How do you spell the sound of a giant, never-ending fart? Here's a shot at it: ttthhhhhhhhbbbbppppttttttt. I'd submit that as a grade, too, if it were possible. It's hard to even call what aired tonight an episode—it was more like an hour-long infomercial for a cruise line with about 15 minutes of Top Chef tacked on at the end. Stretched to its limits by shots of the ship and a play-by-play rundown of the chefs' cruise-ship dinner, tonight's installment took my enthusiasm for this crucial end-of-season elimination and replaced it with rage.
Here's why: We're down to only five contestants! In last week's teaser, we were promised that this was the big run-up to the finale. Only four chefs will get off the ship! (Of course, we still have two chefs who will appear from Last Chance Kitchen and viewers' discretion.) If handled well, at this point in the season, Top Chef can really shine. Fewer, better chefs means more screen time for technique and innovation. Those of us who have stuck out the entire season have been waiting for this. We've been anticipating who might remain, and we've been playing out their strengths and weaknesses. The end of the season is our reward for watching the first part of the season. That's how elimination-round competition works. But as early as 10 minutes in, tonight's episode was showing signs of serious distress.
The first warning signs appear with the quickfire barely underway, when Padma and guest judge Curtis Stone painfully and awkwardly make small talk. For a long time. And all of it makes the cut. The premise of the quickfire isn't terrible. The chefs must feature iceberg lettuce—because everyone wants to remember the Titanic while on a cruise ship at sea. Clunky connotations aside, the challenge highlights a tough ingredient, and I was interested to see what the chefs would do with it. The specifics of the challenge and the intentions of the chefs get lost in all the product placement, though. (Does it count as placement if the chefs are actually contained within the product?) It's not a quickfire worthy of much time: difficult ingredient, lots of people, go. It's a tried-and-true concept, but this challenge sees almost twice as much air time as usual, and for no good reason. I was so frustrated by the sloppy editing I wanted to keep fast-forwarding to the food parts. For a show that's ostensibly about food and cooking, that's not a good sign.