It’s always surprising to me how some of the contestants misbehave, despite knowing that the editors will do that. My assumption is that they ARE aware, and they want to get screen time – any screen time is good publicity, even if they come across as a jackass.
Tangent: For a really funny (and serious!) take on how reality shows edit, read Ben Elton’s Dead Famous. It’s fictional – a murder mystery – based on a fictional British reality show, with the editors totally manipulating and distorting to get “entertainment.”
It doesn’t surprise me, considering while the judging goes on they’re locked in a tiny room for hours with a bunch of people they hate. Notice that all those scene are always in the stew room or right after when they are getting wasted.
In the edits of Marcel vs Jamie, I believe it’s a lot easier to edit someone to look like an asshole when they’re not, than it is to edit someone as a slacker when they’re not.
Jamie left to go get stitches. Jamie refused to serve her dish up on the tennis court challenge. Jamie was consistently on the bottom and never on the top throughout the competition. There aren’t additional things that were left on the cutting room floor that would change these basic facts.
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a successful Restaurant Wars showing. Season 4, Stephanie Izard did an amazing job heading the team and doing Front of the House. She had a knack for getting all those super egos to work together.
IIRC S6 restaurant wars team was successful too. There was some drama with Michael V. ordering people around. But, they did have a very successful service.
I’m a little concerned tonights RW may be a major clusterf*ck. The previews show a lot of drama. Given that this is All Stars they should have a successful night. But, all those super, All Star egos may not let it happen.
I want to see a great RW. They’ve already had too many failed EC challenges. I hope they can get this right.
My take on Marcel is that he is an arrogant ass that is also a great chef. His talk worked well in his season (especially his season) but doesn’t translate well to All-Stars where half the chefs are as good or better than you.
Yeah, Fabio totally outdid himself. Tiffani said something about not wanting to do front of the house because they always get blamed, but has a front of the house person EVER gone home on restaurant wars?
Yeah, at least once. I don’t know what season it was, though, I just remember that she was Indian-American.
God, Marcel just TOTALLY deserved to go home, but I’m a little shocked that it actually happened. I love how he shifted all blame to his team, though. “My only mistake was in choosing my team”, my ass.
I liked this RW. There was one team that came together and did a great job. I got a little nervous when angry Dale started to emerge. Thank goodness Fabio calmed him down. After that, that team worked like a well oiled machine.
Fabio deserves a lot of credit. Front of house has a key role in controlling the orders that hit the kitchen. I was amazed at how well Fabio used servers he didn’t know.
Marcel never looked very good in All Stars. He hasn’t matured as a chef since his season. He has skills. But seems unable to lead. Maybe in a few years he’ll finally grow up.
I recorded tonight’s episode and just finished watching. No real surprise. I posted earlier about seeing the promo for the show Marcel has starting soon on the Syfy Channel as well as a link to an interview he gave complaining about getting the asshole edit. I figured the timing of both made it likely he would get the boot tonight.
I really enjoy how nervous Blaise gets. The guy has amazing ability and still makes himself crazy by over analyzing.
I think Fabio is such a great personality and tonight really had him at his most charming and fun.
Also, I really loved the quickfire. Years ago I worked in a great seafood restaurant. We had a great fish butcher and whenever I worked a double I would watch him breakdown the fish for dinner. It’s an amazing thing to see.
I’m going to spoiler this in case some people haven’t had a chance to watch the show yet, and it was probably the biggest surprise of the whole episode:
Sounded like even the judges were tired of that shit. Bourdain’s comment was, “Why foam?! Why now?!” but I’m sure that’s just all the editors included from a 20-minute rant about what the fuck is with the goddamn foam all the fucking time.
Marcel bleated the thing that assholes always say when their “leadership” fails… “I can’t physically force someone to do something.” He’d better learn how to handle people if he wants to be something other than a sous-chef.
To be fair, a real head chef can fire people. The “captains” in these kinds of challenges have no power to actually enforce anything, so when a crew wants to sandbag a nominal leader like they did with Marcel, then there’s nothing the leader can really do about it. It’s not comparable to a running a kitchen for real, because in a real kitchen, the staff has to do what its told, regardless of how they feel about the head chef’s personality. A lot of head chefs are assholes.
I’d feel a lot worse for Marcel if he’d actually evinced any leadership skill and was, in fact, sandbagged. He was behaving poorly even if not the nominal leader. I’m thinking in particular of his arguing with Antonia when she was trying to expedite.
He corrected her on something. She called the wrong “all day” number for something. He had no choice but to correct her or they would have been short an order.
The others decided immediately that they weren’t going to listen to him, and there are no consequences in these challenges for not obeying a team leader. They seem to exist only to provide easy scapegoats when a team loses.
Marcel’s last blog. A lot of it is his version of what happened.
I thought he did give some interesting insight into the behind the scenes game play. Things that happen in front of the cameras and never get noticed. I bet this happens a lot. Trusting someone to cook your dish is a big gamble. Obviously Mike’s biggest concern is the proteins for his own dish. He cooks Marcels fish a little early. So that it’s almost cold when plated. A small sabotage that isn’t easily noticed.
I totally believe Marcel, but when are these people going to learn you can’t trust other people to cook your dishes? Of course they’re going to sabotage you.
Unfortunately that’s how the line works. One guy cooks the proteins. Someone else does the veggies. Someone plates.
In RW Marcel’s dish couldn’t be prepared ahead of time. He was busy plating. You have to trust the guy cooking proteins. That’s his station.
The judges know this. Mike I. should have been held responsible for the badly cooked fish.
Marcel was responsible for the dishes concept and flavor profile.
But, Marcel went home for bungling the job of running the kitchen. The bad fish dish was secondary.
FOH problems also resulted in slow service and cold food. Was the fish cold because Mike cooked it early? Or was it late service? Hard to prove.