Project Runway: She's in... but did she cheat?

Collections from Irina, Carol Hannah and Althea

Last night's finale saw major sniffles, a minor meltdown from Tim, a made-up runway show and maybe some cheating? (It was also brought to you by the letter 'M', apparently.)
Carol Hannah relapses, and the first part of the episode is spent watching her retch and cry. I feel bad but let's move along, you know? Tim's meltdown is built-up but he's really just mad because everybody's behind the day of the runway show.
I won't recap the entire episode, but here's what you need to know about Bryant Park:
In actuality, Lifetime and Bravo were still battling over the rights to Project Runway when the show in Bryant Park took place. That means the designers never actually got to introduce their collections or walk down with their models (they couldn't spoil the top three because the show was nowhere close to being aired by then.) All of those segments were taped before the real runway show, which explains the shoddy editing work. I would've preferred to see the "real thing" and hear about some of the production drama. From what I have read, Heidi was also very upset for the designers themselves because they couldn't stand by their work and get recognized.
Irina's all-black collection is an homage to New York, remember? She had to re-do her t-shirts because of the Coney Island images on her shirts weren't hers last week. So what does Irina do? She creates a t-shirt that plagiarizes New York magazine's "Reasons to Love New York" issue. It is dumbfounding to me, as a former New York magazine intern and New Yorker. It is NOT that hard to come up with your reasons to love New York. Not hard at all.
But her work is polished, even though the idea of the "warrior woman" battling New York isn't novel, Michael says. Heidi would like to own several of the pieces in the collection, and Nina wishes there was some more color.
Carol Hannah's collection (inspired by Duke) has great color, draping and tailoring but the pieces don't really tell a narrative. The judges say that the collection isn't cohesive, even though the individual looks are beautiful. I have to agree - I love Carol Hannah's dresses but I don't really see how they all fit together - except in their use of draping, which wasn't enough to tie them all together.
Althea's combination has a lot of pieces, which is impressive, but I didn't really buy her "futuristic" concept. Neither did the judges. If she was going for the future, she should've pushed the envelope a bit more and done some different styling on her models. Leather does not equal future. The clothes were attractive, though, and Michael was impressed that she designed sportswear. Her last three looks were a bit off and belonged to a different show. Althea's downfall is that she tries to "hit too many notes," as Heidi said, at once.
In the end, Althea has the best "connection to the streets" and Carol Hannah has impeccable tailoring - but neither of their collections told a tale on the runway.
Irina, unsurprisingly, takes the top title. Her helmets were a good way to unify an all-black collection and her t-shirts lightened the ominous pieces. The show actually taped such a long time ago that it's doubtful anything will come out of her using someone else's words.
And that closes out a mediocre finale. While I appreciate runways of wearable looks, it was sort of sad to not see a more ambitious designer this season who could dabble in high fashion like Christian Siriano.
Season 7 - back in New York - starts in January; woo-hoo!