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Excuse me, but has Top Chef forgotten 9/11 already? Our country was attacked! Now the enemy is trying to build a TERRORIST BREEDING CAMP right next to the World Trade Center Sbarro’s, and Top Chef is holding its season finale in Singapore. Unbelievable. ENGLISH IS NOT EVEN THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE THERE, YOU GUYS! (Although, there are tons of white people everywhere, apparently, as we will discuss later.) Anyway, Kevin, Kelly, Ed, and Angelo all arrive at a picnic table in Singapore’s historic Food Cart District. Kelly asks Ed how his flight was. “Awesome.” Haha. Really, Ed? I mean, I’m sure it is exciting to be in the final four and to get to go to Singapore for the first time, but we’ve all been on airplanes before. A 16-hour flight (with or without a 5 hour layover in Frankfurt) is not “awesome.” “How swollen are your feet?” “Awesome!” Ed also interviews that he didn’t pack his bag to come all this way and get kicked off the show. Whoops. Whoever DID pack their bag to come all that way and get kicked off the show picked a terrible strategy! Kevin interviews that he just came to have fun and really soak in the whole experience. Yikes. Rookie mistake. Sounds like Kevin packed his bag just to go home!
After a quick tour of Singapore’s famous noodle jails (“As you can see each kitchen is a jail cell, and the chefs are prisoners, and their food is pain.”) the chefs encounter Padma standing in a food court. “Uh oh, not good” everybody says. What? These guys are idiots. Padma GOOD! Hi, Padma! Anyway: it is time for the Quickfire Challenge: make street food using a wok.
Everyone is sweating. I’m pretty sure everyone is making sweat skewers and sweat-soup dumplings. Angelo’s heart is “pounding out of his shirt.” He really has a way with the language that is normal and not from outer-space! Within the first 10 minutes of the show we are reminded 100 times that Angelo cooks Asian food, so he has this challenge in the bag. You know what? Something tells me Angelo doesn’t have this challenge in the bag! Just something vague I can’t even put my finger on about the way dramatic tension works. Who will beat him? Will it be Kelly or Ed? We know that it won’t be Kevin, because a) it just won’t, and b) he’s never cooked in a wok before. “What’s wrong with you?” Padma asks. GOOD QUESTION! What is wrong with you, Kevin? Kevin explains that he’s never cooked with a wok because…I’m not really sure why. He says something about not having “those big burners” at home. Does he mean no stove whatsoever? Because I have a wok and have cooked with it, and I am not even a professional chef on a competition show about kitchen talents. On top of that, I never made it into the final four and prepared for a trip to Asia. Goodnight, Kevin!
Ed wins. For the first time in Top Chef history, the winner of the Quickfire Challenge in the finale gets immunity. Congratulations, Ed. The best thing about Ed is that you know he’s going to be a mature adult about this and respect the work of his competitors and not make gloat-faces for the next 45 minutes.
Oh.
For the Elimination Challenge, the chefs are on a single team preparing dinner for a Food & Wine party. That night, they begin preparing the menu. Ed suggests they only need four dishes, one dish each. Everyone seems kind of unsure about this, but if Ed says so, then sure. Wait, what? Ed has immunity. As Angelo will later interview, he could present a hot dog and he will make it to the final three. So why is anyone listening to him? Especially when the next day, Ed secretly explains that he was planning to do two dishes all along. Gross. I think Ed is a talented chef, and I know that this is a competition show, and I know that this competition is entering its final phase, but gross. It’s really rude to throw people under the bus when you have an UNLIMITED BUS PASS. Angelo explains that he likes that Ed has immunity. He thinks immunity is a crutch. Haha. Shut up, Angelo. He says that the spark in the forest has been lit. You lost me, Angelo. ANGELO, YOU ARE A TOTAL COCONUT!
Shop shop shop. Cook cook cook. Although, not much cooking. Everything needs to be prepared a-la-minute, which means they can do very little prep. Tom comes in and gives everyone shit for only cooking one dish. “This is a Food & Wine party!” Haha. Relax, Tom. I mean, if you want them to cook more dishes, that is reasonable, but don’t pretend like it’s to keep up the great and well-known legacy of Food & Wine parties. Everyone freaks out, and is so mad at Ed for snookering them into cooking one dish when he was planning to cook two dishes all along and also has immunity. And then, within two seconds, everyone has a really elaborate and thoughtful dish mapped out and ready to go. Huh. Either they are all very talented, or this show is a fucking LIAR.
“That’s my mother’s spoon,” Ed says. What is even going on at this point?
They serve the meal, despite all the servers being TOTALLY Asian and not even being American at all. Seriously, everyone in the kitchen is so frustrated with the service. Relax, racists. Everyone eating dinner at the Food & Wine party is just KLASSIC Singapore, born & braised.
They all look the same over there, you can’t even tell them apart.
Everyone seems to have really cooked at the top of their game. Good job, guys. Like, there are nit-picky things with everyone’s dishes, kind of, but for the most part all the judges love everything. In the end, Ed wins! He had immunity and he still blew it out of the park with his hot dog and bowl of lukewarm water. It probably didn’t hurt that he sabotaged everyone and made them scramble to get a second dish put together. And so here we are. Who will move on to the final Challenge, and who packed their bags just so that they could go back home? In the Stew Room, which is BEAUTIFUL by the way, everyone is saying that it is going to be them who goes home. They are all trying to out self-sacrifice in front of each other. Enough. Kelly goes home for her gritty cold fish soup, which everyone loved when they were eating, but then decided was very gritty and gross. It sounds so gross when you describe it that way! The tension is so thick, you could cut it with Angelo’s awkwardness!
Goodbye, Kelly. At least now you can go back to Colorado and have a bunch of children to match your haircut. You look like a mom, Kelly!
Next week: Angelo dies.
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English is one of Singapore’s four official languages, and children are required to learn it in school!
After the street food quickfire, I got bored and read facts about Singapore on the internet.
I guess this is the point where they realize Angelo is the only one that can actually cook, so now they make it look like OH NO HE MIGHT NOT WIN but then he wins. The joke’s on you though, Bravo, because I already won Top Not Giving A Damn.
My wife sent me this NYT review of Ed’s restaurant.
http://events.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/dining/reviews/25rest.html?scp=1&sq=Plein%20Sud&st=cse
The short version: YA BURNT!
There’s no Immunity at the New York Times!
(note: statement does not apply to old Judith Miller columns)
I think Tiffany’s fiance wrote this
I am so happy to read this. I have such a visceral reaction against Ed. Maybe it is the fact that he looks like a character from The Witches in mid transformation between human and rat or maybe it is because he is a straight up douche bag, regardless I wish him nothing but failure in life. Humiliating failure.
I don’t think Ed’s a douche bag. He’s a great guy. I mean sure he is proud of the fact that he convinced some poor girl (who I assume has serious issues based on her choice in men) to cheat on Angelo (Angelo?..) with him. And then there’s his obvious advances on an engaged woman while at the same time maintaining a long term girlfriend. We all have our faults. You just have to look past his shit-eating grin to that little pit of sadness where a human heart should be. Then you will realize that Ed is a great person who you want to be friends with, especially if you are a woman or have female friends because of how he women with dignity and is in no way a sleaze ball.
Also, how could you not love a guy who justifies his knowledge of Asian cooking with a reference to all the Asian chicks he’s banged.
Seriously, guys. Ed bangs chicks. It really does happen. Seriously.
It makes no sense that the finale is in Singapore. We all had to endure stupid political puns for the last infinity weeks, the least they could do is have the finale somewhere that could be related to politics, maybe Tehran.
“As you know, the Iranian military has nuclear capabilities. Now we’ll see if you have the capabilities to make dishes nuked in the microwave” -Padma, probably
Is it because it says “Singapore” on Obama’s birth certificate?
it is “à la minute,” not “mise en place.”
-youI am so glad I was not the one to point this out.
i am so heureux i was the one to point it out.
“Top Chef: Angelo Dies” might actually be an interesting show to watch.
Also, where was the spoiler alert about Angelo? I wanted to be genuinely shocked when he dies next week. Now I am going to be looking for it the whole time.
“Top Chef: Everyone gets to make a P.A. slap Ed in his big smug face” (you wouldn’t touch it yourself, look how sweaty he is)
Actually, I’m getting the vibe that we’re THIS CLOSE to season 1 of Top Murder-Suicide.
“Winning is a crutch. Cooking good food is a crutch. Not crying like a baby is a crutch.” – Angelo (probably)
“There is no crying at Judges Table” — Padma (unfortunately not)
So do we have to wait until next week, or can we officially declare this as the worst season ever? Season two had a great run, but I think it’s time for it to retire. RIP, trying to shave Marcel. Long live Kevin’s temper tantrums.
Nope. The worst season BY FAR was when Thumbhead Hosea won.
yesyesyesyesyes
Thumbhead is the worst winner, fo sho. As a whole, though, that season had Stephan, Fabio, and Carla. Where would we even be without the phrase “top scallop?” That alone disqualifies it from the running for worst season.
Worst finale, though.
I try not to think about that season.
This season was by far the worst. It took me three weeks to even figure out who everyone was! The Washington D.C. gimmic was lame and most of the challenges didn’t make any sense (I am looking at you space food challenge).
My friend has a theory. There was never any way that this season would measure up to last season, which was totes the best, so the producers loaded the cast with mediocre cooks with combustible/crazy personalities (dreadlock ponytail, snake-face alex, crackhead girl whose name I can’t be bothered to look up) and hoped that the drama would make up for the shitty cooking, knowing that next year they would have some decent chefs. That was a very run-on sentence. To sum up: They didn’t want to waste good chefs on a season nobody would like anyway.
Your friend’s ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to his* newsletter.
*Or her.
You friend may have a point considering they are not even bringing back chefs from the current season to help with the final challenge like they normally do. Instead they are bringing back last seasons finalists to help out. They are literally calling in last season to be closers for the season finale ratings.
Did I see Harold Dieterle in that preview? Because if so, it’s worth it to watch just so I can later have sex dreams about cooking and then having sexy sex with Harold.
Thoughts:
1. When they saw Padma in the beginning, did anyone else get a Super Mario Brothers/Final Fantasy flash of them reaching the princess but having to fight one last battle?
2. The interviews are getting a little intimate… toeing the line the way that models in porn magazines do (I assume) where they’re not looking at you but they’re not NOT looking at you.
3. Maybe it’s just coincidence that her speech is naturally slurred, but this show is COMEDY if you imagine that Padma is drunk all the time.
i am definitely going to give #3 a try. brilliant!
padma freaks me out. i caught an episode of “melting pot” on the cooking channel that she hosted. she made some indian salad that looked ok – but every moment she looked like she was going to cry, was drunk or someone was behind the camera with a gun threatening to kill her family if she didnt cook the salad right.
what i’m trying to say is that she’s really pretty.
I thought we were imagining her high all the time, because rumors are she is high a lot of the time.
She was definitely hammered at the Emmys. I’m surprised she didn’t fall down the stairs on the way back to her seat.
I miss Tiffany! She would’ve told Ed to stop being such a douche about having immunity. Or SHE would have won immunity. Or she could lend Ed another dress to run around in.
I went to a food festival this weekend and Alex was there serving Pea Puree. It was gross. Turns out I don’t actually want to taste any of the food I see on Top Chef.
“This is the f’ing Catalina Wine Mixer!” Tom Colicchio
based upon the motivational pep talks he gives himself, i’m guessing angelo likes to be yelled at during sex
i’m so over Tom Colicchio’s douchiness. i was so pissed off that he was yelling at them for making one dish. Either tell them they need to make 2 dishes or have Padema come in to fuck with their heads and say they need to make another one. he should leave the show and sit back and endorse diet coke for a while
If you want me to wear 37 pieces of flare, just make the minimum 37 pieces of flare.
That shit was so contrived. He was really just coming in to put in some suspense because everyone was getting along too much or it was just going to be boring otherwise. I couldn’t help but remember a couple seasons ago where there was some stupid team challenge for a stupid party on a boat and he slammed everyone for making too many dishes rather than just focusing on one or two good ones. I think that was in the Hung season.
Full unnecessary disclosure; last night I dreamed that Angelo was trying to kiss me. I find this to be disturbing because I really think he is a giant, cry-baby, weirdo.
I just remembered something: did anyone else notice the earpiece action going on at the elimination dinner? Gail Simmons and Dana Cowin were both clearly wearing them while eating and I couldn’t figure out why. Were they listening to a Yankees game or are the producers telling them what they should/shouldn’t like? Am I going out of my way to find something to be interested in during this awful season? Yes and Yes.