Fall is a marvelous time of year when, after a long summer of boredom, tears, and ABC's Wipeout, TV finally gets good again. Case in point: Top Chef,
Bravo's reality TV cooking competition, hosted by possible zombie Padma
Lakshmi and featuring Head Judge Tom "Just Like the Dad Who Never
Approved of You" Colicchio.
There is a common misconception that people who aren't good cooks
themselves won't like a show about cooking. That is stupid.
Approximately four billion people read and enjoyed Harry Potter even
though they weren't wizards, so I don't see why we can't all watch a
cooking show. So here are this season's chef-testants (except the girl
who made something involving peppers and Satan and was immediately
thrown off), ranked in order of how much I like them.
Mattin
Mattin
is my favorite so far, because he so adorable he is practically a
Disney character of himself. I imagine that his daily To Do list looks
something like this:
- Wake up
- Put on red necktie
- Be delightful/French
Seriously. Look at him:
That is a pose he routinely strikes. Like, there have been two episodes, and there are already two instances in which he has done it:
Mattin! French Disney Boy Champion of the World!
Based
on his awesomeness, I have decided to hire Mattin as my personal
employee. I will not be employing him as a chef, though; rather, his
job will just be to shadow me throughout my day and repeat everything
I say in a French accent.
Kevin
Although
I have ranked Kevin quite high here, I don't actually have much to say
about him. After all, it's still pretty early in the season, and most
of the chefs have only had about two minutes of screen time each.
However, Kevin seems pretty solid. He won the first challenge, which
is impressive because it involves beating the most people. I think he
is one to watch.
Jesse
I probably shouldn't be ranking Jesse this high, because she has
been kind of erratic and weird on the show thus far. However, she is
from Maryland, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. Also, I
love that her profile on bravotv.com
says, "Bacon, butter, duck fat, cumin and trash bags are the five items
she keeps on hand at all times." Ahhhh yes, all the essential
ingredients for my favorite dish: "Big Trash Bag of Fatty Things, with a Dash of Cumin." A Maryland classic!
Also, this is one of Jesse's tattoos:
Preeti
Pretti earns points for having a fauxhawk, a.k.a. the official hairstyle of
Top Chef.
She is also the head chef for Google, which is cool, except, you know
what? I am getting sick of hearing about how sweet it is to work for
Google, and how they have swimming pools for everyone, and it's sooooo
great, and and there are free-range unicorns walking around the complex
for you to ride from building to building and blah blah blah. Now they
have a
Top Chef contestant working for them? Fine, Google. Keep having all the fun.
Bryan
Bryan is the other Marylander on the show. He owns Volt in Frederick,
which I just Googled, because hey, I research these posts. So this is the first picture you see when you go to voltrestaurant.com:
Followed by this:
Lesson: Bryan likes being alone.
Bryan is brothers with Michael
(next on my list), and so far the sibling rivalry between them has not
seemed as intense as some of the Bravo promos would have us believe.
However, I would wager that things will heat up eventually, because the
brothers Voltaggio seem pretty on top of their game. Which brings me
to . . .
Michael
Contrary to what this picture may have you believe, Michael is not, in
fact, a member of a 1990s boy band. However, he is clearly supposed to
be the edgier of the two brothers, as evidenced by his knife-and-fork
tattoo and the fact that he is wearing enough bronzer to make Lindsay
Lohan look albino in comparison.
Ron
Ron here is kind of a wild card. In the first episode, when the
challenge was to make a dish inspired by one of your vices, Ron claimed
that his vice was that he had to travel a very long time from Haiti to
the U.S., to which the judges pretty much responded, "Yeah, that's not
really a vice, but this is pretty bangin' shrimp."
Hector
I
haven't really noticed Hector too much, but he seems kind of funny.
His bio mysteriously says he is "currently working on a project on hot
peppers." That sounds vaguely awesome.
Ashley
You are just going to have to believe me when I say there is more to Ashley than her bizarre resemblance to Jimmy Neutron.
Ash
Ash has made about zero impression on me so far, so I am using him as a buffer between the people I like so far and the people I don't like so far. It is an important job, Ash. I am glad you wore a bowtie for it.
Robin
Now we are getting into "people I don't like so far" territory. Robin
seems like she could get annoying. She is a "self-taught" chef, which
in
Top Chef world usually translates to "extraordinarily
defensive and paranoid chef with a chip on his/her shoulder." At any
rate, I don't think she'll be around for very long, so I'm not getting
too worked up about it.
Laurine and Eve
I spent the entire first two episodes of the season being unable to
differentiate between these two women; finally, when I was beginning to
get good at telling them apart (Eve's ridiculous baby voice helped);
one of them got eliminated. Eve, I think. Maybe it was Laurine.
(Incidentally, "Laurine" is how our landlord pronounces my name.)
Anyway. These two suck.
Eli
This
guy seems preeettty annoying. According to his Bravo.com bio, Eli is "a
self-proclaimed Gastronome." Yeah, well since we're making
proclamations, I'm going to point out that he is also a
Lauren-proclaimed dumbass.
Michael
This
guy seems like a real douchebag.
Jennifer
Bleh.
You already know Jennifer is going to go far this season, because the
her appearances in the first two episodes have clearly been edited to
position her as the Annoying Character Everyone Loves to Hate Who Goes
on to Come in Second-ish. (See also:
Stefan.)
It appears we will have
to deal with her annoying accent and horrible personality for many
episodes to come. That's unfortunate, because she is totally the
person you knew in elementary school who liked to be all Type A and
competitive and suck up to the teachers and pretend to be nice, but
then give you backhanded compliments about your stegosaurus diorama and
kick you at recess when nobody was looking.
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