And then there were 6.
Brianna really shot herself in the foot this week. Now it will get ugly. I like all the remaining contestants. But do Herb and Serena have the chops to succeed at this level?
Herb and Serena are the next to go. You heard it here.
I totally agree with you…Herb is falling apart…the judges seem to think he’s going to get his self together but he has too many demons from his past that he hasn’t dealt with..obviously he was a fat child and even though on the outside he’s not fat…in his head he’s still that fat little boy that the kids teased…now he’s so afraid of being judged he’s blowing it…they should have voted him off the week he broke down…but obviously they see something in him that he doesn’t see in himself…to bad…he and Brianna have the same problem..although she might not have had any fat issues as a child she’s got some other demons floating around in her head..I hope they both figure it out so they can get beyond it and do what they do best…cook…as for Serena I’m tired of her mouth and her grandmother.
I was so glad to see Brianna go.
Yes honey we get it. You would never touch tuna noddle casserole. You would never be in the same kitchen as tuna noddle casserole. You, if you had your way, would never be within ten states of tuna noddle casserole.
We get it.
She had one of the easiest dishes imaginable to make over and all she did was whine about it. Make a cream sauce, substitute fresh tuna or seafood or monkfish for the canned tuna, top with mushrooms, add fresh pasta if you can and then serve.
Not the oh-my-god-terrible-task she repeatedly implied.
Herb was nearly as bad. What the hell possessed him to used multicolored rotini on that dish? Or to just throw in the kitchen sink with it?
Again very bad judgement.
The only dish that looked appetizing was Brad’s.
I still want Aarti for the win. If she can finally show some self confidence she can really have a shot at showing us some great Indian food. When she isn’t have a self confidence crisis I really like her personality as well. Self effacing combined with apparently very good food recipes makes a nice combination.
Nobody, and I mean nobody likes tuna **noddle **casserole. 
That stuff is nasty.
You know what, though? I am heartily tired of how the judges emphasize the whole personal-story angle all the damn time. My Nana taught me this, my cousins and I ate that, my wife and I ate *this *on our 1st date, my father and I made *this *every weekend. Every once in a while here and there, OK, fine, but it seems like every contestant, every dish, there has to be some misty-eyed story about a sainted relative. It’s getting more relentless with each season.
And as for the previous winners: Melissa’s show has a great angle (eat good for cheap! who can argue with that concept?) but the show has a singularly blurred camera lens, that Vaseline-smeared Lifetime movie look. No one else’s show does that, and the last episode of hers I watched, my eyes were starting to water by the end of it. Also, she looks like Hillary Clinton. Good recipes, though; a few of them are real keepers. Some of her hints suck, on the other hand - no, I don’t wanna buy day-old bread! It’s not “just as good!” I want *fresh *bread, dammit!
Adam couldn’t cook for shit, but he has a genuinely warm and charming manner in front of the camera, thoroughly at ease in a way few people can be, so I’ve been really glad that they’ve given him so many non-cooking shows. Mr. Horseshoe is a big fan, too, and we’ve been DVRing the new Candy Store show.
What you said, pretty much.
I couldn’t believe Brianna’s attitude in this episode. “OMG I studied in France and they would scoff at that.” Yeah, well, so did plenty of kids sitting down to dinner when their moms would make this; fortunately your job is to make it classy, so show a little class and knock off the whining. Make a bechamel sauce and make those French teachers of yours happy.
I buy multicolored rotini every now and then, and even making easy “I’m hungry so I’m just going to gobble up some pasta” dishes, I still look at tri-color rotini and think damn, that just doesn’t look good with anything else. (Not bad in an oil and vinegar pasta salad, but otherwise… meh?)
I’m sad that Aarti came so close to getting tossed off the show. She keeps sabotaging herself constantly.
Brianna so could have gone high concept with her dish, but blanked. I would have deconstructed it and gone with seared ahi tuna steaks with a porcini mushroom noodle side dish. A dollop of a light cream sauce and she wins, or at least doesn’t go home.
Bingo. I immediately pictured seared tuna medallions with some awesome mushroom sauce over a bed of fresh fettucini. Instead, she went pretty literal on the “casserole” concept, and basically just used crab instead of tuna. Very uninspired.
Still, I was kind of surprised that Herb wasn’t sent packing, given his continuing emotional breakdown, a disastrous camera challenge, and what appeared to be a horrific dish. He has to be next.
I agree with what everyone said about Brianna…she’s a wannabe…I have been to a thousand Chinese restaurants and the only thing on the table is soy sauce and sweet & sour sauce…she goes out of her way to try and make herself look better than the other contestants by acting like a snob…ok I hate tuna noodle casserole too but I don’t think I’m better than people that like it…I’m glad she’s gone.
And Aarti comes back from her bad performance last week to hit the top again!
Almost all of these contestants are laboring under huge cases of stage fright plus not preparing a single thing to say until they get up there - or if they do, it’s not that good. Serena, wth? Regardless of what your name might suggest (false cognate?), don’t serenade the foodies/chefs assembled to dine on your food. I forget who it was who made the comment about her making pasta week after week - some people get stuck in a rut, but usually it’s just sticking to one cuisine, not one ingredient.
Herb, you’re your own toughest competition, I think. You knew the pans were shallow. You knew you were short on time. You’ve got the potential to be awesome, but you need to get past these blocks you set up for yourself.
Yeah, Susie slammed him good for that little mistake. It’s good to see Aarti take both the Camera Challenge and the Star Challenge. Bobby really seems to like her, which might get her past a slight flub in the next couple of weeks.
If this week was any indication, it will be Tom or Herb gone next. Aria will make it to the end just on “mediocre,” while the guys are actively killing themselves. It’s between Aarti and Brad for the win.
Okay, I finally realized that the theme song for the show sucks.
If not for Dzaster, Serena would be the most embarrassing contestant this season. The fake accent, the fake injuries, the fake personality… and a dish I could have popped out. That having been said, the LA foodies were a bunch of pretentious twats. Towards the end I stopped wanting to poo in their plates, but gah! They deserved to eat Serena and Tom’s food.
Shows you how horrible Serena was, because I thought Tom totally mailed it in this week. He did nothing of note. But they still thought he was better than Miss Italy.
Aarti is so far ahead in this thing, it’s no longer a contest. It’s an ad for her new show.
Brad was likable this week. But I think it’s too late. He still doesn’t seem to be comfortable in front of the camera. However, they are setting up this idea for a show in which he travels around following his passion for food. Yes, I caught that, FN producers.
Aria’s interruption was epically awkward. If you’re going to barge in like that, have something to say. Her food seems pretty mediocre as well. Ditto for Herb. He’s still on because they’re afraid that he’ll have a breakdown if he’s cut. But it’s only a matter of time.
I see Aarti as the winner and Brad getting his runner-up show/special.
Herb is obviously suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder…he should have brought a therapist with him to help him deal with his unresolved childhood issues. He may be a normal sized person on the outside but in his head he’s still a fat little boy.
Very true, if Herb could have followed what he knows about the food he grew up with, he would have been walking away with this from day 1. It is the demons in his head that re dragging him down and there is no way he can recover.
I’m wondering how the screening for this show actually works - I’m sure I saw some fluffy little piece on it early in the show’s history, but I’ve forgotten everything other than how it starts with a video submission.
Anyway, I really hope Herb was able to suppress all his emotional baggage through that process and is finally cracking only once he got on the show, because… I know reality shows are kind of exploitative anyway, but it’d really bother me if they knew this guy was having such trouble and they let him on the show anyway or because of that very reason. Like they knew they’d never let him win and become that much of a liability, but him flipping out would spice up a show that was getting lackluster.
The only baggage Herb will be dealing with is the ones he brought to the show.
The Energy Chef will have an Energy Crisis this week…
Watch for it…
Ranch dressing risotto actually doesn’t sound half bad.
I think they should have cut Aria.
Agreed. She has absolutely nothing to add to the Network. The only two people they had tonight that could create a show I would watch were Tom and Brad and they kicked one of them off.
I’m pulling for Tom, I think. They need more men, and I think he’s funny. Aarti is cute, but I’m just not into Indian food much. I think they might want to keep her for her ethnicity, though.