Mischa Barton: PR: On the Road Again

We think for Season 8, PR should have an animal mascot, don't you? They make everything cuter.

We're always of several minds regarding the "Tim on the Road" episodes. On the one hand, they're always a welcome respite after the insanity of the competition and before the insanity of the finale. Plus, it's always fun to see Tim outside the workroom and given the freedom to say more than "I'm concerned. Make it work!" which is, quite sadly, what his role has been reduced to in the past few seasons.

On the other hand, it gives us little to talk about for the week. We got the Mila vs. Jay bout out of the way (racking up an impressive number of comments in the process), so now it's time for the "making fun of baby pictures" post.

Okay, can we just say one thing about the Henderson family?

If that doesn't look EXACTLY like the cast of a sitcom, we don't know what does. The whacky dad, the attractive, long-suffering mom, the cute kids. And they all seem to like each other! What's THAT all about?

How many hair colors do you think he had over the years?

This will be our final, finger-wagging, "don't judge a book by its cover" point regarding Seth A, but we can't help it, we have to say this. Early on, there was some assuming going on that Seth, because of his neck tattoo and general "rocker" vibe, was going to be something of a Jeffrey Sebelia redux. As we all know now, the truth was quite different. Seth A turned out to be one of the all-time sweetest and most game designers to ever appear on the show, with a sense of fun and excitement miles away from Jeffrey's defensiveness and carefully cultivated "bad boy" image.

Nothing illustrates this better than the differences in their respective home visits. Jeffrey famously served Tim coffee in a "Slut" mug (which, granted, was pretty funny), but Seth A decided to go a different route to embarrass Tim:

A trampoline. Of course. How very Seth A. "Come on, son!" Let's drag the fancy gay man outside and throw him on a trampoline! YEEHAW!"

Why do we get the impression that Seth is the Henderson family member that uses that trampoline the most?

As for Tim's advice, we were a bit shocked at how extreme it was. We can't really judge whether he was right because we really didn't get a good enough look at the garments being critiqued. Still, Tim was right to point out that churning out looks at the rate Seth was going was not a technique conducive to self assessment or even innovation. It was right for Tim to tell him to take a step back, but we're not sure if it was right for Tim to tell him to essentially start over.

Tim is very down in the 'hood, as you can see.

Little-known fact: Emilio and his brothers formed a kid soul group in the early '70s, The Sosa Three.

In fact, it's so little-known that we just made it up, Dig those groovy leisure suits.

As for this altercation, we have little to say. We weren't there and unfortunately, Bunim/Murray seems determined to edit out anything that might be interesting, like, say, a big argument between Tim and a designer. According to both Tim's blog and vlog, this argument was quite a bit more intense than what we saw onscreen.

Additionally, we're not getting Emilio's side of it. Sure, we're inclined to agree with Tim's take, but we're not going to accept it as fact. Besides, there is no crime in disagreeing with Tim. We didn't particularly like Emilio's collection and we found him to be kind of sour and obnoxious throughout the whole competition, but even then, we're not willing to commit to an answer of who was in the right or wrong here. We're just pissed that we had to go to Tim's blog to get more information. B/M, we have no idea what's going on in your heads, but viewers WANT to see these types of arguments.

It was, of course, no shock that Mila lives in a black and white world. We'll give her that: she's consistent.

We can only exert so much control over our comments section (we simply can't spend all day monitoring it), so there have been some unfortunate and cruel comments made about Mila's looks. And now, apparently, since, to some eyes, she looked better during her home visit than she did during the competition, haters gotta hate and claim she had work done. Blogger, please. Every single time we've met one of the designers face to face, we have always been shocked at how much better they look. That's because the designers we've been watching for the last ten weeks or so have had virtually no sleep and are running around in high stress situations for 12 to 16 hours a day under harsh lighting. You try looking refreshed and fabulous under such circumstances.

And another thing: stop disparaging people's looks on this blog. That's not what we're about and it's never been what we've been about.

Anyway, we have little to say about Tim's critique. There was too much black and white and color-blocking according to him. Well, ditto on that.

Requisite embarrassing/cute old picture.

Once again, according to Tim, he and Jay clashed quite a bit during the competition; so much so that it required an apology and some "healing." Question: Did we just drink too much in the T Lounge all season and miss these apparently intense confrontations that have been going on all season?

One thing just occurred to us: last season Tim had an altercation both with Ra'mon and his model over a toilet dyed dress. Never saw it. This season, Tim has been having intense arguments with Jay that we never saw and more intense arguments with Emilio than the ones we've seen on TV. Common denominator in all these edited-out scenarios? Tim.

Hey, we're just putting it out there. We've had our fill of providing explanations and conspiracy theories for the week. But we're cheeky enough to ask: Is Tim being edited out of the show for some reason?

As for Tim's critique:

We largely agreed with it. We still think Jay deserved a spot in the finale over Mila, but that doesn't mean his work didn't have issues. Namely, Tim's spot-on critique that he tends to overwork things and the result looks like student work.

BEST EMBARRASSING FAMILY PHOTO EVER.

Generic "enemies facing off" scene. Insert treacly make-up sounds here.

We kind of shrugged our shoulders at the whole handshake thing. They're not crazy about each other. Of course they'd keep it cordial but distanced. Isn't that what everybody would do?