The End Must Come: Top Design’s Finale and the Last Assignment

    Going into the Finale of Top Design were only two contestants: Matt and Carisa. And it looked as if they were a good match. I love the idea that they were both equally smart and innovative, though they had very different designs. The finale was one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen. They were so in tune with their designs. The assignment was to design a loft for themselves as the clients. They had 162,000 dollars to do it with, a month to design, and five days to implement everything. They knew what was going on, and the editing played up the fact that they were on it.
Throughout the run of the show, I didn’t like it when they played up the drama between the designers and their troubles with their designs. Call me an optimist, but I believe in people and I want them to succeed. Sometimes the designers just seemed to be failing miserably at everything they were trying so hard to accomplish. Even the final designs were not appreciated like they should be because of the way that everything seemed unfinished. But it only seemed unfinished because they had shown all of the struggles that the designers went through.
Off of that tangent, I believe Top Design was a well-executed show. It really brought in viewers who might have no experience or even interest in Interior Design. The actual designers are what draw people into the show. Bravo has a way of constantly intriguing people in the world of reality competition shows when people might not know anything about them initially.
The actual finale was only one-hour long, unlike some other shows from Bravo where finales are longer than the usual one-hour time block. Even though the designers were given an entire month to design their lofts, the show still was paced very well because it lasted the hour and no more.
Carisa and Matt were great in this episode. They really didn’t rib each other or cause problems with the other. They were both really cordial and nice to each other. Because they had had all the other 10 designers to go through, they really respected each others’ talents and strengths.
Carisa has a black-and-white modernistic approach to all of her designs. Personally, I like her designs better than Matt’s because they are always really cohesive and original. I also like black and white as colors in my designs.             Carisa really was innovative in this project. She made a bed “pit” where the bed was located underneath a platform and was really savvy. Even the show’s host, Jonathan Adler, commented that he could see himself doing some “freaky” things in that pit. She really tied her entire loft together and mad it her own.
Matt worked with his typical tastes and traditional styling. He made his loft as an entire entity but had pieces sectioned out of the whole. He had a daughter and a wife, and his designs showed that he cared about them in his look of the loft. His daughter’s room was sectioned off from the main part of the loft and he even let her pick the colors. The pink and purple “princess room” was sweet and fabulously designed. However, I thought that it didn’t really fit within the whole concept of the loft. Also, the bedroom was lacking in any type of personality. Other than the animal rug on the floor, it didn’t really denote sexy or romantic really. However, Matt’s use of the traditional design elements and his attention to detail, including how he accessorized, is what made him win.
I believe that the Top Design finale was a very classy way of ending the series. It really encompassed all that was Top Design. The designs were beautiful and well done, and the contestants to the very end, were absolutely amazing.

On the Top?

At the very end of January, a new reality competition series was launched on Bravo. Hot on the heels of Top Chef, Top Design swept the recurring audience into its grasp. With the same sort of idea and a different industry, Bravo picked up a new series without losing any momentum.

Quick to assume the style of recent Bravo shows such as Top Chef and Project Runway, the new Top Design worked with the same premise. A little design, some drama, and a competition for real people. Incorporating style elements of the previous shows, Top Design seems like a rerun of the same show tweaked for a new industry. In some ways it is. It works with the idea that has worked for a while now. People like to see real people come and do a competition, get angry or dramatic with each other, and come away with a prize at the end for the winner. People want to see the unique challenges and experience things they’d never do on their own.

Top design opened the doors with a large cast and a twist. The first week, they’d kick off two people instead of the customary one. Of course, the designers are thrown into the first challenge with a vengeance. They can’t meet the client, but he or she is a celebrity. They learn a little about him/her through five objects picked to develop their rooms around. They are put into teams and then the drama begins.

Every Bravo reality show has drama, that’s part of why people watch. They want to see the personal fights between one character and another. The very first fight comes between one of the youngest guys and the oldest. Michael, who’s in his twenties, has no real experience and is quite docile in his manners and designs. John, who’s in his forties, is a very strong, aggressive personality and doesn’t mesh well with Michael. They have a fight and their personalities clash, causing them to be one of the people with the worst designs. They don’t have a good time with the assignment and it sets the tone for the rest of the show, even season. People’s personalities and the clashes they have with each other are the reason people like to watch these shows.

Another plug to the Bravo world is the commercials during the season premiere. The commercials featured “Dirty Dishes,” Top Chef “tell alls” throughout the premiere to draw in the top Chef watchers. The end of the finale for Top Chef and the season premiere for Top Design started on the same night, back-to-back. These little blurbs are insight into the feelings of the Top Chef contestants and were a huge draw to the watchers of the series. They showed things that would never be shown again and were available, predictably, during the season premiere of the new show. This got the viewers to stay tuned and probably interested, since it followed the format of Top Chef and all the others.

There are also little references to the style of the reality competitions. Names were on tags, like color swatches, or paint samples. This was done extensively, though a little differently than Project Runway. Also, the contestants were introduced with little bits of “interview” style information while they moved in on the first episode. This is indicative of a reality competition in the way that everyone is introduced. The beginning of every reality competition introduces the contestants as they move in. So in that way, this is a very conventional competition. Also, the design studio where they do their sketches is almost identical to the studio that the contestants had on Project Runway. So many other little elements of the classic reality competition were thrown in.

In a way, this is a typical reality competition. But in another way, it’s a creative take and a different styling of something that works.