***This whole post is a SPOILER for last night’s Top Chef finale, as well as previous episodes of Top Chef.
I like to pretend that I don’t watch Top Chef. Like watching it is beneath me, somehow. I don’t know – I’m weird like that about some shows. But this was the first season that I actually made an effort to watch, and I caught maybe two-thirds of the season. I think I started watching because I loved Tiffany so much – she was the rare “top chef” candidate that seemed to be able to cook her ass off while simultaneously being really cool and generally nice (but able to whip her bitch out for the appropriate occasions). Alas, Tiffany was eliminated two weeks ago, and I just wasn’t very excited about the four finalists that got to move on to the final elimination rounds in Singapore. The four finalists were: Ed Cotton, Angelo Sosa, Kevin Sbraga and Kelly.
In their first days in Singapore, they had two challenges (this was last week’s episode) – make Asian food using traditional ingredients found at the Singapore markets. Ed won both challenges, and Kelly was eliminated last week. Honestly, I thought she deserved to go weeks beforehand – and her spot would have been better used by Tiffany, seriously.
So, the actual final episode picked up right after Kelly had been eliminated. Going into it, I guess I was rooting for Ed by default, just because the sweaty, chubby white guy with the bitchy mouth was more appealing to me than Angelo’s passive-aggressive bitch or Kevin’s misanthropic ways. Padma ordered the men back to the judge’s circle, where they were told their challenge: they each had to make a four-course meal – one vegetable course, one fish course, one meat course and one dessert. And they would get their own sous chefs too – former Top Chef winners Ilan Hall, Hung Huynh and Michael Voltaggio.
I always thought that Michael Voltaggio was a major douche, but I really liked seeing him work as Kevin’s sous chef – and Michael really brought it, and helped Kevin out and they worked really well as a team. And I had always liked Ilan, but he totally sucked as Ed’s sous chef – it seemed like Ilan spent most of his time second-guessing Ed. But the award has to go to Hung Huynh, because he pretty much thought up, prepared and cooked Angelo’s entire meal while Angelo lounged around in bed, being “sick”. Granted, Angelo really could have been ill, and there was some talk of throwing up and migraines and dehydration. But he didn’t really look sick, and he didn’t really sound sick, and the whole thing was just kind of weird, right?
At the end of the day, you knew Ed wasn’t going to win because his dessert sucked ass and even he had a sh-tty attitude about it. I think if Ed had really put some time and effort into his dessert rather than sub-contracting to Ilan, Ed would have been a contender (although his duck necks sounded weird, right?). And while the judges seemed to like Angelo’s food (Hung’s food), but you got the feeling that Angelo was out of the running pretty quickly too. And that left Kevin standing – plus, I think the judges were impressed that he had the balls to make a Singapore Sling. So Kevin became the first African-American to win Top Chef, and the glum-bot even showed some emotion, which was nice – his reaction to winning (“I am?” he asked, stunned, when told he was the Top Chef). Hurray? What did you think? I think the judges were only looking at the four-course meal, and not at the whole scope of the season. For which it seems like Kevin should have won, I guess. Whatever. Poor Ed. At least Angelo was very gracious in defeat, right?
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