Next week is the finale of Bravo’s hit series Project Runway season four. This past Wednesday, judges Heidi Klum, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia kicked off the beloved Chris March, narrowing the competition down to the last three designers. All season, contestants whine about wanting to be in the top three so they can have the opportunity to do a show at Bryant Park in New York City for Fashion Week. These lucky top three get to design a full collection and put on a runway show to compete for some fierce prizes, including an editorial feature in ELLE Magazine, $100,000 from TRESemme, the opportunity to sell their line on Bluefly.com, and a brand new 2008 Saturn Astra! Horray! Like most reality shows, Project Runway does not occur in real time. Taping begins weeks before the show airs. Because of the nature of the show, with a designer getting kicked off every episode, one would hope that Bravo would try it’s best to keep results of future shows under wraps in order to maintain some form of suspense. Unfortunately, Bravo doesn’t do very well in this endeavor. It’s pretty easy to find out who won a challenge and who got kicked off before the episode airs. As a result, blogs publish spoilers thinking that this is what their audience wants. However, it seems that this is exactly the opposite of what avid watchers desire, because a portion of the public is getting a little bit upset, myself included. I view this as a PR problem for Bravo and Project Runway because they haven’t correctly gauged their audience. Isn’t the purpose of the show to slowly narrow the group down until one designer remains? Shouldn’t some illusion of mystery, excitement and anticipation be maintained? For me personally, and many of my friends, the best part of Project Runway is the suspense of not knowing, and the failure of Bravo to adequately shield results is disappointing. Another issue I have a problem with is the purposeful deception of viewers when it comes to the illusion of the final three. Throughout the whole show, the designers talk about how great it would be to be in the final three, to get to go to Bryant Park and have a show during Fashion Week. But little do the unsuspecting viewers know that not three but five designers have full shows at Bryant Park. This is Bravo’s sad attempt to shield the public from finding out who the last three designers are. For you see, Fashion Week occurs at a point in the show’s season when there are five contestants left. Therefore, all five of these designers work on lines and get to show at Bryant Park. And yet they still act disappointed and upset when they aren’t in the top three because they supposedly don’t get to go to Bryant Park. What gives, Bravo? These Bravo folks need to make up their minds, and pick as side of the fence. They need to either maintain full secrecy about every episodes’ results, or be straight with the watchers and don’t try to fool us with this “only the top three get to show in Fashion Week” bull. Their publicity team needs to silence the spoilers and not try and spin what happens at fashion week. We Project Runway fanatics aren’t stupid. Don’t treat us that way.
