LoganTheHuge

Padma wanted her some Gronk sausage. She even had him blushing! If you're making The Gronk blush, you've gone too far. Gronk appeared to have a very...um...simple palate so was not surprised by what he liked and disliked. George's plate definitely looked like a truck stop Denny's platter, vb68. I wouldn't even throw that plate at my worst enemy. Everything Gail said about Katsuji was spot on. He really does cook with his heart. He was never afraid to go big or go home. I appreciated that about him. He believes in what he does and that's beautiful (even if his food wasn't always). Tom gave amazingly high praise to Doug, whose dish did look inspired for such a simple concept. I loved what Mei did, and I'm like Gronk (meat! Sausage!) but I would have inhaled that yummy dish. Well deserved win. I'm less annoyed that George is back but hate that he got immunity with that boring Denny's platter and his Seuss dish looked the least inspiring/interesting. He seems nice enough, but telling a man as big as Gronk (and who's judging you) that you're not a fan of his is moronic. He's lucky Gronk is affable enough to not hold it against him, though I would have. Go Dougie, win this thing!

While I'm glad Dougie won again (and I would like him to win this whole shebang), this episode pissed me off. I don't want two eliminated losers coming back! And I certainly don't need to see Jersey Shore castoff/Mike Isabella "protege" back on my screen. I know Isabella is now a successful restauranteur but he's no Eric Ripert and the way all of the chefs said his name in hushed reverential tones annoyed me. George kept saying he got a "raw deal." NO, dude, you LOST in a quickfire competition AND in the sudden death challenge. You lost TWICE. That's not getting a raw deal. That's just sucking. Agreed. Also, isn't is "snooze you lose" and if you grab the whole bucket (even if you don't need it all), it's yours? At least Adam asked her if he could have some, and she shared with him. It definitely wasn't cool of Melissa to do that, but we all know she's not going to last anyway. It's not Top Salad. Yes, all of the food looked pretty unexceptional through the screen. I felt bad for Adam (and a little bit for Katie) for taking a risk and getting knifed for it. It's no wonder these cheftestants are playing it safe. Although you could say that Dougie stretched himself and pulled it off. Seems to be about execution more than concept. I thought George/Isabella Jr.'s dish looked REALLY boring (although everyone said it tasted good). Like Pepper Mostly said, you can get lamb kebobs at every strip mall across America and it'll still taste pretty good. Lastly...Richard's hair! WTF! That hair was ten inches too high.

Many people (including fictional character Don) are talking about the 2% of victims who are falsely accused of sexual assault and their inability to get a job or become athletes or live their dreams. This is utter and complete bullshit. It is so offensively, patently untrue. *Mike Tyson - CONVICTED of rape. Serves a meager 5-year sentence. Gets cast in popular movies (HANGOVER), has a stage show directed by Spike Lee, has an animated show. He's never apologized for his crime, BTW. *Ben Roethlisberger - Repeated accusations of rape, so heinous that even Roger Goodell (weak NFL commissioner) SUSPENDS his despite the fact that Roethlisberger is never tried in a court of law. Roethlisberger continues to be the starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers and continues to sell jerseys with his name on it for millions of dollars. *Jameis Winston - Accused of rape. Case is viciously covered up by the prosecutors and police. Winston wins a Heisman Trophy a few months later and is on his way to the NFL and million-dollar paydays. *Jerramy Stevens - Accused of rape in college. Case is particularly vicious. He also gets the Jameis Winston coverup, goes on to be drafted by the Seattle Seahawks and plays in the NFL. Even marries U.S. soccer star Hope Solo. *Mark Sanchez - Accused of rape in college. He's never charged and goes on to be drafted by the NY Jets. Currently starting as QB for the Philadelphia Eagles. Has a very nice paycheck and dates the likes of Eva Longoria. Yes, I'm giving high-profile examples. Yes, there ARE men out there who are innocent and whose lives legitimately DO get ruined. What I'm saying is that the myth of "rape accusations ruin innocent men's lives" is exactly that. It is part of the lies told in this rape culture that we live in when in fact, the exact opposite is true. The majority of men accused of rape go on to live their lives. Some of them have special skills like Roethlisberger and some of them are just paper pushers. The majority of women who ARE raped do not. I'm sorry if this is off-topic but seeing this debate angers me. We need to change the narrative when we talk about rape. It's up to all of us to contribute. To stay ON topic on the show : I thought this episode was particularly hideous (and not for the rape storyline). It took several steps backward from the goodwill the show generated in me the past two episodes. I look forward to it ending next week and hope it can at least go out on a relatively high note.

Eric Ripert is gorgeous! You should wear that lust with pride! There's also something sexy about Tom C. I worked with his wife once years ago and she was lovely, so I'm assuming he is as well. I'm not much of a fan of his on the show but I don't hold it against him. Yes, they should have clarified that. I *thought* that's why she made that joke about being a line cook (because she lost to Doug) but again, that's my interpretation of what the editing monkeys didn't show us. He's shown himself to be terrible at team competitions so I was very surprised Katie chose him for her team (rather than let him go last). That's why I think Katie has poor leadership skills - I thought she should have recognized Katsuji's weakness as a team player, even if he's a better cook than, say, KeriAnn or maybe Adam.

re: confusion over Mei's joke about women being better line cooks. I thought what happened is: Mei and Doug both wanted to be EC. Mei "let" Doug be EC because she'd be needed in the kitchen since "women are better line cooks" (a joke to make up for the fact that Doug won out as EC over her). YMMV. And yes, Mei and Melissa WERE better line cooks than Katsuji and Gregory. The M&M team rocked it. Adam is so annoying but that annoying quality helped him be a good FOH. It's always the annoying ones like him and Fabio who do that job well. Poor KerriAnn was in way over her head. I didn't think she volunteered to be FOH. I thought Katsuji volunteered her and she agreed. However, she did not do a good job. It seemed like her servers WERE bad but she didn't establish the table numbers from the beginning. I thought that's why the servers had a different idea of what was table #1 and table #13. So it seemed like she made the situation worse. KerriAnn's dish and poor FOH service made her a good PYKAG but Katie should have gone, IMO, for being an awful EC. Not only did she not establish a good theme, she should have nixed KerriAnn's dish and she should have told KerriAnn they were going to futz with it. She also didn't appear to be doing a good job of expediting the way that Dougie was and her leadership skills were nonexistent. And on that note, I have a major crush on Doug. Yes, Katsuji, we all know he's short but he can still get it, and always over you. Katsuji showed his true colors this episode. This is a competition BUT this particular contest was a team one, and he showed why he's not going to win the competition. He should have made an effort to make his team better to save them, and himself, from the chopping block. Same for Gregory. I'm okay with either of them going now. I hope top 3 is Doug, Mei and Melissa (Melissa purely because I find her inoffensive; I would have wanted Gregory up there but he's gone downhill for me).

I really enjoyed the convivial, genial tone of this week's episode and yes, AsshatAaron being gone had a BIG reason to do with it. I don't actually like reality shows so I could do without the drama. I like seeing talented people doing their thing without screaming at each other. I get enough of that in real life, thank you very much. It shows how much one bad apple does spoil a tree. I thought Stacy (or Melissa) would go home since they both missed their respective SO's. It seemed like Stacy was at peace with the knifing so good for her to go out with her head held high. I liked what she said in her exit speech. And yes, both Melissa and Stacy had very cute partners. Melissa's girlfriend looked a lot like the Orange is the New Black writer who recently came out. Dougie is so fuzzy and cute! I have a crush on him, too, Gregory. Reese Witherspoon's venison blueberry idea sounded horrible but it didn't look so bad on screen and the judges didn't throw it across the table so I'm assuming it was good enough. I liked that Katie took risks even though she had immunity. Mei's dish sounded very unique and good. Ken Oringer was a very good guest judge, as was Tiffani Faison. I could have done without the colonizers and Native American dinner theme. "Here we have descendants of Native Americans and here we have descendants of the people who slaughtered them! Let's eat!" Weird. He reminds me of Spike (can't remember the season he was on but for some reason, Top Chef keeps trotting him out even though I thought he was perfectly forgettable) in that he is clearly mugging for the cameras. I think he's less annoying and more talented than Spike, though, and he seems to want to kumbaya with the cheftestants a lot, which is sweet.

While I wholeheartedly agree that Katie won't even be top 5, she had every right to defend herself (and she didn't even do it aggressively). The Editing Monkeys have shown Katie to be pretty quiet, passive and blandly nice. She's a teacher, for goodness sake, she's not ruffling anyone's feathers. That makes her an easy target and Aaron has been picking on her relentlessly. If she finally chooses to speak up in front of the judges, I say good for her. This is a competition so whatever she can do to make herself stand out is what she has to do, and it's not like she lied. She said the truth - Aaron had been needlessly picking on her. No way is Katie going to win but I'm glad that she didn't let herself get trampled on by Aaron and she did the SMART thing - Talked "shit" at the right time to the right people. As for Aaron, I was surprised he got knife'd. I thought it'd be Melissa or Stacy. I thought they'd keep him around for the drama but maybe he was too surly even for the ratings police. At this point, Gregory is Paul Qui'ing everyone. No one even seems close, not even Mei (did you know she works for Michael Voltaggio??) who we all thought would be a frontrunner. I really like little Dougie a lot, he's adorable, but he also doesn't seem to be on the same level as Gregory. Adam talks a big game but has yet to cook a big game. The ladies, sad to say, are all weak. BTW, I liked the war concept (fitting in with the setting). It was on-the-nose but fun.

Here's the link to Gawker's article on Aaron's domestic violence arrest as referenced by BusyOctober above. As if we needed even more reasons to hate him. <sigh> His whole "this my turning point" made me think they were trying to Nicholas Elmi-him but Nicholas was never that bad. Aaron is beyond redemption. Dicky Blais's jacket had me LULZing for DAYZ. Stop. Trying. So. Damn. HARD! Everything he says is so meaningless. This whole episode I thought "This is Top Chef, not Top Scallop!" I like scallops every now and then but these cheftestants make them way too much. I didn't think Swayze should have blamed his team menu on his loss. He could have come up with another idea, or at least executed that salad way better than he did. The judges weren't knocking the concept, they were knocking the execution. I never even remembered the other female cheftestant who who was booted but she said something about coming back on Last Chance Kitchen, which I don't think they're doing this year. Poor girl is going to be wandering around the set, looking for LCK. How does Katsuji make something that looks so good (that ceviche) and then make something so horrid? That thing he made looked like a baby puked up green peas. And his idea to serve a "gluten free" dish just meant globs of sauce and veggies? That actress looked offended by that, as she should have. PastaKatie's gluten free dish looked very tasty. Katsuji is clearly being kept for entertainment value. Little Dougie is really cute and seems like a nice quiet fella. I'm still on the fence about Santino LaBeouf. He's got that annoying Spike personality but he doesn't seem rancid like Asshat Aaron.

LOL, same here but I have a potty mouth. Mei suffers from resting bitch face so I will give her a pass for looking the way she often does. I think her win did get to her head a bit but she dialed it back down once the crazy Katsuji delivered. I can't blame her for being hyper-paranoid about what he was going to cook up. I do like Katsuji a lot - he's going to be entertaining. Whoever called the hipster NY chef (can't remember his name) Santino and Shia LeBeaouf were spot on. That's all I could think about when they showed him talking - this is what an unholy union of Santino and Shia would look like. He also turned out to be not as douchetastic as I was worried about. He seems like a wannabe Spike more than anything. Hat Douche, on the other hand, is the asshole I thought he'd be. What an aggressive, rude jerk. Yes, Reese Witherspoon was annoying but the way the editing showed, she appeared to be sticking up for herself (which I respect). And I hate when guys can't take the heat so they resort to the typical "she's a bitch." In the first episode, Hat Douche mentioned that his entire staff quit right before his restaurant opened and now I can see why. That being said, those two were insufferable and I felt terrible for Boston Chicken. I'm glad that she was able to get out unscathed. Sucks that Joy had to be booted. I liked her just from the two episodes we got. ETA: I forgot to mention: SWAAAAYYYZE!!!! I love that that guy busted out his Patrick Swayze tattoo so earnestly! Roadhouse 4 Lyfe! OTOH, you have a tattoo of Patrick Swayze. On your arm. And you didn't do it while you were drunk.

If you looked up "trying too hard" in the dictionary, Dick Blais's awkward grin would greet you. It's obvious he was a major dweeb growing up and now has some fame and wants to take full advantage of it but his true nerdiness keeps tripping him up. What was with that motorcycle analogy?? And that hair! I never thought I'd prefer his sad fauxhawk but here we are. There are two clear douche front runners so far. Douche with the baseball hat who served Padma a slab of fat and the annoying hipster douche who clearly watched a lot of videos of Spike. The baseball hat douche has some seriously mean eyes. He looks like he'd piss in your soup. I think he's gonna be our villain. Anyone who would willingly associate with Mike Isabella deserves to go. Are they not doing Last Chance Kitchen this season? Not that I ever watched it.

The acting on this show is blowing my tiny mind. There are actors that I've never liked before - BB Thornton (though he used to be real good), Colin Hanks - and actors that I've never seen stretch like this - Martin Freeman, Bob Odenkirk - and then actors I'm being introduced to - Allison Tolman, Russell Harvard - and I freaking love them all. Throw in Key and Peele and Stephen Root and hot damn. Amazing job by all and to be honest, the quality of their acting is elevating the material and some of the parts where believability goes out the window (as all of you have already pointed out). I too thought that Linda might wise up and realize Lester was setting her up, especially since she showed a hint of intelligence when she picked up on having to cover for Lester during Molly's interview. But nope, I think she was just very much in love with Lester and had the blinders on. Her story about her difficult upbringing kind of confirmed that she views Lester as her literal white knight. BTW, the story of the customer shitting in the box spring had me LOLing. Molly seems like she really wants to protect her dad from knowing about the danger that she's putting herself in, though. So I wouldn't be surprised if she keeps it away from him or tells him that it's confidential. (Good to see all of you TWoP'ers on here! I even got to keep my same screen name!)