MagneticMediaFed

I don’t understand those people who can watch whole sporting events on ESPN Classic from years ago, knowing full-well what the outcome of said event is going to be. I guess for die-hard fans it’s all about the journey, not the outcome, but one has to appreciate a certain level of the unknown in competition. Last night by the time I got around to watching Top Chef it was 4:30 in the morning and I could barley keep my eyes open. I opted to go to sleep and watch it in the morning. Once I got up I started downloading the episode so I wouldn’t have to watch it on television and run into the problem I had last week where since I was recording a later showing the DVR would catch the end of the original broadcast right off the top and thus spoil the outcome. That being said, I couldn’t really do anything on my computer for fear of accidentally finding a spoiler-filled news headline on my homepage. Growing impatient with the download, I opted to just watch it on TV but to be ultra careful. More after the jump…

I sat down on my chair, flipped on the television and immediately saw the winner doing a cooking demonstration on NBC’s In the Loop. M*****F*****S!

Panicked, I quickly pulled up the show on the DVR and pressed play, forgetting my plan of immediately fast forwarding through the first five minutes and thus caught Padma declare the winner and having that winner jump for joy.

So here it goes…. (Hung wins).

Add this to the Dirty Sexy Money debacle a few hours earlier and Wednesday night television was turning into a total bust.

Oh well, the show must go on.

The chefs started things out by taking a ski lift to the precipice of a mountain where they were told to cook a three course dinner in whatever style they wanted. They then drew knives to see who their sous-chef would be. Typically this where the old contestants would come back to lend a helping hand, only this time around their presence was replaced with three very accomplished chefs. Rocco Dispirito ended up helping Hung. Michelle Bernstein joined forces with Casey and Dale got the help of Todd English.

The chefs then headed to the kitchen to begin preparations. Hung knew exactly what he wanted and worked with a laser-like focus. Dale seemed a bit more haphazard but was still functional. Casey, my girl, was a complete disaster. I don’t know what happened, but she was never really in this thing from the moment she landed at the top of Mount Chef. She had problems adapting her food to the altitude (water can’t really create a rolling boil that high up), being organized and generally having any focus whatsoever.

The big twist for the episode came an hour before serving when the chefs were asked to prepare a fourth dish, this time with the help of some old castaways. CJ ended up with Dale, Howie was with Casey and Sara “helped” Hung. This also led to perhaps the greatest single shot over the course of the entire season. As everyone is rushing around grabbing pans and ingredients and such, Howie is seen reaching for a tray next to CJ. The way the camera is framed Howie’s entire body is seen but we only see CJ from feet to shoulders. His freakishly giant frame couldn’t be squeezed onto the screen.

The chefs ultimately serve the typical stable of judges (Tom, Padma, Gail, Ted) as well as our celebrity chefs from earlier in the show… and Brian. They let him stick around despite being knocked off last week. Every time there was a shot of him he looked hopelessly sad. It was funny to hear his comments on the dishes because even though he made it to the final four I never really got the impression he knew what the hell he was doing.

Outside of Casey’s dishes, which were OK but never great, everything was received pretty well. Dale had the biggest highs, but he also hit a low note with his lobster gnocchi. Hung had one huge success and three dishes that were incredibly solid.

At the judges table they ran through the four courses and were split 2-2 between Dale and Hung. Then we went to commercial. Then we came back and all of a sudden we were live and there was this big audience there in what was otherwise the exact same set, but with the walls pushed back. This struck me as odd because it meant the chefs actually had to stand in front of the judges back in Aspen and listen to Padma say, “We’ve made a decision” only to get on a plane to New York (it was in New York, right?) and wait a few weeks for a decision. In a way, it reminded me of that episode of Arrested Development (because everything reminds me of Arrested Development) where they teased the show saying the last scene was live, only to have that scene last about 3 seconds — it’s the one with Andy Richter as the quintuplets.

So here we are in this big room and everyone says their parting words and then Padma announcing, as I had already seen, that Hung is the new Top Chef. He jumps up and down and shouts and screams and Marcel from season two runs over for congratulations and we all live happily ever after. When all was said and done I think it was a pretty good season — especially in the caliber of the chefs competing. That being said, I could have used a little more drama and name-calling. In other words there was no Marcel head-shaving incident this time around.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 2:30 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.