![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mar. 27th, 2008 11:09 am
Top Chef, now with added windiness!
Three episodes of Top Chef last night, and what do I have to show for it? A sleep hangover and a muted sense of regret. I was half-heartedly boycotting the last season on account of their continuing failure to showcase Midwestern talent, but setting the current series in Chicago pretty much demolishes that objection.
Now the obstacle is a lack of eye candy. Although Howie "the Bulldog" was no Frank "the Bull", he was still enough to catch my eye.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu thought I might like Eric, but something didn't gel with him even before he started slagging Rick Bayless. (Just because you, Mr Corndog King, have never had upscale Mexican doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, much less that it's an oxymoron. Go back to your deep fryer, you glorified short-order cook!) If we had to have a self-effacing San Franciscan bear on the show, why on earth couldn't it have been foodpoisoningsf? I'll wager it hasn't been twenty years since he made a soufflé!
That leaves Manuel, who's got a handsome paisano face, but not much personality and a dowdy pear shape. (At first I thought maybe it was just a succession of bad camera angles and ill-fitting aprons, but, no, he's fundamentally a soft-edged trapezoid. What was that Judy Tenuta sang about wanting a man with "child-bearing hips"?) Well, and Tom Colicchio, although with each progressively more bastardic iteration of his persona, my ardour dies a bit more.
Plus I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to getting a rubish kick out of seeing my city spotlit on the small screen, even if it is pretty much all Lincoln Park, all the time supplemented with tourist-friendly shots of downtown. The block party was a fairly fresh trick from a bag that's showing its shallowness and I was unaccountably proud that the North Side yuppies made such a good showing in the pantry raid. So far, mercifully few idiotic marketing tie-ins--could it be that the producers have realised we want more Iron Chef and less Rachel Ray?
As far as personalities go, I'm really rooting for the lesbian couple and I can only hope against hope that the producers' attempts to force them into a Dramatic! Heart-wrenching! Showdown! aren't too ham-fisted. And although I'm one withmonshu in hating Andrew's smug nastiness, there was something engaging about seeing a team fight the judges tooth-and-nail for being put in their place when they felt they had no right to be there. It made the ensuing smackdown all the sweeter.
Now the obstacle is a lack of eye candy. Although Howie "the Bulldog" was no Frank "the Bull", he was still enough to catch my eye.
monshu thought I might like Eric, but something didn't gel with him even before he started slagging Rick Bayless. (Just because you, Mr Corndog King, have never had upscale Mexican doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, much less that it's an oxymoron. Go back to your deep fryer, you glorified short-order cook!) If we had to have a self-effacing San Franciscan bear on the show, why on earth couldn't it have been foodpoisoningsf? I'll wager it hasn't been twenty years since he made a soufflé!That leaves Manuel, who's got a handsome paisano face, but not much personality and a dowdy pear shape. (At first I thought maybe it was just a succession of bad camera angles and ill-fitting aprons, but, no, he's fundamentally a soft-edged trapezoid. What was that Judy Tenuta sang about wanting a man with "child-bearing hips"?) Well, and Tom Colicchio, although with each progressively more bastardic iteration of his persona, my ardour dies a bit more.
Plus I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to getting a rubish kick out of seeing my city spotlit on the small screen, even if it is pretty much all Lincoln Park, all the time supplemented with tourist-friendly shots of downtown. The block party was a fairly fresh trick from a bag that's showing its shallowness and I was unaccountably proud that the North Side yuppies made such a good showing in the pantry raid. So far, mercifully few idiotic marketing tie-ins--could it be that the producers have realised we want more Iron Chef and less Rachel Ray?
As far as personalities go, I'm really rooting for the lesbian couple and I can only hope against hope that the producers' attempts to force them into a Dramatic! Heart-wrenching! Showdown! aren't too ham-fisted. And although I'm one with
monshu in hating Andrew's smug nastiness, there was something engaging about seeing a team fight the judges tooth-and-nail for being put in their place when they felt they had no right to be there. It made the ensuing smackdown all the sweeter.Tags: