Monday, September 20, 2010

Top Chef: Just Desserts

Top Chef: Just Desserts is on the air, and I am super excited! The first episode aired last Wednesday, and I think this is a great addition to the Top Chef family. Host Gail Simmons is a long time judge from the main Top Chef, and Head Judge Johnny Iuzzini and his crazy pompadour appeared on this past season of Top Chef. (I have to admit, watching him as head judge is making me imagine super-bald Tom Collichio, Head Judge of Top Chef, with a pompadour. Someone should photoshop that.) When I found out that (DJ) Hubert Keller is one of the recurring judges, I literally got up and did a little dance. I fell in love with Hubert Keller during the first season of Top Chef: Masters, and my love only deepened when I saw pictures of him DJing at a festival in San Francisco, the city I was living in while falling for him.

But enough about the judges! This season starts out with only tweleve contestants, compared to I think seventeen in most seasons of Top Chef. Did Bravo not want to commit to as many episodes? Honestly, I find it hard to keep track of everyone when there are seventeen chefs running around. As with the other shows, they start with a short "Quickfire" challenge, where the loser suffers no peanlty but shame and the winner gets immunity from elimination for the episode (at least in the early episodes). This week's elimination was all about chocolate, and my sweet tooth is begging to be fed now. For me, the biggest downside of cooking competitions is that we the viewers can't actually taste the food, and just need to take the judges' opinions, as opposed to something like fashion or singing shows where the audience has most of the information the judges do. However, I think with pastries, presentation will be much more explicitly part of the challenge, so we viewers will have more information to judge the contestants with.

One of the big issues in the cooking world is gender. For ages women have had a terrible time working their way up the ladder, with men to this day still openly saying that women belong making pastries, which of course drives me crazy. Top Chef season six was particularly annoying in seeming to have selected a lot more talented men than women, so that something like the first six people eliminated were women. Season seven was better in this regard, but I am excited to see the competition in what is traditionally considered the female side of cooking. (There are tons of talented chefs of all genders, races, sexualities, et cetera, and I do hold Bravo responsible for their selections. No, I don't know much about how they select contestants, but when it is obvious to the audience on day one that some people are vastly outclassed, I can't believe that the show runners did not have some idea going in.)

Also, I lost count of how many out gay men there are this season, and of course I do love out people on TV. Season seven didn't have any, and I really loved season six's gay male-Ash and lesbian Ash buddy comedy in the background. (Favorite moment of the reunion show: They ask if there were any romances, profound awkward silence, and the two Ashes said they switched teams for each other. Wonderful stuff.)

I watched the preview for the rest of the season, and it looks like one of the stronger chefs is clearly going to be the "bad guy" for the season, which I am not looking forward to. There also seemed to be straight up sabotage, with someone hiding all the butter from the rest of the chefs? Ugh. I have no interest in those kinds of shenanigans. I do watch Top Chef for the people, and not just the food, but I don't like when people are too horrible. Season six of Top Chef featured a lot of people hating on one contestant to a degree that I found extremely unpleasant and reminiscient of the bullying and cruelty I faced in middle school, and one especially loud mouthed and offensive contestant who drove me up the wall. Right in the first episode he started off with comments about how women shouldn't be at his level (and that particular woman outlasted him and was the final one eliminated before the finale!) and I just hated him all season and cheered when he was eliminated. I also had a lot of affection for one of the season's finalists, and several people who lasted much of the season.

This past season just never caught my attention the way season six did. I think a lot of it was that most of my favorite contestants were eliminated early on, but perhaps the lack of strong conflict actually mattered to me more than I thought? I really don't know. We'll see. The two seasons of Top Chef: Masters have never had any nastiness (well, expect Ludo's... I don't even know what to call it, delusions of something) and I adored those seasons. Top Chef: Masters is like the celebrity Jeopardy of Top Chef, with chefs who are older and well established, usually with multiple restaurants of their own, and their winnings all go to charity. Most of those contestants are just much more secure in themselves and their careers, without the desperation of some of the Top Chef contestants, some of whom have very unsure futures. The prize money for Top Chef is $100,000, which is clearly intented to "further their culinary dreams" or something like that, but the apparent "bad guy" of this season of Just Desserts has a mother with over $100,000 in medical debt, so that puts an entirely different spin on that. (To any European readers: Please enjoy your lack of bankruptcy from health care costs!) Hopefully that won't color the season too much.

I think I've said more than enough for a show I've seen less an hour of, so, Top Chef: Just Desserts! Wednesdays on Bravo, with episodes available on their website! http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef-just-desserts