The writing is on the bluefly.com accessory wall. This season of Project Runway is just not making it work, and my faith that they’ll pull their act together is only slightly boosted by this evening’s looooooooong overdue ousting of melodramatic bra-maker Ricky (pictured, awkwardly, above). Ricky wore ugly hats he found in S&M catalogs, designed some of this season’s least appealing outfits and cried more often than a menopausal manic depressive. He offended as many of the five senses as someone stuck in a television is capable of offending, and now that he’s gone, I can move on to my more legitimate, less-catty complaints about the current state of our beloved PR.

Let me first say that the caliber of talent on a show like this is unfathomable to someone like myself. In the alternate universe where sewing a dress would be mildly appealing to me, I still don’t think I’d be remotely deft at it. These people are, but for the last couple of weeks their creations have not reflected that. The challenges haven’t suffered like I expected they would, yet the outcome is not what it used to be. I think a lack of structure is at fault. The best clothes this season have been produced during the most specific challenges. Giving these people a task and then letting them run amok in a fabric store doesn’t produce the same results as handing them a couple pairs of old jeans and pointing at a model. They need specifics, and last night reflected that perfectly. Everyone whose designs suffered did so because of poor interpretation and color choices. I realize that the whole idea of Project Runway is to find the person who can produce the most amazing designs under any set of circumstances, but is it really worth arriving at that conclusion if the months prior are spent suffering through people who can’t?

On the personality side of Runway, I am reasonably happy to see who is left this late in the game. Chris’s endurance and success this long after being kicked off and kicked back on almost demand that he stick around until Bryant Park. Sweet P is more fun to have around than she is talented, while Jillian’s creativity is dampened by how ungodly boring she is. I can tolerate Cristian’s forced persona but only for his consistently interesting offerings. And Rami, despite his recent outburst at Sweet P and fun-spiral, is still my favorite. I’m waiting for him to crank it back up.

To return one last time to irksome Ricky before I purge him from my mind until the inevitable reunion, I would like to point out that the only episode in his extended run on the show when he didn’t sob hysterically was the night that he was told to leave the show. Irony is rarely this frustrating.