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Just when I thought I had lost my last opportunity to make snide jokes involving rosettes and/or straitjackets, the good people at Project Runway handed me a pair of beautiful presents wrapped in an excess of black and white fabric: the unexpected, terrifying, and blessedly temporary return of Vincent and Angela, each of whom was given one more chance to show exactly the kind of specialness that got them run out of TV Land once already. Forget the silly ''everyone who won a challenge gets a second chance'' rationale (they conveniently neglected to mention Keith, who won the very first challenge this season): This was really an excuse to inject a booster shot of crazy into a final fivesome that was beginning to look a little sedate.

And did the demented duo let us down? They did not. Given a smart challenge _ to design a cocktail dress in black and white, using every square inch of cloth you purchased _ Vincent and Angela's comeback quickly turned into a go-away-again. Why? Because Angela designed a ''shrug'' (that's fashionspeak for ''bizarrely tiny doggie jacket that real humans don't wear'') that made her model look like Little Bo Peep _ that is, if Little Bo Peep had slaughtered a lamb, skinned it, buried it, and worn the little furry pelt to its funeral. And because Vincent made a sticky-looking black skirt that rode up his model's backside like underwear on a cross-country Greyhound trip, and solved the fact that he bought enough black fabric to outfit the Flying Nun by simply dumping the bolt over his model's shoulders. Bye again, guys! Seriously: Show up one more time, and I'm calling an exorcist.

The Vincent-and-Angela revolving door (without even a kiss from Heidi this time _ she looked ready to throw a knockwurst at them) still meant that one designer had to go. Now, last week, I got a stern lecture from many of you about my poor understanding of couture, specifically regarding the virtues of Jeffrey's immense yellow clown outfit. So, people, bring it on again. Explain to me the kind of cocktail party to which it's appropriate to wear thigh-high Our Lady of the Truck Stop leggings, a Daisy Mae top, and approximately 8,000 polka dots in between. That wasn't couture, and despite the judges' bizarre insistence on the term, it was ''rock & roll'' only to those who believed Donny Osmond's claim that he was a little bit rock & roll.

As Kayne aptly said, Jeffrey's dress wasn't something that ''if I was a girl, I would wear to a cocktail party.'' (Whaddaya mean, ''if''?)

Nevertheless, after two straight wins, the Neck would have had to turn into a gigantic vampire bat and attack the judges to get himself kicked off. This was destined to be either Kayne's or Laura's week to go _ and while Laura got a fairy-tale ending (she cried, she hormoned, she got advice on how to make her dress look younger from her fairy godmodel, and she finally won her first challenge), Kayne wasn't so lucky. The judges _ Nina, Michael, and sharp-dressing and thoughtful guest panelist Zac Posen _ busted him for cumulative lack of taste, ironically in a week when he didn't have a rhinestone, a sequin, or a glue gun to call his own. Kayne departed gracefully (well, perhaps ''gracefully'' is a mite generous, given that he called his competitors ''bitches,'' ''heifers,'' and ''cockroaches'') and vowed not to continue life as a ''seamstress.'' Have no fear, Kayne _ as long as awards telecasts have red-carpet preshows on E! and starlets need dresses that say boobs, Botox, and Mystic Tan, your hands will never be idle _ and you'll be able to pay people to get on their knees and sew those hems for you.

So now there are four _ one of whom will go home, and three of whom will stay in New York for Fashion Week. (Though the results won't air for a while, the finalists will show their collections in New York this Friday.) And suddenly Michael isn't looking merely like a contender but like a front-runner. His white cocktail dress with a carefully patterned black cummerbund and lots of intriguing, not-quite-horizontal lines was a stunner _ well thought out and sensitive to his model. (It was especially nice to hear him talk about designing specifically for dark skin, a theme that the show, with its array of models of color, ought to explore more.) On top of that, his dress was, as always, dead sexy.

By contrast, Jeffrey and Uli both got mild tongue-lashings from the judges for going to the same well once too often _ Jeffrey for his manic horror-show style, and Uli for an addiction to wild prints, loose silhouettes, and ropy straps. (Tip for next week: When you make a dress so busy that it looks like an astigmatism test, don't compound the felony by throwing a seaweedy noose around your model's neck.)

What did you think? Have you ever heard anything more despairing than Tim Gunn's ''Oh, Jesus'' when he saw Kayne's dress? Didn't this week's bloated sponsor-smooching L'Oral segment stray a little too much into ''Ford Focus on the Contestants'' territory? And next week, who's going to be cleaning out his or her workspace and cursing Nina Garcia's name?

Well, shut my mouth. Just a week after my one millionth plea for the judges on Project Runway to give Vincent the heave-ho so he can finally find a more appropriate venue for his ongoing self-realization (I'm thinking maybe a permanent spot on Dr. Phil), the guy goes and ruins my argument by (a) winning a challenge, (b) designing a pretty dress, and (c) acting normal.

What a blog wrecker of an episode this was. I look forward to hauling my nasty-bastard A-game out of cold storage next week, but what am I supposed to do after last night's show _ make fun of how people's sisters look? Make nasty remarks about somebody's mother? What kind of person would even consider doing something like that? (Hint: Jeffrey.)

The latest installment of summer's best reality show swiped a shrewd move from the Survivor playbook: Just when the contestants are beginning to seem a little less than bearable, bring in a bunch of family members and let the tears and revelations start flowing. But the arrival of six mothers and two sisters did more than warm up the episode; it allowed for a canny commentary on the artifice that usually defines this show, as well as an editorial swipe at the fact that most designers never give a second thought to women with large butts, wide hips, short waists, neck rolls, big boobs, and other actual human features. This week, they were forced to do just that. To paraphrase the philosopher Mo'Nique, it was time to hate on the skinny bitches and design for everyone else.

Before we get to how the players met that challenge, let us count the great tidbits of information that were imparted to us.

Fourth best tidbit: Michael Kors has a mother. And they have matching tans.

Third best tidbit: Laura is pregnant with her sixth child (old news over the Internet back fence, but fresh info to viewers, and apparently to her own mother). This announcement allowed the expectant mom to utter the greatest line about parenthood since the glory days of Roseanne: ''Five, six, seven _ it doesn't make that big of a difference. I'll just throw it on the pile with the other ones.'' ''It.'' How sweet that she's already picked out a name!

Second best tidbit: Jeffrey used to be an alcoholic suicidal junkie living on the street. (Not sure which street, but it was near a tattoo parlor.) Some of you have noted that I've been very hard on Jeffrey, so let me at least say that he has what appears to be a very nice mother who probably had to log a lot of playground time having to gently ''explain'' Jeffrey to the other mothers. I really wanted to give him the best-revelation prize, but he'll have to settle for runner-up status and a $20,000 scholarship, because the tiara goes to...

Kayne! Why? Because Kayne lost 110 pounds. That's right _ he lost an entire supermodel, plus a second supermodel's leg and head. And in the land of Project Runway, anyone can be a reformed substance abuser, but it takes a big man to admit you were...a big man.

Bravo, Mr. Former Huskypants. In consideration of your accomplishment, I'm going to forgive you for putting Michael's elegant mother in a pair of wrinkly old Bermuda shorts that looked like an 18-hour girdle after a football game. And while I'm handing out absolution, Laura, I guess you're off the hook for that trap-door diaper-front high skirt you stuck on Jeff's mom. As for the best dresses, other than Vincent's simple, sharp black silhouette for Uli's mother, Uli, with her great eye for fabrics, came through with a snazzy, breeze-blown chiffon that Kayne's mom worked like she owned the place.

That left Jeffrey, Angela, and Robert in the bottom three, and Robert, after weeks of underperformance, was sadly but deservedly sent home for putting Vincent's sister in exactly the kind of outfit that women who don't look like Barbie dolls get stuck wearing when they don't know what else to put on _ a big wet sigh of a black dress with a vast swollen-ankle-colored top that was the visual manifestation of a howl of defeat. [Read Jessica Shaw's interview with Robert]. Robert's departure allowed the only fair ending to the bad-behavior contest between Jeffrey and Angela: a draw. Jeffrey, you insulted Angela's mom. You said you didn't ''appreciate'' her standing next to you. And you referred to her as a ''crazy bitch.'' To sum up: Have fun in hell. And Angela, you urged your grouchy mother to trash-talk Jeffrey's blobular dress on the runway to sabotage him. Remember: All the rosettes and bubble skirts in the world will not hide a conniving heart.

What a delight, however, that the two evildoers will fight it out again next week. And now, in the tradition of the Macy's Accessory Wall, the L'Oral Paris Makeup Room, and the TRESemm whatever, let me end with my own product placement: Project Runway fans, trust me: You will not want to miss the next cover of Entertainment Weekly.

What did you think? Weren't you shocked that Jeffrey cried when Robert left? Putting aside the fact that we love Michael, do women really want to wear reversible dresses any more than men want to wear reversible pants? And when Vincent said, ''Uli's mom has this European air about her,'' do you think it occurred to him that she is, in fact, European?

To understand what happened on the latest installment of Project Runway, it helps to begin at the end. The very end specifically that little sentence that flashes by in the closing credits that says ''the Producers and Bravo'' give the judges ''input'' during the elimination process. Following their lead, I would like to offer my own ''input'' to the producers and Bravo after this week's outcome: Butt out. Keep your grubby ''We have to keep him because he's 'good television' '' mitts off of the judging process, and let Runway be Runway. Because I bet there isn't a contestant, an actual judge, or more than a tiny handful of viewers who seriously believe that Vincent, perennial bottom-dwelling nut bag, should still be around.

And yet, he is. This week's challenge wasn't a ''Make it beautiful'' show but a true ''Make it work'' hour in which the nine remaining contestants had to style clothes out of recyclable materials found in a Newark warehouse. (It was all very An Inconvenient Truth goes to Fashion Week.) Here's what we learned: Tim Gunn looks dapper and freshly pressed even at 5 a.m. Kayne used to Dumpster-dive as a little boy. Forced to use garbage, Angela will make exactly the same kind of Sporty Space Whore costume she makes most weeks. And one more thing: In the world of couture, looking like Minnie Mouse, whose name was rudely invoked more than once, is apparently a bad thing. As bad as looking like Frankenstein (or, as Nina Garcia pronounced it with regal disdain, Frank N. Stein).

Minnie came up when the judges were considering this week's bottom three. Alison (who at one point this week was subtitled, apparently for viewers not conversant in Blonde) complained that she was stuck with a big model without a waist, a conversation that allowed Tim Gunn to become the least Jewish person in history ever to use the word zaftig. Figuring that humiliating your model is the best revenge, Alison wrapped her in a stiff, wide hate crime of a minidress, stuck a king-size hair bow on her head that looked like something a Topsy Tail vomited up, and, for good measure, attached a bewildered-looking six-inch stalagmite to her right shoulder. The poor model walked out onto the runway looking as if she knew the bad teenagers were about to dump a bucket of pig's blood on her and ruin her prom. And when Heidi used the sentence ''She looks like a plus model'' (a word so filled with rage I'm surprised Bravo didn't bleep it), end of story. Alison went home. And, as Mr. Gunn always says with an absolutely delightful lack of conviction on his indispensable podcast, ''we'll miss her.''

That saved Kayne, a surprise tenant in the bottom three whose good judgment in saying that he knew his fourth-grade Thanksgiving-pageant, ''Look, Mommy, I'm playing a tree!'' dress was ugly did not mitigate the fact that it was, indeed, ugly. Kayne got off with a warning because of his past strong performances and open display of shrewdly calculated shame. (Oddly, Kayne also got subtitled once this week, I guess for the few Project Runway viewers who don't speak Gay.)

That left seven other conflicted, worried personalities in jeopardy all of them Vincent. True to form, he listened to the Inner Voices and designed a tubular white fire hazard that looked as if his model were the victim of a sorority hazing in which she was mummified in double-stick tape and then pelted with debris. At one point, as she shuffled along, I thought she was being pecked to death by origami birds. Even his design table was frightening; it looked like a room from Se7en. As Vincent stood there, he blinked and gaped and fussed and threw out words like ''artsy'' and ''avant-garde'' as if going through a series of fashion adjectives alphabetically would eventually save him. And something did though what it was, only ''the Producers and Bravo'' know.

This dunderheaded decision led to one of PR's only post-elimination fights ever, when in-it-to-win-it Laura leaned over (almost saw your boob; still love you) and tore into Vincent. He said something incomprehensible about Harry Winston and her nose and then smugly leaned back, ready to get kicked around for another week after all.

What else? Oh, right the winners. Is there anyone, at this point, not wowed by Michael, whose phenomenally smart and appealing three-piece gold, white, and translucent plastic combo won him his second straight challenge? He was joined in the top three by Laura, who found a way to make a Laura dress even out of garbage (although she appears to have contracted a localized case of Rosette's disease from Angela), and by the reprehensible Jeffrey, who made a dress that I guess had its virtues, especially if you've ever looked at bile and thought, ''Gee, what a nice color.'' (Michael Kors called it ''ugly-beautiful''; he was half right.) And that left three in the middle: Robert and Angela, both elated to dodge the bullet, and Uli, who seemed to aim a German-to-German laser death beam at Heidi when she missed the top three. Now that's a cage match I'd like to see.

What did you think? Is Vincent still around on merit or because of meddling? What is ''the fine line between innovation and insanity''? And doesn't the timelessly stylish Minnie Mouse deserve an apology?