Guess I'll have to wait until next season for Project Dune

After a long, convoluted and legally complex hiatus, Project Runway came back last week. Despite its new home on the Lifetime network, the show looks essentially unchanged, although it’s now accompanied by a bevy of network-building spinoffs (Models of the Runway, Project Runway All-Star Challenge). Hungry, arrogant, self-involved designers with touching life stories and wacky hairdos run around like mad people trying to create a fabulous piece of clothing in an unreasonably short period of time. Nina Garcia and Michael Kors snipe, Heidi Klum giggles and wrinkles her nose, and Tim Gunn is lovely. Welcome back, Project Runway.

One annoying quality of this new season is the surprisingly high number of weepy contestants – or has it always been this way and I just don’t remember? Johnny gets a little bit of a pass on this, because at least he had a fittingly dramatic backstory to justify his emotional breakdown and the subsequent Tim Gunn lovefest, but the rest were just egregious. Ra’mon, who was apparently a med student in neurosurgery and then decided to become a fashion designer? I am not moved enough by your passion for clothing to find your tears endearing. Also, you say this about your career history: “I went to med school specializing in neurosurgery, and towards the end decided that it was one thing to have a career I could be really great at, it was another thing to have a career I could be passionate about.” Oh yes, I too weep for your dreams, incredibly skilled neurosurgeon who almost made it through med school before finding himself.

Ra'Mon the former neurosurgeon, trying not to cry; Tim Gunn comforting Johnny

Ari's transformative clothing

Other than that, it was the same, familiar situations, but this time set in LA. Mitchell sent his model down the runway essentially nude, and Heidi said some bitchy things about models pretending to be taller and skinnier than they actually are. Louise is really into vintage Hollywood. Malvin is into androgyny and doesn’t watch the red carpet because he doesn’t differentiate between “different colored carpets.” Another designer, Ari, is all about avant-garde, experimental clothing, which leads to this amazing sentence: “I’m really into the idea of transformative clothing that would go into a tent, that would also have water purification systems, and you would be comfortable in it.” I can’t really understand what she’s talking about, or envision what those designs would look like, but just based on her concept and some of the images they show, I think she’s actually trying to make us all stillsuits so we can survive the desert sands of Arrakis. And you know, I’m okay with that. Too bad Michael and Nina couldn’t understand the usefulness of scifi fashion and decide to eliminate Ari. You’ll regret it when we’re running a mélange-based economy, Michael Kors!

Project Runway and Top Chef have always been my favorite reality competition shows, because at least the standard drama, backstabbing and weeping is set within the context of people performing a skill I find impressive. It’s silly, the contestants are absurd but take themselves extremely seriously, there’s high tension and surprise, and it makes a nice break from trying to write carefully about amazing shows like Mad Men and upsetting shows like Toddlers and Tiaras. So, welcome back Project Runway. I missed you.