Watching a bit of TV.

I keep forgetting to blog about TV. Am I watching anything (aside from that debate the other night)? Well, I'm still following "Top Chef," and, being a "Project Runway" fan, I had to check out "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style."

Speaking of style, Tim Gunn may have style sense when it comes to fashion, but a TV show needs some style too. He's great on "Project Runway," where he's offset by lots of other characters, but look how they built a show around him! They paired him up with Veronica Webb, who is incredibly stiff and dull. And there are no contestants, just a makeover target. On the show I watched, this unbelievably uninteresting woman was shown over and over doing one of two things: acting demure and modest or getting excited about all the fabulous stuff they were giving her. Here she is failing to project her essential femininity and here she squealing and clapping and saying things like "wow."

The worst part was in the end, when our made-over darling performed a fashion show in her living room for her family and friends. Her husband presented her with a new engagement ring -- something the show gave him to replace the crappy engagement ring that was all he could afford when they actually got engaged. He couldn't get insulted when they displaced the ring he bought for her. He had to be all sobby and grateful and then do a little re-proposal at the end of the fashion show, blabbing irrelevantly about how much he loved her, which he obviously did -- whether she was wearing jeans and T-shirts or the little dresses that the show insisted she wear to highlight her feminity.

Then, predictably after much foreshadowing, they made a big deal of her mother showing up. That part was almost funny, because obviously they knew the mother was on her way, but they put on the fashion show without her, and then they made a big deal about the big surprise they were about to reveal, and I really think the woman thought she was going to get more material goods. Then, the doors flew open and it was just mom. It's not as if she hadn't seen mom in ages. Mom had just had "an operation." Yeah? For what? You know if it was cancer, they'd have said. It was probably something entirely undangerous. But it wasn't funny, because it was idiotic manipulation, trying to make us cry over absolutely nothing.

And I adore Tim Gunn. I can't watch his horrible show. I await the new season of "Project Runway," but it will be "Project Runway" without Tim Gunn. Oh, the tragedy of TV spinoffs.