thursday night smackdown

This week on Top Chef Vegas, some people try to cook, others get mad, Tom Colicchio sneers at someone and Padma narrates in an inappropriately loud and monotone voice. Good times!

LAST WEEK: They had to cater bachelor/ette parties. Boys vs. Girls, when it’s just as easy to say Men vs. Women. Woman who needs to brush her hair couldn’t get over the het privilege integral to having a day of drunken revelry around a pool and made it known. Repeatedly. Eventually Eve got packed off back to the group home.

10:02: Last week – week 2 – was the first time Shiv was not in the top 4 of any given challenge. Quit now, you’re clearly destined to fail.

Mousy woman is worried about proving herself. She should be, if I only remember her as Mousy woman.

10:04: Guest judge is Mark Peel. I hope he’s saved up some more bon mots for us – fingers crossed!

QUICKFIRE: Potatoes. DON’T USE THE PURPLE ONES, they’re never good.

Swanson brand culinary stock, it’s time for your closeup.

10:05: Seriously, can it be someone’s job to transcribe Haitian boat guy for me? I think he said something about potatoes and love and Bob Marley? And it seemed like something I’d make fun of, but for all I know he actually just said something really deep.

Tanweed says something assholey about risotto. Shut it, Weed.

10:07: BLANCHING WATER BROUHAHA. Whose water is whose? How will we blanch properly if we don’t know? I know, let’s all get needlessly pissy over an innocent mistake!

Preeti pronounces gnocchi “nocki” so now I have to hate her.

10:08: Okay, I might actually like one or both of the brothers. I can’t actually tell which is which yet, but one of them just made a really lovely plate of tuna.

Hairbrush just pronounced lardons “lardoons.” But I don’t hate her, because that’s a funny mistake, like if pirates plundered for pork.

10:10: Hector has potatoes three ways, it takes TEN THOUSAND YEARS for him to explain what they all are and only 37% of what he says is understandable.

10:11: Is everyone else in the world as tired of Blis Bourbon maple syrup as I am? Because I am really, really tired of it. It’s SYRUP. GET OVER IT.

Jesse’s soup is too spicy…so she starts whacking herself in the head telling herself, “I hate myself, I hate myself.” I hope the cayenne provokes some endorphins, because she’s starting to worry me. And if your mental health worries ME, you should be worried,

10:14: Top chefs are Hairbrush, SuperSizeMe and Shiv…and it’s Shiv, for “finding the essence of potato.” Her whole not winning a challenge = same as losing is starting to get to me. So I guess I should be happy she won because girlfriend looks TIGHTLY WOUND and I don’t want to be in the Post Office when that employee loses it.

10:15: Weed is convinced that there is favoritism at work here, despite the fact that there are different judges every week. Tell yourself that, Weed.

I think there’s a real danger that excessive self-tanner can leech through the epidermis and into the bloodstream, eventually affecting higher cortex functions, and I think he is the poster child for that risk.

10:18: Who doesn’t hate Andy Cohen?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

10:19: ELIMINATION CHALLENGE: Servicepersons!

You know, some of these contestants might be anti-war, and it might be offensive to have to cook for military personnel. Someone should get upset about that and complain ad nauseum.

10:20: They’re cooking for the Thunderbirds. They don’t know their ingredients or cooking equipment. Everyone is tripping over themselves to prove that they LOVE THE TROOPS.

I don’t know about all the troops – that’s a lot of people to love, and I don’t like most people – but I have a nephew in the Navy, so there is at least one particular troop that I love.

10:22: Weed takes over all military style, so there are going to be teams and a Tournade and American food, whatever that means. Beanie Weenies for everyone!

Wow, I just now remembered that Weed has an actual name.

10:24: Time for the TWEEST! Canned foods. Shitty kitchen. No Stoves. But someone appears to have a six-foot-tall whisk. Fun!

10:27: Beardie was in ROTC. Heh.

10:28: In case you didn’t know, everyone LOVES THE HOLY HELL OUT OF THE TROOPS.

10:30: When Weed says anything now, no matter what it is, my brain just flashes with this white-hot hate and I come to 10 seconds later not knowing what he said, only that I hated it.

Beardie loves cooking traditional southern food. Beardie is going to be Art Smith in 30 years.

Ron and Jesse are making chowder because he’s won chowder competitions and “the troops like chowder.” I think it is the case that shellfish allergies are enough to bar you from military service, so he’s probably right. Plus, when I’m in the desert, I usually want soup.

Giant whisk!

10:31: I am slowly choking, choking, choking on everyone’s palpable love of the troops.

10:32: Someone was worried that Shiv wouldn’t be a good exec chef because she’s soft spoken. Have they ever heard of the whole big stick thing? Or small knife? Because I see that she is very good at this and is also HARD FUCKING CORE.

10:34: Scurry montage! I don’t even have to look up, I just wait for the double-speed music.

Time to wrap everything in cling wrap. I wonder what brand it is?

10:35: They drive to the hangar in a convoy “which is cool, because it’s like going to war.”

Indeed. Cool.

Shiv: she scares me, but I respect her. And that respect is only partially born from my fear.

Someone made pasta salad, I think Mousy woman and Preeti. I think you automatically lose for pasta salad.

10:39: I think some of these people might be willing to give the troops sexual favors, so great and overwhelming is their love for the troops.

10:42: Commercials. I don’t know how Bravo expects me to wait 24 entire hours to see what those real housewives of Atlanta will get up to next.

10:44: It’s not just airmen – and airWOMEN, brother whose name I don’t know – but families and kids. I’m thinking some of them were just at a Thunderbirds show and wandered into the hangar to see what was going on.

We got chili, we got chowder, we got potato salad, we got pork tacos, we got pasta salad. So pretty much, we got the Old Country Buffet.

10:45: Beardie has a family tradition of military service, so he obviously loves the troops. As so we all. A lot. Hear that, government? I LOVE THE TROOPS.

10:46: One of the service persons has a cute child. My heart is momentarily warmed.

10:47: The pasta salad, justifiably, is getting dinged.

10:48: Servicepeople have no issue with eating cream chowder in the desert, possibly because they are used to eating salisbury steak MREs and peanut butter crackers. One red-haired woman has just eaten “a whole lot of scrumptiousness wrapped in lettuce.” I assume she means the slab bacon. Because, you know, bacon.

10:50: Pithy speech about how awesome the servicepeople are. The servicepeople who we love, we want to hug them to our collective bosoms and stroke them.

The Top Chefs and the servicepeople are taking on a Lenny and the rabbit vibe.

10:53: Commercials. I want to see Fame, and I am not ashamed.

10:55: Pointless interlude. Jets are cool. The Thunderbirds are cool. I believe they are the acrobatics wing of the airforce. We send them in to war zones to awe the crowds so we can subdue them.

(Have I mentioned, however, my love of the troops?)

10:58: This episode is not going to be an hour, is it? Danggit.

11:00: JUDGES’ TABLE: Weed, Beardie, Not Jonah Hill and one of the brothers are the top.

Why am I not surprised that Beardie’s family does barbeque competitions?

Colicchio is overawed by slab bacon. I mean, I get it. But I’m not a celebrity chef.

11:01: “The winner is someone who fed a lot of people under difficult circumstances”…the brother. Apparently, this one is named Michael. Because you know, the others only had to feed a few people under non-challenging circumstances.

At the bottom: Preeti, Mousy woman and WEED. And he is livid. LIVID. Just like my Great Aunt Martha gets when the deliverymen don’t show up on time. LIVID.

11:03: Weed’s defense: “I didn’t have to do it, so it shouldn’t matter if it sucked.” So then he backtracks and acknowledges that it sucked, because he could not possibly be a bigger, defensive suckup.

11:04: Colicchio: “Tell me: Who said ‘Let’s make pasta salad?’” THANK YOU. And I rarely thank Tom.

11:06: Mousy woman was so overtaken by her love of the troops that she forgot she was in a competition. It’s early in the season for the whole, “Why are you just trying to skate by?” lecture, is it not? Are we going to get it more than once?

11:07: And we’re already getting the “standing behind the dish” lecture. This season is blowing its wad early.

The judges recognize that Weed was LIVID. Peel: “He was rocking back and forth, I thought he was going to throw a punch.” Heh.

There was a guy kinda like that in the psych ward in which I once spent a week. Seriously.

11:08: You know, if you didn’t stick a commercial here you could end the show at 10 after rather than 15. And if you cut out the pointless interlude, we could have made it to 5 after. And we could have cut out some military pandering and still have had a healthy amount, bringing the show in on time. I’m just saying.

11:11: Aw, no one wants Gail to be their co-pilot, whatever the hell that means. I know she knows about food, but Gail Simmons is like the Drew Barrymore of the Top Chef universe.

11:13: Ooh, Weed has a big ol’ pulsing forehead vein when he’s angry. Attractive! LOSER: Preeti. Bad Gnocchi Karma. (My new Boston Hardcore / Dick Dale tribute band)

Sigh. It means at least one more week of dealing with Weed, but she didn’t seem like she was going very far.

NEXT WEEK: Famous French chefs. Nausea. A quickfire with an elimination. More nausea.

As always, head over to Blog Well Done if you’re into the Fantasy Top Chef Pool thingy.

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