I predict that Miles will take home the prize.
I thought this might be the case as early as the first challenge and was moderately certain by the second. I will be genuinely surprised at this point if he loses.
Miles will win, not because of Simon de Pury’s embarrassing infatuation with him and not because Jerry Saltz is his champion. He won’t win because he and Nicole make goo-goo eyes at each other and we, the viewers are hopeful of a little True Romance in the group instead of the constant bickering and whining. Even his Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, as television-friendly as it is, will not bag him the prize.
No, Miles will win because he has the most creative versatility and has the artistic skills needed to consistently realize his imaginative vision. In a group of artists linked mainly by the credo, “it’s all about me,” he somehow finds a way to produce objects that often connect to larger human issues.
Jaci, however, won this challenge and rightly so.
I’m guessing Simon rousted them out of bed at an ungodly hour so that they’d be driving those pricey Audi’s when there was minimal traffic in the streets. I think if they really wanted to enact the quintessential Manhattan experience, thought, they would have stuck’em all in taxis driven by English-challenged immigrants and turned the drive to Forty-Seventh and Park into a time trial.
But that’s just me.
When Simon finally articulated the Challenge Number Five, it took me a while to figure out what exactly it meant. The New York experience? Does a drive from downtown to midtown constitute a true experience of New York? And is a piece of German automotive engineering part of that?
Then I had questions. What about the issue of fairness? Some drove and some rode: that’s not even apples and oranges in terms of experience. Drivers snuggled up with the vehicles but had to concentrate on the road and not on the scenery. Passengers, assuming they didn’t fall back asleep on those luxurious leather seats, got to meditate on the architecture and stare at pedestrians but didn’t actually interact with the cars.
In the Audi Forum showroom, all I could do was wonder what John Chamberlain might do with all that gleaming metal.
At the end of the episode, The Jury turned Jamie-Lynn back into a pumpkin or a scullery maid or whatever the correct metaphor is. They left Jaci beaming, Erik purple, Miles largely unconcerned and the others grateful to keep their invitations to the Brooklyn Museum Ball.
And they left me just a little bored.