Darth Nigel

I caught a couple of riffs later in the "Doctor On a Guitar" interlude. But no, I didn't catch the grand entrance music. Do tell :)

Maybe it's time to get new hosts. I know... Imagine if you will The Next Food Network Host starring your favorite (?) Food Network hosts and hangers-on in a multi-week multi-round elimination competition to pick the new hosts of this award-winning reality competition. Join hosts Danushka Lysek and Alton Brown in a series of elimination challenges that have nothing to do with cooking or hosting. Competitors (probably including Amanda Freitag, Elizabeth Falkner, Scott Conant, Duff Goldman and that guy from Cake Wars) will be joined in weekly challenges by eliminated contestants from Food Network Star who will judge and critique them. The web series for eliminated contestants (possibly called "I'm a Chef, get me out of here!") will be hosted by internet personality CooksDelight and eliminations will be voted on by denizens of the popular forum site Previously.tv.

Shibori said: "The Food Police" -- Oh, I would watch the hell out of that show. Are you listening, FN?

Well, that was dire. I'm reminded of a comment of Alton's from one of the early seasons, (paraphrasing)"Can we just send this lot home and start again?" Some of them (Michelle, Emilia, Dom) were just hard to watch, and some of them (Arnold, Alex) were boring. I take no pleasure from watching people embarrass themselves in public (that's one reason I never go to karaoke nights), and I was cringing at most of these people who have made it half-way through the competition. A couple of thoughts on Emilia: first, she might have done better had she taken a couple of gentle, good-humored shots at Bobby or Giada rather than her fellow contestants. Second: I wish we'd had more camera footage of her return to the Green room and her fellow competitors... All in all, not the best night of television this series has seen.

I'd sooner watch Lenny than Richard Blais :(

Oh, crap. Next week, in a very special episode of All Star Academy, the mentors will compete to bring back an eliminated contestant.

They didn't show the judges' comments after the first two rounds. Well, OK, I guess. But then, when they did discuss the "complete meal", the judges did not discuss the dessert round on camera. Seemed like a strange choice from the director/editor...

I would have been happy with whoever won; this season had very few annoying competitors. I was struck by a shot from the very first Judge's Table of the season, where the top three for the first challenge were lined up to see who won. Gregory, Doug and Mei. I wonder how often that happens?

Yeah, I made it about half way through this one. I as waiting for them to roll out the professional drift driver to run the road course, and was hoping that they would also wheel out "The Stig" for the non-drift lap. "Some say, he once burned off an eyebrow on live tv..." So not thrilled by a couple of the episodes (this one, the Doom/video game one) and a bit ambiguous on the "transformer" one. Was hoping for a few more episodes with actual myths in them (even if they revisited some that they did 10 seasons ago). All in all ... meh

First season of Top Chef: Masters when the contestants had to cook an appetizer using only items found at a gas station/Kwiki-Mart. The challenge was a good variant on the "supermarket aisle" challenge (which I also enjoyed). But what made me chuckle was a line from one of the chefs while they are milling about in the Kwiki-Mart -- "I'm thinking of making a catfood tartare"

Just thought of this. Was the whole thing the Doctor's dream? He was being attacked by the psychic head lice, and that was all. Everything else was his imagination?

Not bad at all (until the end). A good romp, with scary monsters and a somewhat unconventional Father Christmas (loved Nick Frost, and the writing of the character). It even made a vague sort of sense, which is better than some Christmas specials. I loved the ending with Old Clara, who had led a full life, and had had adventures on her own. She was happy, and even seemed pleased to see the Doctor again, before she died. It also (in a sense) called back to the "School Reunion" episode with Sarah Jane Smith, except that Clara had been more content. So why did we get the last couple of minutes? Completely spoiled it for me.

This felt like a wasted episode, but came so close... Consider this: They send the contestants off for their "one-of-a-kind" dining experience ($1000 ice-cream, $777 burger, $34 pepto-bismol). Contestants come back and then are told -- "OK, you have 60 seconds to describe on camera what you ate, and why it was special". Points off for "buzz-words". Now we have a stack-ranked order of contestants based on that. Contestants pick from the available proteins in order of ranking. Now we split into two teams -- either TexasBarbie and Emma get to pick or we spin a roulette wheel or something Vegas-sy. So there you have it: Both halves of the show are more tied together, we get to see some actual on-camera food description, and it might have sucked less.

What I would have liked (well, other than a different main challenge) would have been if Bobby Flay had done his own "Selfie"/"Behind the scenes and a tip" video, so we could have had something with which to compare the contestant videos. Might have been interesting, in a couple of dimensions. But oh Ghod, watching the "viral" videos reminded me of a line of Alton's from one of the early seasons of the show "can we send this lot home and try again". When my son was in elementary school, he and a couple of his friends/classmates recorded episodes of a "crime show" on our street; that show was more coherent and better shot than those viral videos.

I liked this episode. A pretty good season finale, but considering that I'd given up on the show earlier, and the last few episodes brought me back, it was way better than I expected. Two minor disappointments: - I wish that after he zorched Garrett, Phil had said "Game over, man, game over" rather than whatever the throwaway line was. - more seriously, May should just have shot Ward in the back of the head (perhaps more than once) rather than the brawl. But I'm ready to watch next season... if only to find out why Coulson is writing modern Gallifreyan :)

I've tended to like the more "cranky" Doctors. William Hartnell and Chris Eccleston were my favorites. I also liked John Hurt, what little we saw of him. I have hope for Peter Capaldi. I'm not sure what that says about me. Also thought that Donna Noble was a good companion, and the journey that the character took was remarkable. Especially when (at the end), Donna reverted back to the "original chav" and we saw how much she had grown in her time with the Doctor. I tend to hate the "most special snowflake ever" companions (Rose, Clara, Skye -- wait, wrong show)... I'm not sure what that says about me either.