O.K., the show is on in a couple of hours and it looks there is not a thread started yet. The previews seem to imply that an unpleasent personality conflict boils over. Anyone know what this might be?
Don’t know, but I have a hunch it involves Marcel. Maybe the rest gang up on him and do something really lame, like dye his hair blue while he’s sleeping, or chop it all off. Then to show they are sorry, they all do likewise to themselves when they come before the judges’ table.
Oh, and I saw on the preview that somebody also gets told to leave for some wrongdoing outside of the cooking challenge.
Well, yeah I sorta figured it had to do with ganging up on Marcel in some way. If what you said is true about someone being asked to leave my guess would be Ilan. It always seems to me he is the one who instigates a lot of the Marcel-hate that goes on.
Chicken liver plus chocolate? That alone is grounds for dismissal. Yuck.
half an hour in and no haircut. I want my money back.
Wow. I totally didn’t see that coming. That said, it’s clear to me that reality show contestants are fucking morons. Do any of these clowns read the contracts they sign?
That said, it sounded like Cliff would have been the bootee anyway
insanely stupid stuff.
Cliff’s lucky that Marcel didn’t press charges. Marcel’s not a big guy - just about the same size as Elia. That would’ve terrifed me - I don’t like being held down. I am glad that Marcel didn’t run to the judges - that would’ve made him look even more like a punk, unfortunately. Elia looks good with no hair, but her hair was so beautiful. Marcel couldn’t seem to understand why no one would want to help him after he refused to help anyone else, but I think at that stage of the competition they shouldn’t be expecting too much help. And two courses with beets? Ugh.
StG
It seemed like even Sam and Ilan were a little bit chastened by what happened. Like the switch finally flipped and they realized they had gone over the line. I don’t know why Cliff was so shocked at getting the boot.
I totally did not buy the attempted fake out. It was obvious to me from the second Cliff got DQed that they weren’t going to eliminate anyone else.
Looks like Ilan might get in trouble next week. Hope it’s not a red herring. I’m rooting for a Marcel-Elia Final 2.
Didn’t Marcel talk to somebody? How else did they know? From hidden cameras?
I think that they should have sent Sam home, too. He sat there and smirked at the camera while all of this was going on. Poor little geeky Marcel was sleeping when Cliff jumped him, and just woke up with theis guy twice his size holding him down by the neck. Marcel was a class act, though- after all of the “Lord of the Flies” crap the other cheftestants have put him through, the first time he’s reacted at all was when he apparently hit the camera when he left the room. Even at the judge’s table, he said “Let’s talk about the food”.
I assume from the production cameras they have on in the suite (in addition to the hand held cam they chefs were using)- someone must review the feed?
Am I wrong?
Who’s idea was it to hold Marcel down? Did they all agree or did Cliff just decide to do it? I missed that part.
I really didn’t enjoy this season very much so it’s hard for me to root for anyone. After Betty cheated and they let her stay I sort of lost interest.
All the cooking challenges beside this last one and a couple others were basically fast food and appetizers. Not a lot of “Top Chef” quality challenges like last season.
I don’t hate Marcel like a lot of people but I’m not rooting for him. It really seems like everyone picked on him but I have to think that they don’t all strike me as particularly terrible people and absolutely no one liked him.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Elia win.
I don’t have an issue with all 4 going, but it still seems like the judges copped out yet again. Cliff has been a dip-shit whenever it came to personal interaction throughout the season, so tonight didn’t shock me.
For whatever reason Marcel has put himself into a position where he is going to have to sail alone. I don’t know if it was intentional on his part or just a byproduct of his grating personality, but it’s starting to remind me of the girl with red hair last season (can’t recall her name) that burned her bridges with all the other chefs, and it didn’t work out well for her.
Wasn’t she the Runner-Up? Forgot her name as well. Hell, now that I think of it - I can’t remember ANY of their names from last season. Not even the winner.
That said, I can remember that they use exclusively Calphalon in the Kenmore kitchen. Yay for product placement! (Ok, I’m going to go pack up my knives and lobotomize myself now…)
The producer team is ever present even in those “private” moments. Marcel had no need to tell anyone. The producers made their decisions while everybody slept. Colicky is just the mouthpiece of that executive decision.
Cliff was the guy getting the axe anyways. The shame of this whole mess is that they felt they had to keep the 4 and didn’t boot someone else for a final 3.
Sam had nothing to do with the whole thing. He might have seen the whole thing and done nothing about it but that was pretty much his position all throughout. He wanted nothing with the whole hair cutting non-sense. He had no plans to cut his own and that meant he wasn’t going to force cut Marcel’s.
Cliff just went on his own. He is that kind of a brute and he went down a path nobody else was even joking of following. He kept calling on the others and everybody made sure they were elsewhere.
That was the evil Tiffani, who was absolutely slaughtered by Harold Dieterly (sp?), after Dave twitched himself out of the competition.
I felt like I was watching a rape! That was wrong on so many levels - they’re acting like such total asses. I couldn’t believe no one would come and help the poor guy! And you know the producers would’ve been pissed at just the head shaving, even without the assault. What the hell were they drinking, absinthe?
Agree pretty much with Sapo. A couple of personal insights…
Part of the problem with Marcel was nicely encapsulated in the restaurant kitchen. Marcel plans for a kitchen with Marcel and … nobody. Just Marcel. There’s the Marcel freezer which must be open when and only when Marcel is taking something from it. There’s the Marcel range top which must always leave room for the Marcel pot and the Marcel pan. There’s the Marcel cutting board and the Marcel mixing bowl and the Marcel pantry and the Marcel table where the Marcel meal is prepared. There’s even the damn Marcel food rack where the Marcel baking pan is balanced precariously, jutting out into the Marcel walking aisle. There are indeed these other bipedal things moving about the kitchen, but they are merely badly programmed robots who bump into all the Marcel items, and are neglectful when they are not assisting Marcel.
Cliff. You know, I never find qualified apologies acceptable. An apology, to me, signifies wrongdoing, repentance, and regret. Cliff regretted what he did, but only, it seems to me, because it caused him so much grief. I wanted to hear him voluntarily remove himself from the competition because every freaking moron knows that every freaking reality TV show expressly prohibits aggressive or offensive touching of any form. Let alone that that’s what civilized existence itself demands. But failing that, I wanted to hear, “You’re right, Chef. I’ll leave right away.” And failing that, at the very least, “Marcel, I’m sorry for what I did to you. It was wrong, and I deserve at the very least to be booted for it. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Well, shit.
Were there originally plans to eliminate more than one contestant? They were going to have to eliminate Cliff no matter what. Having him show up at the judge’s table, get the boot for that bullshit, and then chopping somebody else over food just because somebody had to get the boot over food would throw the balance off (if 4 contestants were indeed slated to make the final all along).
I am kinda tired of this whole season, it’s just No Fun.
The one to watch might be Colecchio. In ‘Project Runway’ Tim Gunn serves as mentor and talks to the designers and discusses their issues and points of view but does not serve as a judge. Colecchio supposedly serves in both capacities but I find his ‘mentoring’ to be assine. He walks in once and mutters some brilliant nugget (“Don’t burn anything else.”) and leaves. Could be the editing but it doesn’t seem to helpful. Does he taste anything and advise? I doubt it since he’s a judge.
The crystalizing moment was when the judges had made their decision and he seemed to make a moue of distaste. Maybe the food world is lucky to have such a staunch guardian of the faith.