DWINDLE, DWINDLE, LITTLE STARS. The five remaining designers will be sliced to three by the end of the episode, so the pressure's on, especially for Christopher, who's the last man standing. And, considering how copiously he cries, I use the word "man" advisedly.

Heidi sends them to meet Tim Gunn at "an iconic place," which turns out to be the Getty Museum. Ooh, I love that place. When I was little, I used to wander around there pretending I lived in it, wondering where to put the couch.

L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has nothing better to do than greet the scissor monkeys. Tim gives them their assignment: Explore the museum, the architecture, the grounds and the beautiful ocean view for inspiration, with their models at their sides to serve as muses.

"There's so much to see," says Lonely Boy. "So much to not touch." Say, Handsy McTearduct, have you ever been in a museum before?

MOVE OVER, ERIN BROCKOVICH.

Ronald Craven is the new (fictional, but still) messiah of indignant environmental activists everywhere.

As portrayed by Bob Peck (a well-heralded British actor who us Americans only know as the guy that played Muldoon in "Jurassic Park"), Craven is the main character in "Edge of Darkness," a BBC mini-series from 1985 that focuses on an international nuclear conspiracy that forever changes Craven's life when his activist daughter Emma (Joanne Whaley) is murdered because of it. And now that the much-praised, six-part collection is finally available on DVD in the United States, we turncoats can finally be pleasantly surprised by what all the fuss is about before Mel Gibson's movie remake comes out in Jan. 2010.

The 30-year-old singer/actress was born and raised in this town, and she's doing us proud by consistently scoring high marks. Her favorite part of the process: wardrobe. But she couldn't put on any of the revealing, sparkly gowns if she didn't practice day and night with partner Dmitry Chaplin.

» EXPRESS: How did you prepare for the show?
» MYA: I only found out two weeks ahead of time. So, I started doing cardio, some boxing exercises and running outside with my dog. But I haven't been back in the gym since.

» EXPRESS: Because your schedule must be crazy now, right?
» MYA: Yes, we start early Monday mornings — 7:45 a.m. — with hair and makeup, fittings, consultations, dress rehearsal. It's a full day until the show ends. The next night we stay even later, and sometimes we'll go straight from there until rehearsals. Initially, we were limited to five hours a day, but now we do up to 12 the rest of the week.

WHEN YOU THINK "sci-fi heroes," who comes to mind? Maybe Captains Kirk and Picard, or Dr. Who, Buck Rogers, Ralph Hinkley, Superman, Will Robinson, Steve Austin, Sam Beckett or Flash Gordon?

It's a sad state affairs that ass-kicking females like Xena, the Bionic Woman and Sarah Connor make up maybe 5 percent of those heroes. With the exception of NBC's "Heroes" and the beloved "Star Trek: The Next Generation," even ensemble casts overwhelmingly favor male leads: "Stargate SG -1," "Babylon 5" and the original "Star Trek," for example. There's no lack of strong female leads in science fiction if you look hard enough, but most shows have been giving the shaft to the fairer sex since television's inception (even the Cryptkeeper, Rod Serling and Mike Nelson and his robots are dudes).

Props are due to the SyFy channel, which is way ahead of its time at producing great shows that often present women in positions of power, notably the new "Battlestar Galactica." Also exceptional are the sci-fi shows on the WB/UPN, including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Star Trek: Voyager" and even "Roswell." But network television for the most part has been predictably Y-chromosome heavy.

THAT'S ONE "PROJECT RUNWAY" mystery solved: how Althea gets her hair like that. She puts it in a bazillion fat curlers at night and most likely sleeps upright like Betty Draper. Totally worth it, too.

So, morning among the dwindling scissor monkeys. There are two boys left, Chris and Logan, and four girls. Carol Hannah vows to not make another dress. Mark that; it will come into play later.

At Heidi's summons (how come no one squeals, "Heidimail!"?), they are lured to the sad, empty runway set and seated facing away from the runway. No, no one is about to be bashed over the head with a portable Singer by a vengeful Michael Kors. They turn around to see their winning looks standing in silent, unpopulated judgment. El, Logan doesn't have a winning look, but he does have tight silver jeans.

THIS WEEK'S EPISODE opens with Robin spewing some nonsense about how thrilled the outcome of last week's Restaurant Wars made her.

Oh yeah, Robin?

I bet you are.

I bet it's nice when a pair of Voltaggio brothers hoists you on their shoulders and marches you to victory.

Spoiler alert:

Those are two questions unanswered — nay, ignored — during the four series of the comedy television show "The Mighty Boosh," which is immensely popular in the U.K. and a cult phenomenon over here.

Reminiscent of "The Young Ones" and "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "Boosh" is known for its trippy set pieces, anarchic plotlines and wide cultural spray, not to mention the chemistry between its two leads, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding.

FORTY-TWO YEARS AFTER it first aired, "The Prisoner" remains one of the strangest and trippiest television dramas ever produced, blending the paranoia of "The Invaders," the fixed setting of "Gilligan's Island," the plot machinations of Kafka and the surrealist imagery of a painting by Dali or, more fittingly, De Chirico.

It has become a cult institution, its 17 episodes passed around on bootlegged VCR tapes, then finally released as one of the earliest DVD box sets in 2000, and finally given a polishing on A&E's new five-disc Blu-Ray set which will no doubt inspire media upgrades among diehard fans.

Playing off the success of James Bond and other romanticized Cold War spies, "The Prisoner" twists the concept by making the man of action into a victim of an organization that can neither be beaten nor outsmarted. Co-creator and lead actor Patrick McGoohan had played a spy on the immensely popular British "Danger Man" series in the mid-1960s, and he devised "The Prisoner" to play subtly and deviously off that role.

After abruptly resigning his job, McGoohan's unnamed secret agent is gassed and imprisoned on a remote island that acts as a sort of retirement center for other decommissioned agents. Number Six, as he becomes known, won't be so easily silenced, and each episode finds him devising some new means of resistance and escape. "I am not a number," he declares repeatedly, often to shocking derision or laughter from other characters.

THE GREAT THING about the Monty Python sketches and films — besides how funny they still are, 40 years later — is how much of an inside joke they've become. Ask a group of people about the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow — or start to sing about cross-dressing lumberjacks — and you'll be met with either whooping enthusiasm or blank stares. It's comedy that's almost as polarizing as the "Three Stooges": there's a very distinct and passionate cult of Python, and then there's everybody else.

"Almost the Truth — The Lawyer's Cut" (Eagle Rock) is a six-hour documentary that aired earlier this month on IFC and is out now on DVD. It includes recent interviews from the five surviving members of the group (John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin) as well as archival interviews with the sixth founder, Graham Chapman, who died in 1989.

Still, "Almost the Truth" isn't really a great place for a Python neophyte; better starting points include the group's work itself, from the complete "Flying Circus" DVDs to its films ("Monty Python and the Holy Grail" chief among them).

Aha! That explains Christopher Straub. Yes, yes, he's a little prince. Seems so sensitive, so truly ruffled when the judges chastise his latest train wreck garment as it stumbles down the runway. (Admittedly, I think his costume challenge was right on target.) But even he's confiding in us from the other side of the teavee that things have been going downhill.

The picnic table dress he made with Rodney Epperson was a disaster. Drrty shorts that made Christina Aguilera want to bundle up. And the criticisms foisted on the lad have been so pointed, so severe, we really do wonder how he's stayed in the game this long. Is it that he's the only contestant on the show we the viewers may find less boring, less bitchy, tolerable?

Maybe I'm being a little mean. I did love the fact that Dame Michael Kors is now at the crossover point between George Hamilton and La Toya Jackson on the complexion color wheel.