HappyDancex2

Anyone else yell at the TV when Vinny was presenting his dish he mentioned, yet again, the Nomad? Yikes dude.

Well I had both Joe and Nini and they both lost so my brackets are done unless Antonia wins. I was hoping for Joe….he had a better chance than nini. I said next year I need a “current cooking bio” before I pick my brackets! I thought Sara was going to be like Fabio and just drag him out for the name but hasn’t cooked competitively in awhile. Who knew Sara was cleaning it up on every iteration of Chopped!!! /soreloserinmybracketsLOL. But I won a fancy dinner out and a ninja multicooker slow cooker looking thing so I’m happy. I snickered when I realized there was going to be another female champion. I think Guy is trying to balance out finding big name culinary people to be judges to increase the cache but the real experts are people who compete and judge cooking competitions. I’d like to see Eric Greenspan as a cheftestant or judge. Did Aaron may do the first season? Hoping to see Rocco back as a judge next year. Maybe Brooke and Bobby can come back together BWAHAHAHA.

I was also surprised that they decided to create a dish around bacalau and were shocked when Whole Foods didn’t have it LOL. I mean it’s extremely seasonal in most areas, even for restaurants. They didn’t even entertain a plan B before they got in the store?? Baffling. update: I did have my Indian food today to cleanse my palate of watching Vinny yuckifying the karrrrma sutra chicken hollandaise. I had the lamb saag and aloo gobi with some crispy papadams and mango lassi. Bread basket was assorted naans and parathas etc. the only bread I don’t like is the onion kulcha. Food was dynamite! My vibration is restored and Vinny can be gone!!!!

All of the food places looked quite excellent! I would like to visit Canada again soon….yum! The Thai food always looks great to me but thats a different version of Filipino food that I’ve had and would love to try that place. Or maybe it was the way they separated out the condiments made it more interesting? I’m definitely going out for Indian tomorrow though….get some cashew butter chicken! And Vinny pronouncing it karma instead of Kama was hilarious…. Excited for susar next week. I hope they have to rework the ingredients of his famous salad and make it peasant comfort food. Or a casserole. Dude was really worked up over the hollandaise. I actually got his concept but got confused during judging that the hollandaise was on top of an already sauced chicken so it read super heavy. I missed the other sauce. What didn’t help was his partner didn’t even seem to eat Indian food, let alone cook it. And the butter chicken sauce can be quite creamy and not in your face spicy depending on who is cooking it. Too bad they didn’t make a chutney or pickles to cut through the fat.

The editors hate us LOL. Why the 2 vocal fry’s have the voiceover commentary for 90 percent of the episode had my nerves ratttttttttled!!!!! loved seeing Sara back…she looks fantastic and coupled with the fact that she’s competing on TOC as well makes her a great edition to a comeback on the circuit of food TV. Not sure why she was relevant in this episode and she was barely introduced! Top chef definitely feeling like a lot of choppy new show runners or something.

Coming in late but enjoyed catching up with the thread! Y’all cracking me up. I did yell out LFG when Joe won over Jet just for my bracket points. I needed that because I picked Izard way too far and she busted my quadrant long ago. I loved her on top chef but she hasn’t been winning lately so why I picked her 2 years in row now is baffling. i picked against Brit resigno and she has both technique and competition cooking chops. I really like her too yet I had an upset feeling that didn’t come true for her that came true for Jet. happy to see Cosentino and the not so angry Italian back on TV. Chris did such a good job dealing with Art Smith in his season of Top Chef masters. Weird to see him wearing the same aprom and glasses almost 20 years later!!! Not feeling Kaleena. Her showing on Top Chef was rough. im enjoying the comeback of Jonathan Sawyer. May he continue to be blessed on his journey. I do wish he would make amends to the city of Cleveland at least locally though. Even his intro is misleading….his beard award was Great Lakes for Cleveland even though he is represented as a Chicago chef now. He had a bad road out and I’m glad he’s found sobriety. Probably explains a lot but he left a lot of people high and dry. kudos to rocco for stepping back in. He not really a competition chef either but he has the guts to play in the sandbox…if not just for fun. Antonia and Jet don’t seem like they are having fun! I got worried when I saw Charlie Palmer. He’s not even normally on the circuit on Top Chef which would be more he judging group. He hasn’t a clue on how difficult these games are in the time constraint. But nice to see his big name out there. Can’t get too excited about Cat Cora. I love me some J Waxman and his side kick Katsu LOL

I was disappointed with the final challenge. It was just another version of the same old. I would have preferred something more skills related like the rolling balls being added to the cage or even an endurance challenge. You can use sheer will to stand on an object or hold something up. If you aren’t good at puzzles you won’t be good no matter what.

I’m not sure it ever mattered in this season. It was clear they viewed her as the older woman momma type and that’s generally anyone older than 40. She looks like a a type more to me…big fake boobs, lotta face work done etc. She’s pretty common IMO. Had she been exceptionally athletic with results to prove it then maybe lying about your age is something but my guess is that 23 year old teeny doesn’t give a hoot whether Sue is 45, 55 or 65. if her real age ever comes up people are just going to blow smoke up her ass about how great she looks for her age. What else can you say? If she’s happy then more power to her. She’s seems like a smart lady that maybe had to endure some stuff. It’s just weird that she herself used it from the beginning like it was some “thing.” A misdirection that yielded her something and for that point I think she overestimated the importance of it.

I find it interesting that people tell themselves a story that they believe and it gets so strong it’s just forming its own tsunami against oneself. Apparently Rachel has been deemed an unbeatable fire maker. And Teeny has determined that she would already lose to not only Rachel but pretty much anybody in fire making because she sucks. call me old school but it’s making fire. You have nothing but time on your hand out there. Instead of doing whatever comfortable routine you’ve established on the beach and taking the easy way out every day, why not practice making fire? Heck you should be doing it every day once you get out there anyway. Learn on the job when you don’t have a job because it might save you at the end. Fire making is unpredictable Teeny….you don’t need some speshul majicks to do it nor learn how to do it. She sure gives up easily for someone in their early 20s…..

I was mesmerized by the way those sand granules clung around Andy’s eyes. They had a beautiful “I’m going to Burning Man or a festival” quality to them in a way I wanted to enjoy them and both tell him to knock them off his face before he got a cornea scratch.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Sue’s level of vanity is higher than your average person which is perfectly fine because she seems happy with the image she is trying to portray. Have at it sista. However when she went to get her personal item of mascara and spread it around I’m sure she caught a glimpse of herself in some window or mirror and she did not like what she saw. Thus the soot face and story. Nobody in survivor to date has had permanent grime face. No one. You don’t have it unless you want it. Caroline said everyone told her and she seemed to dab at it but not clean it. Not clean it with water, sand….etc. Just like all plastic surgery, fillers and what not you create the look you want. Just say we didn’t have any foundation so I used dirt and grime to cover up my facial imperfections that only I see in the mirror lol. all that sun would bring out melasma on me. I probably would be horrified to see my face after 2 weeks in the sun. However I would imagine none of you would even notice it!

I wasn’t able to watch it live but found it very satisfying to watch it via FF on DVR lol. My takeaway is that the ending was better than I had thought and this show would have been fine as a 2 part episode. Not sure how they would pay for it but seriously nothing really happens other than watching people do excursions on vacation. I’m fine with the winner because I felt like Punkin winning would have been just voting for the least egregious choice. As a grouo they were forced into a lot of odd social predicaments, with most of us here questioning who was playing and privy to what rules. Theron by luck got to the bag first on the rando elimination. Punkin for some reason wanted to go first on the helicopter challenge. If Nick goes first and then he chooses Trader Joe’s then she has the decision of who to boot off at the end. And none of it is even as fair as a bag of rocks you know? It’s hard to play the social game when the social game is dictated by accidental occurrences.

How can you not know who Genevieve is? Didn’t you listen to her journey of being a person who was so deeply affected by a person she knew for 5 days saying “I trusted you” on a game called….Survivor…suffered so much trauma it made her “put up walls” so she wouldn’t have any more emotion for people? So she played quiet and deep, she had no friends…NO FRIENDS….until she wept upon reading a letter from home that told her she needed to CONNECT and have a sense of COMMUNITY in this game to be ok with herself? repeat story every episode x 5

This is way more responsibility of the jury than on Survivor if they have to pick the winner and then somehow allocate the money based on….what? The absolutely gold standard of “deservability.” Is that height? Weight? Struggle per age related fitness level? Best sob story of childhood? Overcoming trauma? Whiteness of teeth? Ability to cry on cue?

I get what you are saying about punkin turning on beckylee but beckylee was scrambling and her unstable energy and insistence just made her look even more trustworthy. Nick just made a mood first and looked more confident and BL ran around and pleaded her case. She got outplayed. She was so bitter and whiny….shows her immaturity and self grandizing mindset.

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-F was that the spoiler? So it does turn into survivor with a jury? So how does a second season work? Only the first season gets blindsided by a jury?

I hope they vote off Jo Jo siwa. nicks girlfriend looks so young…I thought she was his 14 year old sister! Forgot that he’s just a college kid himself. He looks 38 in this series but he’s wrapped in a hat and coat and cold sore so frankly everyone looks age shifted lol. I’ve never hate watched a show before. 🤠

Theron called nick a master strategist? What strategy is necessary for this game? A walk in a straight line??

Genevieve is starting to take on that smug affect when she talks. She reminds me of the character Christine baranski played on the good wife. That lazy insolent speech pattern. Yikers

Coming in late but Sol looks like he gets his clothes at the Disney closet. He looks like Aladdin tonight wtf Vote out Genevieve. I can’t listen to her anymore.

These holiday episodes are cute and entertaining. Can’t wait for the reruns! Looks like I missed some good competitions.

All I see is a 2 week all expense paid trip doing adventure things. I’ve been doing this for 4 years and paid between 10-15k for one week, not including airfare. There is little threat to dying. I say little because a fellow traveler attempted a gorge jump in Africa and like any adventure item hundreds of people do them a day. Well she hesitated off the edge and jumped into the edge of the platform grabbing it. Looked innocuous enough other than the fact that she broke her leg. Sheer to the bone. So while there is little risk, there is not zero risk. But for the most part people pay for these experiences. someone is going to end up with about 350k after taxes. Not a bad haul.

I will not read that spoiler. I can’t become even more stabby with myself with another piece of information that could make this show even more unsatisfying as it’s set to be lol. I think the final ascent should be a foot race in front of some bears.

Do they? The challenges are just a time thing. The only threat here is a twisted ankle or MCL sprain. Or plot twist by the bearded slow talker that no one can predict. We’ve had how many weeks of people with heights issues screaming they can’t do it….and do it. And weeks of slow Amy and that other lady whose name I already forgot bringing up the rear with no real consequences other than one food penalty. It feels like it will be an arbitrary decision on whether they get to the summit or not. Whatever is best for production? I’m missed the first few episodes but I assumed that only one person will win the money. Why else have eliminations? Is it possible for 1 or 2 people to split the money?

Perhaps Amy could use her logic of “deserving” to get to the summit for her Never Give Up Attitude if we knew that was the criteria. If there was a bonus for making it to a checkpoint early, she (and other slows) would get picked off. But if production wants out of shape people to be able to compete for this prize then speed can’t be the only criteria. The men would have stayed around longer had they have to build camp once they got there because Amy and Trader Joe’s would not have the stamina to then build food and shelter, even if it was a tent. Nothing like getting to camp and already having a fire and concrete block stove set up with some soup already bubbling. If they were truly starving they wouldn’t have left those peppers and crackers for the birds.