jmthrd

the first challenge was the closest this show has ever come to capturing how i work in the kitchen: inspired by family tradition hackneyed twists on flavors/presentations spending the whole time on instagram fuck it, let's get popeyes involved while we're at it

where can i buy OOEY GOOEY WITH JESS TOM merch

they used to do the "don't say delicious" challenge on the flagship program and it was always one of the best ones, so i was glad to see it here. the format of the show was nice-- cross between food network competition and facebook video. i'll keep watching this, i guess nobody here is going to see the other side of the star salvation tunnel, even if i want jason to come back and take the food network star title at the end. that'd be the icing on the cake for this season

bobby and giada were actually good mentors tonight, and i think the show leaning into the star-to-judge pipeline helped with that. since it's midterms, thoughts and placements on everyone: adam - adam would clean sweep "the next travel channel star" but he's never going to win this. it was his time to go amy - i like amy in confessionals but not in the competition. i'd watch amy's show faster than anyone else's, but only if it were confessional amy. tonight on the judging panel i realized that we'd get competition amy and that's not enough for me. fifth place christian - good rhythm with bobby and giada on the self-critique! a shame i don't remember anything about him in the critiques. runner up harrison - i don't think harrison realized the skills you need to judge a food network show are different than the skills you need to win a challenge on food network star. you don't need to give out tips for the viewer at home and you don't need to have a take on the dish being prepared; nobody watches iron chef to figure out what's for dinner tomorrow night. he should have caught himself and stopped when giada kept escalating, but his performance tonight was as much of a failure on the show as it was for him for teaching the wrong lessons. jess - jess is going to win - she'd be the best judge of anyone here, her POV played to an interesting dimension tonight, and "food novelist" is just the kind of title the network is going to want to have. special thanks for splitting the panels for the giada/bobby challenge into a realistic panel with this season's likely top 3 plus adam, and a cringe panel with everyone else. i got to have both worlds tonight! katie - katie is not going to win but i want her to go far so she can continue to be a bad team player and whine over ingredients other people got to get first. sixth place manny - +1 for liking manny but i think he's still rushing himself. it happened when he was critiquing bobby's bearnaise as well as his video package-- i think it's what he does when he's nervous. it's gonna come up again and it'll be too tight of a competition to make up for it. fourth place and an invite for comeback kitchen 2019 palak - i like watching palak and she has a level of cooking authority nobody else holds a candle to. but i don't see her judging a show and being good at it. second place -- sidebar: why does giada not have a competition show? every year it's a new spin on the daytime format but i want her to read primetimers to filth for even suggesting they make a baked pasta

"Logan as the Clippy of The Forge" was the highlight of this dud of a finale. I wanted to spend a whole episode in the Forge instead of a couple of scenes and instead I got a bunch of confusing dud twists. Had they done the Charlotte/Dolores twist at the top of the season and played through both timelines with that as the hook, I'd probably have had more fun this season. But in this form the back half was a real struggle. The third season has a ton of possibility in the sense that I've got no clue where it's being taken from here. I doubt anyone on the show does either so I'll probably be back to see what story decisions they end up making and what ways they try to hide it from the audience.

I’m lucky to have lived a life without much regret; choosing to watch the Westworld finale last night over this is going to be a black mark for the rest of my life. I am so upset with myself for doing that when i could have seen Giada react to Tyler Florence describe the morocco party as “lit”. Now that I look back at it, the only thing Westworld could have done to win me over last night was a shot by shot recreation of this episode with Dolores instead of Bobby Flay. Every single one of these parties was a disaster in a different way and it was a treat to get to watch it unfold. I can maybe only see two people winning this thing at the end (either Palak or Christian) and it's the final eight, so we have five more weeks of this. I don’t know if it was the twist in the challenge, or if it was the teams, or if the Volkswagen Tiguan’s state of the art conference call feature was a means of hypnosis and everyone was in a state of trance, but whatever made this episode such a trainwreck needs to be isolated in a lab environment so it can be studied in its purest form. Farewell to Rebekah, who I was not-so-secretly hoping would make the crab mac ’n’ cheese bites anyway and try to tie it into pasta fest. Star Salvation is yours for the taking.

Rebekah telling Simone to leave time for Manny, after sucking down a half hour to film her segment, earned her a spot in my all time hall of fame Food Network Star finalists. There's no chance she's going to win but if by some miracle it happens, give her a Beat Bobby Flay type show where she can just break whatever rules of the challenge she wants and I'd never miss an episode.

I am truly disappointed nobody tried to drink the jambalaya.