Note: Scott Tobias is out sick. Michaelangelo Matos is filling in for him tonight.
Tonight: 12 Angry Chefs! Well, that’s pretty much how “Farm Rules” was set up—and to a great degree, played out. That is, when the chefs weren’t practically jumping one another. “Tamesha is the only person I feel comfortable hanging out with,” says Angelo of his younger competitor, and as the last episode informed us, would-be paramour. “There’s a lot of inner passion… that I’d like to bring out.” I bet! Then there’s Ed and Tiffany, who have a very clear and comfortable chemistry, whereas Angelo (in this edit, at least) seems more on the make. Or maybe not: later, Tamesha defends Angelo’s behavior with a slight smirk: “For me, it works”—is she reciprocating? And isn’t Angelo married, with child?
We get our second indication that Angelo has played fields very different than those he and his fellow would-be Top Chefs will be cooking in when the short challenge is introduced: “For your Quickfire, you’ve got crabs.” Angelo, cringing: “Well, I had crabs.” You’re joking. Tamesha, on the other hand, has never picked them before: at one point, she was allergic to them. Timothy, on the other hand, lives in Baltimore, where crab is king, and smiles his Felix the Cat half-smile and nods sagely, “I pick crabs every Sunday,” as he calmly cleans 25 of them.
But Timothy doesn’t win this challenge—or any other, for the rest of the season, as it turns out. (Though he’s gracious in defeat: “I should have put some soy sauce in there.”) Ed wins the Quickfire, and between the gradual increase of camera time over the season’s arc to date and his bashful flirtation with Tiffany (think of the potentially levelheaded kids!), he’s starting to seem like a potential comer, though the fact that the runners-up were, again, Kenny and Angelo makes it more clearly obvious that along with Kelly, they’re the odds-on favorites for Final Three.
Then: chaos! It’s time for your challenge: for 40 local chefs, cook six dishes family-style. Proviso: “You won’t see your ingredients or cooking equipment until you get there.” And of course, the chefs have to decide who does what themselves. Naturally, this is where Angelo and Kenny butt heads—and Bravo, never missing a trick, asks us to text our answer to the question, “Who is the bigger alpha male?” Just like the house itself, except by a smaller margin, the people voted Kenny. And what does Mr. Daddy Love Shtick or whatever the hell his housemates called him during this week’s Top Chef Interstitial Love Jam (pointedly not featuring Angelo) opt to do with his rather easily conferred power? Yep: Everyone gets to work with the same people they worked with on the last challenge. If Kenny, as is pointed out during the ILJ, bears a resemblance to Isaac Hayes, this is the part of the show where he unveiled that love-beads-era favorite, “Do Your Thing.”