Firstly, all this "Gretchen's a bitch" nonsense is an overreaction. So last night's episode split the designers into two giant teams, and because she was the only person coming up with ideas, and the only one taking charge of the situation, with her teammates following her around like baby ducks saying, "Yes Gretchen, please Gretchen," that makes her a bitch? No. It makes the rest of her teammates indecisive weaklings. I don't even think it was even edited to make her seem manipulative. It portrayed a lot of other people sitting on their hands and sucking and not having any opinions being all too willing to follow the one person with some get up and go... Not to say that what happened on the runway was great. The "Team Luxe" collection was a major blah, and the speeches made on the runway were weird, but only because they were a retaliation against playing the TV-land game of cut-throat bullshit that is Project Runway. The judges just don't like being talked back to, and they certainly don't like being asked to be "mindful" or to be told how to make decisions confidently. It's their TV show so they are always un-touchably right. Plus if they were making judgments "mindfully" (seriously, though, stop saying that) then their whole catty house of cards comes down on them. Go back and watch the last couple chapters again. Gretchen talks positively about what they tried to do with the collaborative process, but at no pint does she say anything positive about the end result of the collection other than it being "cohesive." It's Heidi, Michael, and Nina who turn around and say, inventively, "Oh but you loved it before [they're making that up] and now you're backpedaling." They keep harping on this fantasy until everyone believes it, but it's not there in the footage. There is plenty of manipulation happening on this show, but it wasn't coming from Gretchen. Anyhow, here's what she had to say:

Oh yeah, and Michael is incompetent. Spoiler after the break.

Gretchen is safe, but they made her sit in the hot seat in the final two. A.J. seemed unsurprised to bite the dust. And Casanova won! His hilarious couch-flopping diva moment boded ill, but he pulled it off. I'm glad, I'm not ready to see him go. More couch flopping and odd elfin slippers, please. Lovely guest judge Georgina Chapman on his look:

Here's to next week.