Yeah, that really lowers my opinion of Casey. I understand being mad that she’s getting the blame, but that doesn’t justify outright insulting Carla. Carla never said it was Casey’s fault – she mentioned that certain things were Casey’s idea, and then the judges told her that her mistake was letting Casey have too much control instead of Carla cooking her own food. Even after that, all she ever said was “I should have made my food”, not “I shouldn’t have listened to Casey.”
You could be right about the editing suggesting that the production staff wanted an “arrogant Euros” storyline . . . but on the other hand, I think Fabio came off pretty well, and it’s hard to know how much of a bad edit Stefan got without knowing how arrogant he is in real life.
But having read the judges blogs for several seasons now (Tom’s in particular), I’ve been convinced of their sincerity in saying they’re just trying to pick who made the best food on a given night, and are largely uninfluenced by and even unaware of who the audience will be rooting for. As Tom has commented, they don’t know much about what happened behind the scenes (which of course influences audience opinion) until months later when they see the completed episode. (For instance, he said he didn’t know about the relationship drama with Hosea and Leah, which is certainly something that would have affected the audiences opinion of them.)
I think you’re probably right that the judges would consider Stefan the better chef (certainly they’d say he’s more “technically skilled”), but they’ve been pretty consistent in saying they were judging the food in front of them on that night. Apparently the majority of judges felt Hosea was better on that night, as did Fabio (who was openly rooting for Stefan). Even Toby Young claimed in his blog he thought it was basically a tie, but that in that case Stefan’s season-long performance should be used as a tie breaker.
Hosea won because he made a better meal in this episode. He has been consistently good to great throughout the season, but rarely amazing. Stefan has been consistently great to amazing through the season, but missed the mark on the last few challenges by a bit. Since they only judge each challenge without considering the rest, Hosea did deserve to win the title. I think a few people would deny Stefan is the better chef though.
I’m not sure I like not taking the rest of the season into account at all either, but consider this. If they did take the entire season into account when deciding the Top Chef winner, someone like Carla who only gets going later in the season would have zero chances of winning the title.
Perhaps they could put a cut-off point somewhere near the middle of the season, and tell the contestants everything from there onwards will be considered when deciding the eventual winnter. A good point might be when the Quickfire winners stop getting immunity. That way late starters like Carla wouldn’t be too badly penalized, but the overall performance would still count for something. Maybe it would encourage people not to take the safe way out too.
I was surprised to read on the blogs that Hosea and Stefan consider each other friends. Based on the editing you might think they hate each others guts.
Continuing my comment above . . .
I do think some of the judges may not have liked Stefan very much, because he came across as arrogant. But reading the blogs they seem sincere (to me at least) in at least trying their best not to let the personalities influence their judgment. E.g., they picked Ilan as the winner in season 2, even though Chef Tom was still less than pleased with him for his involvement in the Marcel head-shaving incident. And, sorry to keep going on about it, but the fact that Fabio picked Hosea despite openly rooting for Stefan is really telling to me.
This has some merit, but it becomes problematic for the guest judges, the celebrity-chef types who are too busy to commit more than a couple of days to the show. They won’t know anything about what happened before they got there. The guest’s only exposure to the contestants is the single show on which the guest appears. Which is why I angled toward the ‘running scoreboard’ approach described above; on any given show, the guest judge does rankings, which result in weighted scores, which are tallied on the scoreboard.
I think having a specified and significant reward for winning each week would help discourage the middle-of-the-pack strategy. I’m thinking that, instead of an autographed book, have each week be worth the contestant’s choice of $10,000 or immunity the following week.
I know one thing. The book thing is so lame I am embarrased for both the “winners” and the person giving out the book when it happens.
The books aren’t even really prizes, they’re just excuses to pimp the books. That’s probably part of the dal for getting guest judges to come on. You can always see the concealed disappointment when the contestant sees that’s all they’ve “won,” though.
This is probably the best idea. (Although not 10,000 since the grand prize is only 100,000) Amazing Race started doing this a few seasons back and the race really went from “Don’t be last” to “Gotta be first.”
Oh, I’d up the final prize, too.
I don’t want to go off on too much of a tangent here, but did Gail have some rack enhancement done during her time away? Her girls were really taking center stage during the judging table debates…
I know there is editing involve but . . .
The way the judges were talking, it seemed to me the criteria was who made the best LAST course and not the best meal.
I also think it’s BS that the chefs did not have to make a dessert. I know that many contestants are not comfortable with baking but
- This is Top Chef, not Top (everything but a pastry) Chef
- You can make desserts without a background in pastry
- Knowing I would have to make a meal, I would have 1 or 2 dessert recipes in mind going in.
I looked at her and said “pregnant”!
My thought too. I’m not sure of the filming schedule but it had to be at least a few months after her honeymoon.
While she was a bit over the top (literally!) in the finale, Gail is pretty pneumatic in general. I think that was just a rather (un?)(fortunate?) dress/bra combo.
Just wanted to weigh in that I really like the way Carla (and Richard, last season) comported herself: all season, she took responsibility for her dishes, didn’t try to throw anyone under the bus and gave credit where it was due. While her personality got on my nerves at first (I could go the rest of my life without hearing another “Hooty-Hoo”), she really grew on me - guess I’m a sucker for the “nice guys/gals”. Not that I disagree with her losing in the finale - that was on her. But she owned up to that, too.
Tom Colicchio’s blog is finally up. Some highlights:
- He actually liked Hosea’s first course better than Carla’s (despite it lacking salt), and he really didn’t like Stefan’s dessert (which he called a train wreck)
- He thought Stefan’s first and last course both suffered from prioritizing presentation over taste
- He actually thinks the chefs should have to do a dessert (“These aren’t my rules; I just play by them!”), but since he’d explicitly told them it wasn’t required he felt it would be unfair to penalize them for not making one
- He refuses to say whether Hosea or Stefan is the better chef, but calls it “irrelevant”, arguing that if the goal was to pick the better chef you could just skip the finale since they’ve already seen plenty of their work throughout the season.
- He defends judging them solely on the finale by comparing it to the undefeated New England Patriots losing to the Giants in last year’s superbowl. (“How you played the rest of the season might get you to the Super Bowl, but if you lose the Super Bowl, you don’t bring home the trophy.”)
Yes, Gail had always been voluptuous, it seemed that the dress was more responsible for putting the girls in the spotlight. Or maybe she was hoping she’d get some beads?
Carla had made a comment along the lines of wanting to show that it was possible to succeed on this show without being mean or throwing people under the bus. I think she did that and it is admirable, unfortunately I think it was her niceness that burned her more than a couple times when she didn’t speak up in the group wedding challenge and in the finale when she didn’t just brush off Casey’s suggestions. Still I am glad she made it as far as she did. She was a little annoying at first but she grew on me, too.