Top Chef: "Block Party"

[rachelmanija]

Is anyone but me watching? I love the show! It's comforting to me to see that even pro chefs can screw up and produce inedible disasters on occasion.

I wish old episodes were available on DVD or online, so I could watch previous seasons! Here, Check out Hung's breakfast Smurf village on youtube!

It's too early to have real favorites yet, but I am currently rooting for the lesbian couple. I'm also rooting for the "molecular gastronomist" to make into the finals, because his food is so entertaining. It's a little early to tell who's actually got the best cooking. Though I have to say, Hung's food was consistently inventive and looked delicious from very early episodes on.

Was I the only one who mixed up the two smug, arrogant, scrawny white guys with light brown stubble? I totally thought they were the same person, sometimes with and sometimes without a hat, until they were all lined up together. Oops. It reminds me of how I went through 3/4 of The Thin Red Line thinking that two blue-eyed, dark-haired soldiers were the same guy, until one of them died. Anyway, they were both insufferable and I was hoping one of them would get the boot.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Top Chef and Project Runway are always so far ahead that it was a shock to see that Make Me a Supermodel* films the week it's aired.





* Which I find watchable, provided I fast-forward past all the interpersonal drama bits and watch just the challenges.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Completely OT, but the Supermodel show has to be contemporaneous because it involves a voting audience. I think that's a bad idea, in part because reality show audience != high-fashion industry insider, but it also has weird side-effects as to how they cut the show. E.g., it's been creepily clear that some of the interpersonal stuff is vastly magnified to fill time, and because the editors thought it might develop into a "storyline" but never particularly did.

It's much easier to see what kind of whole-series arc subplots you have when the whole series is already in the can!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah. OTOH, that means they also don't spend just that little bit more time on the person who's going to get booted that week that I think I perceive on TC and PR.

I've been enjoying the photography and watching the behind-the-scenes stuff at the shoots, like how they did the tank setup for the weeks they shot them underwater with the snake. I'd love to have the resources (and skills, and equipment) to be able to take photographs like that. And the runway walks especially underscore how much I don't know about what fashion insiders look for and at in modeling clothes on the runway. But I prefer PR and TC, just because what I love about those shows is watching creativity under pressure.

I watched the hairstylist show when it was on (Shear Genius? I forget), but it wasn't as good. My stylist and I snarked mightily about it. He was contemptuous of them because none of them were that good of stylists, he said, plus he's done hair shows for years where he has to conceive and execute four styles an hour, so he had no sympathy for their whining about only having an hour and a half to do a style.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I think the real problem with Supermodel (whoops not Supernodal) is, well, it's already been done (hello America's Next Top Model). The voting and the excessive male nudity are the only distinctions they've got in the marketplace of modeling competition shows, and actually, it's pretty clear that the two are related. The votes are overwhelmingly biased towards the male contestants (and against the females), because the audience of the show is really interested in male nudity.

Which is fine, for a reality show, but I have my doubts that it produces a worthwhile competition.