Thursday, July 20Last night's episode of Project Runway drew in a record 4.8 million viewers to the Emmy-nominated series. Fueled largely by a scandalous revelation first reported on the popular website "Television Without Pity" by Viktor Rolf that quickly spread throughout the internet, viewers were anxious to watch what would happen. It seems that a designer on the series, Keith Michael - also known as "Jude Kinnear" - had misrepresented some traced images as his own original sketches at his audition.
Michael responded on the highly-regarded "Blogging Project Runway" by explaining that these images were part of a "research assignment" mapping trends for a client and his actual work was contained in one of the other portfolios submitted that were not included in the episode.
After winning the first challenge and gaining immunity for the second week, Keith was looking good to the judges and viewers alike. However, promos hinted that someone would be "asked to leave." Would this be the reason? Or is this something that completely escaped the producers? Would Keith be busted on the show? Or are Viktor Rolf and the internet sleuths a step ahead of the Bravo insiders?
It seemed that EVERYONE wanted to know.
After NBC aired the first episode of Project Runway on Monday night, and the "scandal" reached the mainstream news media by Wednesday morning, it seemed that all of America was tuned to Project Runway last night. Viewership topped even the previous record for a Bravo show: 3.4 million for the Season Two finale. (Turn to page B3 to continue)
