I’m kind of loathe to write another negative post today as I generally prefer to talk about things I love rather than things I hate.  Honestly – I know you don’t believe me given all the rants about comics and feminism – but I swear – I really do prefer to talk about things being awesome than things being crap – unfortunately the world does not always provide me with awesome material.  And thus, here we are today.

Project Runway sucks.  I cannot believe you can go from the peaks a mere year ago (and five seasons of quite frankly ground breakingly great reality television) to the valleys we are experiencing now.  So why does it suck?  Let me count the ways.

1. The contestants are flat out not as talented.  I doubt a single designer in the top three this year could have made it to the top three in any other season.  Even Carol Hannah, who I like.

2. The challenges were not only boring and dull, but um…not actually CHALLENGING.  They were phone it in easy, and almost never were the designers given more than one day to finish a challenge, which I think sometimes limited their potential ambition.  Where were the challenges to make things out of food, or flowers and lawn shavings?  Where were the intensely specific and brutally creative challenges?  Totally absent.

3.  Nina Garcia and Michael Kors were almost entirely absent from judging.  This makes, Heidi, who I love, but who I can also freely admit is the least qualified and least gifted judge, as the only mainstay judge getting to know the designers.  More talented designers (Ra’mon and possibly Epperson and Malvin) got cut arbitrarily, while others (Johnny and especially Mitchell) were allowed to stay on without doing anything of note for far too long.  It threw the entire competition into a strange kind of flux, where the bar never officially got raised on the challenges because the level of competition was so low.

4.  It’s on Lifetime now instead of Bravo.  Bravo is on the cutting edge (if there is one on television), they have forward thinking aggressive programming, and they have proven that they know what to do with reality television…in fact, they’re the masters.  Lifetime is a rookie in this area and while I applaud their interest in changing the face of Lifetime, I hate for a brilliant show to suffer as they get over their freshman errors. And I suppose this largely includes the new production company (which I understand is no longer Magic Elves).

4a. I can’t help but think that part of the designer casting had to do with Lifetime’s “targeted demographic”.  There was a disproportionately high number of attractive thin young women on the show this year (and in fact the final three are all thin attractive women).  So when suddenly the talent level has dropped considerably and there are all these attractive young women…I don’t know…I have no proof…but it felt a little convenient all of a sudden.

4b.  Another frustrating aspect of PR being on Lifetime is that unless you’ve recorded it – it is BRUTAL to sit through the commercials for other Lifetime programming.  The ad content is so in opposition to the show you’re watching that it’s jarring and, well, horrible.  I used to hate watching the Bravo ads because there was so much repetition but at least those ads were for shows I might conceivably watch.

Those are the big ones for me.  Others might argue that moving the venue to Los Angeles also hurt the show.  It wasn’t that big a deal to me.  If you took away the other problems I listed, I think I barely would have noticed the LA change.

I’ll be finishing out this season, and my longtime love for the show will probably compel me to come back for the first few episodes of Season 7, in the hopes that they’ve learned from their freshman mistakes.  But probably this show is over for me (for everyone? I’ve heard nothing but bad things from other fans as well).

It will be hard to recover from such a terrible misfire of a season.  It went from must see TV for both Adam and I, to Adam dropping it and me begrudgingly watching it days later on the TIVO.  Not good.

Awesome idea, as it was in 1984, but the execution here is seriously flawed.

Stilted writing, over-the-top hammy performances (with a few notable exceptions), incredibly out of touch and dated stereotypical characters, and effects that are completely hit and miss.

It’s easy to see where the money went on certain effects shots that look good to great by TV standards, but others look hokey and almost like they could have come from the original 1984 series.  Basic shoddy green screens with actors awkwardly in front of them; a “New York riot” that looks like an average day on any New York street, rather than the chaos that would ensue were aliens floating above us, etc.

I could forgive the effects though, I really could.  What I cannot forgive is ridiculous heavy handed plotting and completely unoriginal characters.  The single mother and rebellious teenage son?  CHECK!  Attractive blonde overly earnest priest questioning his place now that aliens have showed up?  CHECK!  Hot blonde (might as well be from Cali) alien to tempt the rebellious teen son?  CHECK!  “Perfect” guy with a mysterious past that is super in love with his “perfect girlfriend”?  CHECK!  Convenient traitorous partner/best friend?  CHECK!  “Tough as nails” newly divorced mother?  CHECK!  All the tropes are there – and there’s not a single interesting or new thing about these stereotypes that get trotted out for roll call.  These were tired character types ten years ago (at least!) and I saw nothing new to keep me tuned in now.

[SPOILERS]

Scott Wolf’s tempted opportunistic reporter was vaguely interesting and well executed, though certainly not ground breaking.  Alan Tudyk’s traitor FBI agent/V terrorist cell operative was not unexpected, but at least in Tudyk’s hands it didn’t incur eye rolling.  Although proof that the writing/plotting/pacing is seriously off, is that we as an audience cannot remotely begin to care about Tudyk’s character and/or his relationship with Elizabeth Mitchell’s character before he turns on her – so the reveal is totally powerless.  We can’t feel anything about it because we don’t care about these characters yet (if ever)…it’s no real surprise he turns on her, because we don’t actually know or care for him.  Morris Chestnut’s “perfect guy with a past” in love with his “perfect girlfriend” was boring me to tears as well (despite my general like of Morris Chestnut) but the reveal of him as a V traitor aligning himself with the human resistance was a welcome surprise.  The V leader Anna, played capably by Morena Baccarin is enjoyable to watch, but that won’t take me far.  And in an interesting side note, IMDB says that Famke Janssen turned down the role of Anna…which if she read the script, I don’t have to wonder why.

There was also a kind of pitifully unhip aspect about this show, that I can’t quite put my finger on.  I suppose it was primarily noticeable in the writing…it felt like someone’s grandpa was writing it and was trying SOOOO hard to connect “with teh kids!”…which as anyone who’s still remotely young-ish will tell you is a freaking death knell.  In my experience, kids (especially badass awesome ones) can sense someone trying too hard from about a thousand miles away and will run in the exact opposite direction.

Also, if this was supposed to be geared towards the young hip sci-fi crowd then why are there no good young characters?  There’s only one young adult/teenager (that’d be the rebellious teenage son – oh, and his token friend that got about six lines) and they’re probably the most annoying characters thus far.  So if it’s not geared towards “teh kids”…who is it geared towards?  The entire cast looks to be in their mid-30’s…but I’m in my early 30’s and the cast still felt old and tragically unhip to me.

And it can’t possibly be geared towards the die hard sci-fi crowd because even my barely sci-fi credentialed ass found plot holes the size of…well…I don’t know…but they were big.  Like, why do the the V’s need to engage in any kung fu fighting with us lame humans, when their technology outstrips us by miles?  And how have the V’s actually managed to stay hidden, when all it takes is a two by four to the head (or arm, or whatever) to reveal their interior reptilian selves?  And is the entire human race really so dumb that when an alien guest storms into all of our major cities across the globe and essentially says it will be taking some of our “abundant natural resources” nobody stands up and goes – “Hey…you know what is abundant here on Earth and isn’t anywhere else in our known universe?  Human FLESH!”  Lame.

All in all I’d give the first half of the episode a solid and resounding F, and the second half a wavering C- (wavering towards D that is), putting us somewhere in the D range overall.  I’ll probably tune in next week to see if they can save any of it (though if the previews are any indication – they can’t).  But if they don’t manage some better writing, better acting, less heavy handed hammy one liners, more consistent effects, and perhaps most critically – losing the dated and unhip feeling of the whole thing – I’ll be permanently pulling the plug.

Ironically, the somewhat similar Flash Forward (FBI lead characters, major global event, etc.) is already on my critical list – a mere pseudo-weak episode away from being pulled from my weekly viewing – and compared to V, Flash Forward looks like a world famous, A-list cast Shakespearean production.  And if you’ve seen Flash Forward…that’s saying a lot.