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Thank God for Top Chef. Better yet, thank God for food on television. Most of us will never (or rarely) have the opportunity to eat at a gourmet restaurant. Thanks to the Food Network and by extension Top Chef exotic food is suddenly accessible to the masses — just not to, y’know, eat.

Like any reality competition program the first two weeks are tough because they have to at least pretend like all fifteen characters actually matter despite the producers already knowing who ultimately does and who won’t. It’s also tough because we, the audience, have to pick our favorites based on those few, fleeting moments of personality that sneak through in the few seconds of interaction between the contestant and the judges.

Here are the characters that stuck out to me:

Padme (the host) — have I mentioned how incredibly hot she is?

Clay — early in the episode you kind of got the feeling that Clay was going to be the underdog who made a serious dent in the competition but then the challenges started and we realized that he simply didn’t have the talent that the rest of the group has.

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1) Rescue Me begins its fourth season tonight on FX. It’ll be interesting to see if the series can right itself after the disasterous last third of season three. Whether or not the sink into complete absurdity is yet to be seen, though either development will be interesting to watch — at least for a while.

2) Elsewhere in basic cable, Bravo premieres the third season of Top Chef tonight (Top Chef: Miami — no joke). The show might not only be the best reality competition show on any network, but also one of the best cooking shows. Food + TV = Bliss

3) Friday will mark the final broadcast of The Price Is Right with Bob Barker as host. This is something that we all should certainly watch, not just to pay our respects to Mr. Stick-Mic himself to so we can remember what it was like to stay home from school when we were eight or how we’d spend the dog days of summer avoiding the heat. It’s also significant because how often are we reminded of the suggested retail price of lima beans?

4) HBO has posted the second episode of John From Cincinnati to HBO On-Demand, despite the episode not being shown on the actual network until Sunday night. I don’t know if this is going to be a recurring thing or not (like last season’s The Wire), but it’s certainly a good place to stay ahead of the game. I watched the episode and found it to be better than the first and probably a defining moment for the series. You will know after finishing it whether or not John From Cincinnati is for you (it’s certainly for me). I’ll post my thoughts early Monday morning, but feel free to add relevant comments here in the meantime (or, hell, even irrelevant comments. Just not irreverent comments. No one likes a smart alec, Mr. Smart Alec).

On the way to work today I saw a poster in the subway for yet another new reality competition show on Bravo. It’s called Shear Genius and is presumably about the search for America’s next top hair stylist. Yes, hair.

For those keeping score at home, Bravo currently airs Project Runway (fashion), Top Chef (food), Top Design (design), and now Shear Genius (hair). It got me thinking about other competitions the network could try to explore. Here’s what I came up with:

Top Gardener — Sixteen florists compete in a series of extravagent challenges in an attempt to be crowned America’s best. The winner get’s a lifetime supply of bulbs, and a greenhouse created in their own image.

Make Up Test — Contestants spend their nights living in a luxury loft in New York’s famous make-up district and then spend their days applying “untraditional” make-ups to the faces of ugly people. The winner get’s an exclusive deal with MAC to produce their very own shade of stage-foundation.

Pharmacist Show Down — Professional pharmacists try to out do each other in an escalating series of challenges involving the prescribing of anti-depressants to the cast of America’s Next Top Model. The winner gets his or her name put on a new series of erectile dysfunction medication.

Project Runway (Tarmac Edition) — A dozen air traffic controllers have to land planes safely under increasing distractions (What’s that? The instrument panel has been replaced with a Connect Four game? Tough, these things can happen when you’re a professional AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER.). Each week one contestant will be voted off by our judges: three goverenment FAA regulators. The last player remaining gets their own private gate at Ronald Reagan International Airport.

What other shows should Bravo pick up?

Check out Shear Genius via Bravotv.com

Just don’t piss off the family…
Yesterday Bravo announced that it has acquired Television Without Pity, the on-line web home to complainers and television trolls (two powerful web contingencies that frankly, need a place to vent). The real question is whether this acquisition will ultimately dilute the commentary. Days earlier the Real Housewives of Orange County thread  on the TWoP message boards was taken down. Housewives airs on Bravo. Ah, conflict of interest — gotta love it.

For more information on this subject than anyone could possibly want, head over to The Watcher where Maureen Ryan has such gems as a transcribed Bravo conference call. The internet, again, saves the day.

I want my Court TV…
Well tough. You aren’t going to get it. Starting next year Court-TV will be rebranded with a new name, new logo, new look and new programming. It’s parent company, Turner Broadcasting, plans to turn the existing network into an ACTION! channel, the same way it has turned TBS into the COMEDY! channel and TNT into the DRAMA! channel.

The new programming will still feature court room shenanigans during the daytime with the addition of a Star Jones deflated talk show and a trimmed Nancy Grace. During primetime the network will focus on unscripted series about con artists, female bounty hunters and other such broadcast crown jewels.

The current CourtTV website will stay intact after the changeover. The network has yet to be renamed.

Last night’s Top Chef finale was expectedly tense for a program in which most of us knew the result. Since last week, the internet had been endlessly yapping about Ilan’s apparent victory in the Bravo cooking competition. It’s almost like a guy can’t quit his job as a line cook in a restaurant these days without the media jumping all over him like a lion on an injured gazelle.

Still, the competition was fierce, and Marcell (again) was too much of a jerkface to bring home the (literal?) bacon.

The real question that remains is whether I actually start watching the Top Design episode that is currently resting on my DVR.

Ever since I was tricked into watching an episode of Top Chef last month I’ve been completely hooked (thanks Matt!). Marcel’s advancement to the finals. Luckily for Bravo, Marcel is the perfect reality competition candidate, because he has obvious talent (enough with the foams!) and couldn’t be a more unlikeable presence amongst, well, most humans.

Tonight’s penultimate episode was good. Very good. It had some really neat food being prepared, and the drama was laid on thick. The beauty of Top Chef is that it rarely focuses on drama that doesn’t take place in the competition area (i.e. The Kenmore Kitchen), until the show has weeded out a good portion of the cast. Sure people have been saying they hate Marcel since the second or third episode (I was saying it after the first), but we never saw any of the real horn-locking until at least halfway through the season.

Now it’s all out there and couldn’t be more entertaining. Tonight’s episode might have had one of the best reality-exchanges I’ve heard in a long time:

Ilan: I can’t wait to make you cry tomorrow.
Marcel: It’ll take more than a little paprika to make me cry.

BAM! Take that scripted drama!

Anyway, Sam is former executive chef of Punch here in New York City… I’m sure he’ll be okay.

ONE: Did anyone else find the judging round of last night’s Top Chef to be a bit of cop out? Sure, Cliff would have been eliminated reguardless of his Tami/David-influenced prank/ouster, and yes, the contestants had cooked better than they had all season, but surely one of those four could have done more. Elia could have not broken that chocolate heart. Marcel could have not had such a ridiculous haircut. I don’t know, Sam is still alive so I’m happy.

TWO: Tonight, either the real or fake Stephen Colbert will be appearing on The O’Reilly Factor AND culture warrior Bill O’Reilly will be appearing on The Colbert Report. Tune in and watch a cartoon character debate a human (but you won’t know which is which). [8:00pm FOX News Channel, 11:30pm Comedy Central]

THREE: According to the AP, CBS is annoyed they went to all this effort to attract more viewers than any other network and yet still can’t get people to talk about their programs at the water cooler. To fight this the network has decided to focus more on “BUZZ” (I’d have suggested “Zazz!”). Says the article:

CBS is annoyed by the lack of attention paid by the industry, critics and awards shows to series like “NCIS,” which has done particularly well since this past summer, and “Criminal Minds,” which was starting to beat ABC’s “Lost” head-to-head. CBS is airing a “Criminal Minds” episode directly after the Super Bowl to drum up more public interest.

That’s also true to a lesser extent for “Jericho,” the new serial about nuclear survivors that has done well despite some critics judging it the least likely fall series to succeed, said Nancy Tellem, CBS Paramount Network president.

“It is very, very frustrating to know you have hit shows and fantastic actors with story lines as challenging as any others and somehow we can’t break through,” Tellem said.

-David Bauder AP

Yes, who’d have thought that the the whims of the American populace might not coincide with critics? News flash: when Americans are grouped together, we start to get kind of stupid.To counter this, the network is planning for some buzzworthy fare for next fall, including “a musical about a low-rent casino owner, a series about a swinging couple set in the 1970s and a show about an exorcist,” says Nina Tassler, CBS entertainment president.

FOUR: Last night I finished watching the first season of the BBC series Spaced, which aired between 1999 and 2001, and is utterly fantastic. The series, which is notable to fans of “Shaun of the Dead” as the same people were involved, was the culmination of a decade’s worth of Generation X-influenced culture. The basic premise plays along the lines of Three’s Company but that’s where the similarities end. Spaced, instead, is a kinetic, hilarious, explosion of twenty-something laziness. The filmmaking (and the comedy) is as ADHD as its characters, but unlike The Family Guy and other such copycats, Spaced always has a purpose in its insanity. Spaced is the type of program you would expect a vintage Kevin Smith to make if he were more ambitious.

I’ve tried to watch reality competitions before. It never works out. [Kenmore] I get bored with the seemingly endless barrage of contestants and producer-fueled conflicts. I figure, if I’m going to watch what is essentially a game show, there might as well be a wheel, dollar-values, and/or trivia (or at the very least, educated pointing).

But then I caught fifteen minutes of Top Chef Monday night and BAM! I was hooked. It didn’t hurt that Anthony Bourdain was the guest chef and used the phrase “Flinstonian execution” to describe someone’s Thanksgiving dinner course. Lucky for me Bravo [Kenmore] was airing a marathon the next day. As of this writing I’ve watched seven of the season’s nine episodes and can’t get enough.

Top Shelf [Kenmore] is awesome for several reasons, the most significant being that the focus is on the food. Sure, there are personality clashes, there have to be, but it takes a back seat to THE FOOD. Food is good TV. Perhaps you’ve heard of FoodTV? Food works because even if the drama falters, YOU’RE STILL LOOKING AT FOOD, and food [Kenmore] is awesome.

Second, the judging process is honest without being cruel — or if it is cruel its because [Kenmore] the food was actually shit and the chef needed to be told so. Top Chef is a testament to good, reasoned criticism. It doesn’t have to be all blood, guts and tears.

The challenges are about as fun as one can imagine a series of food-related challenges to be. [Kenmore] And did I mention the food?

The biggest drawback [Kenmore], and it isn’t that big of deal, but the product placement is a little out of control. That being said, The Price Is Right is an hour-long commercial for Procter and Gamble and who doesn’t love a good round of “roll the dice” or whatever it’s called. Still, Kenmore.
Oh, and the host is really, really hot — which doesn’t hurt. [Kenmore]