Houston native Cesar Galindo switched sides in the latest installment of The Fashion Show: The Ultimate Collection, the Bravo reality series that requires competing design teams to whip up a runway collection based on the week's theme.

But it didn't make much of a difference.

For the previous two weeks, Galindo was on the far superior House of Nami team, while the competing House of Emerald was rife with bitchy personalities and bad fashion design. So producers mixed it up a bit, asking one designer to go over to the other team.

Galindo, by far the most experienced designer in the competition, traded places with Calvin Tran, a mean-spirited designer whose high opinion of himself far exceeds his meager talents. Under the delusional assumption that he can whip the secondary team into shape, Galindo nevertheless has an easy working relationship with his teammates, although he warns ominously, "You think I'm Mother Theresa, but I'm not."

While he vows he can be mean, Galindo maintains his good guy image, even helping out Houston designer Rolando Tamaz, although Tamaz is now on the opposite team. That act of generosity drew a rebuke from contestant Cindy Ayvar. "I feel like telling Cesar, 'Don't help them.' We're in a competition, and you're in the House of Emerald now. If you don't help them, we could win," she says.

I think she wandered in from Survivor.

This week's challenge is to create a collection based on the femme fatale, "who's impossibly charming, but whose charms could prove deadly," co-host Iman intones in a ponderous voice that is meant to be dramatic but just comes across as silly. Thus far, she's been a dud of a host and proof that most models should keep their mouths shut off the runway.

Co-host Isaac Mizrahi is much more comforting as a judge/mentor, combining the roles that Michael Kors and Tim Gunn play on Project Runway, although there's one jarring moment in the episode when Mizrahi denies that he has ever dressed in drag because he's "such an ugly girl."

Under Galindo's direction, the House of Emerald decides on a purple and red theme with cheesy, cheap-looking black lace fabric as an overlay. It's a disaster as even the normally-unflappable Galindo temporarily loses his sense of taste by creating a jumbled gown and cape that no femme fatale would touch.

"You made a terrible dress and an even worse cape," Iman chides Galindo. "You can stay."

She doesn't seem to realize the incongruity of her last sentence as Galindo looks understandably puzzled.

I'm starting to think he may have been better off getting the boot.