Top Chef Season 3 episodes 7 & 8
Last week’s Top Chef episode 7, Guilty Pleasures, featured a bait-and-switch strategy. The chefs were told they were going out, and got dressed up. Once at the club, though, they were pressed into catering to the closing hour munchies of the other patrons. Some of them rolled with this better than others. Sara was asked to pack her knives, because she was slow to produce an underseasoned burger and terrible milkshake. Interestingly, though Howie’s sandwich was also reviled, and their team was taken to task for communication problems, he was not given the boot. The week before, Joey got sent packing because he wouldn’t listen to Hung. But this week, Howie didn’t get sent packing, even though he didn’t talk to Sara.
Episode 8, Restaurant Wars, was itself a bait-and-switch. Everyone is warned that competition is more fierce because the winner of the quickfire no longer gets immunity. CJ squanders his advantage by picking a weak team. What was with Casey’s pissed look as Brian and she joined the team? Not only was it clear to me that it’s Casey who’s going to get the boot (she’s the one who looks like she’s on the verge of tears in the studio interviews) but both teams did such a bad job of the impossible task of opening a restaurant that they got a mulligan, so it’s to be continued, and we won’t find out for sure till next week who is eliminated. To add insult to injury, the judges didn’t critique the chefs much. Instead, Padma read aloud from a blogger’s comments, and used her criticisms instead of the judges table. Oh, yes, great idea to have a guest judge of Daniel Boulud, then hand all the judgment to a blogger? Feh.
I think there were plenty of candidates for booting: Brian fell apart up front, Dale’s decor was awful, Tre had inedible potatoes, and Howie had bad and heavy risotto. Why not just send Howie home instead of drawing out the misery for another week?