First Reaction: When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Bacardí Limón

Possums, in honor of this week’s sponsor, the official drink of the Matt Lorenz Drinking Game is not tequila but, rather, Bacardí Limón, which seems rather fitting, since the company’s logo features—wouldn’t you know it?—fruit bats.

We begin with Carisa doing a little obligatory exposition, reminding us that we are halfway through the season. Wait, half is like “middle,” right? Does that make it middling? The midway point of these reality competition series is very important, of course, because it is then that the sleep deprivation, overwork, isolation from the world, confinement with the other contestants, and (as we see this week) access to alcohol combine to create their own form of magic—the catfights, the breakdowns, the Brady Bunch allusions.

In the usual example of Bravo Hubris™ that becomes Bravo Foreshadowing™, Erik tells us, “I’m in the final six, and I’m ecstatic about that. I’m pushing through and seeing how far I can go. My goal is to be here till the end.” Our favorite part of this is not the inevitable result of such pronouncements (similar to the way characters in Lifetime movies always seem to invite leukemia or a drunk driver at the wheel of a city bus whenever they announce how happy they are to have found the long-lost daughter they gave up for adoption after their daddy made them give up the baby when they were teenagers and their unfeeling husbands pooh-pooh’d the importance of the search). No, our favorite part is that Erik tells us he’s “ecstatic” in the most matter-of-fact, sensible, nice-Chicago-boy tones you can imagine. Paging the Pointer Sisters! We can’t wait to see “hysterical.”

Comme d’habitude, the designers are gathered in the “Plaza” of the Pacific Design Center, which, being big and blue, is commonly known as the Blue Whale. Todd announces their next challenge, a party for Bacardí Limón. Excuse us; we seem to be mispronouncing it. Apparently, it’s “BaCARdee LeeMAWN.” And then Todd’s always-freaky voice-over: “Hosted by Elle Décor.” (We’ll get to how odd this really is, but later.)

But the Archangel Todd bears glad tidings indeed, telling the designers, in reference to the place where they are standing, “This is the exact same place where Elton John hosts his annual Oscar bash. So you’re starting out on sacred ground.”

In an episode that had its share of good lines, this may be our favorite. Like the designers, we had no idea that Todd was the Sister Wendy of the PDC, or that we were on such sacred ground. Istanbul that was Constantinople has the Blue Mosque that was the Hagia Sophia; West Hollywood has the Blue Whale that is the Fagia Sophia. And that fountain we’re always seeing shots of, it must be like the spring at the Shrine of Lourdes (Ciccone-Leon); unfabulous pilgrims come from far and wide to be healed by its waters, or to pray at the Blue Whaling Wall. The lame leave lamer, with a penchant for bad hairpieces, magenta suits, near-bankruptcy, royal funerals, and catfights with George Michael. Oh, and does that make the rival Vanity Fair Oscar party at Morton’s, a hop and a skip away, the equivalent of the Church of England?

The BaCARdee LeeMAWN party will be a team challenge. Matt tells us, with slightly odd, Yodian syntax, “These team challenges I’m so completely over, because you have to deal with a bunch of crazies on your team.” We take a drink. (The Matt Lorenz Drinking game has grown so sophisticated, and we have grown so bibulous, and Matt has grown so gay-acting, that we take a drink whenever he speaks or laughs.) And then we see him standing next to Erik, both in matching yellow-green tote bags. Totes fab, totes faggy. This deserves two swigs.

The teams are Carisa, Michael and Matt on Team Dis’ and Andrea, Goil and Erik on Team Function. Put ‘em together at a BaCARdee LeeMAWN function, and you get Dysfunction Function, that’s your junction.

Continuing the slight Star Wars feel and demonstrating his very steady grasp of 1970s American cultural tropes, Goil tells us, “Since I got here, the one person I wanted to work with is anDREA. She’s like a better model of me. Like I would be R2-D2 and she would be R2-D345. She’s many, many models ahead of me.”

Todd tells us that BaCARdee “describes themselves as being sensorial.” So that’s where that came from. And like a good teacher, he defines the word indirectly, telling them their design will have to involve the five senses, which he then has to go and list, because we might not know what the five senses are.

Long montages of the designers preparing their designs—Goil referencing Dorothy Draper, Michael shuddering at the thought of “a Disney World of lemons,” Andrea telling us she wants their party tent to resemble a “supermodel party in Iceland.” It’s also not the only time Andrea references parties in Iceland during the episode. Does Reykjavik have a reputation as a party city or a supermodel breeding ground that we don’t know about? Has Andrea watched Die Another Day one too many times?

More montages to demonstrate that three may be a perfect number, but it’s also the most unstable number, always turning into two primes, two against one. In this case, it’s Matt and Michael against Carisa, who, paradoxically, is butcher than both of them put together. And we have Andrea and Erik against Goil. It’s a bitchfest.

Before sending them out to do their tasks, Todd tells the designers, “To help you out with communication, we’ve hooked you up with some phones.” Hey, Todd, as Margaret Russell herself says in her blog, how about hooking them up with some therapists? Maybe that would help them with communication.

Erik and Carisa go fabric-shopping. Matt and Goil go to Wolfgang Puck Catering to pick out hors d’oeuvres. And Michael and Andrea go to a party rental store. Of course, they go in style, in a new! 2007! GMC Acadia! And again, the camera snakes lingeringly over the logo on the car’s curves.

At the fabric store, Carisa peruses—what else?—fabrics, at one point asking, “Are these flame resistant?” We stopped breathing for a second, and Miss XaXa said, “Meow! Is she talking about Matt and Michael?” But then Erik helpfully explained that in California, the law requires flame resistant fabrics at outdoor events.

At Wolfgang Puck, Goil is introduced to the wonders of caviar and truffles, and is endearingly overwhelmed: “I am used to a small hole in the wall in Chinatown. And so this food is all very foreign to me?” Realizing that she’s got a couple of live ones, the Wolfgang Puck lady preens to them about how truffles are thousands of dollars a pound. To which we wanted to say, as Edina Monsoon once did, “You only work in a shop, you know. You can drop the attitude.” Then Goil asks, “Can I take some to-go bag?” And we said, “Good for you, Goil.” Gauche? Perhaps. Understandable? You bet.

Andrea lets it slip that the party is where the staff of Elle Décor is going to be hanging out. Ah. That explains a lot. It may make sense (to someone) for Elle Décor to host a party for a lemon-flavored rum, but a party in the middle of the afternoon? Not hardly likely, as someone we know used to say. So it’s two tents for staffers and hangers-on to hang out (and on) for a bit in the afternoon (who’d say no to free booze and free Wolfgang Puck catering?) while the show is filmed.

Actually, Erik seems to put his finger on the matter when he compares it to “kind of like a Polish wedding in the backyard of Mom’s house.”

After repeatedly talking over Carisa and putting down her opinions, Michael, abetted by a giggling Matt, tells Carisa, “We all should be able to express our opinions without being talked over and put down, and that’s something you’re having trouble with. So please just step back and breathe.”

Wow, just wow.

We hadn’t thought about it before, but Michael is entirely wasted in the design world. His true calling is politics. He’s like a younger, thinner Karl Rove. Need someone to insinuate that John McCain fathered a black baby, or that triple-amputee Vietnam War veteran Senator Max Cleland is a coward and a supporter of terrorism? Michael’s your man. Forget Todd Oldham; we want Michael negotiating with Iran on the enrichment of uranium. After all, if anyone knows about going nuclear, it’s Michael. We hereby withdraw our endorsement of Todd Oldham and propose Michael Adams as Special Ambassador to Iran.

Todd does his supportive walkabout, discussing his “casket concerns” with Carisa and Matt. (Don’t worry, Todd; we’ve got issues with mortality, too.) More footage of Andrea and Erik ignoring or being condescending to Goil. Erik does get off a rather nice line (and as with a lot of what Erik says, it’s all in the delivery and the accent): “Yeah, hang on there, Spartacus. Everybody remain calm.” It becomes even funnier when we see Goil in the White Room sporting a sort of vest that looks very much like a Roman leather cuirass.

(“Shouldn’t we take a drink?” asked Miss XaXa.

“It’s cuirass, not queer ass, and Matt didn’t say it, so no, we can’t drink.” Miss XaXa looked suitably disappointed.)

It turns out Matt had the idea of hiring go-go dancers for their party. We took a drink, which was difficult because we were snickering. Alas, it turned out to be female go-go dancers, and Michael was in charge of hiring one.

Getting on the phone with the danseuse, Michael chases away the carpenters, so the professional shimmy-er wouldn’t be frightened by thoughts of banging and hammering. Tactful as ever, Michael immediately casts aspersions on her ladyship, telling her that he wants her classy, well, “as classy as a go-go dancer could be.”

Matt sends Carisa to make sure Michael isn’t “putting [the go-go dancers] in gold, gaudy stuff.” Carisa—aka the woman with whom we’d most like to play poker—can’t keep her reactions out of her face. Michael summarily dismisses her, pointing a terrible, damning finger at her. He then makes a scene, accusing Carisa of making a scene while he was “on a professional phone call.” And he pursues her with more of the same, again stressing that it was “a professional phone call.” For the sake of argument (the Michael Adams motto?), let us assume that phoning a go-go dancer counts as a professional call, but just how professional is it to tell said go-go dancer that she isn’t classy? But hey, that’s why we’re blogging and not plotting to have U.S. Attorneys fired.

It’s the next day and time to set up the party tents on the homo-hallowed ground of the PDC Plaza. Andrea and Michael go shopping for flowers, and Andrea buys “furry” flowers. More footage of Goil being ignored and seething as he risks life and limb, including the crushing symbolism of being nearly crushed by one of Erik’s wooden wall components. (Apropos of nothing, Goil has great calves.) Goil is especially peeved at being ignored and overlooked because he is some kind of “halfling—half human, half carpenter.”

It’s time for the judging, and we meet guest judge Ben Bourgeois. Been bourgeois, done that, so we won’t snicker, but Ben’s claim to fame is organizing said homo-hallowed Elton John Oscar party, which, we suppose, makes him the equivalent of Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and whoever built the cathedral at Chartres.

Jonathan—trying, as always, not to be self-consciously cute—greets the designers thus: “Hey, party people.” The judges will go down to the tents and join the party to appraise the designers’ work, but, in perhaps the saddest words Jonathan has ever uttered, the designers “will have to party from afar.” Then, again trying not to be self-consciously cute, Jonathan says, “It’s time to partay!”

At the after-party in the White Room, everyone has had time to spiff up, including Erik, whose shirt cuffs are undone and at a rakish angle. The judges first address the Matt-Michael-Carisa tent. Kelly, who—surprise, surprise—is a daughter of South Carolina, tells them that her favorite “assessory” was Doc Holiday, the objectified black “doorman” at the entrance to their tent. Ah yes, doesn’t everyone think of black men as accessories?

Matt reveals that they were originally going to hire go-go dancers, but opted for the bouncer because the team felt the go-go dancers “might come in distaste.” We definitely took a drink.

Michael takes credit for the variation of sitting arrangements, which struck us as rather funny, since, during the design process, he had—using his self-proclaimed expertise as a resident of New York, attendee of such parties, and expert on the BaCARdee LeeMAWN aesthetic—shot down Carisa’s idea of sitting arrangements because “people at these things don’t like to sit.”

Michael then admits as how “sometimes being a little nicer is better.” Carisa can’t help interjecting, “And you’re the spokesperson of nice?” Why, yes, Carisa, and that’s why we want him as Special Ambassador to Iran.

Kelly asks if the team had high-fived as a whole, and Michael and Matt perform a high-five that is utterly horrifying to behold, something out of “Men on Film” from In Living Color.

Then the other team airs out its laundry. Andrea gets taken to task for her flowers, Erik takes credit for the overall vision, and Goil complains about Andrea and Erik excluding him and becoming “a kind of club that I cannot join.” This leads to a debate on Confucianism versus Western individualism between Goil and Jonathan. Or maybe it is Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 they are debating, where if you are a team player you lose for not being an individual, and if you are an individual you lose for not being a team player.

While the judges deliberate, the Stew Room is indeed stewing. Goil bursts into tears, saying that he felt like Jan Brady. Andrea apologizes for being a leader. And Michael, of all people, puts his arm around Goil. In the White Room, Jonathan calls Erik “an old-fashioned decorator,” which, coming from him, is a left-handed compliment indeed. Margaret “Quip-O-Matic” Russell (there’s a reason she went to Brown) drops her bon mot of the week: “Flowers shouldn’t be furry.”

Team Carisa-Michael-Matt is declared the winner, and Matt the individual winner, so he will have an extra hour to complete the next challenge. Bravo Foreshadowing™ bears fruit as Erik, having taken the credit for the failing design, is sent home. Goil begins to cry, and Margaret surreptitiously gets a little verklempft.

In the design room, Todd continues with the left-handed compliments, praising Erik’s “old-school skills,” and confirms what scientists have known for a while: “the designer gene is in your DNA.”

Well, that definitely explains a lot.

First Reaction: It's the Pits! (Sand Pits and Snake Pits)

Yes, we’re a little late with this, possums, but hear us out.

We first watched the premiere episode of Top Design straightaway after the final episode of Top Chef, a show to which we devoted three and a half months of analysis on Amuse-Biatch. The entire experience, particularly the last several weeks, left us jaundiced, frazzled, bilious and vitriolic all at once, and we were afraid that those feelings might have spilled over into our reaction to Top Design.

We had actually been looking forward to Top Design as a return to the halcyon days of Project Runway. No mob mentality, no potentially criminal assaults, no burbling homophobic subtext. Just old-fashioned, candy-colored, Froot-Loopy creativity and bitchery.

In fact, perusing the cast profiles and previews, we said, with no small amount of glee, “It looks like it’s full of queers and bitches.”

“And that’s just the men,” agreed Miss XaXa, delighted.

And yet, we were bored the first time we watched Top Design. Normally, we like to post a first reaction in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, but we said to ourselves, “No, that might not be fair. It’s probably just the Top Chef vitriol talking. Give it a chance, give it a few days, watch it a few more times.”

But you know what? We did watch it a few more times, and we’re still bored. Tant pis.

So here goes.

Let’s start with the title, shall we? Our tongue knows things we don’t, and it kept, and keeps, wanting to say Top Designer, not Top Design. Naturally, Bravo couldn’t call it that, as it would cause confusion with Project Runway, which should have been called Top Designer all along. Still, that missing prepuce of the “er” suffix will no doubt continue to haunt us like a linguistic phantom limb.

And the theme song? Well, it sounds like a duet between a panting mongoose in heat—

“—and circa-1992 Crystal Waters vocalizing into a subwoofer,” Miss XaXa helpfully interjected. A gypsy woman like Miss XaXa always tells the truth.

The introductory montage of the contestants arriving passed relatively painlessly. We were introduced to the cheeriest of the lot, Goil, an endearing, charming, and ebullient Ivy League Gaysian, our favorite kind. He immediately began rearranging the furniture in the apartment, and we were grateful that Bravo, unlike with Top Chef, didn’t use this as a springboard for a commercial-break factoid bubble about feng shui.

Blonde, startled-looking Felicia told us that her design philosophy was all-encompassing, and that she had a desire to place even the food in a client’s refrigerator. But since she doesn’t appear to eat, and may, indeed, be surviving on the stores of collagen in her lower lip, we decided we wouldn’t want her designing our kitchen or controlling our food supply. And Felicia, possum, come closer and let us whisper two words that ought to chill you to the marrow: “Jocelyn Wildenstein.”

Amphibian contestant John came in as if entering Toad Hall, and threw out little cluster-bombs about the “queeny” contestants, and “girls,” and “campy designers.” We weren’t surprised because his comments were “hateful”; we were surprised because they were self-hating. We suspect that somewhere in John’s past is a personal ad reading, “No fats or femmes,” but, really, the Lady Chablis doth protest too much. Prancing around, hands on hips, rolling your eyes, and pitching your voice high as you accuse others of being queeny is not exactly tonic to your str8acting bona fides.

As for his relationship with bespectacled enfant très, très, très terrible Michael, well, let’s say that, having spent the last several weeks writing about the relationship between Ilan Hall and Marcel Vigneron on Top Chef, we simply haven’t got the strength to tackle this just yet, other than to theorize that they’re exactly the same person, and that this is proven by just how skillfully Michael cut John to the quick by declaring in horror that some idea of John’s reminded him of the Chicago suburbs, since on his Bravo bio John says he’s “allergic to the suburbs.” As Miss XaXa observed, “The power ‘tool’ meets the power bottom.” “But which is which?” we queried, stumping Miss XaXa for once.

We found Matt to be pretty, although, like every other viewer in America, we did a double take when he mentioned his wife and daughter. But then we remembered that Cedric Gibbons was married (and to Janet Gaynor, no less). And Calvin Klein was married. And Elton John was married. And Jim McGreevey had a wife and daughter, too. Il n’y a rien d’autre à dire. We also quite liked Carisa Perez-Fuentes. She seems to be one of our peoples (hyphenated last name y todo), and is pretty, spunky, and well-spoken, a perfect prototype of Fruit Fly as produced in a factory run by Wendy Wasserstein and Edmund White.

The contestants were shuttled to the Pacific Design Center (or PDC, or the “Blue Whale”) in West Hollywood, there to meet host Todd Oldham and learn about their first design challenge.

And now a word about our host. We remember Todd Oldham from his heyday at MTV, when we were young and dewy, and he was preternaturally youthful and held découpage tea parties for Shalom Harlow and Rebecca Romijn on House of Style. And we like the man. We did, after all, try to have President Bush appoint him Special Ambassador to Iran.

We were fully prepared to make cracks about his youthful appearance and The Picture of Dorian G(r)ay, but Bravo treated us to some close-ups and we had to cry foul and ask, Is Todd Oldham turning into Hurd Hatfield? Not nice, Bravo, not nice. In the days of MGM, the camera lens would have been slathered in Vaseline before being trained on an aging star; couldn’t Bravo spring for a little KY to coat the lens?

Still, this was proof positive that winsome boyishness is a lot harder to pull off once you get long in the snaggletooth (and a lesson that 36-year-old, clown-jacket-wearing, skateboard-riding, sexually indeterminate Ryan might want to take to heart). As for the oft-mentioned oddness of Todd’s voice and speaking style, Miss XaXa reminded us authoritatively that Botox has been known to paralyze speech centers.

The challenge was to split into teams of two and create a “sanctuary” for a celebrity client on the basis of five objets. Knowing in advance that the mystery client was none other than transsexual Alexis Arquette, we were particularly irked by Todd’s incessant, quasi-smirking use of pronouns: “he…or she,” “him…or her.” Knock it off, Todd, just like she had it knocked off.

We cringed when we heard Lisa say that what she does, in design terms, is “ethnic modern.” We're a little bit ethnic ourselves, what Miss XaXa calls “a little bit out-of-the-country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll,” and in our experience, “ethnic modern” too often translates to a Pottery Barn couch paired with (pick one) chinoiserie, Kente cloth, or plaster Aztec sun calendars.

As for the approach Lisa and Heather adopted for their room, of course you think Asian when you think of sanctuary. Never mind the reality of Tokyo, Shanghai, or Kuala Lumpur. Just take a shoji screen and a Buddha head, add hot water and cover for two minutes, and voilà, instant enlightenment and sanctuary. Paging Edward Said! Orientalism alert! That’s ethnic modern for you.

After montage and drama, it was time to meet the judges. Todd finally lost the pronoun game and introduced Alexis Arquette, but not before telling us that she “comes from Hollywood royalty.”

Now, we are quite fond of Alexis (we even liked her when she was a boy, in the days of I Think I Do), but we’re at a loss to explain this royal provenance. Queen or princess? Yes. Hollywood royalty? Not so fast.

She is a member of the Arquette family—David (whose singular accomplishment has been to impregnate, and not be divorced by, Courtney Cox), Rosanna (who went from Desperately Seeking Susan to desperately having her carpet Hoovered by Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin on The L Word), and Patricia (whose marriage to Nicolas Cage appears to have lobotomized her and who now stars in Medium, a show Miss XaXa dismisses thus, “Medium? Please. It should be called XL, or Double D.”). Not exactly the Hustons (Oscar-winner Walter, Oscar-winner John, Oscar-winner Anjelica and Danny) or even the Barrymores (Oscar-winner Lionel, Oscar-winner Ethel, Oscar-nominee John, and former child star Drew).

The regular judges—Jonathan Adler, Margaret Russell, and Kelly Wearstler—gave some pleasure, but also some disappointment. Most pleasurable of all was Margaret, our newest older-woman crush. It was clear that Kelly, sporting medieval-looking leggings and a shiny, pleated pink gingham dress that Christian Lacroix might have designed for a revival of Oklahoma!, is “just a girl who cain’t say no” to bad fashion, and we love her for it. Not since Padma Lakshmi….

As for Jonathan, we’ve already given him grief about his “See you later, decorators” sign-off, and worried about his marriage to Simon Doonan, and now it’s time to fret about his footwear. Jonathan, possum (and this goes for you, too, Todd), those sneakers were just a no-no. Had it been a weekend in country, we wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But this is the White Room you’re in, a K-hole of a scenic concoction Frankensteined from druggy memories of Chicago, Broadway Melody of 1940, The Snake Pit, and a Chesterfield sofa (we half expected a tapping Eleanor Powell or a singing Renee Zellweger on that black floor). You can’t get away with that, boys. If you’re old enough to get yearly check-ups for prostate cancer, you shouldn’t wear twenty-something-surfer-boy sneakers to the White Room, or anywhere in public for that matter.

In the end, Goil and Elizabeth won for a room that featured a sand pit, and Lisa and Heather (sigh) were sent home for the green Chinese restaurant they designed, and the first episode came mercifully to an end.