'Project Runway' - Season 8, Episode 10 Recap

['Project Runway' - 'There's a Pattern Here']

'Project Runway' is hateful for making the most deceptive commercial previews. For a good week, they have been toting this "Someone Will Break the Rules" storyline. So what happened this week? Nothing! It's in the preview for next week. Again.

The challenge was a re-hash of last season's HP challenge where the contestants got to design their own textile patterns. Sadly most of the outfits paled in comparison to Seth Aaron's jacket or Emilio's skirt. This season the contestants had to use childhood memories as their inspiration.

Most of the contestants had their mothers come and visit, except for Michael C. who got his mother and his son, and Christopher who had his very attractive partner visit. Each of them got time off to vent about life, but it took its toll on Andy who lost all his focus. Sadly, he threw his mother under the bus during the critique. Andy's dress looked like a weird '60s hooker. Andy really should be eliminated, even though his clothes last week were amazing.

Ivy must be jealous because the show has really become the Mondo show. Not only did Mondo continue his amazing streak of really edgy pattern matching and silhouette, but he opened up to America a huge secret: He's HIV positive. Not only was that hugely brave, but when he told the judges it made sense to them, and they realized how his pattern lifted a negative situation into a positive one. The amazing thing about his pattern was that he matched it perfectly on the legs so you couldn't notice any seaming issues. He was the clear winner for a third week in a row.

Gretchen had a slight moment of humanity with her mother, but she quickly returned into being a bitch when work progressed. When she called Christopher's dress a C+ and considered making a boyfriend sweater for her own outfit, I knew that she only talks the talk. While I understood her whole "Southwestern Peacock" design, two thoughts stayed in my head: The NBC logo, and that her model's breasts looked twisted because of the pattern. I have no clue what "disco earthy" was, but guest judge Rachel Roy's "almost" critique was where I was going.

When Valerie said "I'm gonna design like I did in the beginning of the competition," I didn't think she was literally going to borrow ideas from her napkin dress. The skirt of the dress had promise, but why she created that top was beyond me. The top was not sexy, but the blue slip on the bottom was a bigger offender. When she was eliminated, I thought her good-bye speech to all the contestants reminded me of 'The Wizard of Oz.'

As for the rest of the contestants, April's design was nice, but she hasn't really broken her mold. It's shocking that neither Nina Garcia nor Michael Kors have called her a one-note designer, instead of "consistent." We haven't seen big splashes of color from her at all and that's worrying. When she tried to add color, Tim suggested removing it. How Christopher is still on this show is frankly baffling. Aren't we beyond shopping at Sears? The design that Michael C. made originally was so much better than his final product. He had no "tie" element in his original concept and the yellow touches felt wrong for the "evil eye" theme he had. Why he didn't use red elements? They would have tied into the pattern.

There were moments that made us realize Valerie will be missed -- she stopped saying "Cray Cray" early on. She mentioned the phrase "LatAsian" which made it seem that Ivy was nicer than she was portrayed, or there would at least me some interesting moments between Valerie and Ivy that are now on the cutting room floor.

Were you satisfied with the elimination? Leave comments below.

'Project Runway' airs Thurs., 9PM ET on Lifetime