S10.E10: A Fine Finale

[Drogo]

In the Season 10 finale, the final two recruits face their final challenge: prepare a three-course, restaurant-quality meal for a panel of experts, including Tino Feliciano, Jesse Palmer and Claudia Sandoval.

Anne Burrell and Rachael Ray help coach their recruits, but ultimately this is their final chance to show how much they have improved since Week 1.

The culinary experts pick a winner based on a blind tasting and the winning recruit walks away with $25,000.

[LexieLily]

Wasn't one of these "culinary experts" on The Bachelor once?

Glad for Daniel that he won, but it makes it difficult to care about the finale when it doesn't seem like Anne even liked her recruit.

[tabloidlover]

I thought Ann should have won.  I'm pissed.

[mlp]

I don't know that I'd even like Daniel if I met him personally but I was rooting for him.  Ann seems like a nice person but she would drive me nuts with her histrionics.  And she said "on fleek."  Twice.  Gah.

Rachael would make me nuts too.  She does her contestants no favors by doing everything for them.  Anne is a much better teacher.

I couldn't stand Claudia when she was on MC so I wasn't exactly delighted to see her again.  I can't look at her big red mouth without thinking of The Joker.  I wonder how FN came to use her as a judge when they couldn't even bring themselves to utter the words "Master Chef" in her introduction.

How is Jesse Palmer a food expert?  In his introductions, they just say "football player."  No food blogger or cookbook author or anything related to food.  I wonder how he ended up on FN.

[Snarklepuss]

45 minutes ago, mlp said:

I couldn't stand Claudia when she was on MC so I wasn't exactly delighted to see her again.  I can't look at her big red mouth without thinking of The Joker.  I wonder how FN came to use her as a judge when they couldn't even bring themselves to utter the words "Master Chef" in her introduction.

LOL, Claudia looked even more Joker-ish on this show than on "Master Chef".  I had Mr. Snarklepuss in stiches after I froze the frame at a particularly Joker-ish moment.

Re:  "on fleek" - I had hoped we'd heard the last of that expression with Tregaye on "Food Network Star".  Strange that the only times I've heard it used on TV have been on Food Network.

I knew Daniel would win this weeks ago which makes me wonder if it was ordained to be so by TPTB.  Anne's constant overcompensation around him tipped me off that he was her favorite.  The lady did protest a little too much in her constant criticism of him and I knew it had to mean she was covering up a secret preference for him.

I really didn't have a preference for a winner, but I felt sad for Ann that she didn't win.

I don't know, I liked this show better in its first few seasons, but I say that about every show lately.

[Testing]

Yay team Red! Was rooting for Daniel and chef Anne. Glad Anne was mostly hands off when preparing meals in the beginning vs. Rachael doing a lot of cooking for Ann.

Hopefully, everyone has learned something from the show. First time tuning in and it was a very interesting season.

[Christi]

Asian Bowie for the win!!

Ive watched the whole season and he never bugged me, because well, hes my Asian Bowie lol

HATED the judges...what a bunch of humorless Douchebags...

Edited March 6, 2017 by Christi

[spiderpig]

2 hours ago, mlp said:

I don't know that I'd even like Daniel if I met him personally but I was rooting for him.  Ann seems like a nice person but she would drive me nuts with her histrionics.  And she said "on fleek."  Twice.  Gah.

Rachael would make me nuts too.  She does her contestants no favors by doing everything for them.  Anne is a much better teacher.

I couldn't stand Claudia when she was on MC so I wasn't exactly delighted to see her again.  I can't look at her big red mouth without thinking of The Joker.  I wonder how FN came to use her as a judge when they couldn't even bring themselves to utter the words "Master Chef" in her introduction.

How is Jesse Palmer a food expert?  In his introductions, they just say "football player."  No food blogger or cookbook author or anything related to food.  I wonder how he ended up on FN.

This, this and this!

I already didn't like Ann (found her too fakety-fake), but the use of "on fleek" twice sealed the deal.  Did you hear me shrieking at the screen, @mlp?

Don't get me started on Claudia.  I understand they're making a new version of Stephen King's "It", and Claudia could be cast as the nightmarish clown Pennywise, who lived in a storm drain and snatched innocent little kids.  As far as I can recall this is the first time I've seen her since MC, and I had managed to put her out of my mind until tonight.  Thanks, WCIA.

I had no idea who Jesse Palmer was.  At least he was pleasant.

[Rammchick]

Culinary experts?  The Joker from Masterchef and an anchor from Good Morning America??  Really?  Any credibility this stupid show might have had went right out the window right there.  And who didn't see Daniel winning?  I said that weeks ago when it was obvious that Anne was being unnecessarily harsh with him.

And frankly, I don't understand why Ann didn't say anything to Rachel about not letting her cook during the demo.

[Amarsir]

The show never really had any credibility in judging. (Or anything else, really.)  At best it was "Here's the night manager at Chipotle, a woman who has posted 28 different Yelp reviews, and an audience member for Beat Bobby Flay who wandered into the wrong room."

In addition to the well-observed problem of Rachel's teaching method, she also leaned on techniques that Ann had never used before - like deep frying or making pastry dough. This completely invalidates the show's premise that they've been trained for this moment.  A real finale should not only draw on what they've learned, but should involve choices by the contestant. Otherwise, judges saying "The pears and blueberries worked wonderfully together" is meaningless since they're judging someone who didn't pick them.

[theatremouse]

I thought there was not only a no touching/tasting rule but also some sort of distance requirement from the coaches to the contestants. Am I remembering that wrong? Rachel seemed ALL up in Ann's grill, like inches away and doing all but touching. It distracted me because I'm used to some sort of forced distance. Also I knew that dough was going to be raw on the inside because Ann even said she put it in 3 minutes too late and she egg washed the hell out of it. Of course it looked gorgeous and golden brown if you egg washed it. And I'm not saying she shouldn't have egg washed it, but people do that for the look. She misled herself into thinking it was done. If she'd really been taught along the way, she'd have already known that.

It did drive me nuts that in the practice session Rachel basically did everything. Her teaching method is demonstrate. Anne's teaching method was "do what I tell you". Automatically better lends itself to the format of the finale. I get that maybe some people might learn better by watching once then doing, but Rachel really fucked over her contestant. And they edited it to illustrate it. 

The football player bugged me. I know he's on GMA now, but dude seemed like he had all his comments pre-written for him and he was supposed to act host-ey during their judging. He was little Mr. Segue Intro man. I don't know whether they actually did write lines for him and this was intentional, or if that's just his idea of how he was supposed to sound and participate, but it was annoying to listen to. Plus every word out of his mouth was the most trite reaction possible to eating a bite of food. My eyes hurt they rolled back so far in my head. At least the other two mostly sounded like they were actually reacting live to the food they were eating instead of picking prefab reactions out of a hat.

[justspiffy]

 Jesse Palmer was quarterback for the Florida Gators(chomp chomp, go Gators), then played in the NFL. He has co-hosted The Chew many times, before his morning talk-show gig. I think he is a foodie.  He was also on the Bachelor. Whether or not any of that qualifies him to be a judge on this show, I don't know, but I'm not sure about the other two, either. Maybe they have a hard time finding judges because the show is so lame?

[Maverick]

 Jessie Palmer is qualified because he's hosting Spring Baking Championship.  With FN, that's all the qualification you need.

 The used to get somewhat better quality judges.  In the early seasons I remember being shocked they got Jeffrey Steingarden to judge on this thing.  

[mlp]

Some seasons back, there was a rule about distance.  I clearly remember Anne and Robert Irvine getting into it a bit about the other crossing an invisible line and that was season 2.  I agree that they ought to revive that rule.  Rachael was impeding Ann and making her nervous.

I also agree that Jesse Palmer sounded like he was reading lines.  In previous years, all the judges sounded like that so I suspect Claudia and the other guy were just better at covering it up.

I'm still laughing at the vision of Claudia as a creepy clown.  Not nice but....................................... :)

Quote

 Jessie Palmer is qualified because he's hosting Spring Baking Championship.  With FN, that's all the qualification you need.

That seems to be the case but, in my mind anyway, a host and a judge are two different things and don't have to meet the same requirements.  I don't have a problem with him as host (although I prefer Bobby Deen).

Edited March 7, 2017 by mlp
Adding comment.

[Snarklepuss]

15 hours ago, Amarsir said:

In addition to the well-observed problem of Rachel's teaching method, she also leaned on techniques that Ann had never used before - like deep frying or making pastry dough. This completely invalidates the show's premise that they've been trained for this moment.  A real finale should not only draw on what they've learned, but should involve choices by the contestant. Otherwise, judges saying "The pears and blueberries worked wonderfully together" is meaningless since they're judging someone who didn't pick them.

I couldn't agree more.  I don't know why this didn't bother me in previous seasons but it did bother me this time.  I think the finalists should have a say in what they want to cook and not be pushed that far out of their comfort zones.  But I think the real issue is not even with that but with Rachael choosing Ann for the finale in the first place.  If Rachael really wanted to win she wouldn't have picked Ann over Laura in the first place, and I still question the authenticity of that choice because it didn't make sense.  Given how so many of us saw Daniel as the "chosen one" all season long it just seems a little too suspicious to me.

[OoogleEyes]

That's it. I'm officially done with the Food Network.  Between this and Food Network Star and Kids Baking thing...it's just an embarrassing mess. Introducing Claudia as an "award winning chef"??  Yeesh. 

[MajorWoody]

As in most other seasons, the finale was anti climatic and featured two people that I had zero rooting interest for. 

As for the judges, the Joker Lady was a joke, and the other guy was awful, as others have said it was like he was reading a script rather than reacting to the food. I didn't realize he was the host on Spring Baking Championship, but it is funny, because I only watched one episode of that and said to my wife how bad and insincere the host came across as. 

They should turn this show into a full blown comedy, instead of trying to pass it off as a semi legit competition with comedic overtones. Most of the media attention whores on this show over the years have been blatant phonies wih their over the top schtick, and their too dumb to be realistic moments and comments. If the producers just made this full on comedy, it might actually be better received. 

And finally, can they stop with the BS of Anne saying suggestive things to guys, and acting like she is getting hot and bothered over some guy? Give it a rest, already. 

Can only hope the new Iron Chef show is worthwhile.