DS7EP1: Extremely Bad Home Makeover

They're calling it Design Star Goes Hollywood, though it's more like Design Star Goes Hollywood Blvd. You know whores and meth dealers. And, as usual, the first episode is the one where the designers work together to makeover their home away from home. Host/Mentor, David Bromstad--and will someone please explain the outfit with the pants tucked into the work boots, because Homo HQ didn't alert me to that Fashion Don't--tells our motley crew of designtestants that the special item they sent from home which tells their POV will be magically, er, randomly, paired together to create six teams of two.

In other words, crazy will be paired with crazy. And I'm talking to you, Kris and Bex.

Danielle and Luca get the Great Room

I'll first start off by saying I was wrong; wow, that was hard for me. But Luca isn't a Friend of Dorothy; he's more of an arrogant straight man, who wears plaid and says "dude". I know! And his Home-Away-From-Home item is a pair of steel, um, jacks.

Danielle is given the "I'm doing this show because my mom just died and she'd want me to win" sympathy edit. But, after that one brief mention, it doesn't come up again. Her POV item is a silver angel wing. Okay.......

The Great room is one of those useless rooms in new homes that are actually taller than they are long and wide. Seriously, thirty foot ceilings are just a waste. But Danielle decides to have molding made for one wall to add more height, because the room demanded it, I guess. And she decides to takes photographs of their two POV items and mount them on the opposite wall. She picks a gray paint color because gray is all warm and cozy and stuff.

Luca buys two big couches and then shows off his big ego--he actually tells us he can do anything--by telling the carpenter how to cut the molding and basically being the Project Manager. Yeah, I didn't see design in there at all; I saw shopping and bossing.

I didn't like the room; it looked like it was set on end because it's so tall and narrow, and the light blue wall just seemed odd. Plus, it was gray, white and blue. There was no Pop Of Color, which is a crime for a designer and just seemed to border on bland.

Still, Vern Yip--modeling Garanimals for Grown-ups--liked that Danielle's paint choices humanized and "inspired" the space. Genevieve The Goiter--dressed like a Naughty Schoolboy, apparently to the delight of a certain HGTV executive--wasn't sure about the moldings but she gestured a lot and said "verticality" so it looked like she knows design. Guest judge, Daisy Fuentes liked the photography.

Bex and Kris get the Master Bedroom

Bex is married to a soldier. I don't know what that has to do with Design Star unless they want to appear patriotic. Kris says his style is "client driven modern eclectic." Um, isn't all design "client driven"? These two, the nerdy gay guy and the nerdy straight gal seem like a match made in TV heaven. Not so much.

The tension begins. Bex talks, Kris cuts her off. He suggests paint, she faints. This won't end well, I imagine.

Kris POV piece is a Lucite table he covered in stripes of painters tape. Kris dubs it "pure brilliance" and, yes, that gets you on Design Star. But, if that doesn't work, send them a wooden hand that artists use as a model, because it worked for Bex.

Seriously, Your POV is a wooden hand? Who are you, Hannibal Lecter? When she asks Kris how she could use her hand in the room, Kris tells he doesn't really care by grabbing the hand and showing his disdain for Bex with one finger.

I’m getting The Bitch Vibe from Kris.

While shopping Bex spots a giant matchstick lamp. No, not a thin lamp, that resembles a matchstick, but an actual lamp that is a matchstick. She must have it, but Kris isn't so sure, though he does end up dragging a piece of tape from his homemade table, across the floor, up the wall, and toward the red light of the matchstick. Pure.Brilliance.Not. But Kris loves his tape, and so he tapes a teensy piece of wood for the mantel so that the tape from his Lucite table has a mate across the room.

For her design element in the room, Bex creates a daybed. Yawn. But then she drills big holes in it and will light it from within, and the holes will be in the shapes of constellations because they're stars and this is Design Star and.....Christina!! Bring me my nailgun! Then she takes her Wooden Hand and mounts it to the all alongside some neon-painted saw blades so it looks like the hand is spinning the blades. Seriously.

The Goiter hates the wall color, whipping out her Handy Dandy Designer Words handbook to call it too "muddy and saturated." Then she sucks a lollipop and spins the saw blades while Daisy and Vern look at the room.

Daisy actually likes the saw art, which makes me wonder about Daisy. But she and Vern hate the daybed and daisy comments that the holes are so big you get blinded by the lights.

The Goiter stops sucking....the lollipop, people, get your minds out of the gutter...long enough to say she likes the tape.

I imagine she and a certain HGTV exec like to tape each other up.

Britany and Mikel get a Bedroom

Mikel shows up in red wine pants, so the whole question of whether he's gay or not is answered without having to say a word. He calls his style Vintage Chic AKA Recycled Gay Male, and warns that even though he has a manicure, he'll get his hands dirty.

Britany Not Spears, though it's hard to tell the difference, tells us she's a designer and a photographer so she'll have an edge creating rooms that look good in pictures. Not rooms that look good for a client, mind you. But she's build, she says, because she wears pink. This will not end well.

His item is a globe he's covered in chalkboard paint, which.....I have no idea what that means. Her item is an ottoman which she covered in fabric which means she knows a fabric store and has a staple gun. Still, both their items are black, and so The Gay Guy and The Blonde seem to hit it off.

She creates a piece of wall art, and he picks the paint color. She doesn't like the color, so she picks a deeper shade, and now he can't take credit for that either. Mikel needs to find "his moment". 

Mikel takes an ottoman and covers it with a shower curtain because that screams vintage, which is his style. Shower curtains? Style? Honey. No. 

The Goiter liked Britany's lattice molding, because molding is design, and she mentions it in every single room. She also loves the ottoman.

That's all the critique we get of the Britany-Mikel Bedroom, so I'm assuming their safe because they're really not worth mentioning further....

Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e' and Rachel Kate are given the Den

Rachel shows up in plaid, but she isn't a lesbian, she's just a bad dresser, who apparently has no gay male friends to tell her plaid doesn't work. She plays the 'I left my child to come here' and gets that Teary Edit.

Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e' is a self-taught stylist and calls her style Glitzy Transitional. [Note to designers: don't just take two random words, slap 'em together and call 'em a style.] And she said Glitzy with Jazz Hands. Di.Va. She brought as her POV item a leopard pillow. I don't know what to say about tha.....

Yes I do. Leopard.Is.Over!

Rachel brought a large white acrylic moosehead which she says shows off her "high fashion outdoor girl" style, while I think it really says, "Home Goods had a sale."

The den is a mess. Rachel paints a giant 10-x-10 black square on one wall and slaps the moosehead right in the middle, while Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e' builds a molding installation and slaps a tiny TV right in the middle. The room has two focal points and yet I find it hard to look at either one.

Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e' also buys a barfy gray-brown comfy sofa and calls it a day. Oh, but she tosses the leopard pillow onto the couch, so there's that.

Vern likes the moosehead on the black wall because, well, he's an idiot who has no discernible HGTV style or even an HGTV show of his own. He also calls the black painted, cut from plywood, coffee table that Rachel made "high end" as if to further prove my point.

The Goiter loves the couch, which means she loves how Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e'  shops, but, and this is a shocker, she doesn't like the molding. I think her HGTV exec married-with-children boyfriend told her to stop being so one-note.

Yuki and Stanley get the Designer Lounge AKA The Garage

Yuki tells us she's married, with children and, well, that's all we get. She seems out of her element from the get go and I begin hearing ominous drumming in the background.

Stanley is a big-gunned, tattooed, seventies hair wearing, metal sculpting doofus, and I think I’m in love...at least once I get the clippers out and take care of that hair.

He’s brought a metal sculpture as his POV and instantly says he'll take it, expand it, and make a window installation out of it. Stanley ain't messing around.

Yuki, however, brought a decoupaged fleur de lis which, well, has no meaning whatsoever and she cannot even begin to think of how she'll place it in the room.

She can think, though, or painting two walls royal purple, and two walls pea soup puke green and then buying a twelve-foot neon orange couch for the room.

Yes, she did. Her one saving grace was the striped flooring created from laying two different colored woods down on the floor. I'll give her that.

But then I move on because we get to see Manly Stanley welding. On a table. Welding. Big guns. Welding. Hot but dumb. Welding. His art piece turns out very cool, and, of course, fits the window perfectly.

Yuki, however, isn’t so lucky. She decides that her fleur de lis needs to be a part of a collage created from making a paper sign that tells where the designers come from, with neon painted empty picture frames and crumpled pieces of paper. Seriously. Her designer aesthetic is My Six year Old Could Do This.

Of course, everyone loved the sculpture, and they loved the flooring. Vern said the paint colors were so awful they could be seen on the inside of his eyelids. And they all agree that Yuki's collage was a giant waste of time and space.

Jordan and Miera get a Bedroom

Jordan. I’ll stop for a moment because I love that accent. I don't care if he designs at all, just let him talk. And talk he does about Mikel's wine-colored pants, so i see a lovely little Besties Couple being made right before my eyes.

Miera tells us she's 63, though he bio says she's 64, and she spends most of the show talking about how old she is and how it's been forty years since she's sewn, or handpainted a wall, or, well, been young.

Jordan's POV piece is a very sexy--and I'm not saying this because he's Aussie, I’m saying it because it's true--Plexiglas end table. I immediately make a mental note to find out where he sells that table. Miera brought a blue and white vase because she lives in Florida and she likes all things coats and she's old and retired and .... yeah.

She shows her age by suggesting they use a soft basket-weave textile to make a headboard and luckily for her, and us, Jordan nixes the idea and fins a metallic alligator print.

Of course, the print doesn't come in a roll of fabric, it actually comes cut in hides, and so there is drama over how to make headboards. Remember, Miera hasn't sewn since she made the Stars and Stripes a few hundred years ago, but Jordan decides to make the headboard out of smaller square so the hides can simple be stapled to them and all is saved.

Vern loves the "specialness" of Miera's hand-painted, really wobbly, chevron pattern on the wall, while Daisy never met a metallic animal hide print that didn't strike her fancy. The Goiter liked the headboards.

Evaluation

Instantly BritanyBarbie and Mikel are safe; as are Jordan--and his accent--and Miera--and her Imodium AD. The others represent both the best and the worst of show.

Vern loved Danielle and Luca's great room; he loved the paint and the photos. Daisy liked that they took the great room and made it like a chic hotel lobby, which is something everyone wants in their home.

But The Goiter asked Luca what exactly he did in the room, and his ego came out. He "brought it to the table" and then he "worked with the carpenter" and he "figured out how to get molding that big in there."

In other words, he was a handyman. But The Goiter soothed his savage beast by telling him she loved the couches he bought, making this, not Design Star, but Design Shopper.

Danielle and Luca are safe.

The Goiter turned to the 'r's in her handbook of Design Terms and said she loved Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e'  and Rachel's "little reprieve" whatever that means. Vern loved the coffee table. Daisy again mentioned the moosehead.

Hilari-I'd-Like-To-Buy-An-'e' and Rachel are safe, and Rachel actually is declared the winner.

That, in my mind, does not bode well. A black square and a plywood table are winning? Even Charlie Sheen finds that incredulous.

For Bex and Kris, The Goiter loves the little "vignette" of the taped table and the matchstick; she hated the color. Vern complimented the Saw Art, but Daisy said design isn't just about art installation.

Thank you Daisy.

And they all hated the day bed.

Just before being told they were safe, though, Daisy leapt from behind the judges table, tore that stupid hat off Bex's head and stomped it into the ground. I'd like Daisy back every week please.

Which brings us to what I like to call YukiStan, and the awful room. The floor gets points, the paint colors get points taken away. The sculpture gets points, the collage get points taken off.

You know what's happening.

Yuki goes home. And deservedly so. What isn't deserving is that Manly Stanley gets the bottom slot because Bex and Kris should have been there for saw blades and tape. His sculpture was easily the best use by any designer for the POV piece.

My Take

Not one room looks designed. they look, as Nina Garcia might say, on that other show, hand-sewn.

It's a "design" show and yet people get props for the couches they bought.

It's a design show and people get props for the pieces of art they made in a horribly colored room.

I mean, if you're gonna call it Design Star, talk design. Talk about how the whole room works, not how the coffee table looks good, or that chevron pattern is cool. How did the two designers create a good room, if they did?

Luca is arrogant.

Jordan needs to talk more.

Kris is a bitch.

Bex is a geek.

Stanley is a big lovable galoot.

Britany is Britany. 

Hilari needs to lay off the leopard.

Mikel needs to be more fabulously gay.

Miera needs to stop being ageist.

Danielle needs to be more memorable because seriously, i had to go back and see who I missed.

Rachel Kate needs to.....which one is Rachel Kate?

Bring back Candice.

Lose the Goiter because she's nothing but an HGTV commercial whore.

Lose Vern Yip because, although he actually is a designer, he does nothing for HGTV except judge this show and look cute in his little boy clothes.

Make it about design. And talent. Not good shopping and painting ability.