Thursday, September 6, 2007

IT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING THE MOST OF WHAT YOU HAVE: Good advice, Padma. And it’s true whether you’re playing fantasy football or competing on Bravo reality television programs with pretensions to presenting high culture. That’s not to say, however, that it isn’t ridiculous to expect folks to shop for two hours of food for seventy people on $350 and then present something truly fabulous, or that I didn’t giggle to myself on draft day every time someone felt like their best option was to take a Brown or a Raider.

This week on Top Chef III, one contestant decided that making the best of what he had meant trying to quit, twice — standing pat on “pride” the first time and “You know what? F*ck them. I’m great. They don’t get to judge me…” or words to that effect, the second time — as his ego repeatedly wrote checks that his subsequent performance failed to cash. He closed with some almost believable speeches about how he was going out of his way to be less pushy and abrasive, and how he had finally come to realize that competition could make room for team work. We’ll call him “Terrell”, for now, to protect the innoce—er, the eliminated. We wish him luck in his future endeavors.

In the Quickfire, everybody got $10 and a single randomly chosen aisle of the supermarket to shop on. To abuse a metaphor, we might liken their predicament to having to take a random NFC Defense to fill in during your regular squad’s bye week: unless you draw Chicago, Dallas or Philadelphia, god only knows what you’re in for.

Hung (San Francisco) was so screwed he decided he might as well go finger-paint, praying that bold juvenile improvisation might make up for any number of other factors. His division rivals loved him for it. The scoreboard… not so much. “Terrell” (Atlanta), was optimistic (as always) about his chances given what he had to work with, but messed up big time, lost a key player, and had nothing to present once the season started. CJ (Tampa Bay) had some hope of a respectable showing, but added the wrong ingredient (Jeff Garcia) to the mix at the last minute. (And am I the only one wondering if CJ ever gets to say “Oh, just have fun with it Padma” when they’re off camera?) Dale (Arizona) cooked up a spicy spectacle that obviously managed to make an impression, but not necessarily in a good way. Nice, though, that he knew what the judges were in for, and had the water ready. Casey (yes, Dallas is Dallas) pulled off a passable wafer pudding, and Sara (Philadelphia) came through with “free form ravioli” deserving of accolades, but Malarky (Chicago), crushed all opposition and took the win with his inspired everything-from-a-can combo of spam, eggs, something, something and spam. Just goes to show that if the rest of the pieces are in place, even spam (yes, that’s you, #8) can be a winner. Around here, we positively loved that Bombay honored their contractual obligation to suggest a “perfect” accompanying Sapphire Cocktail for Brian’s spamtastic winning dish. Hey there Bombay! What do y’all stir up to go with the Cheese Whiz, yo? Because I’m tailgating this weekend, and I do love me some nachos!

As a side note, yes, technically there is a spoiler in that last paragraph, if you can count. But if you’ve watched the show this season then you knew who “Terrell” really was right about “F*ck them. They don’t get to judge me.”

At this point in the post, I’m all out of football tie-ins and I haven’t even got a dig in at Jay Cutler yet. (Could he be the next Jake Plummer? Ah, that’s better.) There is just nothing footbally (which is, I emphasize, not a word) about a fashion show and dinner party on a yacht, unless you invite the Minnesota Vikings and your idea of a “fashion show” is more or less clothing-optional. This, for better or worse, is not that kind of blog.

Though the result in this episode was abundantly just and arguably overdue, I have to say I’m chaffing at the “squeeze them with $350 on the front end, second-guess every sacrifice they make on the back end” format of so many Top Chef episodes. If you want them to create and impress, then give them a budget to create and impress on. If a half-decent job has been done picking talented and passionate contestants, then there should be at least as much drama in the culinary decisions they make as Bravo is currently milking out of the corners that the chefs feel compelled to cut. We all might even learn a little bit more about food. Collichio’s rap against Team Leader Malarkey, that it was his job to hold everyone to one dish, felt in this instance like a hindsight gripe unworthy of the air time it was given. That’s not to say that fewer dishes wouldn’t have been better. No doubt Chef Tom was correct. It just felt like they could have put that speech on cue cards for him the second they settled the budget.

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