photo: fox
Designs Fit for Heroes
Original Air Date: Jul 18, 2009
Patricia Morris Buckley —Staff Writer
pmb@thetwocentscorp.com
The contestants have spent the past three weeks creating designs based on flowers, music and other esoteric things – so who can blame them if they forget about real design for real people? The judges can, that’s who!
Thank goodness the producers gave the contestants a real challenge this week — to design a room in a firehouse where the firefighters can relax, exercise and perhaps go over training strategies. And — it’s a miracle!— the producers even decided to change up the teams. Finally.
I have to say that at first I thought the teams had been stacked (remember the old days when a paint can determined teams and captains?). The Blue Team included Alex, Michael, Casey and Emily. The Red Team boasted frontrunners Nina and Courtland as well as Stacey and Tom. Each team had to come up with a team design, as well as a signature element from each contestant.
The Blue Team had a fire station that lost every single man in 9-11. If that doesn’t pack an emotional whammy, I don’t know what will. The team had to tackle a huge room with massive ceilings. Their first action? Painting the floor.
Wait—did they get a budget over $10 (yes, because they ended up purchasing huge TVs)? Paint the floor – who does that? In the past, they’ve been given flooring by an advertiser. Instead the team had to wait for the polyurethane to dry before they could do anything else. There has to be a really good pun in there about watching paint dry, but I just won’t go there.
Then Alex really stepped up his game and came up with a way to walk on the drying floor so he could finish his mural of the NYC skyline on one wall (and it looked great!). Casey created a large-scale silhouette of a firefighter in red while Emily cobbled together a coffee table with the letters NYFD on it. Michael had planned a set of desks, but accidentally put a nail in his thumb with a nail gun!! He ended up in the hospital the rest of the episode, but Alex (yes, really) came to the rescue and finished Michael’s project, despite the fact that Michael had cut the pieces all wrong.
Emily ended up with the Top Design honors, but Alex deserved the MVD (most valuable designer) award. Best of all, the light blue room they put together felt comfortable and relaxing — exactly what the firefighters needed.
The Red Team came into the judges’ room, thinking they had done a great job. Then Vern blew them out of the water of delusion and told them he was “disgusted” with their design. Tom had peeled back a dropped ceiling to reveal a beautiful old tin ceiling, but he painted it a depressing black. Courtland created a rather blah entertainment center and stained the wood paneling to look like burnt planks — quite inappropriate. The judges liked Stacey’s using the fire station number as art, although it could have been much bigger, bolder and well, funner.
But the worst by far was Nina’s wall art. Yes, she did wall art again, even after the judges warned her last week not to. This is the woman who started the episode saying that the other designers could learn something by watching her. As her signature piece, Nina took small squares of a bulletin board and spelled out the firefighters’ code in Braille. Not only would no one ever “get” what she’d done, it wasn’t functional. Candace called it a “bad eighth-grade art project, with excuses to eighth graders.”
So while Courtland and Nina have won several designs, they both ended up in the Bottom 2. Nina spent her video segment boasting about her Braille project and the furniture selection (another bad move because she had forgotten to give room for the recliner to recline), while Courtland was breezy and upbeat. He had also apologized once he realized his mistakes, something Nina would never do.
So while she provided tons of drama, Nina had to walk out the door for good. Did you see Stacey rolling her eyes at Nina’s elimination? She won’t be the only one celebrating that the Wicked Old Designer is dead!
Here’s a thought: That leaves us with just one frontrunner left — Courtland. OK, he’s had a few bad moments, but he’s humble (or smart) enough to apologize. And have you noticed that some of the funniest moments are his quips? Like when he compared the contestants to baking turkeys when they tried the training facility, noting that turkeys bake at 425 degrees and they were going into 700-degree heat? It’s that sense of humor that would serve him well as host.
But I really don’t think this show picks the best person to host a show anymore. If they did, it would be a show where the audience could still vote. With no audience voting, it’s really up to the producers to decide. With Antonio’s win last year, it was obvious that HGTV was looking to find something they didn’t already have. So which contestant fits into that category this year?
One more grievance: Am I the only one tired of watching a “Moment of Joy” playback 90 seconds after the moment happened on the show?
Are you going to miss Nina? Are you surprised that Alex saved the day (and still managed to finish his project)? How badly do you think that nail gun hurt Michael? Give us your TwoCents…
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TheTwoCents 
I was so happy when Nina was eliminated. When all she could talk about was how awesome she is and that she will carry her team to victory, I about threw up. She was such a one-trick pony with absolutely no humility or sense of reality, really. And her speech about how she saved the team by her furniture choices? That was priceless – because they HATED the furniture!
On a side note, Casey won top designer, not Emily (although I would have loved that as she’s a friend). Great recap!
I’m glad you brought up budget. Didn’t we, in past seasons, know what their budget was? I haven’t seen that at all this year and it’s an element of the program that I really miss. Is it just carte blanche this year?
Ding dong the witch is dead……I was so glad to see Nina’s backside going out that door. There is only so much bragging one can take, especially when there is absolutely no foundation for it! When I saw her doing another wall “art” I was secretly cheering her on because while she apparently forgot the judges warning last week, I didn’t. I was hoping it would be her undoing.
And the “moment of joy” – good idea, bad execution. It would be so much more effective if shown at the beginning of the program without any explanation as to why the joy, or at the very end, just as a recap of the moment.
I wanted to cry when Tom started painting those ceiling tins black. Oh what a travesty! I understand the design reason for it, but he could have done something much more attractive with them. Heck, he could have pulled them all down and sent them to me!
And kudos to Alex for not only finishing his own project, which I really like, but for salvaging the mess Michael made of all that wood and completing that project as well. Good job Alex!
I agree with everything already said. Sooo glad Nina’s gone. It’s so much more relaxed without her there. But not boring at all. I just really think that Mark Burnett is trying too hard to make this like Survivor and Apprentice and changed some things that shouldn’t have been changed. I can’t wait to comment on last night’s fiasco!!