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Joshua David Stein is back briefly to talk about Bravo's Top Chef whose eleventh episode aired last night. For a number of reasons this week, it occurs to me that maybe Earth is a crummy planet, or at least crummy to the extent it is inhabited by man. Our reign at the top of the food chain is near its end (Three fine examples of why may be found here and here and here) Last night's episode of Top Chef did little to reinvigorate my faith in man, mankind and man's kindness.
Lisa stays. Any creature with a heart and soul must agree that for Lisa, a human being riven with maggoty and fetid misery, to remain on the show for yet another episode does not bode well for our fate as a species. And yet, though it pains me to write it, Lisa stays. If Lisa is right side up, the world is upside down. Admittedly, in fairness, her food didn't seem that bad. (I lay the blame for this whole situation on last week's guest judge Tony Bourdain who axed Dale instead of Lisa in a fit of pique. Had the even-keeled Tom been there, this situation never would have arisen. Goddammit, TC! What charity was so important he had to miss his scheduled appearance on reality TV anyway?!!?!) Spike went home instead. He was always a bit of an idiot but really?. Lisa stays!?!? Ai!
Critics you might say that I only hear what I want to, that I don't listen hard. You might even say I don't understand if you really care, I'm only hearing negative. But no. No. No. There is hope yet. And it comes from the past, what was, and the future, what yet shall be. On this episode, former winners Harold, Ilan and Hung were guest judges. My optimism comes not in the form of Ilan who is still an unctuous twat nor Harold who is nice but boring but in the form of the once-vilified Hung. Shown outside the competition setting, Hung is elegant and smart and kind and charming. All the things that, in competition, he wasn't made out to be. This means two things: Maybe Lisa isn't actually as miserable a wench as she seems. Ah fuck it. She is. But it also means, that good can still win in this world. Indeed, it seems inevitable which is a good thing.
Think about it: Lisa is out next week. She has to be. She took Spike's job at the Manhattan restaurant, Mai House so you know girlfriend didn't win. That leaves Richard, Antonia and Stephanie as possible winners. All three are fundamentally solid people, good people. Sure Stephanie might be boringish; Antonia might be too much like an emo Helena Bonham Carter and Richard is called Blais (and not like Cendrars) and has a faux-hawk. But all three of them seem genuinely kind, enthusiastic, smart and talented chefs. They are mensches (menchiz?). Clinging to the assumption that Lisa is gone next week—an assumption that makes living possible—we can afford to be charitable and magnanimous in victory.Lisa's greatest or rather only contribution to the season is to cast the menschlekeit of her competitors into warmer contrast. That's why we need villains, to make heroes. But now that she's served her purpose, it's time for Lisa to pack her knives, her scowl and her hideous haircut and leave.
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Joshua David Stein (yes that Joshua David Stein) is back briefly to talk about Bravo's Top Chef whose eleventh episode aired last night. Back on Wednesday at 10:00pm, when I hadn't been exposed to the horrors of the latest episode of Top Chef, my life was cozy and safe. Lisa, I thought, the worst of the contestants could not last any longer. Surely, I thought, Bravo's producers would tire of her petty villainy, her lack of talent and, quite frankly, her ass face. Unfortunately, this woman, who I and many others have come to despise, succeeded in perpetrating her con against humanity for one day longer.
The challenge seemed promising: Restaurant Wars. We love restaurant wars. Who doesn't love restaurant wars? It combines two primordial passions: food and fighting. Since perky pesky single mother Antonia somehow managed to snatch the Quickfire challenge victory away from Dale, she was allowed to choose her team. She picked faux-hawk duckling Richard and blah blah Stephanie. This left Spike, Dale and Lisa together. Obviously we knew what team would win.
Mai Buddha, the Asian restaurant Spike, Dale and Lisa create, is an unmitigated disaster. The food stinks. The decor stinks and mistakes—many of them—were made. Spike, the unctuous oily slitherer, dons a suit and works the front of the house. He knows his team is going to lose and he just wants to save his hide. Dale beats Lisa in a coin toss to become executive chef. Lisa, on the other hand, whether by design or by ineptitude, manages to crumb up every dish she creates. Her laksa soup is all smoke and no spice. Dale, no angel himself, curses a lot and makes a bad decision regarding an unhappy coupling of scallops and butterscotch (the doughy whiteness of one not melding well with the sweetness of the other). It's clear either Dale or Lisa is getting kicked off.
Lisa stays. Dale leaves. He cries in the exit interview. He was by far one of the most talented chefs, along with Richard and Stephanie. He put himself out there. He had skills and he took himself and his work seriously. It was sad and unexpected to see him be sent packing. Especially when one considers Lisa. Lisa's entire focus seems to be shivving other contestants. She's fixated not on the flavor of the food or the success of the challenge but on protecting herself from the chopping block. She can be charming at times, a glad-handing politician. But anyone with a brain can see through her ruse. Her main technique is dishonesty. Her defensive stance and villainous grin mask a serious lack of skill. What was most disappointing about last night's episode is that a fundamentally respectable institution (Bravo!) made a serious error in judgement by electing to retain and promote a petty, crummy, talentless hack. The decision hurts not only the institution but the viewership as well. We don't need more crumminess. Dale was no hero but he didn't deserve to be let go. Lisa is no nothing. She's nothing but negativity and self-service. And I eagerly await the day when her heartbreak soup comes back to burn her.
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Joshua David Stein is back briefly to talk about Bravo's Top Chef whose tenth episode aired last night. Another episode, another crap challenge in which the contestants must cater to some non-foodie clientele in a mass production environment. Last night's challenge: make box lunches for Chicago cops so they won't get fat(ter). There are seven chefs left and not one made donuts! Pussies.
Seriously though, police officers do suffer from a high rate of obesity. This has less to do with donuts and more to do with the "long hours and the on-the-go nature of police work [that makes] it hard to find time to eat well and stay in shape." In fact the LAPD recently hired a dietician to cut the BMI's of the force and Chicago's police superintendent recently floated the idea of mandatory fitness tests. Anyway, what made last night's episode enjoyable/risible was the reappearance of Sam Talbot, the almost winner almost chef of last season. He's diabetic and has crap taste in sweaters.
Yesh, yesh kittehs. I know. According to many, I haven't the best track record in sweaters. But, srsly, what the shit was Sam Talbot wearing? First of all, he changed costumes more than Padma. During the Quickfire, he wore some khaki green blazer/flak jacket thing with a menagerie of necklaces. By night's end, Talbot boasted a chunkystripey shawl-type sweater, fingers covered in silver and some sort of Dark Crystal type amulet. I don't care if he has diabetes. Blindness does not account for his fashion choices. Douchiness however, pretty boy unctuous self-righteous douchiness, does. He is incredibly good-looking though. I mean his face. It's like an angel face.
So that's fats and ugly sweaters. Next up: Villainy. Who's villainous? Well two people really: Spike and Lisa, the self-promoting skeazy puppy-eyed stoner and the ugly lesbian, respectively. [NB: I will no longer refer to Lisa as an ugly lesbian however since I do believe that gives other ugly lesbians a bad name. Sorry Judith Butler, Andrea Dworkin, Ingrid Sischy, Annie Liebowitz, Andy Borowitz. No harm. No foul.] Spike won the Quickfire and thusly had first pick of Box Lunch ingredients. What he chose others couldn't. So Spike shrewdly fucked everybody by eliminating lettuce, tomatoes, chiclen and bread from their arsenal. But like an idiot asshole, he didn't put any of it to good use. He made a crappy chicken salad with a slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce and some burnt pieces of toast. But whatever. His villainy was at least strategic and not personal. He handily kneecapped everyone. He didn't single out one victim.
The same could not be said for shit-for-tits Lisa. True, Andrew, who got sent home and who deserved to be sent home, did not follow the rules of the challenge. He forgot grains. But to throw him under the bus at the judge's table was not only pointless (of course the judges knew he had erred) but just plain scummy. Lisa is, I'm sure, an opportunistic amoral sorely losing bitter pill. She may be able to parboil some salmon or dice some carrots but she has none of the qualities of a chef. She spend most of her time pointing out the flaws of others and evading responsibility. Andrew, despite his many flaws, at least stood for something and understood some things. Sure he was crazy and annoying but he was loyal and passionate. Additionally, that Viggo Mortensen Eastern Promises moment in the Stew Room was pretty amazing.
From now on, we just have to wait for the Final Three. Gawker's bets are on Richard and Dale (obviously) with Stephanie hanging in there too.
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Joshua David Stein is back briefly to talk about Bravo's Top Chef whose ninth episode aired last night. As Sam Cooke once sang (and Big Baby Huey covered later), "It's been a long time coming." On yesterday's Top Chef, finally, change did come. Nikki Cascone, proprietor of Soho resto 24 Prince and proud Italian-American, was sent home. This would be a spoiler but really who didn't know that little miss thing was just biding her time. The only surprise is that she lasted this long before being sent to make glue. I mean, mamma mia, how many times can one casalinga make a bowl of pasta? Last night's episode still held some signs of pandering to the Lifetime crowd. They replaced the popular restaurant wars with wedding wars, in which the competing teams were made to create a meal according to either the groom or the bride's specs. But, for the most part, the episode redeemed the show. After the jump, RELAY RACES, LEADERSHIP, and SCOTTIE PIPPEN!!!
A couple quick asides: 1. Padma Lakshmi, still hot, still high. 2. The relay race quick fire challenge is always my favorite. It is, to me, exactly what Top Chef should be about, a distillation of skill and ability. For all my hatred of her, the ugly lesbian lady with the bad attitude did supreme those oranges astonishingly well. Richard showed his prowess with the uglysexyscary monkfish. Stephanie, who somehow always seems to have just stepped out of the shower in all her interviews, showed herself a true champ whisking that mayonnaise. The same could not be said for Nikki who actually admitted to taking a break while making her mayonnaise. IT'S A RACE, LADY!!! She also hasn't made mayonnaise by hand since culinary school. Dale, one of her teammates, was not happy. When they lost, in part a cause de Nikki's torpor but also for Spike's manhandling of the artichokes, Dale punched a locker. He had, however, thoughtfully wrapped his hand in a towel.
Normally, I'm not a fan of team challenges or weddings but this one was actually okay. Mostly because the challenge (cooking for 125 people and making a wedding cake) moved the underlying dilemma along. Well set aside the winning team. Richard, I love you more and more. AND you are married!!! But, of course, it is to the losing team that our interest is attached. The breakdown of labor follows:
- Nikki, after sandblasting it into our heads and that of the groom that she's Italian and therefore can cook anything from that region, refuses to take a leadership role on her team. I think she actually says, "If they fail, then at least it won't be on me." Instead she focuses on making pasta...again!!! Oh yeah, she fucking botches it too.
- Ugly lesbian makes an ugly lesbian cake: tasty, solid, squat.
- Spike spends the entire time making sea bass. It looked good.
- Dale would not stop bitching and looking like an Asian Terrence Howard. He cooks just about everything. The only problem is that he doesn't do it well. He does nearly nothing well. He just does a lot of mediocre work.
Obviously it was between Nikki and Dale. The ruling would basically validate one of two very different principals. Either Nikki would stay because, as Russell Simmons wrote, "Do yourself." In other words, she made a wise decision by abdicating responsibility, by letting her crew drift stranded on their own pieces of jetsam, because at least she couldn't be accused of leading them to failure if she didn't lead them at all. On the other, hand Dale, who compounds being an asshole with being a peevish fucker, refused to delegate responsibility due to his utter lack of respect for U.L., Nikki and Spike as chefs.
The difference is Dale's approach still values food while Nikki's values only Nikki. Her legacy will be that of a Scottie Pippen who notoriously and often shied away from leadership positions.(Thanks, Will!) preferring to insulate himself from the danger of failure. At root, this is cowardice. Furthermore, her criticism of ball hog/tugboat Dale, "You don't throw someone under the bus up there," is particularly hypocritical since her whole program was to throw as many of her teammates under the bus as possible. Anyway, it was nice to see Bravo actually reward a values system I, and I think many people, agree with. And it's nice to see Nikki finally get her due.
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Joshua David Stein is back briefly to talk about Bravo's Top Chef whose seventh episode aired last night.
In the last episode of Top Chef I watched on live television, Zoi the Meanish Lesbian got booted off. Since then I heard that Pretty Boy was ousted too which isn't a big loss to anyone since he couldn't cook and could barely talk. He was all shim-sham and snake oil charm. Last night's episode, however, was particularly notable for its strong lesbian plotline (gay tension has been done before but between men) and the particularly weird phallic imagery. Also, Betrayal! Truth! Consequences! Asparagus!
I always kind of liked Jennifer, the shorter mohawked girlfriend of Zoi the Boi. She seemed down to earth in a Northern California way. She seemed loyal, consistently standing up for her girlfriend. And she seemed like a great chef. Something bad happened though between the point where Zoi was sent home and last night, when Jennifer teamed up with similarly tolerable Stephanie in yet another ree ree challenge: The contestants were forced to cook according to the shouted out suggestions of Second City Theatre goers. Improv crowds are, as anyone who has walked by the UCB theatre at around 7:00 pm on a Sunday night knows, are not the coolest lot. Anyway, the girls got, if I recall correctly, the words: Turned-On, Orange, and Asparagus. But what the girls really got was incredibly flirtatious.
It all started with an errant shot at the Second City Theatre. Jennifer's arm was casually draped around Stephanie's broad shoulders. Jennifer through her dork hot indie glasses was looking at Stephanie with a look of love, lust and respect we had previously only seen on her face when she gazed at Zoi. But Zoi was out and the need for emotional intimacy trumped whatever qualms Jennifer had about openly pursuing a Sapphic and adulterous dalliance on national television which surely her girlfriend was watching. So the flirtation continued, communicated to us viewers at home by bite-sized cuts of handslapping, smiles, and warmth. An astute observer of Bravo's latent morality couldn't help but suspect that Jennifer would be axed for her infidelity. She, of course, was.
The most interesting part, at least to me, of the reason why she was exiled was that the two women (one openly gay, the other unopenly ungay or openly ungay or something) created an explicitly phallic dish. The germane phrase was turned-on. There's no reason why they had to choose a phallus—-culinarily expressed as a piece of flaccid bread and a wilty spear of asparagus—instead of say a clitoris to be the turned-on element. This is a particular bitter morsel in the history of sexual inequality in terms of gratification. Why a lesbian would forsake her own sex in this context for a man is unfathomable. I guess it would be hard to express the sex that is not one on a plate. But crafting a menage a trois of goat cheese, crouton and asparagus whilst focusing exclusively on the phallus seems to undo as many decades of feminist thought as Dale's insipid stereotype of male homosexuality did in the last season. The real question is whether Jennifer got booted off for betraying her girlfriend or for betraying her entire sex.
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Joshua David Stein is back briefly to talk about Bravo's Top Chef whose third episode aired last night. Thrash metal chef Erik was unceremoniously kicked to the curb at the end of Top Chef last night and, for many of us watching at home, it was like watching an old dog with cancer and a gas problem put to sleep. It was sad. We saw it coming. We wondered what took so long. We were relieved that he no longer would have the opportunity to embarrass himself publicly. We cycled through shame and mourning and finally we switched channels and watched Rock of Love 2, a VH1 program in which blond fake-titted ex-Poison frontman Bret Michaels looks for love from a cesspool of blonde fake-titted women. And yeah, maybe this is a spoiler (sorry it's not after the jump) but no one can be surprised. Remember his nachos? He did however go out cursing wildly respected chef Rick Bayless which is awesome.
If I sound down on the show well, it's because I am. Both this week and last week and, come to think of it, the quickfire challenge in the first episode, stink of a gimmick built around a sponsor thought up by a team of suits (or probably no, they probably all wear American Apparel now) in marketing who have no idea what being a chef is like. The balance between testing the skills of the cheftestants and pleasing the advertisers has been upset. It makes for unenjoyable television. I mean whatever that dude's name was Erik, he deserved to go no doubt. But this isn't Top Caterer, it's Top Chef. Both Valerie (played in real life by Rachel Dratch) and Eric (played by David Brockie) were kicked off for errors that resulted from transport issues unique to caterers. His corn dogs were soggy. Her blinis were too. As Ted Allen noted, they steamed en route. But neither one of these situations would ever arise in actual kitchens with a restaurant in front which is, presumably, what the contestants are vying for. Erik should have been kicked off for being essentially TGIF line-cook way in over his head. And he was but it's condescending and infuriating to gussy up the reason for his dismissal as a transport issue.
The other thing I feel compelled to note is the idiocy of the audience poll which looked like one thing but was actually another. The poll question was, if I remember correctly, "What will America have first? A female Top Chef or a female President." The winning answer, according to the poll and my Mucinex-and-Theraflu soaked memory, was Female Top Chef. This prima facie seems like an endorsement for Obama. "We'll have a Female Top Chef before we have a Female President." However, since the next President won't be decided at any rate until way after the next Top Chef winner is, whether Hillary wins or not, the answer is really just a vote that a woman will win this season. Statistically, this seems like it should be true since you can bet Bravo is getting pressure to hand the victory (deserved, of course) to a femilady and because of this season's chefs, the women, especially the shorter lesbian lady and Stephanie who won the first challenge, are particularly strong candidates.
Hopefully next week we can actually see the chefs cook, that is prepare a meal that really does showcase their talents and not whatever brand payed a premium for integrated content that week. In the meantime, since the whole kit is just depressing, I really need a pick up. Something that will change by existential angst into exhilarating grinning. Maybe I'll just help myself to a handful of Paxil*, a serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors and this post's proud sponsor.
*Do not use Paxil if you are using pimozide (Orap), thioridazine (Mellaril), or an MAO inhibitor such as isocarboxazid (Marplan), tranylcypromine (Parnate), phenelzine (Nardil), rasagiline (Azilect), or selegiline (Eldepryl, Emsam). Serious and sometimes fatal reactions can occur when these medicines are taken with Paxil. You must wait at least 14 days after stopping an MAO inhibitor before you can take Paxil. After you stop taking Paxil, you must wait at least 14 days before you start taking an MAOI.
Before taking Paxil, tell your doctor if you are allergic to any drugs, or if you have:
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