacking of quotes? Is Chris the one who's out? Clearly he figures in the week's highlight or they wouldn't already be focusing on him as a story line. And because he's with Steven, are we also meant to think of Steven as a bad-luck charm? He worked with Marion, and look what happened there. Is Chris doomed now? Because I don't want that to happen really. I want Ricky to go home. I think his clothes are barfy, and his hats are revolting, and listening to him talk harms my ears.

Montage of sewing and cutting and stuff. Kit and Christian are frolicking about. "All right, bitch, can you just make a f____ing dress?" he laughs, as she throws a wadded up bit of fabric at him. Then we see Christian twirling around in front of a mirror, doing that Flashdance spin. "What can one say to that?" asks husband/partner/whatever. And the answer is that one can say nothing. One can only realize that a very special subset of gays brings that to the world and that that is part of the gravitational force that keeps the planet spinning.

Now it's one hour until the end of the day. Jillian, Rami, and Kevin are busy busy busy. She's concerned that Kevin is a slower worker than she and Rami, but she's so laid-back that she won't kick his ass about it, another example of this season's threatening-to-turn-dull group dynamic. Everyone on board acts like they'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. OK, maybe not Ricky and Victorya.

Commercial time: Here's Nick from Season 2 in his Saturn. He's going to take you to Los Angeles's high-end vintage shop Decades on Melrose. Decades is about three blocks from where I live, and I've always wondered why I can't drive down Robertson past that ridiculous Kitson store without seeing the paparazzi staked out in front of it 24/7, but Renee Zellweger can set up a lemonade stand outside of Decades if she feels like it and not be interrupted. She'd have to call the Star herself to get noticed. I think what I'm trying to say here is that I drive down Robertson a lot to get to various work-related stuff, and I hate being slowed down by assholes in SUVs with lenses pointed out their windows. Disperse, scum! Go hover around Decades instead. At the end of the commercial Nick tries to close the Saturn's' trunk and he kind of goofs. And they left that in the spot. Weird.

Back to the show. It's day two of the challenge. Christian is not playing Tiny Tim to Jack's Bob Cratchit and being hoisted aloft through the snowy streets of London, home to the impoverished Christmas goose. Why not? OMG, ARE THEY FIGHTING?! WILL THERE BE SOME FIGHTING NOW?! I WANT SOME FIGHTING! Instead we get another goofy comment from Christian about how hard it is to work this challenge. Then Steven impersonates Tim Gunn. Someone has to impersonate Tim Gunn every season now. No one's as good at it as Santino was, though. He's the king of Tim Gunn-ese.

Cut to Elisa asking Victorya how Victorya wants something done. Cut to Victorya saying, "I don't like to be a bossy cow, but I have some serious ideas about fashion." Translation: "I don't like to be caught being a bossy cow." Then she goes and starts bossing Ricky around. Good. Someone needs to. His designs are the spazziest things I've seen all season. My husband/partner/whatever is already beginning to hate Victorya for this move. "She's the girl who sped her way through the Montessori violin school at age 3," he says. But I think this tells us more about my husband/partner/whatever than about Victorya. He skipped second grade himself, so gifted did his school think he was going to be. And to retaliate, he picked up a 15-year-long stack of comic books and didn't lift his nose out of them until turning 21. Anyway, I admire Victorya. I admire anyone who bothers Ricky. If they fight, I want it to get slappy, and I want her to make his hat go flying out the window down onto the street below where a big garbage truck full of rotting meats will roll over it and there it'll lie in the gutter, rotting meat juice-soaked, then stepped on by a homeless person with poop on the bottom of his Reeboks. The husband/partner/whatever says, "It's just that she's about to make me feel sorry for Ricky. And I hate having feelings."

Tim Gunn calls in the models for fitting. AND HOLYFUCKINGSHIT, TEAM CHRIS'S OUTFITS ARE FUGLY. But oh, wait, Team Ricky's clothes are nasty too. In fact, it's like a shit-off is about to happen. But not before Ricky and Victorya begin -- yes, at last -- fighting. Well, sort of. They're really just getting miffed. He's pouty, and she's passive-aggressive. But still, it sorta counts. I guess. Oh, I don't know. PULL OFF HIS HAT AND THROW IT OUT INTO THE GARBAGE-STREWN STREETS OF MANHATTAN!

Meanwhile, Team Jillian is nervous. Kevin is still not finished with the shorts because their model was too big. But it all feels like editing room-based manufactured panic. Things don't fit on the models all the time. That's why there's wiggle room to fix it up. The show knows this. We know this. The show knows we know this. So why the fake angst? Oh, that's right, BECAUSE THE RICKY-VICKY SLAP FIGHT IS STILL NOT GOING DOWN LIKE IT OUGHT TO. It's just a lot of huffy "Hmm" and "Well." Dear Producers -- Can't you call Michael Vick in whatever jail he's in now and ask him for tips on what to feed these people so that they'll start biting each other's faces off?

Tim Gunn consultation time. As you guessed, Team Chris and Team Ricky are in trouble. Tim makes his contractually obligated, once-per-episode "make it work" drop before strolling over to Ricky & Vicky's Low-Level-Drama Emporium. V talks. R interrupts. V says, "Can I finish?" That sort of thing. Now they're grumping at each other. Voices are not being raised. V's calling R out on being a shitty team leader and -- subtext time -- having shitty taste in everything.

And now it's 45 minutes until the end of day two. Sewing sewing sewing. Blah blah blah. The Brother Sewing clock on the wall says time's up. Jillian is seen freaking out a little about the time situation and Kevin's not-done-ness.

Runway day:

Finally we hear from Elisa about her teammates V and R. Elisa thinks it's all been about miscommunication. Elisa seems to hate fighting. Of course, Elisa's job isn't to write about the exciting goings-on in an episode of a reality show. If it were, she'd think differently about the subject, I guarantee.

Everybody's back in the workroom giving finishing touches to their garments. Ricky's griping about Victorya changing her piece at the last minute. Kevin, to the interview cam, has to own up to the fact that he's not done with his pair of shorts. He's had two days to make a pair of shorts. Two days. I think I might be able to make a pair of shorts in two days, and I can't even operate a sewing machine. He says he's going to have to pull a magic rabbit out of his ass. He says this while wearing that awful leather/shearling, snuggly-wuggly padded condom hat he wore last week. So that means the rabbit would rather live in Kevin's ass than in Kevin's hat.

Models come in. Hair and makeup. Kevin's pounding buttons onto his shorts with a platform shoe. Victorya is tit-binding her model into the top of the dress. She says she likes things to be flat. And if you recall, she also bound her model's arms in the first episode. All the bondage, V -- what's that about? I hope this is just a subliminal message to Ricky, that she's saying, "Look, don't fuck with me, because I'll make sure you end up like Heather Matarazzo hanging upside-down and naked in a hostel in Slovakia, crying and screaming for your life to be spared right before the rich lady takes her machete and slices you open so she can bathe in your blood."

Now we're in the TRESemme/L'Oreal wing, and there's nothing to say, really, beyond how everyone in my house thinks that we saw that one hairstylist guy, the one standing next to Jillian, in Paris Is Burning -- in the part where they talk about "mopping" at Roy Rogers with the crew from the House of Pendarvis. Oh, you never saw Paris Is Burning? Well, Netflix that shit ASAP because it's incredible. It's not about drag queens, it's about life. And stealing food from fast-food restaurants.

The Kevin shorts work. Jillian says she's grateful. Christian announces that his own clothes are "Fer-OSH!" As in "ferocious." It's what the kids are doing now, chopping syllables out of words, saying "totes" instead of totally. Stuff like that. Yes, it's gay. Dumb-gay, not homo-gay. You know what I mean. Anyway, then he calls Ricky's collection "horribly ugly." And he's right.

OK, runway show:

The judges are here. Who will be the guest judge? In my house we'd like it if it were Brenda Dickson. She used to be on The Young and the Restless and has been a YouTube sensation for some time now. When you're done reading this recap, go there and enter "Welcome to My Home," and you'll know why. And don't freak because it's not like "Two Girls One Cup." Anyway, failing a Brenda D. get, then maybe Tina Knowles or the people responsible for the Cross Colours or Troop lines. Maybe the ghost of Willi Smith.

Oh, dang, it's just that boring old Donna Karan. Whatevs, as the young people say.

Team Jillian: sexy flared denim overalls, denim pleated shorts with a top that has a big poofy thing around the neck, and a pretty extravagant denim dress with a poodle-ish skirt. It sounds gross, I know, but it all looks pretty good.

Team Chris: long beige-y gown with yucko-grosso shoulder-paddy bolero shrug thing, a nice poofy-skirted dress (made by Sweet P), and a dumb leggings with wrappy blouse thing.

Team Christian: pinstriped zoot suit-inspired skirt with high-necked top and jacket, big puffy babydoll-length dress, and a super-tailored dress with a lot of contrasting black-and-white fabric. Best piece of the bunch, and the best collection so far.

Team Ricky: Shitty gear for "ladies night" at Confetteez from TJ Maxx. Little upchucks of neon all over the place.

Heidi tells everyone they're going to do things a little differently (read: boringly) this week. We get no judges chat, no chance to hear Heidi say mean things behind any designer's back, nothing. I'm really bummed about this. All we get is an immediate announcement of who won: Team Jillian. Naturally, the second-best group gets the prize. Kit and Christian, robbed again. But at least Team Christian is "in."

The two lowest-scoring teams are Team Chris and Team Ricky. No surprises here. And nothing interesting coming from the judges' mouths, either. What is interesting is the very large bandage on Nina's hand. Or is it a ring? Living-room discussion ensues. We make the TiVo go back and forth, back and forth. It's a ring. Now, do we hate it? Do we wish it were a bandage now? Ricky and Victorya are back to sniping back and forth about who did what and who was responsible. Kors just hates it, because they chose to work with satin and it all looks crumply, like the models have been partying all night. And speaking of that, I know you've been waiting to hear a modeling story from guest commentator, the Model Who Is Named Elyse. Well, here she is:

"The only time I ever stayed out all night and went straight from 'da club' to a shoot was for a huge pan-Asia ad campaign. I was so hung-over I cried because I didn't like my hairstyle. The pictures, expertly airbrushed, were everywhere, and the client booked me for the ad campaign for three more seasons. Ha!"

Also, she gave me a modeling nutrition secret. Because she gives and gives, that Elyse:

"Diet tip from my Bulgarian model roommate: Eat nothing but boiled cabbage and Volvic. If you experience that late-afternoon energy slump and you're craving something sweet, have a Marlboro and shut the fuck up."

Makes you wish you could be a model, doesn't it?

Anyway, the judges wonder aloud why Ricky and Vicky couldn't get their shit together. Heidi asks the team who should go. I LOVE THIS PART. R says V, V says R, Elisa says Elisa. Yes, you read that right. Elisa hates conflict so much she'd rather go home than deal with it. And that's why I dig Elisa.

Then they ask the same of Team Chris. Chris says he should take responsibility for the disaster and go home. Steven agrees.

Then Heidi asks Sweet P to say who should leave: "Sweet P," she says.

Sweet P, in a whispered aside, says, "Can I do eenie-meenie-minie-mo?" Heidi -- impatient Heidi -- locks Sweet P in a direct laser-vision gaze and says again, sternly, "SWEET P." If you woke up in the night and Heidi was standing over your bed staring at you like this, you'd have an instant heart attack and die. Super-freaked-out Sweet P says it should be Steven because his dress didn't look like it was part of the collection. Then she apologizes to Steven. Poor Sweet P. I have this really good chamomile-citrus tea that I'd like to stop time and steep for Sweet P and then hand it to her through the TV screen. It would help.

Then they get rid of Chris. Oh well, sorry, Fred Flintstone. You seemed nice. You may have suffered from typical ugly-shirt-having bear fashion disease, but still, you seemed nice. I have to go "Sshhh" to the husband/partner/whatever as he tries to bring the ham-flavored-tears line back for one final go.