Anyone watch it yet? I won’t spoil the winner yet, but I wanted to comment on something Stefan says early in the episode.
Minor spoiler regarding the final challenge to follow…
Ok, so Stefan chooses Marcel to work with and comments to the camera “So what if he’s a bit of a twat.” Maybe it’s viewed differently in Europe, but in the US the word “twat” is considered pretty vulgar. I’m no prude, but I’m surprised it wasn’t bleeped out. In fact, I backed up my DVR to make sure I had heard it right and I turned Closed Captions on. Even the closed captions replaced “twat” with “[bleep]”.
Poor Carla. She let her sous chef help talk her out of the win. Hosea has done nothing particularly impressive all season and I don’t care that he won. For his next act Stephan will run for governor of California.
The full line Stefan was “So what if he’s a bit of a twat. Who isn’t?” Which was hilarious coming from him. (Like Tangent, I am a little surprised it wasn’t bleeped out.)
As soon as Carla started listening to Casey, I knew she wasn’t going to win. the same self-doubt that plagued her during the first few episodes came back in full force and made her think Casey knew what she was talking about. And Stefan had to ruin that perfectly good hate I have going for him by being so incredibly sweet to her.
Honestly, as much as I thought Stefan was an arrogant ass, I would rather have seen him win that Hosea.
I’m really bummed. I didn’t think Hosea was impressive once throughout this whole season. Also, did anybody else notice the way Stefan’s eyes watered a bit when Carla started crying? I don’t care what the producers want us to think, I don’t believe that guy’s an asshole. I believe Hosea is absolutely an asshole, and as much as it pains me to say, Toby Young was clearly correct.
Though not my favorite, Hosea deserved the win and I am OK with it.
Being a sports fan, I am comfortable and accepting of the concept of performance in the championship game taking precedence over convincing and dominating performances earlier in the season.
If Stefan was such a better chef than Hosea, why did he stumble when it mattered, when the championship was on the line? He had a choice to make whatever he wanted however he wanted. His poor judgement (freezing the fish, making a so so desert rather than finishing with something more powerful) caused him to lose. To use another sports cliche, “Today’s game isn’t won on yesterday’s home run.” Stefan was clearly better than Hosea all season, but he needed to out hit Hosea today, and he just didn’t do it.
Carla deserved to lose because on the biggest service of her life, she chose to defer to someone else and she made a basic execution error that changed her dish in a major way. She knocked herself out of the competition.
Hosea survived the marathon playoff of the season and then came through when it counted, you can’t hold that against the guy.
The fact that Fabio said that Hosea was the best, even when he did not want to say it, made me feel accepting that Hosea deserves the win.
Carla doesn’t do well with the group dynamic. In the team challenges she (and her team) floundered, and then in the final challenge she caved to her sous chef. I really thought she should be gone half way through. However, I did come to respect the way she cooked individually and think she deserves to be there.
Hosea, on the other hand, did not. To me he’s where Tom’s philosophy of it’s only about the last dish you made fails. Because the winning strategy is to play it safe. You don’t have to win challenges just make sure you’re better than the worst. And that got him to the finals and Lisa to the finals last year.
He wasn’t a judge; he was one of the 12 guests for dinner.
This was probably the closest finale. A different mix of judges could easily have gone with Stefan. I’m not surprised that Tom, Gail, and Padma downplayed Stefan’s choice to go with dessert and rated Hosea’s choice of venison high. There were other guests (Hubert Keller particularly) that seemed to lean toward Stefan. In the end, if Stefan had made a better dessert (ice cream and mousse?), he probably would have won.
I agree with this. Throughout the competition I’ve been a bit uncomfortable with the rule that they don’t judge past performance when factoring in who wins the challenge. For one, there’s no way NOT to discount everything you already know in helping you make a determination of who should win and who should be sent home. But also, I think that consistency and consistent greatness should allow you to remain when you screw up once.
But when you get to the championships, all bets are off. This is it. Your one and only shot at the title. You can’t be judged based on how you did in the past challenges because, frankly, that would lead to a situation where the winner was already crowned before the last challenge begins.
Hosea cooked the best food last night. He’s not the best chef. But he cooked the best food last night. He wins.
I agree with all of this, basically. Carla didn’t believe she deserved to be there, so she let herself be led into decisions that didn’t work. She figured “Casey’s done this before, she’s great, I should really do that.”
Carla: Casey did that stuff before, she was there before, and she lost. If only you had more confidence. I hope you really believe in yourself now, and that you follow that determination to stick to your guns when you know you’re being true to your style.
And I liked seeing Stefan’s heart there. It seemed like he was coming out kind of obnoxious to get camera time, to be noticed, make a splash, and I was hoping he wasn’t 100% jerk. Maybe he was just acting with Carla but he looked honestly touched by her sadness.
Although Stefan panned Hosea’s food a lot, I don’t remember him ever saying anything negative about Carla’s. I don’t know if that’s because he didn’t see her as competition, or if he has some old-fashioned chilvaalry going on. But he really didn’t like seeing her cry.
Carla lost it, fair and square. It’s too bad she lost her sense of self when she needed it most.
I don’t really care who won between Stefan and Hosea, although I think possibly Stefan got the villian edit so we’d be thrilled with a Hosea win.
I liked all three contestants going in, so I wasn’t going to be disappointed no matter who won. The only way I would have been bitter is if Jeff made it in and won.
I think the key to Hosea’s win tonight is he did not let Stefan get under his skin, instead, he was the the one to do what Stefan has done to him for much of the season. Wasn’t there an earlier challenge when Stefan didn’t let Hosea share in some of a desireable ingredient? This time Hosea grabbed the Foie Gras, got Stefan all in a tizzy about it, but then at least offered to split it evenly at the end.
I think that was the start of it, and Stefan seemed more concerned about what Hosea was doing than his own dish. It seems like, and I’ve only seen last season’s finale, that the final comes down to the confident person who concentrates on their dishes, doesn’t allow others to influence their decisions or their attitude, and who perform decent food. Last year’s finale is a good example of that.
I also was touched by Stefan’s response to Carla- I’ve always thought he’s a bit cocky and likes to tease others (esp. Hosea) but that he’s not a jerk. I’ve respected his demeanor at judge’s table, even if his comments afterwards are a bit of denial (i.e “I lost because they expect more from me”.)
I wish Carla could re-do her dinner. I knew she was in trouble when she was even considering doing a dish she had no experience with and did not know would work.
None of these chefs came close to Stephanie’s performance last year.
Grudgingly I’ll acknowledge that Hosea may have just barely cooked the best meal, but I’ll never think of him as Top Chef. Even Richard, his sous chef, seems to agree in his blog:
We were yelling at the TV, “No Carla, don’t listen to her!” and then when she took her second suggestion for the cheese course we knew she was definitely screwed. Both of Casey’s suggestions are what screwed up Carla’s meal. I wish she had more confidence in doing her own food, she could have won.
I don’t think Stefan is that much of an asshole either and I don’t think he was acting choked up over Carla, I think it was genuine.
I was kind of bummed about Hosea winning but I think he was more deserving of the final three than Lisa was last year. Hosea was kind of middle of the pack all season, Lisa’s strategy was to just not be the absolute worst most of the season.
Let’s face it, it was Stefan’s to lose and he did. Had just one of his other dishes been better his strong 3rd dish might have carried him to the win.