Most of reality TV took a break for the holidays (cable marathons notwithstanding), and I did, too. But starting tonight, the season is gearing up once again, and I am, too. Let's start with a full-on episode recap, shall we?
Top Chef is back on Bravo after a several-week pause. It had been so long, I'd nearly forgotten that Mia had quit to keep them from kicking out Elia (even though I'm pretty sure Michael was toast, but she seemed happy to be the martyr, so we'll let it go).
Marcel and Ilan start out sparring -- Marcel interviews about everyone being on edge because they're competing and living together, but I think one of the major issues is that he annoys people, and they're getting sick of it, so they aren't being that nice to him, like ever.
Michael is hardly my favorite person left on the show -- his class-clown attitude annoys me a lot of the time -- but it would not be fun to get dental work in the middle of this competition, and after getting a tooth pulled, he looks ROUGH saying he's hoping for a 15-minute quickfire challenge so he doesn't have to run away to spit up blood. Now that's appetizing.
Ted Allen of Queer Eye fame is the guest judge. Huzzah! He's hilarious. The contestants learn that immunity is off the table. The quickfire is to create a plate around a color. Cliff is concerned because he draws purple, but due to his color blindness, he couldn't tell what color he'd drawn. No one seems too excited about their draws, particularly Elia (white) and Marcel (brown).
Cliff deals with his problem by matching everything to an eggplant. Marcel's French press exploded at the end, with only 40 seconds to spare, which caused some problems. But Ilan was up first, with his red. Then Betty with green. Marcel's coffee explosion ended up only affecting the dressing of the dish, not his food at all. The other contestants start snarking about how he has "foam" of something in all of his dishes, which I would have giggled with them about, had I been there. Elia did fish with a poached egg, looked tasty even though everything was white. Cliff's dish looked lovely -- AND purple. Sam had yellow, and Ted seemed to love it. He also liked Michael's carrot chips and the rest of it. Ted didn't like Betty's greens, saying, "It looked like something you raked up, not to be unkind" -- "Well, you are," she interjects, which drives me insane because, HELLO, it's a competition, and he's a judge. It's his job to be harsh. She's one of the oldest competitors left, if not the oldest, and she routinely acts the most immature. Not all of us blondes are like that, thankyouverymuch. Anyway, Ted also didn't love Marcel's coffee moat and though Ilan hewed (hued? sorry) too much to the theme and didn't offer anything to contrast with his steak tartar. Ted's favorites were Sam's, Cliff's and Michael's. The winner is Michael, but he doesn't get the immunity he was hoping for so he could have a day to recuperate from his dental stuff.
The main challenge is about inspiration. They offer the inspiration of the seven deadly sins, each doing a course of a seven-course meal. The meal will be served to Debi Mazar and her friends. Mike gets the chance to trade knives and steals Envy from Marcel (ditching Lust, which seems dumb to me). Marcel brings a stop to the process of the team deciding who is going to do which course, which angers everyone. Even Sam starts getting annoyed, and he's been the calmest person this whole season.
Elia has Pride, and she's doing a big "proud" chicken entree.
Ilan has Gluttony and aims to make the diners "fatter."
Michael has Envy, so his plan is to do an imitation crab dish but with real crab because the fake crab wants to be real crab? I don't know. Let's just assume he's still heavily medicated. But they're out of crab. So he decides if he was a trout, he'd envy a salmon, so he buys salmon. Oy, so literal. Good thing he traded Lust away.
They head to a fixture store for all the serving dishes, and it became an issue when the other contestants take the house discount, and Marcel doesn't, and then Sam starts talking about him right in front of him. (Marcel points out that it's prety funny since Sam's sin is Anger.)
Betty has Sloth, and she does three slow-roasted soups.
Cliff had Greed, so he does a complex bouillabaisse.
Marcel has Lust and makes a cherry tart.
Ilan makes fudge cake and chocolately funnel cakes for his gluttony dessert, and yum, that seems to qualify.
Colicchio stops by and seems totally unimpressed by Mike's idea of greed.
Ilan starts trash talking Marcel right at the end of the challenge, and it's not pretty, but at least in the interviews, he seems embarrassed that he went there ("there" being mocking Marcel's sex life).
Once everyone gets to the venue, they agree to help each other during the service and act like grownups (well, that's not exactly what they said).
Sam is up first, and Marcel helps out by pouring the wine. Sam's wrathful ceviche is up first, which everyone seems to adore.
Betty's soups are up next, with three soups in three flutes, making it slothful because you drink it I guess. Even the pretty one for the closeup didn't look that pretty. The judges don't seem to like the texture, saying she probably didn't strain it -- "That's pretty lazy," Tom says. I snicker like an 11-year-old.
Sam presents Mike's Envy dish because Mike doesn't think his face should be out there, but they make him come out to explain his dish. Tom and Padma are shocked that Mike did this tasty dish, which bodes both well and not so well for him.
Cliff's Greed dish is up next, the bouillabaisse, he says it's greedy because of the amount of seafood.
Elia's chickens, "which look very proud to be here," get rave reviews.
Marcel's first dessert is up, and he doesn't want any help. (Hey, guess what, his dessert has foam.) Betty starts snarking about Marcel "snapping" at him, when all he did was stop them from leaving. Ilan says, let's not help him serve, and force him to apologize before putting out the dessert. Bucco's wife from The Sopranos gets all flirty and asks him to serve the cherries to her, which gets all weird as he dollops chocolate sauce into her mouth. The judges start laughing about the foam, and Debi Mazar starts talking about how the dish (which is supposed to have to do with Lust, remember) seems to have been made by someone who, "hasn't had as much sex as he needs" to create a dish that's over the top. Man, it was bad enough when Ilan, who hates him, was mocking him, but to have an actress who doesn't even know him call him out -- in describing his food! -- all I can say is ouch.
Ilan's second dessert has to go through some changes at the last second -- the funnel cake got crispy, so they dipped them in simple syrup. The main part was the fudgey cake, though, so it wasn't the worst thing ever. However, in his presentation, he points out that cherries are supposed to drop your libido, which was so rude and unprofessional to Marcel. Yeah, he doesn't like him, but keep it to yourself during judging. No one seemed to love the second dessert, though.
Now, Judges' Table. Guest judge Roberto didn't like the desserts or the soups. And he thought Michael's was the best. Ted loved it, too. They all loved Elia's chicken, but Tom thought the presentation should have been more over the top. Sam's dish gets high marks again, too. Elia, Michael and Sam are the top three -- and seriously, they have to know they did the best, right, after seeing everyone else's food? -- but the winner is Michael. "You should cook on Vicodin more often," Tom says. Bottom three is easy: Marcel, Betty and Ilan. Tom asks Ilan why he slammed Marcel's dish. Ted says Marcel's dish was the most lovely, but it didn't seem "lusty" enough. Padma tells him to knock off the foam. Tom tells Betty her soups weren't smooth, and she said that she did strain it. Betty and Ilan say Marcel should go home; Marcel says Ilan should. Ilan screams at Marcel while they're waiting for the judges' decision.
Speaking of which, going home is Betty. I'm OK with that.
Top Chef may have taken a break this week from regular programming, but that doesn't mean that Liz and Justine are taking the night off. This week, we've got a Top Chef reunion show, bringing back some of the strongest personalities from the previous five seasons of the show. The 11 cheftestants (plus Fabio, fan favorite from season five, playing host) who came back were some of the strongest and conveniently most dramatic on their seasons. 
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