PR All-St★rs 2, EP 10: DefCON Four! It's The Real Woman Challenge!!

So it's Final Four! Final Four!! And this is kind of the Final Four I'd imagined as the season began, though Joshua, of the criminal color choices, is a bit of a surprise. But, as I also said, this is Anthony Ryan's season to lose and he'll be at the tents, even if he does get the most incredible save of the year--and I’m including Isaac Mizrahi's threat to catapult himself onto the runway to save Emilio last week.

This week begins as the designtestants meet Not-Heidi, aka Carolyn Murphy, on the deck of the USS Intrepid--a World War II aircraft carrier turned museum--and she introduces them to their clients: four female American military veterans.

Yes. It's the .... dreaded .... Real Women Challenge! 

Each of the women will be attending a different formal function and the designers will create fabulous looks for their chosen client.

Not-Heidi reminds the designtestants that, as always, it's about fabulous clothes, but this time is also about working with the client, i.e. No Ven v Client brawls.

That said, let's pray for no tears, and let’s rip......

JOSHUA

First off, if I was a client and paired with Joshua and he showed up in the outfit he wore last night--the two-toned neon tight shorts and that wack-a-doo tank--I would have asked to be given an outfit from the bargain bin at Goodwill before I’d let him create something for me.

And then when he goes and picks some eyeball-shredding black-and-white cheetah print, I knew my prediction that he would be eliminated and/or killed this week would be coming true.

But something happened this week and Joshua, apparently during a commercial break I'm guessing, had an Edit Button installed in his design center, and apparently upped his dosage of Taste.

He takes that horrific fabric and dyes it dark green to mute the pattern.

Let that sink in: Joshua wants a muted pattern.

And it was a good choice. The dress, which could have been typical Joshua Hot Neon Mess, turned out to be fun and flirty and perfect for his client, Leslie, who was thrilled to have a dress to show off the prosthetic leg she wears as a badge of honor from her service.

Guest judge Katie Holmes--and don't we all think "designer' when we think of her, though I guess she is since her ex-husband, Tiny Tom, bought her a design company before she tunneled out of Casa Cruise to freedom--thought the dress was beautiful and comfy. Comfy? Mkay. Fellow guest judge, and actual designer, Carmen Marc Valvo loved that the client wanted to show off her prosthetic leg; and loved that Joshua accommodated her. Not-Heidi praised the flattering silhouette, while Georgina Chapman praised Joshua’s restraint. Her only mild complaint was that she wished it has been a dress instead of separates so it could have been more form-fitting. It was, as Isaac told us quite simply, his favorite.

I never thought I'd say this but Joshua was the easy winner. 

ULI

Uli went back to Beginning Of the Season Uli and designed a dress that looked almost exactly like the dress she was wearing while talking to her client--who wanted a dress for a friend's wedding. Now, to be fair, the client, Jessica, did say she loved Uli's dress, but now we know that Uli does short and feather or long and flowy, and really not much else.

The one thing is that Jessica wanted purple, but Uli couldn't find a good purple at Mood so she went gray and white. Note to Uli: Um, Dye? The dress I mean.

Jessica's dress fit her perfectly, and was exactly what she wanted; plus she rocked that bitch down the runway, so Uli gets bonus points for Happy Client.

Not-Heidi loved the shape of the dress, while Georgina loved the smart and sexy, somewhat mullet-y hemline. Isaac loved the shadowy detail at the bust but thought the embellishment was not necessary. Katie Holmes, still rubbing her wrists from the handcuffs she wore as Missus Cruise, thought that maybe Uli could have used a feather embellishment. Katie knows from feathers, having just flown the coop--see what I did there?--before making her Guest Judge appearance. Carmen Marc Valvo loved the bustline and generally thought it was a sexy dress.

It was typical Uli, back to form, but it was better than the next two, so she's in for next week.

EMILIO

Emilio's client, Lisa, wants something short and flirty and yellow for a bachelorette party in Las Vegas. At the mere mention of the word yellow Emilio gets all verklempt because he thinks color is enough to win this gig.

Not so much.

His design was fun and flirty and short and sexy, but when Lisa came in for a fitting, well, there was no fit. So, Emilio scrapped it, and then dug around for scraps to make a new dress, adding some fabric that he said he would "fuse" to the yellow to give it structure.

Fuse? I was thinking light the fuse and blow that mother up. Alas, he didn't and what came down the runway wasn't short and sexy and flirty. It was, in my mind, except for the garish yellow, business casual. Slap a blazer on it and it's a work-a-day suit with a sexy back.

Katie Holmes loved the color because it reminded her of Tweety Bird, and, well, Katie also just busted out of a cage before taking part in All-Stars. Seriously, I can turn any line into a Katie Escapes Joke. But I digress. Georgina also loved the color, but thought the fusion of the fabrics made the top half and bottom half seem like different fabrics. Isaac called it a good idea, with a bad fit, while Carmen Marc Valvo rightly pointed out the bad fit of the sexy back as it slid its way around the client. Not-Heidi, however, liked it.

And so Emilio also gets saved.

ANTHONY RYAN

As I said, for me, it was always a shoe-in that Anthony Ryan would be at the tents, and then came this week and the most hideous dress of the season. luckily the producers, caring less about good design and more about a good show, saved his cute little butt because he seriously should have gone home.

Truth be told, he did have the most difficult client, Donna. She had recently been injured and had gained some weight, so her main request was Hide My Boobs! And, I'm guessing, her entire body.

But Anthony chose to hide her boobs and her curves, by draping her in an upside-down grey-to-white ombre, with a white band across the top of her bosom and a black band beneath; um, that only drew more attention to them, Anthony.

Then to make matters worse, he looked like he used packing strapping to create halter straps for the dress. Add to that a too-high slit and, well, I turned to Carlos at many, many, times during the show and say, "Say goodnight Anthony!"

I was heart-broken. I wanted him in the finale. I always liked his cute, fun, young dresses, and this week, the all-important week, he gives us Female Soldier In A Tent.

But, luckily or not, the judges seemed to be drinking from the Designer Kool-Aid this week because they loved it.

Georgina say what? She did wish more of the body was shown, and that the straight neckline was off-putting and the halter straps seemed claustrophobic, but she liked it.

WTF?

Not Heidi called it a great job.

WTF?
Katie Holmes hated the halter straps, too, because, well, and you know I would go here, she hated being strapped into bed each night while married to Tiny Tom.

But the biggest WTF belongs to one Isaac Mizrahi who said, while it wasn't figure flattering, it was young and fresh and was his favorite dress.

Young and fresh? Maybe, if it had been made for an Amish woman’s lingerie catalogue.

But, like I said, Anthony Ryan needs to be in the Finale and so he gets a save as the judges decide that all four designers were so good this week they all get to move on.

One last time: WTF.

MY TAKE

Was it my imagination, or was Katie constantly looking around for Tom's goons to bust in? I mean, this episode was filmed last summer, just days after Warden Tommy found a Top Gun movie poster in Katie's bathroom, with a secret tunnel behind it, and proof that she'd dug her way through the walls with a spoon stolen from the kitchen and tunneled her way through the sewers of Crusieville and escaped through the rain to await Morgan Freeman's arrival on the beaches of Mexico after he got a message from her in an old lunch box buried beneath a funny looking rock in a field in Maine.

Or something.

I was annoyed by this episode because, as much as I like Anthony Ryan, he should have gone home.

It's obvious that the show was planned to have him in the finale because, let's just say Joshua had made the Awful Ombre.

He.Would.Have.Been.Shredded.

And that just proves that the finale was planned before the show began.

Doesn't mean I won't watch and snark, but it does kind of annoy me that one designer can create what, to me, is the most god-awful outfit of all PR seasons, and get a save.

Just sayin.

What did YOU think?