Top Chef NYC

Eugene and Melissa bite the dust. Given the opportunity to make whatever she wished, Melissa chose fish tacos. That alone explains her long-overdue dismissal. Eugene, meanwhile, fried a whole goddamn fish, wrapped it around pasta with tomato and winter radish (known in chefland as daikon, probably tastes like worms when it's hot). It looked dramatic, but probably tasted like, oh, who knows. I can't imagine the fish. Just can't imagine it. It looked like it had been dipped in flesh-eating mercury or something (fully aware this doesn't exist).

 

Does it ever take a long time. And controversial decisions have been made, too. The "semifinals" in season two, where Sam and Ilan inexplicably had to face each other while Marcel got the loon who shaved her head, remains the most glaring example of network folks simply wanting to create ratings with a tense finale.

If you ever see that episode, you just look at Padma's face when she tells Sam to leave. It says, quite clearly "you got fucked here."

The troublemakers are always kept around too long. Howie that one year. Lisa last year (which nearly had horrible consequences when she almost pulled off the overall win).

 

That's what happens when the show becomes commercial. The first season didn't have any expectations, so the chefs were eliminated like they should be eliminated, according to skill level. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who watched that first season to disagree with the order of elimination, other than maybe Lee Ann advancing to the finals over Dave, but that's about it.

Once that first season had aired and they saw the feedback and how much heat/love Tiffani got for being the "bitch", they realized drama was the answer. Like you said, Lisa almost made them pay for keeping her around.

I'm still enjoying this season, but I'm starting to tire of the product placement. I realize that's been around since Season One, but shit, the Diet Dr Pepper Quickfire? I already TiVo the show to skip through the 4 million spots for Real Housewives. Don't tell me I'm going to have to start skipping through Padma's instructions/15-second monotone commercial.

 

This isn't isolated to Top Chef, unfortunately. The same thing happens on Project Runway. Not "troublemakers" per se, but designers who are characters or "make for good TV."

 

WHEN IT WENT UP ON THE SCREEN IT SAID DIET DR. PEPPER AND MY HEAD NEARLY FUCKING EXPLODED.

Sweet Christ.

 

Um, they didn't pair up for the Season 2 semifinal. They just took the two chefs who made the two best meals. Those were Marcel and Ilan.

I don't know why people still say Sam got screwed. Go back and watch that episode again. Marcel made far and away the best meal of the evening. All the judges agreed on this. I repeat: ALL THE JUDGES AGREED ON THIS. Marcel won the semifinal.

Elia made the worst meal of the evening. All the judges agreed on this.

It was thus between Sam and Ilan for the final spot. They were both OK, but Sam didn't fucking cook anything. He marinated some raw stuff, then called it a day. I would have loved to see the entire footage of this...I swear, his meal took about 7 minutes to make. How can you let that passive aggressive tool on to the final? You can't.

 

At least Toby is willing to voice a dissenting opinion from Chef Tom at the judge's table. That's good to see.

 

I liked him. At first I thought he was just going to be a Simon Cowell knockoff, but he seemed to actually bring something to the table, which was nice to see. Let's hope it holds up.

 

Maybe it's just editing, but it's becoming obvious when Tom has had his fill of certain contestants and wants them gone.

Happened last season with Mark. Last episode, when Eugene started to defend himself, they cut to Tom making an exaggerated, exasperated-looking motion at the table.

Perhaps it was just the magic of editing.

 

I saw that and thought somewhere right now, IJAG is throwing something at her TV.

 

I almost did. If I had thought about it, I would have e-mailed someone. Maybe I will now.

 

Off the Too Chef topic, but did you see this month's Esquire. The one where they wrote an editors' note explaining their use of Dr. Pepper instead of Dr Pepper?
I remember you noted that Jones did it wrong in something he did a couple months back and Esquire ran a letter asking if they knew they screwed up.
The editors' note said it was intentional, that the magazine's style would be to no longer tolerate quirky language or something like that and go with conventional English when at all possible.