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Enough of this malarkey!

Last night I was already recording two shows at 10:00pm and thus had to catch a later airing of Top Chef. To my great dismay, when I pressed play this morning the first thing I saw was one of the final four packing their knives and leaving. In short, I knew who was getting kicked off. Luckily, it wasn’t much of a surprise. More after the jump…

Given what we know of these contestants, seeing Dale, Hung, Casey and Brian in a room together, one of them clearly didn’t fit with the rest. Could that person be the hat donning Brian pictured above? It most certainly could, and it most certainly was. But let’s take a few moments to figure out how he got there.

The four arrived in Aspen, got in a car, took it to a hot air balloon and sailed to a river bank where the preposterously attractive Padma waited to introduce the Quickfire Challenge: cook trout in a pan. No one was particularly excellent at this campfire cooking, but Brian — Mr. Fish — seemed especially inept (to the point of trashing his fish when the didn’t cook properly). The writing was on the wall.

It was apparently on every single ingredient in the kitchen as well. For the elimination challenge, the four were asked to cook for 40 cowboys and cowgirls. The main ingredient? Elk. Everyone performed admirably and the judges had very few complaints overall. Brian, however, was simply outdone. His dish had so many ingredients it took what seemed like hours to describe. For a show that rarely derives comedy from editing, they had a pretty funny bit of time-lapsing Brian’s dish explanation to Padma. What do they always say? Keep it simple, stupid? This was not his plan.

Dale attempted a similar everything goes approach, but somehow managed to pull it together. Dale is also a really good chef, who doesn’t seem to work well on the show (typically. He won this week and rightfully so).

Casey and Hung, our frontrunners, placed solidly in the middle this week. Casey’s elk was a tad rare (read: walking) and Hung continued to impress the judges with his technically perfect and completely soulless dishes.

Though the episode’s greatest moment came when each contestant was asked why they shouldn’t be kicked off (three were going to the finale this year). Dale explained how Top Chef had brought him out of a culinary funk. He had recently lost his job, been dumped and was generally spinning out of control and Top Chef got him his groove back. Hung spoke of his family’s move to America and how he has spent his life in the kitchen. Casey spoke of her love of food and its importance in her life. Brian, perhaps in the final death blow, just said that he really wanted to get to the final so he could cook something he wanted. It was a great moment, highlighted strenthe three who moved forward to the finale, but made Brian the weak link. And now he’s out.

I’ve been a strong Casey supporter since CJ was dropped a few weeks back, though my allegiances may have shifted toward Dale. We’ll see next week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Bravo, Top Chef. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.