This is where designers are made and broken: the infamous "white wall" challenge. David Bromstad set the bar high in the first season of HGTV's Design Star, designing a rug out of hamster cage bedding and using fish bowls as decorative accents. For this challenge, the designers were assigned countries that were meant to serve as their inspiration, and limited to materials they could purchase in a craft store and a set of covered cushions.

Unfortunately, instead of following in David's footsteps, one member of Team Gay met his Waterloo between those three white walls. Michael Stribling, the youngest contestant in Design Star history, created a room the judges called "generic," when he was supposed to be designing a hot Barcelona nightclub.

Michael's losing design

The problem I have with this decision isn't that I disagreed with the judges about his room. Michael alone of all the designers was allowed to choose the country he wanted to use as his inspiration, and there was not one element of this design that invoked the slightest hint of Spain. But it was a nice enough design, certainly competitive with the other designs the judges liked, and a lot better than those of designers who survived. Like, say, this monstrosity from Tracee:

Tracee's losing design

I mean, seriously. She's been in the bottom three every week, she's got a nasty personality and obviously will never win (hello, has anyone noticed that both previous Design Stars, David Bromstad and Kim Myles, were incredibly nice and well-liked by their fellow competitors?), and she submits this hideous crap. Explain to me like I'm stupid why she's here and Michael is gone?

Oh, right. Drama over design. I keep forgetting.

I don't normally consider being paid to watch television a hardship. But I really wasn't prepared for this room, this horrible, horrible room that caused my eyes to bleed. This room, one of four, each more ghastly than the last, in some crumbling and haunted Nashville mansion formerly owned by country music stars.

And then, because of Design Star's Team Gay, the unstoppable force that is Matt Locke and his Boy Wonder, Michael Stribling, that wallpapered monstrosity became this:

And that, my darlings, is why gay is good. And why Matt and Michael are good, individually and as a team.

The judges thought so too, singling them out as having created the best design (Matt's second week in a row earning that praise).

However, despite the fact that angels sang and heavenly choirs played when Matt and Michael stood on the podium having roses tossed at their feet by Vern, Cynthia, and Martha, the entire episode left a bitter taste in my mouth ... and that taste's name is Tracee.

For some reason that I can pretend not to understand but in reality understand all too well, the odious Tracee got smacked down hard by her teammate, the judges, and the other designers backstage after basically tanking her team's design, and still survived this round of competition.

To find out who went home and more, click on through the jump...

My favorite television commercial these days is the one on HGTV featuring a series of vignettes of people watching a real estate show, probably House Hunters.

One viewer wonders which house a couple will choose. Another comments on a kitchen, or the landscaping.

And in the last, a guy looks at the woman he's watching with and plaintively says, "I thought he was his brother."

The woman looks at him pityingly. "They're not brothers."

And that is why I love my big gay home decorating network.

Three years ago, HGTV introduced America to Design Star, a reality competition show for interior designers that went on to become its highest-rated show ever. The out gay winner and breakout star of that first season was David Bromstad, who has gone on to host HGTV's successful Color Splash and inspire legions of fans to fix up the family room and hit the gym and/or tattoo parlor because hello: David Bromstad has some nice arms, yo.

The second season of Design Star featured two out gay men as contestants, Josh Johnson and Scott Corridan, although they both were eliminated fairly early in the competition.

AfterElton.com just got word that Season Three will also feature two out gay male contestants, marking yet again a bold new incursion of gay men into the previously straight-dominated world of interior design.

First is 23-year-old Michael Stribling of College Station, Texas. He's the competition's youngest finalist, and HGTV tells us that he "attributes his success as a designer to his fresh and youthful approach to style."

Michael's audition video is on the Design Star website. He is both fabulous and awesome, and we know it because he says so.

The second out gay contestant is Matt Locke, 38, from Los Angeles. He's the son of an architect dad and artist mom who "provided him with a wildly creative home where he was allowed a great deal of artistic freedom. By age 6, Matt had planned his first bedroom and by age 27, he had built his first house. This Princeton grad also studied fine art and industrial design at the university level and for the past five years has operated his own custom furniture, lighting and interiors company. Matt describes his design style as warm and modern and looks to the great architecture of the world for inspiration."

You can check out Matt's audition video over here. He clearly knows his way around power tools, and don't tell anyone, but Brian has a little crush on him already. (Ed.: I'm quite sure I have no idea what she's talking about, and my testimony will reflect this.) And given that his favorite HGTV show is Divine Design and his favorite film is 9 to 5, I might have a little lesbian version of a crush on him myself.

Okay, when I think of timeless design and endless love, I don’t think any of the following words: Las Vegas, dice, casino, rockabilly.

Tragically, the couple whose wedding reception was this week’s Design Star challenge didn’t feel that way, and thus a hellish red, black, lavender and white wedding was born, designed by the most irritating contestant of all, Robb, who observed when the challenge was announced, “I’ve never done a wedding before.”

It’s my most fervent hope he never does another, but given that the judges keep not sending him home, I don’t think that hope’s going to be realized any time soon.

Last week, one of this season’s two gay contestants, Santa Barbara wedding and event planner Scott Corridan, got canceled, which is an irony and a shame because I’m very sure that this tragic design could have benefited greatly from a nice gay wedding planner like Scott. The queer sensibility was left up to the always-sparklicious Josh Johnson, and for my money, he’s the one I’d have hired to do my Vegas wedding if, one, the laws of our nation were changed to recognize my right to marry, and two, I were drugged and forced at gunpoint to get married in Las Vegas.

But this isn’t about my big lesbian wedding, it’s about Stephanie and Bruno’s big traditional fairy tale princess rockabilly Vegas casino wedding. The remaining designers had one night to come up with a presentation for the happy couple, and all the designers pull an all-nighter so they'll be ready for the 6 AM presentation.

Each designer presents his or her idea to Bruno and Stephanie, who rank the presentations and choose the one they want for their actual wedding reception. Christina, who I’ve never been wild about, had been appropriately horrified at the groom’s rockabilly casino idea, and did what smart wedding planners have been doing for generations and ignored the groom and focused on giving the bride the fairy tale white and lavender wedding she’d asked for. I’m sure it was totally unprofessional of her and it got her booted off the show in the first ten minutes, but I went from finding her annoying to shouting “You go girl!” just in time to see her, well …. Go. Sigh. This show hates me.

This was the moment I had a very bad feeling about our boy Josh, who is not looking as sparkly as he did when the show began. The bride and groom don’t seem enamored of his presentation, and I couldn’t get a feeling for how it was supposed to look from the camera angles we were given on it.

It was really hard for me when HGTV decided to do a reality competition show last year. I kind of hate reality TV and competitions make me horribly anxious, and yet, if you don’t count my Xena: Warrior Princess DVDs, HGTV is pretty much the only reason I have a television. In fact, the first blog post I did here was all about my big gay home decorating network.

I got over my internal conflict and watched the first season of Design Star. And I loved it, because it was backstage drama-lite and design-heavy, and of course, it brought the world David Bromstad as the first out gay design star. And when I heard there were actually two out gay contestants on this season’s show, I was bouncing up and down going “Me! Me! Pick me!” when AfterElton.com was looking for someone to interview them. When I turned in the interview, I said to Michael in a really offhand way that if he’d like someone to recap the show I might possibly be willing to consider it.

The original Design Star was set in New York, a place actually famous for design, art, and culture. The current season is set in Las Vegas, which I find somewhat terrifying as a design concept, but so far hasn’t impinged noticeably on the content of the show. (Next week it probably will, as they’re designing wedding chapels.)

The first season was also less about the drama and more about the design, a ratio that’s been a bit altered this season, and not for the better. I may be in the minority, but I don’t actually like seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I could live the rest of my life happily without ever again seeing a designer shed tears or indicate in a quavering voice that they have failed to do their best.