Project Runway

There's a whole lot of reality TV out there, and I don't watch most of it - I've never watched a single episode of Survivor, the Apprentice, Wifeswap, just to name a few. I stopped following the Real World a long time ago, but I watch the Real World/Road Rules challenges. I like the Ultimate Fighter, because I like watching them fight.

That being said, Project Runway is the best reality show on TV. Period.

If you haven't seen it, it's a competition between aspiring clothes designers. Each week, they're given a fashion challenge in which they are to design and construct a garment. At the end of the show, their work is displayed in a runway show in front of a panel of experts. The designer with the weakest work is eliminated at the end. Believe me, it's good TV.

Coming from an architectural background, it's the closest a TV show has come to the architecture school experience: fretting over a design concept, working against tight deadlines, fostering a camaraderie with fellow students. At the end, you present your project (which probably isn't completely done) to your instructors. The biggest difference is that we never had Heidi Klum kissing us with a "auf wiedersehen" at the end.

This week Zulema was finally eliminated. My fiancé and I didn't like her because even though she wasn't particularly malicious, she wasn't a very likeable person, and her work generally sucked. At the beginning of this week's episode, she had the audacity to ask for a model walk-off and ended up stealing Nick's model (our favorite designer in the show). When she was told that she was "out", we cheered like our team just won the Super Bowl and the World Series in the same day.

It's nice when karma balances out and people get what they deserve. Zulema deserved to be booted out all along. Why? Because at the beginning of the season, she refused to share any of the closet space with her roommates. That was cold.