rab01

Late to the party but I had to post to say that our long national nightmare is over now that Dom is finally gone. I know lots of people liked him and I don't hate him as a person but his strongest point was supposed to be his cooking and he never cooked *interesting* food. It was always the successful execution of a traditional dish. Where's the excitement in watching that? So, I ended up being bored by his dishes and it didn't help that he stank in all of his elimination challenge performances. If this show is trying to find a Food Network Star, he couldn't help their current line-up because they're already covered for Italian cooking; if this show is about finding someone great on camera, he clearly wasn't; if this is just a game show where the winner is the one who wins the most challenges, he lost every single one. So, in all ways, this was an elimination a long time coming. As for the holiday selection, I agree that Halloween was a tough choice but it's hard to come up with other choices. I can understand them wanting to stay away from Passover and Easter (or even making that the option of the contestant) but what would that leave? New Year's Eve? The Super Bowl? Lastly, my crackpot theory of the week -- teaming up with Michelle was so terrible that it messes up contestants for an entire episode after (or longer) -- The Boys v. Girls dinner party started the women's epic losing streak, Dom was absolutely horrible on the Improv challenge that followed his work with Michelle, and now Eddie completely crumbles immediately after being her partner .... she was the black cat of the competition.

Aren't we all being a little hard on Bobby? Is being the best group in the history of this show really such a high bar to clear?

So much this ^ (and to everyone else who said something similar). If Emilia had just made fun of Bobby and Giada, she'd still be here. Her performance was so terrible that standing there wall-eyed and silent (the real "Domanuce") would have been a vast improvement so it's low hanging fruit to suggest an alternate "act" but here goes anyway ---- I would have loved her if she had imitated Giada's smile -- how the smile turns to a wince if she likes you and something bad just happened or her smile stays but her eyes turn cold if you've just done something inappropriate. It would have been funny and she could have made it self-deprecating and people would have gotten it. *sigh* That said, Emilia was my LEAST favorite contestant at the start of this show and nothing she has done since has endeared her to me. I'm just sad that they've eliminated every woman from this show pretty much in order. I'm a standard issue straight man and wouldn't mind if there was some eye candy left on the show for my type. Hey, Eddie's harem can't have all the fun ;)

I think that's just another proof of his professionalism. All of the real FN stars have to say nice things about corporate sponsors' food products and to occasionally do commercial endorsement deals with them. If you can't sound like you want that, you probably shouldn't have the job. Seriously, he was better at that job than Duff Goldman was, who was saying the same type of stuff on this episode.

Emilia was horrible but Dom still should have been kicked to the curb. Unless he's faking it on producers' orders, he is wholly unsuited to this job. Emilia tried to be funny and failed miserably. Dom just tried to run away from his job of presenting on stage. That said, Emilia's performance precluded her from ever getting the win so I can't feel too too bad about her leaving now. Did anyone else notice how hard Bobby and Giada were arguing against Michelle? Every time Kermit and Medusa said anything nice about her, Bobbie or Giada immediately dissed her.

To take the last point first, I totally understand where you're coming from. ... Hey, I said I had an unpopular opinion ;) As for your other points: I think she actually was hired to be "glam" or else we wouldn't see her dressed more conservatively on her cooking show and on Hollywood Game Night. Female judges of season-long elimination show often dress just like she does - or worse (e.g., J-Lo on American Idol, the female judges on The Voice and Heidi Klum on Project Runway. *Yeah, I know comparing anyone to J-Lo is kind of setting a really low bar but I don't watch a lot of competition shows*) As for prime time season long cooking competitions, the only others I watch are Top Chef and Next Iron Chef ... and in those Padma Lakshmi and Donatella Arpaia showed more cleavage that Giada. There's lots of stuff about Giada that I've found really grating in the past. I've also made fun of her clothing when she wears stuff that's wildly impractically like spiked heels when she's going to have to walk across the lawn. I guess I just haven't found her wardrobe this season to be wildly risque or inappropriate (other than that boob-slit outfit). ETA - I just thought of a counterexample to my argument. I caught some of an episode of Masterchef and the female judge on that show dressed much more conservatively.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I think Giada has been a better judge this season than in prior years and I haven't seen her giving the women a disproportionately hard time like she did in years past. That in turn may be coloring my impression of her wardrobe choices but other than boob-slit outfits, they haven't seemed inappropriate to me. She is a Hollywood scion and she dresses like one. I've seen plenty of older stars dress in more revealing clothing than hers when they know they are going to be photographed ... now her shark-like grin on the other hand ;)

I think the show needs to get back to spending more time on the characters' work and their hobbies that have nothing to do with family and relationships. Those episodes are probably a little harder to write because it may require leaving out some cast members but I haven't seen enough of Sheldon being a scientist lately or of Amy being the smartest person in the room or Wolowitz being capable but always doing something disastrous, etc.

I am never rewatching this show because I felt guilty enough the first time around but I never thought that Brandon didn't see what was going on in the episode; I thought he was just trying to pretend it wasn't happening as a defense. In other words, this was one of the least douchey early Brandon episodes. Also Kudos to the actor playing Jim for being willing to look gross enough to help sell the plotline. I'm pretty sure that he knew how he looked in those light pink pajamas. *shudder* One final thought -- please consider using shorter clips or talking over them even more because .... seriously, they make me cringe so hard that I almost have to quit the podcast sometimes.

I like it when judges cut into a contestant's BS to get to the point but I don't know why it was Michelle that got the treatment rather than Dom. Why was it more her job to work better with someone she dislikes than his job to work better with someone he dislikes? Her food was better than his and her presentation was better than his so why was it her problem more than his? I have to admit that I also felt a little cheated by the interruption in that moment because if they'd let her go on longer, I think we would have seen more real drama between Dom and Michelle. I feel like they both thought that one or the other of them were about to lose so the knives were out. I don't think either of them are winning so I'm just interested in how entertaining they will be until they get canned.

I think Arnold was more than justified in being scared of being paired with a home cook. As he said, when you are cooking in a restaurant kitchen, it's better to be paired with someone who's worked on in one before. Also, Michelle herself has said that she's not good at pushing out tons of dishes at a time because she's a home cook - another big minus for your partner in this challenge. Also props to Delewar upthread for highlighting Rue dumping Dom. It's really interesting that someone who's food has been shown to be praised often was dumped so quickly by Rue ...

Some of the other contestants' food must taste so much worse than they show on TV because, otherwise, there is absolutely no excuse for their keeping Dom - even if the idiot judges (particularly Anne) didn't let Michelle explain just what went wrong. Michelle was right to ask him what flavors he was going to put into his risotto - they have to match flavor profiles for God's sake. don't go all "risotto is a blank canvas" on your partner. Also, she did nothing wrong in her presentation, she started the explanation of the two dishes, she certainly did not "use up all the good words" like Dom bullied her/whined at her about. He's dead to me now just like Alex died last week when he went over time without apologizing. By the way, Alex didn't just have no knowledge of the spices that make up 5-spice, he didn't know the components of his absolute favorite ingredient. How the hell can you think you can get a job presenting food to the camera when you don't know crap all about your favorite ingredient? It's too bad that the show didn't tell us some of the secret constraints they were cooking under. As much as we make fun of them, these people are decent cooks and a bunch of them put out lousy food this episode. I think they were given one hour to cook and told that there could be anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours between that time and when they served but they'd have 15 minutes to plate. I think that's why they scrambled so hard to get plates out and had unevenly cooked dishes. You can't cook and plate 40 dishes in 15 minutes but you also can't have meat that sits for 90 minutes after you've cooked it.

I think he was told that she had 75 years left to live if resurrected and thought that she would gets the first 37 years for herself and the remainder for the Fae. Personally, I still have no idea why he thought that would be the way it would work. But, even if he knew, why would that automatically be worse for her than being a corpse?

I figure every show where they claim that, the people are earning something - whether in tips or cash under the table - and declaring nothing in their tax returns so they have to say zero on TV. They're probably grossly underpaid but not getting absolutely nothing.

I love that Sharky and Little Big Head are so self-evidently true that they are not derogatory.

And, you're right about that. Sure, anything that creates drama through weird competitive constraints is better than creating drama by keeping around obviously unqualified assholes <cough>Penny<cough cough> #douchetag<cough>. But ... the things I've always hated about ingredient swaps is (1) that I feel like I've wasted time watching the previous buying montage, and (2) the contestants almost never have time to think about what to make with the new ingredients. I might have liked it more here if they had upped the drama by switching their cars before they left Whole Paycheck. Then we could have b-roll of the contestants bickering in their cars about who gets which protein and what to make with the junk they've been given. That would've given us more drama and better food, a win-win. But again, you're right it's nowhere close to the worst gimmick they can pull. I guess I'm disappointed that I don't see anyone other than Jay, Arnold or Eddie winning this thing (yes, I know that at least one of them will be sacrificed to the "no-growth" narrative arc they have every season) and that the only woman that might have any chance is Rue. (Emilia might be "improving" but she's still not actually interesting in any way. Seriously, her ceiling is a Melissa D'Arabian level of competency without using a dead family member for backstory.) That leaves a whole lot less interest for me in the remainder of the season.

Rosa was my favorite contestant so I'm disappointed she was knocked out this episode. If only Dom had served bad food, they could have eliminated him this week rather than in a few weeks. I stand by my belief at the outset that some of his early stage fright was a put-on but I think what we saw this week was about what he's got right now - and that won't cut it. That said, Alex bugged the everlasting crap out of me this time. It's not OK to eat into someone else's time and it's really not OK to not abjectly apologize to him afterwards. At the Judge's Table he kind of gave his usual smiling nod at criticism and didn't jump in to apologize on camera - he's dead to me. Also, I don't think that Bobby Flay actually doesn't know that sandwich or how to pronounce it; I think that was his way of trying to drive home to Alex that his presentation was long, boring, muddled and unrelatable to the audience. (Also, Bobby Flay seems to be into saying that he doesn't know big words this season; remember him claiming not to know what "parsimonious" meant after GZ said it?) I hated the ingredient switch because it's a trick that I detest every time they do it on Top Chef and it has even less bearing on this show. The rest of the challenge seemed fine to me. You could save your entire team if the menu choices and team presentation were good enough to snow the audience (and you could push out enough food to feed them all). The dials of doom and the taste of the food were the deciders for who got sent home from the remainder - a fairer structure than most challenges. The team aspect came into play when Emilia got help breaking down her chicken and it might have mattered elsewhere and we just didn't see it. (Admittedly, there were waaaaay fewer shots of people tasting each others food than last week. Could that have been because the contestants learned last week that the judges weren't all that into awarding team victories?)

I wonder if it's still possible to find clips of Arsenio's old show? In one episode he interviewed Jason Priestly and asked why no black people lived in Beverly Hills and there's a wonderfully uncomfortable moment or two before Arsenio lets him off the hook and moves on.

In Clueless, you probably didn't quite get the byplay with her father in the movie when she gets home (because it's using U.S. terminology). He says to Cher something like "two learner's permits don't add up to one license." In lots of places in the U.S., teenagers first apply for a learner's permit that allows them to drive a car with a licensed adult sitting next to them. You aren't allowed to drive a car without an adult until you have a license. In other words, Cher was driving illegally when she had that accident in the movie and her Dad was chastising her but recklessly not stopping it.

To add to DaBigDave's point, the Celtics' whiteness was such a prevalent theme in the culture at the time of this show that talk show hosts joked about thinking the color control on their TVs was broken when the Celtics played and Dennis Rodman created a media firestorm when he said that Larry Bird would be just another good player if he were black.

Yeah, Nikki uses different ingredients to satisfy in the same way as the unhealthy alternative without necessarily tasting the same while Bobby uses ingredients that remind you of the original. It's like how he cooked on his other show and I always thought while I watched his show that I'm sure it tastes fine but wouldn't ever be chosen over the original dish unless health was a factor.

16 years age difference - the same as George Clooney and Amal; less than the difference between Warren Beatty and Anette Bening so ... *shrug*

If Alex switches to street food next week, he can survive and become a contender. Otherwise, he seems to be the weakest of the guys and it should be a guy's turn to go next week. I've liked Jay since he was first introduced and just now realized that it's because he looks a bit like Kevin from the best season of Top Chef (the Las Vegas season where Kevin was the front-runner going into the finals but personal problems got in his way during the finals). I think the challenges were fine - both parts. They need to be good at making attractive food and the winner wasn't chosen until they had tasted all but two of the dishes. As for the meal, they didn't say that any of those categories were currently trendy or that anyone would put them all into one meal. They were asking them to make edgy foods that might attract the attention of jaded diners and each course had a specific element that might be challenging to some people. Unless the talking heads and reaction shots were flat-out lying, I thought it was pretty clear that some of the Ladies' food was near-inedible - particularly Rosa's. I like her so I'm worried that she'll be gone within two weeks. She's had too many food slip-ups and they don't seem to like her presentations as much as I do. (I think she's legitimately funny - not just funny by grading on a curve against other Food Network people.) But I have to say this even though I'm a guy ---- HOW IS IT OK FOR A BUNCH OF WOMEN TO GO WITH SEXY AS A THEME WHEN THE JUDGES ARE EQUALLY DIVIDED BETWEEN HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN AND MEN? I gather that Eddie is a more than ordinarily handsome guy and that Dom's looks have some fans here too. So, it's not OK that the women instantly went to sex appeal as a theme and the guys never even considered it. And, it's not OK that none of the judges even commented on the disparity. </end rant>

But didn't Alex vote to keep him and dump Sita?

This may be really shallow of me but ... in what way is the Rock's line about leasing bad *financial* advice for an athlete? (morally wrong maybe) For so many athletes who went bankrupt, child support payments and buying crap like cars for the hangers-on figure prominently in their downfall. I'm not seeing how saying that in a club suggests he "he must have missed a few introductory classes".