Rambler

Mother: "Be very careful and don't let the military see you or you will be shot on sight as looters." Kentaro: "Hey I got a great idea! It's so dark here, let's wave our flashlights all around and start singing at the top of our lungs. I’m sure no one will see us." May: "Are you crazy? STFU you idiot!" Cate: "What a great idea! I think I'll start singing too!" I'm with May on this one. After that I'd be like "Hello Monarch, get me the F away from these two morons as fast as possible!"

If it was me in this elimination, I would create a delicious chocolate dessert and make it look like a pile of dog poop. I wouldn’t be able to go to France, but it would be worth it just to see the look on the judges faces when they had to taste it. 😁

What's funny is that Top Chef had a product placement ad in this week's episode of The Rookie. A cop going undercover tells her boyfriend not to watch the latest episode of Top Chef without her. Then at the end, she admits that she watched the episode without him because, you know, Top Chef is so good who could resist? Nice to see the mise en place make a return after a long absence. The basic setup for the elimination challenge was fine, but it was hurt by the Fast and Furious tie-in. The judges had to eat so quickly that we didn't get any discussion about what was good and bad about each dish as they were eaten like we normally do. Or maybe there was a discussion, but I was too hypnotized by Padma’s cleavage that I completely missed it.

Whelp yet another year of Top Chef with my favorite going down in flames early in the season. Begona seemed to thrive when she was in a situation where she felt free to let her imagination run wild, but when she had to reign it in, she didn't fare so well. Last week I thought she couldn't get too out there because she was in a team situation and had to listen to inputs from her teammates. This week it seemed that she took the holiday theme too literally and just served something that she made for her family during the holidays without trying to elevate it or put a twist on it. It could be that not being fluent in English caused her to misunderstand what was being required of her dish. When she was with the other chefs after judge’s table, it seemed like she had a hard time comprehending what the judges were telling her. Maybe the language barrier was also why she couldn’t coordinate so well with Charbel about the cooking times. Oh well, gotta hope she makes it through LCK. I don't know why they had to make Tom do a dessert. It was a pot luck. If the judges nose got bent out of shape due to a lack of dessert, who were they going to penalize? As it was, the judges probably would have preferred another good main dish to the dense cake they got.

I think I was supposed to hate the sneering Italian cop who was like "You Americans think you can barge in and take over and do whatever you want", but I found myself nodding in agreement with him based on earlier episodes of this show. Of course he was proven completely correct when Jubal ordered them to break in the house of an Italian family without getting a warrant, and based solely on the word of some random dude on the street who they were screaming at because he happened to be looking in the windows of the car they were after. And then afterwards Jubal was all "we should go back and interrogate the family that we just traumatized." Yeah great idea there Jubal! I wonder if the writers on FBI International secretly hate the writers on the FBI mothership because they totally threw Jubal's character into the trash.

That was a strange elimination. Who was the winning chef? The way it was set up, there was no way to tell. This is a competition, so it was weird they didn't include a way to pick a winner. Then at judges table, they usually give feedback to the chefs on the bottom, but here it was like, "Luciana, your dish left us a little flat, so see ya." At least the other chefs commenting from the sidelines ala Last Chance Kitchen was entertaining. It would probably get old really fast, but I wouldn't mind seeing it in a couple episodes per season.

May and Dale were two strong chefs who just got caught up in a bad team dynamic. They had first choice and it seemed like May had an idea on how to deconstruct the Scotch egg, so she insisted that they take it. Dale wanted the fish and chips, but decided to be a team player and give in to May. Then, after he found out that it was going to be a double elimination, it seemed like he got scared and insisted that they play it safe because he didn't know anything about Scotch eggs. This time it was May that gave in, so they wound up with a dish that was neither here nor there. Unfortunately bad things happen to good chefs during team challenges.

I’m liking Begona the most so far. That's two elimination challenges in a row where the judges were like "this dish is crazy, but I love it". She doesn't get much screen time, so I guess she doesn't have a made for TV personality, but I gotta love a chef who lets it all hang out creatively. I suppose on one of the challenges she's going to go too far out there and crash and burn, but hopefully that won't be for a while.

Diplomatic immunity just means the Chinese diplomat can't be sent to jail, it doesn't give him free rein to commit crimes in this country. As soon as the billionaire showed up for the exchange, the FBI could have moved in with a SWAT team and taken him back by force. They are only untouchable if they are on embassy grounds. And realistically, if an American was kidnapped on American soil and held for ransom by a Chinese official, it would be a major international incident and there would be no way the State Department would just roll over and play dead. That would just give any foreign government carte blanche to kidnap any American they wanted.

So we got a terrorist armed with a WMD who may or may not be in this house here. You know what would be an absolutely great idea? To stand on the sidewalk in front of the house shooting the breeze with FBI printed in big yellow letters all over our jackets. I'm sure nothing could go wrong

Speaking of body swapping, I think this show got swapped out with The Orville this week. Here we get Spock-T’Pring hijinks along with Enterprise Bingo and meanwhile Orville went dead serious the entire episode. I hope M’Benga has more of that brain restoring goo on hand...

When the car wash guy opened the van door to reveal the bloody corpse, I felt certain the cause of death was going to be that the victim committed an act of seppuku after being forced to listen to that obnoxious sales pitch.

Glad to see that they seem to be going back to the separate stories for each episode format for this series. The season long story arcs don't work for Star Trek IMO. Well maybe they could work if they found a decent writing staff, but that seems like something CBS is incapable of doing.

It was hilarious how they stuffed the episode so full of Jimmy/Casey drama that they had to move the investigation part of the plot along at warp speed. They were like "Oh yeah, it's 3/4ths of the way through the episode and we have an actual case that needs to be solved. I know! We'll have McGee say 'We cross-referenced the whatchamacallit with the gobbledygook and that got us the exact location of the terrorist's hideout.' Then the dimwit terrorist they left at the hideout will point out the hidden map that conveniently has all the target locations. Of course the terrorists who are planting the toxin are going to bring the scientist who has the antidote along with them for no apparent reason so that everything can be wrapped up in about five minutes. Now we have time for the conclusion of our Jimmy/Casey drama along with the final Dun-Dun-Dunnn moment. Yay!"

Jess noticed that the DEA agent had a clear shot at the drug lord, but didn't fire. Of course the dummy could have took the shot and deliberately tried to miss, but I guess they needed to move the episode along. So a guy is gunned down in his front yard in broad daylight and nobody in the neighborhood noticed? Not to mention the little girl screaming her head off while she was being dragged away, and more gunshots when the guard was killed. Maybe everyone in the area should look into signing up for a neighborhood watch program.