Historically, in writing Top Chef recaps, I would try and come up with a fun headline. You know, just something kicky and fun. Maybe some wordplay. Maybe a pop culture reference. Something about the food they cooked, but in a light and joking manner? Anyway, as you can see, the headline on this post is straight-forward because this show has become almost unbearably dull. If they’re not going to make this enjoyable and entertaining, I’m not going to beat my head against the wall trying to do their jobs for them. On this episode, the winner of Last Chance Kitchen, the lowest rated Internet webseries of all time, is revealed and it’s Beverly. OK? Beverly is back. They try to make it into this whole thing. “Did you even know they were doing Last Chance Kitchen?” Yeah, I knew, and I couldn’t have cared less. Right from the get-go by starting the season off with 400 contestants and whittling it down to 15 over TWO HOURS this season of Top Chef has been tedious and insulting to its audience. Just because people like something doesn’t necessarily mean they want a TON MORE of it (with the exception of Justified, which should be on every single night and/or just be a 24-hour network of its own with brand new episodes every single hour). It is actually possible to contain yourself to a 12-episode season and make that season interesting and compelling and fast-paced and not slog it down with 10 extra episodes of absolute garbage. But hey! If the Top Chef producers want to run this thing into the ground so that no one even has the energy to stay tuned for Watch What Happens Live! that is their business. Literally. That is their job. But I still think they should be fired.

Welcome back, Beverly. Everyone hates you.

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The best thing about doing these weekly GIF round-ups is that no one gets to tell me which GIF I get to put at the beginning (except Gabe, if he wants), so I can pick whichever one I like the best (unless Gabe has a problem with it for some reason) (it’s never been a problem in the past, I’m just saying), and this week I get to pick a GOSSIP GIRL ONE! YESSSS! Hahah. Very exciting. I’ve had a lot of exciting moments in my life, for sure, but the moment during which I chose to feature a Gossip Girl GIF at the top of the weekly GIF round up — that’s right at the top. I fainted and died, and now I’m in heaven with all of the dancing angel GIFs. Anyway, TGIF! This has been a great week, guys. Let’s relive it together, huh?

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My apologies in advance for how boring and self-serving this first paragraph is going to be, but can I just say that my DVR has not properly recorded an episode of Top Chef in months, which means that if I am not home to watch it live, which sometimes I am not, because I am a human adult in 2012 and we all have responsibilities (read: bars to drink at) then I have to stay up for the late-night airing of the episode, which sometimes means even having to watch a couple of minutes of Watch What Happens Live. The point is I have the hardest life out of all the lives and I am a saint for even doing this and we all agree about how true both of these FACTS are and how sad we all feel for me. But seriously, last night was the worst yet in that my DVR did not tape the episode properly, but I was actually home for the last half of the show and it still just wouldn’t play and then I stayed up late to watch the rerun and watching LIVE still didn’t work! It just kept showing me the first 5 minutes and whenever I would try and pause or restart or turn the machine off it just was stuck on this endless Quickfire Challenge loop. O’ WOE IS ME! What’s even going on? Who designed this technology? Has even Bravo given up on this show? Fuck it. Fuck it! (You can’t be upset about this annoying introductory paragraph because I already apologized for it. You have to accept my apology and forgive me, that’s how it works.)

Anyway, the Quickfire Challenge if anyone even cares at this point:

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Remember when Charlize Theron was on last week? That was so great. I wish she was still here this week. Oh! There she is! Charlize Theron comes into the stew room where everyone is discussing Beverly’s elimination. Grayson is going to miss her, and points out that her plates were always perfectly balanced. Ed makes some joke involving a water bottle, which sends Lindsay on some self-aggrandizing defense of the time she was an asshole. Like, you know what, we’re all assholes sometimes and it’s not the end of the world, but don’t start a story about how much of an asshole you were with “I’m the most diplomatic person, but.” You’re clearly not the most diplomatic person. Butros Butros Gali is the most diplomatic person. You’re a hot-tempered contestant on a reality show who had an easy scapegoat to blame for a dish that probably wasn’t very good to begin with. Anyway, Charlize Theron comes in and thanks everyone again. Haha. OK, Top Chef. I think you’re done. I think you have squeezed the last drop of celeblood that you can out of the Charlize stone. (Hey, producers, think about getting Sharon Stone as a guest judge next season so I can make that joke again but even better.) “I was a fan, bigger fan now,” Grayson says. And isn’t that what it’s all about? If Charlize Theron can make just one fan be a little bit more of a fan then her appearance on this show was totally worth it. CHARLIZE THERON, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Charlize Theron. Never forget. Charlize Theron.

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Guys, how intense was Restaurant Wars last week? JK. JK JK. But all the chefs are in the stew room just dealing with it. Muddling through. Can you even–did he really–who do they think–and cetra. Tom walks in and everyone just groans. Haha. UGH, THIS FUCKIN’ GUY. Tom just tells them that they’re heading back to San Antonio and he will see them there. You gotta love this show’s insistence on perfect continuity. There is not a moment that goes by that we do not know where our chefs are and how they got there. (i.e. there is not a moment that goes by where we don’t know what particular type of Toyota they are driving and how “sick” it is, which is generally “totally sick.”) Everyone drives back to San Antonio and we see them shuffle into the house. GOOD GRIEF, WE GET IT ALREADY. They really could have cut out a lot of this stuff and saved more airtime for the exciting SHOPPING MONTAGE. The next day, the gang is back in the Top Chef kitchen with guest judge Eric Ripert and a mysterious conveyor belt. For the Quickfire Challenge it is explained that everyone has half an hour to cook, and they have to use three ingredients off the conveyor belt in their dish, and the longer you wait for ingredients, the better the ingredients will be, but the less time you’ll have to cook. This is all fine and good as a reality TV challenge, but Eric Ripert tries to explain how this somehow correlates to the actual challenges a chef faces and I do not believe him. In what way does a conveyor belt filled with graham crackers and Pop Rocks combined with a time constraint and the necessity of using the graham crackers and the Pop Rocks even if you don’t want to correlate in any way with real cooking? DM me, Eric Ripert. Anyway, cook cook cook. Convey convey convey.

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The chefs are brought into a giant, empty events space. They’re getting 8-way married! Congratulations! No, they are not getting 8-way married (because no one will marry Beverly. Poor Beverly!) they are getting 8-way restaurant warred. No Quickfire this week. All Elimination Challenge all the time. Everyone is, as they are every season, WAY too excited about the announcement that this is Restaurant Wars. Seriously, I don’t get it. As a viewer, I hate Restaurant Wars, and that’s as a viewer. I can only imagine what a miserable nightmare it is as an actual contestant. So everybody take it down, like, six notches. Seriously, look at this face:

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Everyone is still recovering in the kitchen two seconds after last week’s elimination of Manic Panic when Padma walks in and just gets things going. That is what I like to see. LET’S JUST DO THIS ALREADY. She eliminates everyone except for Paul, Gay Chris (aka Malibu), and Ed, who have two minutes to cook a 12-course-meal for Paul Bocuse. None of them can do it, they’re all eliminated. The season ends. LET’S GOOOOOO! Padma tells everyone that they’re going to Austin and the contestants, as always, lose their shit. There are literally multiple rounds of high fives and a lot of screaming. Looks like someone got into the bulk box of dry sherry. Someone says there’s lots of music in Austin, which is stupid and wrong. There is an annual music festival in Austin, that’s true, but it’s not going on right now, and otherwise there is just a regular amount of music in Austin. Somehow, no one mentions that Austin is also home to one of the most insufferable seasons of The Real World ever. Wes? Fucking Wes? Remember him? The worst. That season started off OK when Danny got his SKULL PUNCHED IN, but after that it was so boring. Weirdly, this doesn’t come up. Paul’s nervous because he’s from Austin and he feels that he must represent. “So, I’m like sweatin’ balls at this point.” Sure. Good luck, Paul. I’m sorry, for a number of reasons, to hear about your balls.

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Anthony Bourdain was on Marc Maron’s podcast recently, talking about food and cooking and being on TV and whatever. One thing that is very appealing about Anthony Bourdain’s success as a famous food person outside of the kitchen is how honest he is about his former career as an actual chef and the ways in which he never really amounted to that much. Oh, he ran bustling, big time Manhattan kitchens, but he seems very straight-forward about his failings as any kind of culinary visionary, which may or may not be laced with false modesty, but it’s certainly better than someone who trumps up a reputation that never existed. At one point in the interview, though, in talking about how untalented he used to be, Bourdain pointed out that he could never have won much less even made it onto Top Chef and remarked upon how talented everyone on the show is. Has he seen this season? LOL! But the point remains that it is worth taking a moment at the top of this week’s episode to remember that these are highly trained, incredibly skilled, hard working chef contestants, and that the ringer they are put through is as exhausting as it is challenging, and it’s very challenging. It requires not only a tremendous amount of imagination and flexibility as well as training and skill, but also just sheer endurance and physical stamina. So, keep up the good, very hard work everyone. And now let’s make fun of their stupid faces and hair!

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