If you’re a fan of food (and who among us is not, I ask), you’re surely as addicted to Top Chef as I am. The dishes! The knives! The drama! The fauxhawks!
What more could we ask from a television show, besides the much-needed smellovision, of course? Even without being able to smell and taste the chefs’ awesome-looking (and, occasionally, hideous-looking) creations, it’s one of the best reality shows on TV. I have been devouring it this season, and I’m thrilled that the contestants I predicted as the top two are both still in the running going into the finale. This year, with Blais (above) and Stephanie, there is a very good chance that the winner won’t be a pompous, self-satisfied dickweed. (For examples of such winners, please see the Season Two winner, Ilan, King of the Dickweeds, and — occasionally — the Season Three winner, Hung, who has serious dickweed tendencies but towards whom my heart softened in the end). I’ve loved Blais and Stephanie all season, and I’ve grown to like Antonia, who’s also going to the finals, as well. All three of them are clearly talented, but they also seem to be the kind of people you could imagine working with: passionate about what they do and exacting in practice, but also generally nice, reasonable, and not raging beasts.
Here’s Stephanie making some eggs in a short-order challenge held at a Chicago breakfast diner. I bet those were good!
She did not even threaten to murder anyone while frying those Sunny-Side-Ups. She also, strangely, makes me crave foods I have never tried before:
Looking at those sweetbreads and hearing the judges glowing descriptions of them, I suddenly decided that I needed some sweetbreads in my life ASAP, thymus glands or not. Who can argue?
This, unfortunately, brings us to the fourth contestant to make it to the finale, Lisa. Oh, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, the “obligatory psychotic jackass” of this season (to borrow a useful turn of phrase from Veronica Mars). She’s had a deadly case of bitchface all season, and tends to stand there at Judges’ Table with her arms crossed and her jaw clenched as she “receives” her criticism. The Best Judges’ Table Ever, of course, was the time she accused everyone and no one of trying to “sabotage” her rice, as if someone had deliberately come by her cooktop and turned the temperature up on the burner, making her rice burnt on the outside and underdone on the inside. She refused to name names, though, so this compelling mystery will likely remain unsolved. Unless, of course, the solution is that Lisa fucked up her own rice and CLEARLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED BY NOW BECAUSE A PERSON WHO CAN’T COOK RICE IS NO TOP CHEF IN MY BOOK BY GOLLY.
Well, as you can see, Reader, I have strong feelings on the matter. At least one can find solace in the fact that Lisa provides hours of fun for anyone who enjoys mockery as much as I do. “Sabotage my rice” has now become my substitute phrase for anything shitty or undesirable a person/entity might do. When the internet connection on campus went down earlier today, for example, it was a clear case of the IT people trying to sabotage my rice. The cat howling all morning long on the one day this week I could sleep in? Sabotaging my rice. You get the picture.
No one is safe from Lisa’s Reign of Bitch, however. Here, I believe she is threatening Stephanie and Antonia.
“I will snap you in half if you fuck with me,” she seems to say. Stephanie is so over it, but I would caution her to watch her back. Lisa is a maniac!
Not even this blender is safe:
“FUCK YOU, BLENDER,” I would caption this, blatantly ripping off one of B-Side’s captions in his Top Chef Photocap. (For more pictures of Lisa looking bitchy and some of Padma looking smug and sexy, please to visit his hilarious blog, which basically kicks the ass of mine up one side and down the other). Thanks to B-Side, I am now telling off all inanimate objects, concepts, or entities that spark my ire. “FUCK YOU, WEATHER,” for example. Or, “FUCK YOU, CIGARETTE BREATH THAT I STILL HAVE FROM LAST NIGHT.” As my friend C. and I were chatting last night, this elegant verbal construction truly never got old. Try it, you’ll like it.
Seriously, though, the way Lisa is looking at that blender is also the way she looks at the panel of judges at the end of every episode — judges who have never directly called her on her horrible, horrible attitude and who have, for mysterious and unfathomable reasons, let her continue to the finals of this season’s competition. She fixes them with a bitchy glare, quietly implying that if they continue to bash her food, she will rip their heads off and suck their brains out of their eye sockets. You know, now, maybe that’s why they haven’t had her pack her knives and go. Who wants to face a beast like Lisa and then suggest she go get her set of several sharp, sharp knives?
The finale is (or begins, if it’s a 2-parter) Wednesday at 10:00 (9:00 Central, bitchez!). I am rooting for Stephanie over all, as I’d love to see a lady take the title for once. Solidarity, sisters! Unless the sister in question is Lisa, of course — and let’s face it, the judges would have no business putting her through to the top three. I guess we’ll see just how much longer the judges will keep trying to sabotage my rice before they finally let Lisa get her comeuppance.
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