Design Star – Recap & Review – Picture Perfect

photo: hgtv

Design Star
Picture Perfect

Original Air Date: Aug 1, 2010

Patricia Morris Buckley —Staff Writer
pmb@thetwocentscorp.com

First, my apologies for not getting this review to loyal Design Star fans earlier. I was at a conference and the hotel didn’t have HGTV. Can you believe it? I can’t. Grrrrr.

Anyway, what a different kitchen challenge, huh? This year, the two teams (I guess we won’t get back to individual challenges until the final two) had to design a white space into a kitchen for a Kenmore appliance photo shoot. I think they got tired of ripping out kitchens that went wrong in real homes over the years. This is a nice compromise.

But it also meant that much of the work was done for the designers. Someone came in to do the flooring. Another company put in the cabinets. And then Sears came in with the appliances. This was one of those episodes where if you took a shot every time someone said the name of one of the sponsors, you’d be on the way to the hospital with alcohol poisoning before the credits rolled…

As Courtland lost both of his teammates last week, the judges decided to put Emily with him. It’s a fair choice as Emily is a professional stylist whose job is overseeing photo shoots — and this week’s challenge would be judged on one photo from their shoots. But it also meant the Red Team had two members while the Blue had three.

But even with it being a kitchen challenge, we still had to have the stupid “your favorite flower” inspired challenge. Each team had to pick a themed basket as their inspiration. Red team chose the Italian basket (Courtland selected the parmesan cheese and Emily picked the garlic for their individual inspirations). Blue Team chose the French basket (Michael picked the escargot, Casey chose the bread and Alex selected the corkscrew).

Both teams did a good enough job that the judges could not declare a winner. And they decided that Casey (who is turning out to be the dark horse in this competition) won the individual challenge with the rustic look of the team’s furniture. That left four designers — and Alex and Emily made the bottom two.

I have to say, I didn’t agree with the judges’ calling out Emily because she as a stylist she should have known not to clutter the counters for the photo shoot. First, Red Team had two people vs. the Blue’s three for all the same amount of work – which means she had less time to work on getting the kitchen photo perfect. Plus, she wasn’t in charge as she would be in a regular photo shoot — she had an equal team member who had an equal say. But her slightly forced but cute and bubbly presentation easily saved her.

Alex’s inability to really explain his choices, like the appliances being his only manifestation of the corkscrew inspiration, proved his downfall again. Alex came into the competition without the experience the others had and it was a huge disability.

But I thought he’d stepped up his game for the last few episodes. Remember the skyline mural in the firehouse? How he also finished Michael’s project when Michael was injured? (Saving Michael’s butt — and Michael thanked him by throwing him under the bus repeatedly this challenge. That’s a fierce competitor.) And, of course, Alex won last week’s individual challenge and this week, he finished what few designers have done in past seasons — the backsplash tile!

So I am sad to see him go. He didn’t really have a chance of winning, but he tried really, really hard. And it’s going to be tougher and tougher as the competition goes on to cut more contestants. I just wish one or two really stood out as a “Star.”

Would you have sent Alex home? Who do you think is getting chopped next? Did you like the new twist on the kitchen challenge? Give us your TwoCents…

PS If you’d like a good hoot, go to the HGTV website and check out the blogs of David Bromstad and Heather Armstrong as they debate if Courtland’s newly divulged finance is Deena or “Dean-a.”

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