Last night's "Project Runway" focused on the Final 3 - Althea, Carol Hannah and Irina - as they prepared for New York Fashion Week.

Before the designers take off, Heidi greets them one last time on the runway to let them know that they will each receive $9,000 to create a 12-piece collection.

Cut to a few months later, and Tim Gunn visits each of the finalists in their respective homes.

First up is Carol Hannah, who's moved from Charleston, SC to Huntington, NY. Tim visits on a very snowy day to have a look at her mostly eveningwear collection. While she may be worried that the judges will think her gown-heavy line is not risky enough, C.H. is smart enough to know what she does best and strong enough to stick to her guns and keep her point of view. She does have a few separates in her collection and even - gasp - pants, to which she extends the classy, evening wear theme. Tim then meets with Carol Hannah's family, who flew up from South Carolina to cook him an old-fashioned Southern dinner.

Next, Tim heads to Manhattan to see Irina. (Lucky him.) Irina reveals that her inspiration is NYC, specifically Coney Island where her family originally set up house when they immigrated to America. She has a lot of tee shirts and knits in her collection, and everything is black and gray. Irina invites Tim to a restaurant for a family dinner, where we discover that she might have some daddy issues. (Apparently, Irina's dad never really supported her love of fashion.)

Finally, it's off to the fashion capital of the world, Dayton, OH, where Tim meets up with Althea. She says that her line was inspired by women in sci-fi movies, and I hope she's talking about classic B-movies and not modern sci-fi, which generally features women wearing the smallest amounts of rubber or latex. Tim has his third dinner at Althea's parents' house, and we discover that Althea's boyfriend is a total cutie.

Tim has good and bad to say about everyone's collections, giving praise where warranted and offering up some very blunt advice on the pieces that he doesn't like.

Ten days before the fashion show, Tim calls Irina with a small problem - the Coney Island images she had printed on her tee shirts are trademarked and can't be used. Awww, poor Irina. Now she has to do more work! (Insert Nelson Muntz "HA-ha" here.)

Irina and Althea arrive at their hotel suite a couple of days later, and things seem rather awkward. Althea says that there is still a tension between her and Irina, caused by Irina's previous accusations that Althea was copying her designs. Althea says she doesn't trust Irina and has lost a lot of respect for her, but has never really confronted her about the issue. Meanwhile, Irina talks about how amazing it is that she has somehow managed to "still kind of like" everyone else on the show, as if "everyone else" was the problem.

As the two ladies are wondering where their third is, Tim shows up to let them know that Carol Hannah has a contagious stomach virus and would hopefully be able to join them the next day. Althea secretly hopes that C.H. isn't sick enough to die, but just sick enough to get knocked out of the race, and Irina unconvincingly feigns sympathy for her fallen competitor by claiming to feel bad through loud chuckles.

Carol Hannah shows up to the workroom the next day to halfhearted smiles and inquiries about her health. Even though she says she still feels like crap, she's all made up and wearing a cute little dress. I suppose the producers forced her to look TV-ready. Couldn't they have some compassion and let her rock some sweatpants and a ponytail?

Tim returns to check on everyone's progress, and voices some concerns about each collection. He thinks Althea needs to worry about cohesion, while suggesting that Irina should consider adding some color to her mostly-black line. He doesn't really have to say much about Carol Hannah's collection, as she seems to be her own harshest critic.

After faking nicey-nice for most of the episode, "Imeana" finally rears her ugly head, once again accusing Althea of copying her designs with a smart-ass, "Althea, what would you do without me?" Althea still remains wishy-washy, weakly retorting that she couldn't have copied her mentally over the last few months, allowing Imeana to matter-of-factly state that Althea has "a good memory." I would feel bad for Althea if she wasn't so annoying in her own right. And her lack of any backbone has made her even less sympathetic. Seriously, if that were me, I would have sewn Irina's lips together after the first accusation. Or maybe even after meeting her for the first time.

Nina and Michael Kors (nice of him to show up!) stop by the workroom to dish out some advice too, and Nina mentions that it's very hard to editorialize an all-black collection. Irina decides that she knows better than Nina, and chooses to keep her line free of pesky colors.

After the model selection and preliminary fittings, Heidi shows up. Now, you know when Heidi shows up, a curve ball is about to be thrown. And, actually, to their credit, none of these three designers look very surprised when Heidi informs them that they each have to make a 13th look. The good news is that three cast-offs are brought back as helpers: Christopher, Gordana and the Man-Candy Man himself, Logan! Althea gets to pick her helper first, and picks Logan. Irina takes Gordana, which leaves C.H. with Christopher.

Carol Hannah looks like she wants to punch Althea. Clearly, she wanted Logan for herself. And really, why did Althea pick Logan anyway when, a couple of weeks ago, she did nothing but bitch that he was a copycat and she "hated" him? Maybe she knew it would make C.H. mad. It's an old high school trick.

But Carol Hannah has bigger problems right now. Once back at the hotel, she starts barfing again. Will she make it to Bryant Park? Or will the stomach flu derail her Fashion Week dreams?

Auf wiedersehen - see you next week!


"The Pop Eye @ Starpulse" is a column written by native Pittsburgher and current New Yorker, Becky Broderick. You may contact Becky directly at beckeyeam@gmail.com, or check out her other ramblings on The Pop Eye.