Monday, August 10, 2009

Design Me A Star: Week 4

Double elimination…is there any sweeter two words in the world of reality TV competitions? Last night’s HGTV Design Star teased us all week with the promise of just such an event and it delivered, all be it in predictable fashion. Predictable was the buzzword for the challenge itself as well.

Having our final eight designers redo garages into useable extra rooms was one of the more creative challenges I’ve ever seen on the show. Unfortunately the two couples resided in Boringville and asked for designs that but me to sleep before even seeing them. That said the two teams really seemed to embrace the challenge. Janey and Lonni both stepped up and took leadership of their teams during the planning stages. Unfortunately we learned that neither of them is very good at leading. Once again Antonio and Dan stepped up and became de-facto leaders but also took on the biggest tasks. A quick thought on Antonio: he must stop volunteering to do the construction and carpentry tasks. His design input is not coming across in these team challenges. Dan on the other hand has to stop being a mother hen. He endangers himself by helping and assisting others when he should be working on his own tasks.

Team Dan looked particularly shaky early on thanks to two things. On one hand you had Dan’s daft idea of building a platform in a tiny garage with a low ceiling. It was an interesting concept to solve for the floor but reducing the overall size in any direction of that room was a poor decision. In my sophomore year of college my roommate built a false floor into our tiny rectangle of a dorm room and while loved the hidden storage space (you could put your weed in it although we mostly just but our moving boxes in there), it did make the room feel smaller. The other major obstacle on Team Dan was Tashica. It was like grade school all over again when the designers split into teams and no one wanted to include Tashica. In her smartest move all season, Tashica just stayed put knowing that one group would have to stand where she was. Once the challenge began she proved to be utterly useless once again. Her lack of skills held up Dan. Her inability to come up with any design elements turned her into an irritating idea regurgitation machine. The rest of the team really should have got points for just completing their design with her on the team. For a while it certainly looked like that might not happen but in the final two hours they slapped together their Spanish style garage. The results were underwhelming to say the least. In addition to the odd platform, Team Dan chose not replace the old garage door that didn’t even lock. This is not a good thing when your garage has been loaded up with new furniture and a new flatscreen. The colors were ok but it looked like a garage that had been cleaned up rather than a true separate room.

Team Antonio faired a little better in terms of their finish but their design details were lacking. They had the burden of the more difficult clients who wanted an office, home theater, and work out room all in one, while done in the overdone boring ass style of the Hamptons. Antonio came up with a brilliant fix for the uneven floor but made a huge mistake in deciding to buy but not put together an elliptical trainer. Instead they stuck the box in the corner and put a rather unsightly bow on it. Janey and Torie made the majority of the design choices and they were as boring as possible. It’s clear that Torie does not work well with others and that Janey just graduated from design school. Butthead look alike Jason coasted by this week by being Antonio’s right hand man on the construction projects.

While the double elimination was satisfying the results were predictable. The spiciest moment came as Vern Yip did his best Vito Corleone impression and called a mid evaluation confab of all the judges. This juicy moment came in the middle of Tashica spinning a web of lies that even confused me. Anyway Clive delivered the news and Tashica was finally sent packing. As for the other elimination it came down to Janey and my early favorite to win Nathan. I think Nathan was being sent a message by the judges as his biggest commitment to his team, a Spanish mural, looked cheap and unfinished. Of course he was safe though and Janey took her text books and left the building.

No comments: