Pandora

I love Rasika kind of nerding out over Carla Hall too.

Between Kristen “hopping” into the quickfire challenge and faking everyone out with the start, I’d say she’s knocking it outta the park.

All they had to do is kneel down. How bizarre. That’s gonna go down in college football history as a top 10 “what were they thinking?!?”

Carmona’s father died shortly before the match. Apparently she wasn’t told until after the game and celebration. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/38229486/spain-winning-goalscorer-carmona-learns-father-death-women-world-cup-final

I’m a little disappointed Australia didn’t make it to the final. That would have been glorious. And Tony Gustavsson is so fun to watch, he’s one of the most animated coaches around. But they had a good run, I’m glad they had so much success on their home turf.

I think they showed the bedrooms once, when the baby-purée guy had his back problem and had to leave. But yeah, otherwise, not one shot that I can recall. What a waste of money and resources. I’m thinking they probably did the landscape and Florence shots pre- or post production, when they had more time but didn’t have access to the expensive villa. Which after the House Hunters lead-in, seemed like a natural star of the show. Honestly looking back at the whole show I can’t figure out what was actually on screen for an hour per show. We saw almost no background of the cheftestants, little of their interaction outside of the game, and little of the villa interior. I guess that leaves the actual cooking along with Alex and said cheftestants tasting food and snarking. It may sound weird but they focused too much on the cooking imo. Especially since the dishes were usually substandard. I’d would’ve liked to see more interactions outside the kitchen, maybe I would have cared about the cheftestants. And more nonnas and local food producers! Those people were awesome! I agree with everybody else, this show could have been great but they really missed the mark. What a shame. It was great to hate-watch, though.

I love Carla. But I’m afraid she would cry every time someone got eliminated.

Suni Lee is the reigning Olympic individual champion, not sure how much more known you can get in Olympic circles. The two para athletes are less of household names but I’m glad Top Chef chose them to both highlight their own talents and the Paralympics in general. It’s more of TC doing good where they can, imho.

I like the change of using the athletes instead of family members.

Jet lag maybe? She seems to have a lot of projects going on and as per upthread posts she wasn’t originally cast for this series. They kinda jammed her in. She could be exhausted and totally over it all. Considering how ill thought out this series is, Alex also may be reacting to the atmosphere of general crappy planning and production. She’s stuck in a dog of a show and knows it.

Dear God, not more Corey and Preston. Watching those two donkeys being voted out was a rare moment of sunshine in this series. Now they bring them back for not one, but two shows. Why? Did they think viewers were slavering for more of them? Watching the rest of the “chefs” screw up basic vegetables just confirms my prior suspicion that they scraped the bottom of the barrel for this show. Trenica probably did the best job of the bunch, then promptly shot herself in the foot with those cherry tomatoes, ensuring a Corey/Preston nightmare scenario. Thanks for nothing, Trenica.

I thought Sara running was adorable too, I could swear I saw her jumping up and clicking her heels. (Which I sure as hell can’t do.) I think the trip to LCK has energized her and taken a mental block out of the way….after all, after being voted out once maybe there’s nothing to lose? Anyway, I’m firmly in camp Sara, and when she’s cooking her food and not trying to meet some strange challenge criteria, she’s quite a force. I think she could beat Buddha.

I get the feeling the show wasn’t exactly overrun with applicants.

We’ve hardly seen cheftestants interacting beyond the challenges, and only brief (usually snarky) talking heads. After the double elimination everyone was hugging and I thought I heard something about visiting in Texas. So some people have obviously bonded, we’ve seen nothing of that, or anything else that would make us care about this group. Total edit fail. Everything about this series feels rushed, unplanned, and half-assed, I’m not surprised the editing is like that too.

As others have pointed out, Alex has been rather salty. But I had to laugh when she drifted into the kitchen and said “you only have two minutes and I’m here to stress you out about it!” Then walked out. I guess if you’re going to be the villain, be transparent. There was no reason to only take the capos to taste the cheese, except to add to the general asshattery of the show. And I agree with everyone that they’re just making it up as they go.