This episode reminded me of last season’s Hell’s Kitchen. S/he who can lead a team while not letting the pressure get the better of anyone wins.
That’s also true IRL , in real kitchens, and in any aspect of food service. Being a chef is, in many ways, more of being a manager than cook. Your creativity and cutting-edge talent is not going to be your staff’s primary motivation. You HAVE to know what NEEDS to be done and GET it done in a TIMELY manner, which means assigning/motivating/supervising your staff.
There’s been absolutely no evidence that Marcel is capable of such, either last night or any previous episode. Yes, he’s talented. Yes, he’s creative. But when YOU don’t know where your featured seafood is and have NO IDEA of how to coordinate your sous chefs, you’re going to run into serious issues. Tom was correct when he said that one chef needs to mature a bit more…or whatever it was he said in that direction.
Ilan? OK, he wouldn’t have been my choice either – maybe in the next couple of years because he’s got the basics down pat – but he definitely has more Top Chef potential than Marcel at this point. Didn’t Padma or Gail say something similar? I personally would like to see him attempt a completely non-Spanish inspired menu
Me? I would’ve voted for Sam all the way, possibly Cliff or Ilan tied for second. I really think Cliff would’ve had a shot if he hadn’t been asked to leave.
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that this season left a bad taste in my mouth (bad metaphor intended). I wasn’t rooting for either contestent, just hoping the least antisocial/pathological would win. I don’t think I’ll be watching next season.
I think the whole final competition was designed to stack the odds against Marcel. Ilan didn’t have to worry about trucking his food anywhere - he got to stay where they started. By virtue of having the offed contestants as the sous chefs favored Ilan. I’m not sure that Marcel necessarily has problems getting along with everyone in the world. Surely he rubbed the other contestants wrong and then they all piled on for the rest of the season and made him the chef they all loved to hate.
Imagine if the challenge was done with sous chefs they’d never met - or with none at all. I think the outcome may have been different.
BTW - did anyone watch the interior designer show after? Maybe I’ll start another thread about how I predict the two guys that should have been eliminated won’t be until the very end because their dramatics will be just too good for the ratings.
Ilan & crew had to transport a food cart from the prep area to the kitchen they used as well. As for using previously eliminated chefs for the sous chefs, didn’t they do the same thing last season?
No matter how many times you say Marcel is passive-aggresive it still won’t be true. The main reason Ilan didn’t deserve to win is because he shouldn’t have been there in the first place after the hair shaving garbage.
I don’t think the odds were stacked against Marcel. Maybe it was inexperience but chefs work with carts like that all the time in large places. He should have made a checklist and checked off everything as it was placed on the cart like they do in every other restaurant, catering facility or country club on the planet. Or he should have delegated like every other chef does.
The presentation from both chefs was good but I wouldn’t eat either meal on a bet. Baby eels. eek!
Leaving out all the bullshit and drama that a restaurant patron wouldn’t be aware of, the best chefs at least to me were Sam, Cliff & Elia. I’d rather they didn’t show all of that because it colors opinions too much. After all who judges a meal by how nice the cooks were to each other?
I just got done watching the post-win dual interview with both Ilan and Marcel over on the Bravo website, and it really fleshes out some of the “one of these chefs needs a few years to mature” theme that was circulating amongst the judges. Honestly, if you can watch these clips and not understand the moral imperative of pinning Marcel to the floor and trying to shave his head, you aren’t human.
I mean he was annoying before and I couldn’t stand him, but in the absence of editing you can really begin to understand why every other contestant hated him like the plague. What an unspeakably obnoxious little asshole.
It’s difficult to tell whether it’s true douche-ness, nerves, or a combination of both. I mean, look at the way he’s sitting! If that isn’t defensiveness, I don’t know what is.
Heh, I happened to catch The View this morning. Rosie practically drooled over the fact that Marcel was in the audience. She brought him up onstage, gushing and placating and slobbering so much I thought I was going to throw up :rolleyes:
As big a douche and one-trick pony as Ilan is, he deserved to win based on this single, head-to-head performance. Whether you like him or not, Marcel is undeniably green and less skilled at some of the management/organizational components of running a kitchen and that was his true failing.
I personally think Marcel has a much more promising future ahead of him, and this has certainly given him enough exposure to explore a lot of culinary areas that he finds interesting (whereas I never got the sense that Ilan wanted to do more than find his cozy little niche).
If it’s any consolation, Ilan is also beginning to understand how much of a tool he came across on TV. Newsday had a glowing piece on him (little wonder; his mom works for the publication) yet very few people in the Comments section have anything nice to say about the guy. Lee Anne (from Season 1) also mentions in her blog that Ilan is beginning to appreciate the negative impression he left from his antics (though she ultimately says she likes both him & Marcel as people).
I would also say that, if I were woken up in the middle of the night, assaulted and immobilized by being pinned to the ground, and had the memory of Ilan’s cackling encouragements to continue the assault ringing in my ears, I would tell my noble competitor to take a flying fuck. Marcel didn’t owe Ilan anything, and he’s already shown, as big a prick as he can be sometimes, to still be a much classier act than Ilan (who still refuses to apologize for his role in the incident).
Thank god the season’s over. Here’s hoping that a higher caliber of contestants are chosen next time around.
I would like the Ilan-praisers and the Marcel-bashers to comment on the beach segment before the competition. Marcel was the one trying to connect and to make of it a nice time. Ilan was just focused on being a jerk. Don’t tell me Marcel has zero social skills, he is just rowing against a very strong current.
And that’s why I’ve had the opinion that Marcel’s a bit of an instigator. He mentioned during the Bravo interview that at one point he saw the whole thing as purely competition. What better way to “play along” (as it were) than to instigate your competition into 1) treating you like a douchebag, thereby 2) making * them* look more like douchebags when doing so?
If, as some of you speculate, Ilan has admitted his mistakes and regrets some of his treatment of Marcel, then it only goes further to prove that Ilan has the superior moral character. Marcel is still under the delusion that everybody hated him for no good reason.
Nobody has said anything like that. He still hasn’t publicly apologized for his role in the assault–he just is beginning to appreciate how bad he came across. There’s no moral character involved in regretting something that you did when the only reason you regret it is that millions of people now see you for who you are.
And Marcel’s “delusion” has what exactly to do with moral character? Given that he didn’t gratuitously slam another colleague’s dish in front of a table full of guests, he didn’t resort to playground insults in maligning a fellow chef’s sexuality, and he wasn’t implicated in the instigation of an assault designed to subjugate and humiliate another opponent, Marcel is leagues above Ilan in character. Everything people point to is largely “passive-agressive” this or “read-between-the-lines” that, assigning nefarious motive toward acts that are, while dickish at times, still open to interpretation and subject to contextualization. These 3 items alone I cite with Ilan are so resolutely cut-&-dry that his inability to defend himself (and his supporters’ equal willingness to ignore or justify them) is beyond pathetic.
Thinking that being able to cook a mean paella somehow balances out these other qualities makes Ilan far more “delusional.”
