Top Chef Check-In

OK, so we're day 4,189 into Top Chef's six-year-long Season Three. How's everyone holding up? Stocked with plenty of water and truffle butter? Do we need to pass around the mushroom risotto for sustenance?

Seriously, this season started, what, a couple months ago? And there's still Eight. Chefs. Left. For real? Bravo is milking this show for all they can. Not only was there a useless mini-reunion halfway through the season (hosted by that insufferable Bravo producer Andy Cohen), but this past week the judges (spoiler alert!) didn't even eliminate anyone! The two teams of four chefs had 24 hours to open a mock restaurant. They had to create a full menu, shop for all the interior decorations, train an apparently incompetent waitstaff in thirty minutes and then serve thirty people. When both teams - unsurprisingly - failed, no one was sent home! Since they all sucked, all the losers cancelled each other out and everyone ended up being, in a way, winners, since they could stay another week. Got that? Hugs all around!

It's not that I'm not enjoying the show. I am. I've been a little hesitant about Top Chef in the past, but Salon's Heather Havrilesky changed my mind:

I love the guessing game...Top Chef is sort of one part cooking competition, one part unfolding mystery: You develop your theories about which dish tastes the best, but you don't really know that it's lacking oil or acid or is unevenly salted until the judges have their say.

Okay, I can go along with that. Now I'm fully, unconditionally addicted and it's mostly due to the show itself. The challenges are interesting, most of the chefs seem genuinely talented and it's hard to guess who's getting kicked out of the kitchen each week as past successes don't necessarily guarantee anything.

But TC's charms are starting to wear thin. Instead of decreasing in number, these chefs seem to be multiplying every week. The judges should be eliminating two, three, four chefs at a time by this point. "Hung - you're a big spaz! You're gone! CJ - you're too tall! You're gone! Sara, no, you, the other Sara - you haven't won one challenge yet! You're gone!" See how easy that was, Padma?

Here's how Bravo could punch this show up:

1) Show Tre in sleeveless shirts more. When Tre stripped down to a tank top for the challenge in which they had to feed a late-night club crowd, even he knew that the drunks were lining up to check out his guns, not the raw oysters. With the cute-girl quotient rapidly reducing (only the beautiful Casey remains as a specimen of poreless womanhood), Bravo should take advantage of the cute boys left: the built, soft-spoken Tre, 6'8" former-volleyball-player CJ and mohawked, former-gymnast Dale. Forget the chef jackets as kitchen uniform - bring on the requisite tank tops.

2) Let us actually get to know the contestants. At the beginning of one episode, we see Casey and Lea talking over breakfast. Then, when Lea is eliminated later, Casey has a mini-breakdown because they're apparently best friends. Same thing with Dale and Sara - as soon as we found out they were BFFs, Sara is sent packing. I'm all for a Bravo show focusing more on the creative challenges and less on personal drama ({cough}Project Runway{cough}) but we still need to get to know the chefs if we're going to care about them.

3) The judges should...I don't know...make sense, maybe? The biggest problem with this show - what the hell are they talking about half the time? First Tom Colicchio complains that the chefs aren't being creative enough when they have to update a classic American comfort food. Then they criticize Sara's updated Chicken a la King for not resembling Chicken a la King closely enough. Say wha? Could they complain even more, please? When served pineapple sorbet, two of them literally cried "It's so cooooold!" In fact, these judges complain more than any other judging team from any other reality show. I'm waiting for critiques like "your broth was too brothy." Or "your saffron sauce didn't match my shoes." Or "your left earlobe looked slightly asymmetrical when you brought out your dish."

And please...no more never-ending plugs for overrated, largely disregarded food bloggers, please.

Minor details, overall, however. Bravo has a good thing going and they know it. Which is why I'll still be sitting on my couch at the season finale, eight years older, with a beard as big as Hung's ego, surrounded by discarded fennel bulbs and empty mascarpone tubs, crossing my fingers as the next Top Chef is announced.

Also check out: Top Project Runway Rip-Off.
And: Please Pack Your Breasts and Leave.