The way Padma introduces it each year, it's like this yearly traditional episode is somehow special and awesome and wonderful. Meh. Blah. I've never really cared more or less for these episodes compared to the others that lead up to the final. At least they don't have them shopping for tableclothes and stuff anymore iirc.

I give a big overall thumbs up to the structure of the show this year:

Opening Qualifying Rounds
Pros: Good intro to the chefs, lots of dishes, and a few solid laughs at the bottom tier who, if they had been invited to a regular season, could have barnacled their way through five irritating episodes.
Cons: Quick dishes and arbitrary groups could have been a little unfair? But I think it was fine, the bubble round mitigated most of this and also I just trust Tom and Gail to keep the right people around.

The Show Itself--
seems like every other season...a few too many group challenges leads to some unfair boots (Nayesha), but nothing unwatchable. Overall quality of the cheftestants seems down, and the cuisine a little narrow, but no serious complaints. Tom and Gail are still elite reality show judges, and Padma is still in over her head, sigh can't imagine what Salman Rushdie saw in her beyond "yikes fatwa hey might as well die enveloped in the glory of bouncing Padma"

Last Chance Kitchen--
Bonus fairness! Great addition to the show, the tone is right, the timing is good, and Nayesha could deservedly win eight straight. No complaints, other than it would have been sorta fun to watch batty Bev vs fatso in a last chance kitchen cage match.

...So, even though the overall quality seems a bit down, I'm still liking this season, mostly I'm wasting way less energy being tilted by how screwed somebody got.

funny, I don't disagree with much that you wrote EM, and I give it a huge thumbs down.

These are all fatal flaws IMHO

mostly agree with Al's rankings

--Paul is made for this season and he's mellow...if they ever have a pot brownie quickfire he's definitely the favorite.
--Ed imo seems primed to implode before his time, he's wound a little tightly for reality tv
--once upon a time some buddies helped me move and one of them showed up in capri pants...I'm right now shaking my head at the memory. Ty-Lor seems nice enough, but he's brings the variance.
--Grayson to me she's like a poor man's Gail.
--I think Top-Knot's show personality is talking a little bit of an unfair bashing itt, yes he's definitely trying too hard, but I think it's closer to a C+ than a D-.

predicted final three--Paul, Sarah, Lindsay (a relatively weak final three, no doubt)
can't see in the finals--Top-Knot, Grayson, Beverly
fingers crossed for--Nayesha

Usually I watch this before dinner or something to get really hungry and amped for food but this episode was basically disgusting imo. I'm not a BBQ person in general so take it with a grain of salt but the combination of everyone sweating and being miserable and serving for hundreds of disgusting worthless southerners and eating with their hands is gross. Presentation on the show means a lot to me and all of the plates looked like diarrhea.

Also god****ing damn if they show one more clip of someone saying some variant of "wow gutsy to do x cooking method in Texas!" I'm going to blow my brains out. You're a bunch of ****ing hicks, don't act like you're sophisticated about anything.

I haven't been watching Last Chance Kitchen- have they announced exactly how/when the surviving chef gets introduced to the show?

Grayson isn't banging Chris because Chris is gay. The whole way she talks to him is as if he's her gay bff.

As pointed out- the medical stuff does become a big freeroll in these all night challenges. Dunno if there's a way around that.

Totally fine with Malibu leaving, he was pretty obviously outclassed.

Very simple way around it is to institute a rule "if you are unable to complete a challenge due to any reason, you are eliminated from the show."

Sucks for people with unlucky cuts/heat exhaustion but goddamn, in any other time sensitive competition if you can't compete you lose.

Obv problem would be people trying to force themselves to work through injuries. That can be taken care of by having a good medical staff that always has final say if a contestant can compete or not.

What incentive do the chefs have of serving the 300 people quality food? It seems they could just serve them warmed up food and give the judges the real food and it wouldn't change anything. Is there something in the rules where you have to serve them the exact same way. If not Ed should've definitely not sliced up 1-2 briskets and just cut them when they came to his station.

Assume it's because they want to drive you to their website.

Why? If you're "really interested in watching those" why wouldn't you simply go watch them?

Seems pretty straightforward.

If you have Comcast (Xfinity) the segments are available On Demand.

Bravo would much prefer to have Last Chance air with the biggest possible audience driving the most money, which would be on TV aired after the show. But the distributor of Top Chef (whether it's Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV etc) doesn't want to air a 10-minute segment that would disrupt their normal linear programming schedule. So that's the biggest reason why it's only airing online or on linear VOD.

But they know this the minute they have the idea right? Or do you think they created it hoping it would get on TV and struck out.

Dids - oh yeah, they would know based on their contract with say Comcast if they could air it on TV or not, and also if there may be an opportunity to post it on VOD. Most likely the contract would preclude airing of shorts on linear TV, but allow for shorts to be posted on VOD.

So when they thought of the Last Chance idea, the producers would check with the distribution team to see where they could air it. And probably thought "let's do it cause it's cheap as hell to produce, and worst case we can just distribute it online on our own Bravo site and on VOD. Let's also see if maybe we can get it on live TV also."

So who knows maybe the NBC/Universal team tried to negotiate to get it on linear TV, but struck out. But the economics work fine if Last Chance is distributed only online and on VOD.

(As an aside, these distribution points are all just contractually negotiated so it can differ in every contract, though usually most major distribution terms are standardized for the Networks - so for example, who knows maybe Bravo wanted Last Chance only to be on their online site to drive traffic there, but in Bravo's contract with Comcast, Bravo is contractually required to post any Top Chef short on Comcast VOD if they should distribute it online on the Bravo site - I would think though Bravo is just fine with having it both online and on VOD.)

do you read any of the post show blogs on their site? LCK isn't the only reason to go to the top chef site

Acheson kills it every week in his blog, optimal levels of snark

Upon rewatching, a few more thoughts.

For all his talk, Topknot's MG stuff struck me as really obvious. Maybe it's just because there was a big OOT thing about it a few years ago, but Miracle Berry seems like a pretty stale, trite (and lazy as hell) idea for a challenge like that.

Sarah's complaints about Ed are really dumb, and she came off as somebody with a weird axe to grind.

They really understold the guest judge. Per the blogs, he's a genius who started college at 14, is a big deal at Microsoft, and a billionaire. Weird that none of that got mentioned.

The utterly fake fawning over the truck was terrible.

Forgot about that ... voiceovers added in post production? I also recall 32 shots of the same closeup of the Tundra logo, spaced 3 seconds apart

noticed they are running a lot of past restaurant wars today before tonights show

Nice find/knowledge. He has an interesting wiki page

Looooooooooooool at reaction to the winnar

I know they edit it the hell out of this stuff, but has there ever been an even tolerable fat chick on Top Chef? I swear I loathe them all.

Heather and Sarah were pretty intolerable. I thought that team was going down for sure... it seemed like a really toxic collection of personalities. I'm pretty happy for Bev getting the win.

LCK (I'm still not sure if we're spoilering this or not but I'll be safe):

Pretty much the only woman I can stand is Grayson, Sarah and Lyndsey are shrews and Beverly is just annoying. Too bad Grayson doesn't seem like she's all that great a chef, it would be pretty awesome if she won. Paul still the front runner despite his missteps this week.

thoughts on tonight:
- agree that fat girls suck. jfc try to make up for your looks with a tolerable personality.
- topofherclasspromqueenlindsay should have been sent packing. as soon as i saw she picked halibut as her dish (strike one), to be completed by another chef while she worked the front of the house (strike two), whom you didn't trust (strike three), it should have been game over. halibut is probably the worst possible protein to cook a la minute because it is so easy to overcook. it was a terrible choice to make, and i thought she was going to pay for it. the fact that her front of the house was run poorly was just gravy.
- i love grayson.
- ed too
- sorta sad to see ty-lor-with-an-umlaut go, but once the guys lost it seemed an obv choice