OlfinBedwere

I don't remember any person with that name ever appearing on the show, TBH, and I'm fairly certain that Season 8 didn't have any black contestants at all, let alone on the men's team. The only one I can remember who seems to fit that description was Larry from Season 2, unless the person you spoke to was someone who was supposed to be in S8, but dropped out before they started filming.

It wasn't necessarily a homophobic insult - Nick's background appears to be mostly as a personal chef, with little if any experience working at fine dining restaurants - but best case it just makes Josh a complete idiot for not thinking how it could be interpreted.

I'm pretty sure there's been at least one contestant in the past who's enjoyed the protein shakes, though I can't for the life of me remember who. One thing I do remember is the women in S8 having to eat some really nasty seafood after losing a challenge, and Gail not exactly enjoying it per se, but shrugging it off and basically saying "Meh, I've eaten worse."

They also did it the season before last. Though at least this time they at least had the decency to show us the elimination during the episode, rather than pulling the "TO BE CONTINUED" card yet again. Christine looked like she might have been on the up last week, but she looked so out of her depth this week it was actually kind of sad. Still, the red team should be pretty much unstoppable from this point; wouldn't surprise me if the black team turns out to be all four remaining women, plus Milly and whichever of the men manages to suck least in the weeks ahead.

I'll say one thing about this season, at least we seem to be having an actual two-horse race between Meghan and T, as opposed to the dull procession to an easy victory that Christina, Ja'Nel and La Tasha had (and Joy would likely have had if she hadn't thrown a tantrum and quit). As an aside, holy cow, Christine actually got it together this episode. All of a sudden, Michelle's looking like the weak link on the red team. I'd predict her as the next to go, if not for the fact that the men appear to be imploding so badly that I don't see the women losing another service anytime soon.

I don't think it's too bad all things considered; the show apparently does quite well on VoD services, and doesn't cost all that much to make. I think the reason why the producers of this (and many other) reality shows never significantly change the format is because they're worried about doing something like The Apprentice: Los Angeles, which tried to reinvigorate a series that had unexceptional but still quite decent ratings, but ended up totally driving it into the ground (well, until Celebrity Apprentice came along).

If someone needs to go to the red team at the end of next episode (Christine surely can't hang on much longer) chances are it'll be an outsider among the men, seeing how the women have two very clear leaders in Meghan and T. My guess is it'd be Josh, given his display at the start of last night's episode.

Except that it was the other chef that gave out the final set of points. If he'd given a 1, it would have caused the women to win. That said, I'm pretty sure they've had go-karting as a reward for the women's team in the past. I'm guessing they probably had some other celebrity booked to attend had the women won. Thought that Christine would go before Sarah, but Sarah's really imploded in the last couple of services. Also surprised at how badly Alison did, as she's been one of the most consistent ones so far. Hopefully only a temporary glitch. And Milly? Yeah, Meghan's totally better than you. Deal with it.

In fairness, the men have won so few challenges this season it's actually kind of hard to compare them. Though from season to season it tends to vary; in S12 the women were way worse for going on about how glad they were that those stupid men weren't getting to enjoy themselves, and last season they were pretty equal from what I remember. Last night was the first time T really struggled, though she seemed to get it together for service. Meghan's taken over as the front-runner, but barring one of them imploding I think we're going to have those two in the final. The men are just looking generally "bleh" at this point; I think we'll be in for a repeat of last season, where they did well to start with, but then started dropping like flies after the halfway point.

The UK version was entertaining enough for what it was, namely the chance for Ramsay (and later Marco-Pierre White) to puncture the egos of over-pampered D-list celebrities, but it was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to work out in the longer run. I won't outright say that the US version is better, because they're not really the same type of show, but they did the right thing by effectively turning it into a three-way hybrid of HKUK, MasterChef and The Apprentice (later dropping the MasterChef elements once it became clear that the amateur contestants just couldn't compete against their professional counterparts).

In past seasons it's always seemed more the other way around. One of the women screws up, Ramsay just throws her out and lets the rest of the team carry on. One of the men screws up, Ramsay throws them all out. That said, Adam and Bret only seemed to screw up on their first orders, and I don't think even Ramsay's that short-tempered. Brendan did seem to screw up a lot more, but it wasn't clear whether he was doing it throughout service, or just got temporarily stalled halfway through. The women, on the other hand, seemed to really struggled from the word go.

I noticed it back in the first episode, where she tended to lapse into a more noticeable Jamaican accent when she was annoyed at someone, usually Monique - who, as I recall, actually went on a little rant about Alison's "stupid accent" last week.

I can see Bret turning out like S12's Anton. His rougher personality may help control the kitchen in these early stages when there's no obvious leader on the team, but as the weaker chefs get eliminated and the stronger ones come into their own, that abrasiveness will become arrogance, he'll clash with his team-mates (and possibly even Ramsay) and eventually get kicked out. As for the elimination, sad, but not at all surprising. I knew Mieka was doomed the minute she started walking around the kitchen with that pan of steaks and asking her team-mates "Is this cooked properly?"

T's definitely looking like the front-runner already. Won the challenge for the women pretty much single-handed, and was clearly the person in charge of things during their service.

I don't mind them starting off the season with men vs. women, it's trying to keep the battle of the sexes schtick going throughout the whole season that I don't like. Back in S12 Ramsay did a pretty major team reshuffle midway through the season, and most of the drama seemed to dissipate after that. For some reason I actually got the feeling that Ramsay was trying to set the women up for victory in the signature dish challenge, as he seemed a lot more conservative in scoring the men (mostly 3s, with the women getting a lot more 4s), but Chrissa and Monique blew it so badly that he couldn't give them the win. In that case, I wonder whether another celebrity was booked for the reward? Sure, William Shatner was in Miss Congeniality, but I always got the impression that he was there to throw a bone to the guys in the audience.

Trump may not write all his tweets by himself, but he definitely writes some of them. If not, then that means he honestly paid someone good money to post a series of angry, incoherent rants right after it was announced that Obama had beaten Romney. Anyways, I think I must be jaded, since I only find Geraldo mildly irritating. The guy may be an ass, but personality-wise he's not even close to beng the worst person in this season, let alone the likes of Amarosa. Still, I'm backing Leeza for no other reason than she may very well be the best-ever Celebrity Apprentice contestant. The only other ones I can think of that were so consistently good were John Rich, Penn Jillette and perhaps Clay Aiken.

It certainly seems plausible. The rumors I've been hearing indicate that this season is going to be very much like Celebrity Apprentice 2 and 3. In other words, the first half of the season's going to be an absolute bloodbath for the men.

Hopefully this year we just got two seasons because of the X-Factor being canned, as the rumor mill has been saying. But I remember back in 2009 and 2010 we got two seasons in both of those years because of the writers' strike, and even with the show being less tired and generally having better contestants, it was still too much. If they make a regular thing of two seasons a year, they'll drive the show into the ground faster than an anvil-filled 747 that's run out of fuel. As an aside, maybe ease up on the emotional manipulation just a little? Last night they may as well have referred to the two finalists as "Woman with dead grandma" and "Man with cute baby" instead of their actual names.

No surprise whatsoever that La Tasha won. Heck, if anything, that was the most one-sided finale since Nona vs. Russell four years ago. What is surprising is that Bryant actually seems to have matured as a person. Even as late as the last few Red/Blue team services he was still a cocky idiot, but he came across as a far more graceful and likeable character last night, even managing to be nice when telling Frank to GTFO.

If memory serves the season is filmed over the course of 2-3 weeks, so Chanie was likely off her medication for a significant portion of the season. Regardless, it was an incredibly dumb move to keep quiet about it until after the final drive. Shyamala would probably have been able to help her a lot better if she knew that Chanie's problems went beyond just being a common-variety ditz. Heck, even Angelina was able to talk openly about her own medication situation (though granted, that was WAY more obvious than Chanie's). As for the final graduation, I suppose it depends whether they were looking at it in terms of the most improved overall, or the most skilled. Siham was obviously pretty skilled as far back as the first episode, her major problem was that her nerves were shredded. Jason on the other hand was a complete trainwreck for the first few episodes, but got a lot better as he got glasses and learned new stuff.

I'm iffy on Jason being given the final graduation over Siham, as she was definitely better for most of the season, and aside from those two really bad mistakes her final drive was better than his. As for the worst, however, Chanie absolutely, 100% deserved the title. Hell, she was lucky they didn't find out about that whole medication thing sooner, or else she'd have likely been kicked out of rehab.

I'm guessing that they would have had a 4-person finale if the time and budget allowed, but it just wasn't feasible. Wouldn't surprise me if they just assumed that Siham would cruise to graduation this episode, and booked the crew, equipment and car for the last episode on that basis, leaving them unable to alter their plans when everyone did badly. So yeah, looks like Siham's going to be this year's version of Aaron after all, finally getting her confidence back in the city drive. Jason will probably pull a Sly, have a halfway competent drive and avoid being the worst. Which, of course, will leave Chanie to take the trophy.

The only way I can see Siham not graduating next week is if she pulls an Aaron and insists on sticking around for the city drive in the final episode. It's hard to call out any of the remaining drivers as being overwhelmingly better or worse than the other two, though it'll be interesting to see whether Jason's new glasses make a significant difference in the road test.

Mariah reminds me of Ashley from S4 - when she can focus she's actually a pretty competent driver, but when things go wrong she's awful beyond belief. I'm increasingly getting the feeling that Tyler's going to be this year's worst. Most of the others seem to have some clear cause for their bad driving - Jason is still adjusting to his glasses; Siham's confidence is shot to shreds, and compounded by her husband constantly trying to help her; Chanie and Mariah don't give driving their full focus and attention - but Tyler simply seems to have no driving skill whatsoever.

To the best of my memory, La Tasha and Jennifer have only been yelled at once each by Ramsay, and even then their errors were arguably more the fault of the rest of the team screwing up and throwing them off-balance. Right now it's looking like they'll be the finalists... but then we all thought that Joy and Rochelle would be last season's finalists, and look what happened there.