Top Chef: It Takes More Than A Little Paprika To Make Me Cry
While Marcel's quip to Ilan that it takes more than a little paprika to make him cry was funny, it's sort of indicative of how far south this show has traveled since season one. The sniping. The weird judging decisions. The lack of respect. The Los Angeles-based home base.
Geez -- Top Chef itself might make us cry.
But you know what's really interesting about Top Chef? Even though it's come off the rails, it's still pretty compelling.
However, the wind has been further taken out of our sails due to some of the outside factors.
Look, you can get straight-up recaps at many fine places--particularly here at TWOP (Hi Steph! We love you even though you don't return our emails!). We'll be extremely brief in our recap, to leave more room for our assessment:
We open with seeing what the four finalists are up to. Sam's studying pastry stuff, which he thinks is his main weakness; Elia's still honing her craft and waxing nostalgic about being a swimming champ; Ilan's back doing his Spanish thang at one of Mario Batali's places; and Marcel evidently gets along with his folks at work. As soon as the chefs are back together, the vitriol bubbles up again, and even Elia is annoyed with Astroboyhair. They fly to Hawaii, enjoy a feast with native foods that Chef Alan Wong explains to them in detail. Smartly, Ilan seems to be listening, because the challenge this episode is to prepare dishes meshing traditional Hawaiian cuisine with the cheftestant's own sensibilities.
They all do a great job. Marcel finally puts his best foot forward, incorporating the soul of the cuisine with his chemical magic. Ilan stays with what he knows, and makes two unusual yet lauded dishes. Elia's dishes seem to lack Hawaiian spirit of any kind, and Sam's, while delicious, didn't involve any heat (i.e., "cooking") whatsoever. The judges say everyone did a great job, and had to split these kinds of hairs to make their decision. The judges send Sam and Elia packing. Ilan and Marcel, rivals since "show me your knives" on day one, are the "final final finalists."
There was a little drama at the judges table where Elia sort of accuses Marcel of "cheating," initially prodded by Ilan, though he plays the coward, backs off quickly, and lets Elia fall on her face. See, these claims can't be quantified, and Elia starts jabbering about Marcel's lack of "the spirit of cooking" or "the kitchen" or "chefery" or something. This was not so "cravable." It was a good episode other than that, but it really evoked the sort of crap that has marred this show all season.
And those outside factors that have cemented this as a mostly disappointing season? That magic feeling we had about Harold, Stephen, Leanne, Dave, Chunk, and the rest (even "our Lady of the Bowel Movement," Andrea) continues to diminish in the face of the following:
-- You may have read that Marcel sustained a head injury due to an unruly fan of the show at a bar. Shenanigans, man. Shenanigans. The fact that idiots like this are watching the show make us wonder if we're idiots as well. We think that overdramatic editing is at least partly responsible. This "hyping up the villain" bullc*** that's constantly played on reality TV should be greatly muted on Top Chef. Stephen, season 1's pain-in-the-ass, came by it more or less honestly, not through dramatic editing, as far as we could tell.
-- Speaking of Stephen -- we really think the casting and chemistry were far superior last season. Stephen was indeed smug, but he also backed that you-know-what-up consistently. He was a threat to our favorites. His presentation was always highly impressive; his food usually was too. We don't think Marcel was impressive at all until this very episode. In fact, we think Stephen or Leanne or Tiffany would have won this season, hands down.
-- Food & Wine's early reveal of the winner was disappointing. Did you know about this? That mag's Web site revealed it, purportedly by accident, then removed the results, but a number of food sites picked up on that mistake and published spoiler stories. You can google for it if you like. We won't spoil it for you; not even a link. We wish we'd been able to resist.
-- Cliff, Sam, and Ilan talking smack about Marcel in the press left a very sour taste in our mouth. Now, okay, we know that the evil press can spin things, but come one, people. Rise above. It's particularly disappointing considering that Sam seems like such a stand-up guy, that Cliff dug his own grave by doing something dumb, and that Ilan is showing no respect to his opponent in the finals (win or lose, at this point you should just make an outward show of respect to your competitor). And they did it to Padma too. Classless, boys. Just classless. We're disappointed.
-- The change of hostesses was good, and we generally liked Padma's contributions, but both hosting and judging = too much Padma. We don't want more of her opinions, we want opinions from Gail, who's pretty much been "Baby in the corner" this season, and Chef Tom, the flangadanging EXPERT. We don't need Padma chiming in about acid levels every two seconds -- lady, take your turn, and let the others, who aren't omnipresent throughout every episode like you are, do some talking. Okay, we primarily blame the producers.
We love Top Chef, and we'll certainly watch the finale tonight even though it's been spoiled for us. For next season, we hope that fewer contestants cut from a slightly better cloth are selected; that the producers help the show truly be all about the food; less Padma judging/more Padma hosting; more opinions from Gail and Chef Tom; and at least one guest appearence by Harold, who's still the only "Top Chef" in our book.
(And, hey -- so long as we're making a wish list, how about bringing it back to San Francisco, so we won't feel like idiots for writing about it on SFist!!)