Is it just me, or is this season of Top Chef really boring? Compared to the most recent season of the only other reality show I watch, Bravo’s Project Runway, Top Chef feels like a snoozefest. Here are my 3 tips to jump starting this series back into action:
1. Throw out the rule book — “Oh no, we have to cook in front of a camera!” ”Oh no, we have to cook a specific ethnic cuisine!” ”Oh no, we have to cook breakfast!” Really? This is as tough as it gets? Project Runway designers had to make clothes out of car parts! Come on! We need to get creative here. How about cooking a meal using 18th century technology? Cook using only canned goods? Cook without butter, salt or pepper? It’s time to try a challenge that’s actually uniquely challenging for once!
2. Competition — The challenges are not competitive enough. There needs to be more head to head stuff, more personal risk. How about designing a signature recipe…then having to switch recipes with another chef and execute their dish better than they did? How about each chef going head to head against Tom and the guest chef? Maybe splitting into small teams and each team has to do the exact same dish? There needs to be more fire, more interpersonal battles, more fierce competition. Right now, everyone’s too calm and too damn friendly.
3. Characters — These contestants are booooooooring. The only dude that interests me in the slightest is Fabio, who I’m guessing is the stand out fan favorite thus far. And you know what the issue is? Age/Gender. Ariana? Woman in her 40′s. Krazy Eyez Killa Caterer? Woman in her 40′s. Stephan? Dude in his late 30′s. Other boring people? I dunno, but they’re so boring. Everyone is too mature! Where are all the hotshot young rock star chefs? The punks? The girls are too polite, except Jaime, and the boys are too bad at cooking to have any swagger, aside from Fabio.
So far? Crappy with a lame sauce emulsion.
Grade: C
Please… how can you forget about the awkward updates of the Hosea-Leah relationship. I wait half an hour and all I get is “They like to cuddle”??? Gimme a break.
Oh, and last week’s episode was the dumbest I’ve ever seen. The challenge was dumb. A dumb fruit salad won. Alex, the guy who lost, was happy to leave because he was getting married (dumb, dumb and dumb). Despite the lack of quality, Top Chef isn’t testing my viewership as much as Heroes is…
Great comments, Reubtown. That Leah/Hosea ish, a.k.a. Jewish Chefs in Love, was so dumb. Writing his name on her leg? Is this Top Chef or Jewish sleep-away camp? Also, what’s the deal with these 2 minute “human interest” clips during the second half of the show? We’ll be mid-commerical break, come back for like a 2 minute clip about Hosea/Leah flirting like 7th graders, or Carla talking about God knows what, then bam, back to commercial. And that’s all the interpersonal drama we get for the episode?
And yes, I’m so with you Reuben about last week’s challenge. If I were a Jeff or Fabio, I’d be insulted that 4 blithering idiots with no conception of good cooking were judging my dish. Of course the f’ing salad wins, because those women don’t know the first thing about fine dining. What a joke.
And ya, Heroes is at an all-time low. Nearly unbearable. I had the opportunity to hear Tim Kring speak at a very exclusive panel last week, and he went on about how he’s the only writer on his staff that gets to totally write his own episodes. I was thinking “So THAT’s the problem…”