Okay, it's getting late in the day and I can't avoid it any longer. I'm writing about "Stylista."

It's not a good show. I feel bad about watching it. But I'm going to keep watching it.

So what happened last night? Well, we started out with the last bitter dregs of the Megan/Kate drama. Megan openly bitched about Kate to all and sundry, and most and sundry agreed with her that, yes, Kate is boobaliciously annoying and treacherous. At that point somebody called for a house meeting and Mascara Girl (a.k.a. Cologne, and how ironic is it to overuse one cosmetic when your parents named you after another?) went to find Kate. Where was she? Crying on the bathroom floor. "Oh, honey, no!" x 45 excruciating seconds. Cologne, you're probably too pretty to take on the Mrs. Garrett role in the loft. Next!

This week's get-to-pick-teams-and-screw-people-over challenge was dressing mannequins in clothes from the "Elle style closet." (Just like we're at "Elle Downtown," which seems to bear no relation to the Elle offices at Hachette Fillipachi in Midtown Manhattan. Hmmmm.) Each contestant got a "fashion dictionary" and then had to select something knit, something woven, something with a dart, something with an empire waist (which Anne Slowey oh-so-chicly pronounces ahm-peer, as in the ahmpeereh's new clothes?), etc. Megan and Ashlie both did really, really well. Everyone else basically sucked.

Megan was declared the winner and stuck Ashlie, her main competish, on a team with nice-but-dumb NYU sophomore Devin and the luckless Kate. The challenge was to go down to Chinatown and find a "hidden gem" to feature in the "Elle Living" part of the magazine. a) Snooze! b) Seriously? A hidden gem? In Manhattan Chinatown? 1958 is calling and it wants its edgy ideas back.

I can't bring myself to go into too much detail: wedding store, bubble tea, day spa, kombucha.

Meanwhile, back at the loft, there's a new wannabe-sherriff in town: Ashlie. She's had enough of Megan's Mean Girl ways and wants to usher in a new age, a new administration, led, of course, by her! Vote for Ashlie! Now with 30% less bitchiness! They have a "You're a diva!" "No, you're a diva" type fight that was dramatic, sure, but lacked the cinema verite quality of last week's Megan-Kate face-off.

Okay, we're really cruising through this now. But we're getting to the part I don't want to write about. Remember last week when I said that William was gearing up for some kind of breakdown? Boy, did I call that one wrong. There was a breakdown, and it was all Jason's. Crafty Megan stuck him on her team as cannon fodder. This proved to be a smart move. Jason took some bad pictures, had a panic attack, had a worse panic attack the next day and had to go to the ER, then came back only to be oh-so-coolly dismissed by Anne Slowey. Now, people have panic attacks and it's awful. Do we have to see the whole thing? A thousand times no! I think it was disgusting how long the camera operators stayed on Jason as he lay panting on the floor at "Elle Downtown." It was a serious lack of judgment on their part, the producers' and editors' part, and the CW's part. Serious. Lack. Of. Judgment.

Ashlie came over and gave Megan a preemptive dressing-down for (potentially) throwing Jason under the bus come elimination time. In fairness, Queen Anne doesn't really give the contestants a chance to defend themselves before she decides who to cut. I kind of love this. I hate reality shows where people get a chance to talk themselves back for another episode. (Could this be the only aspect of this show I genuinely like? Yup.)  Megan, to be fair, says nothing about Jason's photography at any point during the proceedings. It comes down to Jason and DyShaun, who accidentally switched the headers on two paragraphs of text. Anne cut Jason, panic attack or not.

So Jason's gone, Megan's still on top, Ashlie's star is rising in the east. And the rest of them? Well, William's turned down the zaniness, Danielle is shown eating something in almost every scene (Another serious lack of judgment! We expect better from you, Tyra!), Johanna speaks Mandarin and just generally has a brain so what is she doing on this show?

I thought "Stylista" was going to be just like "Project Runway" minus, you know, talent, but it has turned out to be a whole different animal. Runaway clotheshorse? But it's more about the egos. Arrrrgh, I don't know. But I know I'll keep watching it, and I feel a little weird about that.

- Posted by Kate