“Project Runway”
Thursday 10pm, Lifetime
We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty of the current season of everybody’s favorite fashion design competition, and due to its unique circumstances, things are a bit different this time. A lawsuit kept Season 6 off the air for nearly a year, but the three finalists’ collections did show as part of last fall’s New York Fashion Week, and you can track down images of all the clothes on the Internet fairly easy. (I recommend heading to Project Rungay.) That gives sharp-eyed fans the opportunity to suss out the final three based on the aesthetics of the collections. The prevailing opinion seems to be that Althea and Irina are a lock, though the creator of the second collection is still something of a mystery. Many ascribe it to Carol Hannah, but I’m pulling for dark horse Gordana, who is just starting to get credit for her awesome work.
“White Collar”
Friday 10pm, USA
USA looks to add to its reliable stable of quirky procedurals with this new series, in which a rakish con artist (played by Matthew Bomer, “Chuck”) strikes a bargain to work alongside the FBI agent who hunted him for years (Tim DeKay, “Carnivale”) to track down other highly intelligent criminals like himself. The supporting cast features Tiffani Thiessen (whither the Amber?) as the fed’s neglected wife, and Willie Garson (the annoying Stanford Blatch from “Sex and the City”) as the con artist’s informant/sidekick. The pilot reportedly has its rough spots, but as we all know, all good series need a chance to find themselves.
“Heroes”
Monday 8pm, NBC
Oh, poor “Heroes.” Ratings have not improved since the nosedive of seasons 2 and 3, and with fewer prime-time slots available on NBC (thanks, Jay Leno!), the specter of cancellation is looming large. So producers are going for the D-word: drastic. They’ve already had Claire experiment with lesbianism, a cheap ploy to get the nerds still watching all pointy in the pants. And now word is circulating that a major death is set to happen sometime this fall, with one of the original series stars getting the axe. And we’re not talking “Heroes” dead (almost everyone on the show has “died” at least once), we’re talking actual character death. I’d put my money on Hiro or Parkman, preferably the latter, whose telepathic bummer should have been put out of our misery years ago.
