Top Chef: Hot Lunch Jam (Oh Sherry)

Hi there, everybody, so glad you could come back and join me again!  Well, we’re only one episode in, and I have to say that A) it’s good to be back with the real Top Chef again (those other Master people are just too goddamned professional and respectful of each other, it makes my job so much harder and then I wind up doing awesome things like picking on people whose spouses have died in tragic airplane crashes) and B) I think it’s pretty clear that this bunch is not going to surpass the talent level of the Las Vegas season, as will be evidenced by several things that happen in tonight’s episode.  Also, I’m finding it hard to believe that I’ve come across a group of cheftestants that are so easily able to annoy simply by the way they draw knives…

guess whose face says everything I’m thinking?

GayNold would be smart to hold that knife a little further away from ShortyPants if he wants to go on, you know, living.  Boyfriend is gonna be super-irritating this episode (and likely the rest of this season until he is finally and mercifully sent home).  Also, before we go any further let’s have a moment of silence for BeakerDreads, whom so many of us liked instantly, and who was so gawkily sweet and gently wacky and comically promising…

…and ultimately clueless

All right, let’s get it started:  Morning at the Bilious Brownstone and everyone’s involved in their morning routine, some are doing pushups (Nosferatu and Bobby Brown), some are masturbating (OranJello, to a picture of himself), while others (such as MassholEd) are shaving in the reflection of the window…

…and bringing the hotness

Eh, he’s only doing that because JerseyMoobs is in the bathroom admiring his cleavage and hasn’t come out yet.  Meanwhile across the room, GayNold clearly disapproves of MassholEd’s well-defined pudge…

or is completely turned on

I vote the latter.  Anyhow, sure enough, when JerseyMoobs comes out of the bathroom we see he is carrying a bottle of that Dial Bodywash!  I wonder if they’re all going to get “drunk” one night and have a big Dial Bodywash squirting war?  Or if eventually they’ll just move on into the bathroom and we’ll get to actually see MassholEd or JerseyMoobs soapily massaging their manly chestflesh.  The very thought should kinda turn me on, but actually it’s making me feel kinda squicky so let’s get everyone dressed and out the door to go meet Scar at the Top Chef Kitchens in the Not-At-All-Product-Placed-Hilton-Hotel-That-The-Producers-Make-Sure-To-Get-An-Exterior-Shot-Of…

remember when this name WASN’T a punchline?

When they arrive, Scar’s there wearing hot pink (and about a zillion hair extensions) and she introduces them to today’s guest judge, who is mighty impressive indeed.  It’s Sam Kass, who is the Assistant White House Chef and “Food Initiative Coordinator”…

…and admirer of Scar’s fuller, rounder, heavier post-baby breasts

Immediately following his introduction, Sammy starts getting heavily gang-eyefucked by every single one of the heterosexual female cheftestants…

I’m betting dollars to donuts that GayNold is just out of frame to the left and feeling just as avidly moist as the ladies

Bobby Brown is in his home town and while he’s not getting all misty-crotched like the others, he knows exactly how big of a deal it is to have to impress a chef that cooks for The President…

“You kidding?  Even I’d go down on him!”

I have to transcribe Scar’s next line, because it’s one of the cheesiest I’ve ever heard them make her say in six seasons… “A successful government is bipartisan… so you’ll be competing in a Top Chef Bi-Parti-Sandwich Quickfire.”   Everyone dutifully giggles, but I’m sure on the inside they were all groaning as hard as I was out loud.  In any case, they get 30 minutes to create a delicious sandwich, which is quite puzzling to our girl Tamesha because she thinks this sounds way too easy…

it’s easier than getting to know anything about her, thanks to the producers ignoring her entirely…

The only thing I know about this woman yet is that she pronounces the word “sangwich” and she has a slight Caribbean accent.  This is still not enough to bestow a nickname.  Anyhow, Scar says they’re going to be paired up in teams of two and brings out the Knife Block, which causes Bobby Brown to roll his eyes… or maybe he’s offering up a silent prayer to Jesus…

“Please, God, don’t put me with that gay guy.  Or the short dude.  Or that blonde chick.  Or the orange fella.  Or the…”

The winning team will get immunity from elimination, and because our resident self-appointed “Alpha Male” (*snicker*) KennEgo hasn’t had a chance to talk down to us yet, he makes sure to jump in and tell us all how “irrelevant” he thinks immunity is because he’s just so confident in his awesome skills that he’s just gonna send each one of the others home, week after week…

except for the ones with, you know, immunity

I get the distinct feeling that he’s one of those people who like to use big words even when they’re not totally sure of their definition or proper usage.  I can say this because I’m one of those people, too.  Anyhow, they draw knives, and the teams wind up like this:  Bloody Mandy & Tamesha, Big-Haired Andrea & JerseyMoobs, Miss Swan & GayNold, KennEgo & MassholEd, OranJello & Trucksy, HomeSchooled Jackie & ShortyPants, Nosferatu & Bobby Brown and ChesTiffany & Instructor LynnBian.

As they’re drawing knives, OranJello tells us it would be super-duper-mega-ultra embarrassing if he were to lose this QuickFire because he has a sandwich shop in NYC, “In fact, I think I would have to close the shop down…”

calm down, Angie, no need to get your fauxhawk so ruffled

And just in case you guys were wondering why I found GayNold so annoying in the first picture above (or why ShortyPants looks so stabbyfaced) here’s a gif to further illustrate why I think this guy is a total douchepot…

because he can’t just say the number “3” and let them move on, it pretty much has to be a head-bobbing plea for attention 24/7

Enough about him, there’ll be plenty more to hate on later (believe me).  Now that they’re paired up it’s time for Scar to reveal the big “GOTCHA!” twist… and sure enough, she says they’ll have to be wearing a special apron for this challenge…

hundred bucks says she squeezed Sammy’s ass a good one right here!

Yup, so this is a Siamese Twins challenge, each chef is only allowed to use one hand!  Bobby Brown thinks it’s brilliant, “Who got high and came up with dis idea??!?”…

prolly the same people who got high that one time and started calling you “The King Of R&B”

Sexy Sammy suggests they leave their egos at the door (HA!), forget about taking credit (DOUBLE HA!) and get to work, and with that Scar calls time to begin!  There’s a mad dash for aprons and guess who’s extra happy about her Sunkist-hued partner for this QuickFire?  Trucksy!  She tells us (in her oddly misplaced Chicaaahgoan Ayksent™) that she has had a “secret crush” on him, and she can’t think of anything better than having her arm around him for the next 30 minutes…

“Except maybe diving face-first into a fresh vagina…”

Less excited to be paired up is our first Team Ebony & Ivory, made up of Bloody Mandy and Tamesha.  I guess our girl Tamesha pretty much just said “I’m gonna be on the right” and Mandy interviews that they should have “rolled Shambo” for who got to be on the right, which makes zero sense to me (is this a colloquialism that I’m not aware of?).  Meanwhile Tamesha defends her shamelessly Shambo-less approach by saying “Bessicallee I doan think I can truss her hodin’ da knife and I hodin’ da bread!”  Normally I would say this was kind of a bitchass move, but I suspect somebody hasn’t forgotten who sliced their own hand open at the previous QuickFire, so I guess I don’t totally blame her for being leery of Bloody Mandy’s knife skillz…

“Oopsie!  Was that your thumb I just saw rolling under the prep table?  My bad!”

Having similar issues is Team Undead, made up of Bobby Brown’s career and Nosferatu.  Bobby’s trying to convince Nosy to hold a package of meat steady while he slices it open, and Nosy’s not having it:  “You need to calm down!” he screeches while Bobby calmly assures him he’s not going to cut him…

stab him, maybe, if he doesn’t man up, shut up, and hold the goddamned bread steady, but he won’t cut him

The only person I would honestly be worried about hacking my hand off for strategy’s sake?  Would be if I were OranJello  and I were paired with KennEgo (or vice-versa).  The rest of them just need to get a grip.  Speaking of KennEgo, he lucked out that his partner MassholEd is left-handed, so there was none of that bitchiness over who got to be on what side of their makeshift conjoined twinapron.  Not like he would have cared, I’m sure he would have just bulldozed his way into being on the right because of his Extreme Relevancy to the challenge.

ShortyPants and HomeSchooled Jackie are limping around together, made JUST that much harder for her because she has to stoop or else his face is buried in her boob…

I love body language, because ShortyPants’ says “I don’t care if I’m violating you, I’m gonna pound the shit outta this chicken breast” while HomeSchooled’s says “Please don’t get a boner please don’t get a boner please don’t get a boner”

They’ve decided to make a chicken club sammich on white bread (and the joke just writes itself!) with some bacon and balsamic onions, and ShortyPants interviews that “taste-wise” he believes they have a good chance of winding up in the top for this challenge.  Awwww, isn’t he sweet?  Just the fact that he said that pretty much guarantees they’ll be in the Bottom Two…

where he’ll have ANOTHER chance to make this face!

Over on Team Hags’N’Hoes (Miss Swan and GayNold) they are gazing around the room looking at all the people panicking and opening things with their teeth and their knives and kinda laughing because they’re so calm and cool in contrast.  In fact, as they work together to slice some cucumbers, GayNold realizes the camera is filming them and makes sure to loudly tell her “I trust you, though, honey… it’s like, if anything, you can give me a manicure…”

please slip and cut the tip of his pinky off

I also love the fact that he’s wearing a huge gaudy-ass ring while they cook, that seems unsafe, unsanitary and would probably be dangerous around machinery like a KitchenAid mixer, but why am I even surprised that he wants to make sure everyone out here in TV Land gets to see his “ice” or “bling”?  And I guarantee you, he still calls it “bling”.  Anyhow, they’re also making a chicken breast sammich, only theirs is gonna be “spicy”.  With a skillion more s’s on it.

Meanwhile Team Alpha Dawg (KennEgo and MassholEd) are naturally going for overkill, because it’s not enough to show that you can make a Korean-chili-marinated grilled-tuna sammich in 30 minutes, you have to also be sure to make a mango-cucumber slaw to go with it.  I’m surprised KennEgo didn’t force them to whip up some kind of cocktail as well.  Naturally, he believes it’s the WINNING sammich…

“*sigh* Can’t we just skip all this stupid competition crap and just award me Top Chef now?”

This asshat always looks totally bored in his interviews, like all of this is just soooo beneath him and his amazing skills, and it’s really off-putting.  I wonder if watching himself back on TV now he sees that and wishes he hadn’t been so damned blasé and condescending about everything.  One thing I can say about OranJello (and you commenters were totally right about this last week) is that he’s driven and appears excited and wants to win.  KennEgo just seems to treat it all as an annoyance that he SHOULD be winning, but he’s not.  And I have to say, I am finding that supremely satisfying.  Because I am kind of a bitch.

And speaking of Team O’Donnell Cruise (good catch on the resemblance, ‘Gasmii!) their choice is to make an Asian fish sammich (natch!) with a beautiful Japanese sauce that OranJello says he likes to call “liquid love” or “sex on a plate”.  We get no sense of how well he and Trucksy are working together, but I get the feeling he brooks no dilly-dallying on his team…

“If you grab my ass one more time I’m going to twist your nipple off.”

ChesTiffany got paired with Instructor LynnBian (much to LynnBian’s delight, I imagine, she just seems like she’d be a breast man to me) and their Team Zebra Musk is going with a sliced veal saltimbocca that we hear LynnBian describe as “heavy on the seasoning and keep the method simple”.  Then she manfully starts to pound the hell out of it…

I suspect that poor veal has her Ex-GF’s face on it

ChesTiff seems excited by their idea and believes they’ve got this one wrapped up, which again almost certainly means failure.  It doesn’t help that at one point they almost burn ShortyPants’ arm off…

adding just a HINT of smoky charred manflesh to the flavors in their saltimbocca sammich

I love how she barely mutters “Sorry” to him, LOL!  Anyhow, Scar and Sexy Sammy come back from their 30 minute Quickie and call time.  They start out with Team O’Donnell Cruise and Scar wants to know how it was working together.  OranJello attempts to be funny and says that Trucksy is like his twin sister…

ha ha?

Stick to cooking, OranJello, and leave the jokes to the recappers.  In any case, here’s how their “liquid love” marinated “sex on a plate” turned out…

fuck.  I’m getting a boner

Seriously, that actually looks pretty good to me, cheesy preparation or not.  Sexy Sammy says it’s tasty, too.  Next we move on to Big-Haired Andrea and JerseyMoobs, who were apparently on Team Nobody Cared About You Guys During This Challenge So You’re Obviously Not Winning…

but here’s what their sammich looked like anyhow

Sexy Sammy tries to console them by letting them know he liked the pickle on their sammich.  It’s not like they made the pickle, though, so whatever, let’s move on to Team Ebony & Ivory…

and their charred and raw offering

Seriously?  WTF is up with that shit?  They’ve blackened it all on one half and the other half looks like somebody got mad and pounded it in frustration.  No comment from Scar or Sexy Sammy (other than their gorges involuntarily hitching as they try to choke this shit down).   Let’s check in with Team Undead.  Scar wants to know how it was for them to work together and after glaring at one another, Bobby Brown says it was “challenging”.  Here’s the result of their uneasy (and unholy) alliance…

ugh, it looks like they dug it out of a grave

They get no comments, which is not a good sign.  Let’s see what Team White Bread did!  ShortyPants calls it “the American-Italian connection”…

made all the more tragic by the giant trees they skewered them with

HomeSchooled Jackie interviews that she’d love to win this Quickfire, not because she wants to be the best and beat everybody else or anything, but because she wants immunity so she can “have a moment to breathe”.  Um, it’s the SECOND EPISODE, if you’re already THIS exhausted after only TWO challenges (one of which you sat out 3/4ths of) then quit wasting everybody’s time and send yourself home, stupid.  Sorry, but I get super-pissed when these idiots beat out 583,279 other people to be on this show and then they whine about how haaaaaard it all is.  It’s no surprise that the judges say nada about their sammich.

Perhaps they’ll have an opinion about Team Alpha Dawg’s full meal deal…

where “open-faced” REALLY means “too clunky to put another piece of bread on top of it”

Sexy Sammy makes sure to mention how much he likes the spices before they move on to Team Hags’N’Hoes, which GayNold says is a play on Asian street-food…

heyyyyyy, he didn’t make them spell “mint” as “myint”??!?

Perhaps he realized how lame that shit was and stopped doing it on purpose.  In any case, Sammy says it’s “pretty tasty” and GayNold jizzes in his Ed Hardy undies a little.  Finally we have the last team of the night, the reckless fiery danger that is Team Zebra Love…

and their surprisingly tame-looking result

Right away Sexy Sammy mentions how hard it is to eat, and apparently he’s right.  Look at Scar…

blowing Salman was never this hard (literally!)

LynnBian lamely offers “It’s more of a knife and fork kinda sandwich.” As Scar attempts to choke down her bite.  With that, the judging is over.

So who sucked?  Well, Team White Bread (ShortyPants and HomeSchooled Jackie) for starters!  Sexy Sammy says he thought their sammich lacked creativity by using just plain white bread (but didn’t he notice that it was SKEWERED BY FIR TREES??!?).  Apparently, their suckiness made it through the fire and got all over Team Zebra Love (ChesTiffany and Instructor LynnBian) because he also shoots down their sammich because the saltimbocca didn’t have great texture.  Poor LynnBian looks embarrassed, while Miss ChesTiffany is clearly fuming…

and possibly ready to leap over that prep table and shove Sexy Sammy’s head into the meat slicer

As far as GOOD sammiches go, naturally they liked Team O’Donnell Cruise (Trucksy and OranJello) because the taste of their fish was so bright and lively, and they loved the herbs and spices.  How much do you want to bet that the entire dish was all OranJello’s idea and Trucksy just used her free hand to hold whatever he told her to (including his balls when they needed scratching)?  Also unsurprisingly, they loved Team Alpha Dawg’s beautifully seared tuna and their Asian slaw.  So who takes the prize?…

let’s guess by facial expression

Sexy Sammy goes as far as to tell them their sammich was so delicious he could eat it every day!  Now they have immunity in the Elimination Challenge!  Naturally OranJello takes his win with grace and humility…

by cackling evilly

Honestly, I kinda don’t mind him being that way, because KennEgo’s turning out to be far more unlikable.  This makes it extremely gratifying to hear his next interview where he says at this point he’s getting a little heated, “I’m like, what MORE do I need to DO?”…

how about do a better job cooking that OranJello?

Ah, but he’s not the only bitter one, pretty much everybody else is standing there making bitchfaces as well, to the point where Sexy Sammy even notices, “You can just feel the love over there, can’tcha?”…

yup, and it tastes like barely-contained tears and jealousy

If the rest of them were smart, they’d save their energy and just try to keep out of the Loser’s Circle, cuz I think that’s about their only hope at this point.  Let’s find out about the Elimination Challenge!

Well, apparently it has to do with an issue very important to the President, the First Lady, and Sexy Sammy himself:  ending childhood obesity in America with Michelle Obama’s campaign called Let’s Move!  This campaign has some innovative concepts for children today, namely “Go outside and play”.  I know that sounds absolutely revolutionary, but trust me, I wasn’t always a fat-ass.  I’m part of one of the last generations that did not have amazing video games and computers to play with (and we only had about five TV channels to choose from… eight if you counted the UHF stations).  You got bored, you went outside and found your friends and you threw the Frisbee around, or played bike tag, or climbed trees, or hit the playground, or played with matches behind the garage until you almost accidentally burned it down.  It was all a lot of fun, and it was good exercise (especially running to find your mom so you could tell her that the garage was on fire)!

whoopsie

Honestly, I feel kinda sorry for the kids now, because they DO have all these great distractions that are geared towards keeping them indoors and damn near immobile (and don’t even start with that Wii Fit bullshit, either, that’s just another game and everybody knows it).  When you add to that the fact that their imaginations are left completely undeveloped (because let’s face it, visual entertainments like movies and video games don’t require any imagination on the viewer’s/user’s part) you wind up with kids who don’t know how to take an afternoon and come up with their own story to act out with their friends.  And that’s just sad.  If the children can’t look at the world around them and comment on it with a sardonic wit and a sarcastic eye, where is the next generation of recappers going to come from?

this is the future

Wait, what were we talking about?  OH fuck, that’s right, this is Top Chef, not J-Mo’s Rantblog.  So anyhow, Sexy Sammy says the First Lady wants to bring chefs in to be a part of her “Let’s Move!” campaign, so the challenge will be for them to come up with a school lunch.  Not only that, they have to use the same restrictions that the public schools have, which is a budget of $2.68 per child or $134.00 for all 50 kids they’ll be feeding.  Jesus fucking Christ, that better be in 1978 dollars… because if it’s in 2010 dollars then that is an insanely tiny amount of money to try and feed a kid with.  Then Sexy Sammy says that he has to take back 4 of those dollars to use for labor and supplies and anything else it takes to get that lunch onto the plate, which is also nuts and brings the total per child down to $2.60.

Well, guess who’s rolling his eyes and sneering at the thought of lunch for $2.60…

this bitch

Yeah, Ms. GayNold thinks it’s just hysterically funny that this budgety thingy is so small for this challenge, as he giggles and tells us “When I go out, I spend $130.00 on MYSELF.”…

“And I’ve got the double-chin to prove it!”

Isn’t it fun being both selfish AND horribly un-self-aware at the same time?  It’s even MORE comical to think about the fact that this one crappy meal just might be the only thing some of these public school kids get to eat all day, right?  Way to promote the more positive, altruistic aspects of our People, GayNold, you fucking shallow-ass, empty-headed, circuit-party queen.

Anyhow, Scar wants to know what the lunches in our schools consist of (because I’m pretty certain she didn’t go to public school and has no idea).  Sexy Sammy says it’s a main course, a couple of side dishes (such as a vegetable or a fruit) and then a dessert.  Plus, it’s gonna have to taste good, because kids won’t eat stuff that tastes like shit, and they’re not afraid to TELL you that it tastes like shit… mostly because they’re not at home, which is where the person who normally serves them can beat them with a wooden spoon if they mouth off about how bad the food is.

Scar says they’re going to be staying in their pairs and going into groups of four, each chef being responsible for one part of the menu, and they’ll all be judged individually.  Since OranJello and Trucksy won the QuickFire, they get to choose which team they want to round out their foursome.  After about 2.3 seconds of conferring, Trucksy says they want Team Alpha Dawg (KennEgo and MassholEd) to be in their group…

welcome, your new name is OranJello’s Bitches

KennEgo insists that this move is major strategizing on Team O’Donnell Cruise’s part, because with OranJello and Trucksy’s immunity instead of having a 25% chance to go home, he now thinks he has a 50% chance of going home.  I think he’s wrong, because Scar said they were all being judged individually, which means he still has the same 7+% chance the other 13 non-immune chefs have.  Even if their group ends up the bottom, he shouldn’t have anything to worry about if he makes his part of the lunch, you know, TASTY.

Scar sets the rest of them free to choose the other three groups and it winds up like this:  ChesTiffany, Instructor LynnBian, Miss Swan and GayNold… followed by ShortyPants, HomeSchooled Jackie, Bloody Mandy and Tamesha… then finally Big-Haired Andrea, JerseyMoobs, Bobby Brown and Nosferatu.  Now they get 30 minutes to yell over each other plan their menus before they get to head over to Restaurant Depot to go shopping.  Then they 2½ hours to prep food, plus one hour on Elimination Day to heat up their meals at the local middle school where the kids are located…

oh yeah, and you can take off those stupid aprons now

Trucksy’s talking with her group, saying she knows every kid likes chicken nuggets, burgers, hot dogs, stuff like that, and thinks if they can take that kind of food and make it healthier they’ll have a great menu, so she’s going to make a “healthy” burger as their main course.  KennEgo manages to just look bored whenever he’s not the one doing the talking.  Is it wrong that I’m hoping he might go home?

Bloody Mandy is having the brilliant idea of doing chicken thighs braised in sherry, which is a kind of ALCOHOL, and seems rather out-of-place on a KIDS DISH.  It’s even more amazing when Tamesha tentatively mentions she’s thinking about making a side-dish of gnocchi and Bloody Mandy jumps all over her, saying “If you fuck up gnocchi in front of them they’re gonna slam you for fucking up!”  Tamesha’s like “I will NOT fuck up my gnocchi!”…

she WOULD, however, like to backhand the shit out of some eye-rollin’ bitches standing to the right of her

Tamesha says she’s done her best to avoid Bloody Mandy altogether in order to keep the peace, but the fates have forced them together here, and it just plain sucks.  Meanwhile, HomeSchooled Jackie decides to volunteer to make a chocolate banana pudding for dessert, which is a huge relief for the other group members, especially Bloody Mandy who notes “People who make desserts go home.  And taking one for the team is not in my vocabulary.”  Yeah, and apparently neither are the words “cooking appropriate non-alcohol-laced food for children”.

HomeSchooled is going on and on about how amazingly healthy her banana-chocolate pudding is going to be (right?) and then mentions that she feels super-confident doing this challenge because she loves feeding kids.  She really IS insane, isn’t she?  Then she says her parents went through an ugly divorce while she was in high school, so she wound up taking over as “the mom” for her younger sister, thereby “keeping her out of foster care”…

which had a somewhat tiring effect on Miss Jackie

Wait, I don’t understand this statement… is HomeSchooled implying that when her parents got divorced they decided to stop taking care of (i.e. feeding and clothing and sheltering) their younger children altogether?  That’s a pretty damning accusation, I bet her folks are mighty proud now.  Or scrambling to move out of their house and change their phone numbers.

Moving along to the next group, Big-Haired Andrea’s suggesting their group make some kind of mac & cheese, Bobby Brown thinks they should put out a cole slaw, and JerseyMoobs offers himself up to the Dessert Gods, except he’s being rather smart and planning on using some kind of melon for it, which is sweet yet usually healthy.

Meanwhile, the last group begins their Descent Into Hell™ with Miss Swan suggesting they make pork carnita tacos, and laying out how they could make them healthier and low-fat.  This is pissing off her groupmates, for what reason I’m not sure, if the woman wants to make tacos with feta cheese and pickled onions, let her!

But no, ChesTiffany has to bitch about how she doesn’t like working with Miss Swan because she’s “trying to take control” and thinks they all four need to be in agreement about each other’s dishes…

…or she’s going to start snatching people baldheaded

GayNold jumps into the fray, questioning Miss Swan about whether or not using onions will be “weird for children”, speaking as if he has suddenly become a child-palate expert.  Miss Swan insists that the kids will love this dish, which pisses Her Gayness off and he jumps back with an attitude, spitting “That’s just MY two cents.” at her while raising his hands in an exaggerated “I’m done” gesture…

this is just his two cents to her FACE, I’m guessing he now has about a buck-fifty to spend behind her back

It’s all so stupid, it’s like they’ve all forgotten that they’re being judged individually and somehow think they need to win this as a team, instead of the reality, which is that they’re just a group.  ChesTiff asserts that she ain’t going home because of somebody else’s crazy dish, “If I go home, it’s gonna be because *I* messed up!”  She’s right, but for all the wrong reasons.  *sigh*  Let’s go to Restaurant Depot, where the TRUE crimes are going to take place.

There’s even MORE fun to be had over at The Depot, where they’ve only got 30 minutes to blow their measly $130.00, which shouldn’t be hard, but you know how these people are.  HomeSchooled Jackie’s searching for the chocolate she needs for her dessert when Bloody Mandy comes breezing by and asks the question that should have been a MAJOR WARNING SIGN to everyone in their group…

unless, you know, she’s planning on getting them ALL hammered

As they all head to the checkouts to see where they are budget-wise, it becomes clear that some people had the mistaken impression their budget was $130.00 PER CHEF and so they’re way way waaaaaay over, and have to start taking items off the cart.  Poor HomeSchooled is told she can’t have her chocolate for her dessert, and yet it’s STILL not enough!  She is growing desperate, “Is there anything you guys can take off?  All I have for my dessert is bananas and milk!”  Here’s what she gets in return…

Cheep cheep cheep cheap

Even better, ShortyPants takes a closer gander at the jugs of liquid on their cart and asks why they have two big jugs of vinegar.  Bloody Mandy flies over at the speed of light and throws her body over the bottle screeching “NO, one of them is sherry!”  The fact that this revelation did not make anybody in her group sit up and say “WTF?!?” is a totally bewildering mystery.

Now they’re headed back to the Top Chef Kitchen to start their 2½ hours of prep work, and Miss Swan is making some whole-grain tortillas to go with her pork carnitas tacos.  When Trucksy passes by and asks what kind of unholy mess she’s making, she tells her about the tortillas for tacos and asserts that it is HER idea, which impresses Trucksy…

…and angers Her Majesty

We’ll get to what’s behind that dagger look in a moment.  Big-Haired Andrea’s group seems to be plowing ahead with a minimum of bullshit, mainly because Andrea, JerseyMoobs and Bobby Brown all have kids and feel like they’ve got a good grasp on how to feed them.  They’re going with surprisingly non-alcoholic chicken dish, plus cole-slaw, mac & cheese and melon-chunks for dessert.  They are helping each other out by tasting each other’s dishes, but they seem to also have a clear grasp that that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be…  each with their own dishes.

We haven’t heard much from OranJello’s Bitches, so here’s KennEgo to tell us (in that dead, bored, lifeless tone that he always affects whenever the subject isn’t his dominating awesomeness) that OranJello’s making celery sticks with a peanut-butter mousse in them (which used to be about the only way I could even EAT celery without choking on it) and MassholEd’s doing a sweet potato pureé (which might be good if this were a NURSERY SCHOOL, but I bet these kids have all their baby teeth in by now, so this seems like a rather odd choice),  Trucksy’s going with her chicken-burger idea, and the Ol’ Alpha-Dawg himself is making an apple-bread pudding.  Naturally he’s “not feeling all the dishes” and thinks they’re not going to be as NUTRITIOUS as they should be…

says the guy who’s plopping more carbs than anybody else on the tray

I think honestly he’s still just pissed off about losing the QuickFire and he’s mad that he didn’t get that “irrelevant” immunity, which probably seems slightly more relevant now.

Speaking of pissed off, Bloody Mandy’s just forged right ahead with her chicken thighs braised in AN ALCOHOLIC SHERRY JUS, while ShortyPants works up a rice pilaf, Tamesha bangs out a green-bean salad and poor HomeSchooled Jackie’s stuck with her banana pudding idea, only now she’s adding strawberries as a topping instead.

Surprisingly, it’s not going well at all.  For some reason HomeSchooled has been cooking the hell out of her bananas for the last 20 minutes and discovers they now taste “like white bread… very starchy”.  I’m not sure what kind of recipe she was using, but I couldn’t find any that said to actually cook the bananas THEMSELVES.  Anyhow, to combat the new stiff’n’starchy glop she’s created, she decides to dump in a few pounds of SUGAR in the hopes that it will help “break down” the starchiness…

“It’ll still be low-fat pudding, right?”

I’m totally facepalming right now.  This group is un-fucking-REAL!  Between Bloody Mandy and her insistence on turning lunchtime into Cocktail Hour, and HomeSchooled  COMPLETELY IGNORING the fact that part of the challenge was to make things HEALTHIER, I’m actually starting to feel a little sorry for those poor kids.

As for Bloody Mandy, she’s still sparring with Tamesha, who’s making suggestions for her dish, and Mandy’s roundly dismissing them one by one.  Tamesha tells US that she’s going to kick Mandy’s ass if she winds up going home because of this dish, and again, it’s that clear misunderstanding of the whole “You’re being judged individually” thing that makes these people’s actions so irritating…

“I’ma gonna strangle her with a sangwich!”

If anything, she should be suggesting that Bloody Mandy serve her booze-soaked chickens with a beer chaser and thus GUARANTEE she’d be the one going home.

Over in the other group full of dumbasses, Miss Swan is trying to run down a checklist, she says she’s got everything she needs for her carnitas and innocently asks GayNold if he has everything he needs for his dish (I think it’s some kind of vegetable salad crap) and he decides now would be a good time to get all bitchy and passive-aggressive on her, so he snots “I think it’s EVERYBODY’S effort, so… we are a team.”

Oh, this is fun to watch.  Especially when GayNold interviews, “Kelly’s talking about our challenge, and everything that she says is ‘I, I, I… I, I, I… I, I, I, I, I’ and I’m like, OK, well, we worked as a group for the greater goal, and there was no ‘I’ involved!”…

there was, however, a great big backstabby bitchcunt!

Back at the Bilious Brownstone, Miss Swan and Trucksy are sharing a smoke out on the patio, and Trucksy’s talking about how this challenge is making her think about the little girl she and her partner have at home… a little girl who doesn’t always have such a healthy diet.  “I mean, crap, sometimes she has hot dogs for breakfast!”  Whoa, and here I thought I was being semi-abusive when I used to take my niece for a weekend and I’d end up serving her cocktail weenies, Wheat Thins and Cheez Wiz!

Awww, poor thing, Trucksy’s obviously feeling REALLY guilty as her voice breaks and she confesses that in the last 3½ years she’s been helping raise her girlfriend’s kid, they have probably eaten out at fast food at least once a week, and this does not make her feel much like a proud Other Mommy™…  “Kids are so much more important to me now that I have one in my life…”

“And not just ‘cuz she’s cheap housework labor!”

Truthfully, she sounds pretty remorseful, and she and Miss Swan have a nice little moment together puffing away and talking about how much Trucksy misses her little rugrat.

However, inside the house it’s a different story, as Miss Swan’s other group members are all sitting around and having a great big bitchfest about how awful she is.  Why is she so awful?  Well, Her Majesty Queenella GayNold summons the lowly Swan into his presence so he can decree how she has displeased him.  “I wouldn’t feel good about myself if I didn’t say something to her.” He says.  Well, as long as you feel good about yourself, then fire away, bitchcooze!

She joins him where he’s holding court and he lays into her:  “I really have an issue with you having claimed stuff today when WE did EVERYTHING together as a GROUP!”.  Then, I’m sorry to say, Instructor LynnBian and ChesTiffany jump all over her, too, monkeying GayNold’s nasty little “I, I, I, I, I” chant in her face…

welcome to the BitchHound Gang™

It is really weak, especially when we hear GayNold still sputtering bullshit like “I didn’t MAKE everything, but I troubleshooted!”   Yeah, unsolicited (and under his breath) and anyhow she’s not required to take your stupid suggestions, so how about fucking off you little Mean Girl wannabee?

Miss Swan is floored.  “I’m flabbergasted that he came at me with this.  He feels like I have taken too much credit.  But each one of us have to stand up and defend a single dish!”  BINGO!  And GayNold’s not stopping, and then he accidentally blurts out the REAL reason he’s upset:  “But I feel also that I got my shit done really really fast to help THE ENTIRE TEAM get everything else done… so now, the judges are gonna be like, ‘OMG, Arnold made a salsa… awesome.’”…

“OMG, did I just say that last part out loud?”

Yeah, if I had fucked up and suddenly realized that I had made a stupidly simple dish, I’d prolly be looking for someone to either latch on to (or blame) as well!  Whatever.  HATE.

The next day at the Alice Deal Middle School they have their one hour to prep, and everybody’s shocked at how small the kitchen actually is.  I guess they musta forgot that Sexy Sammy only took FOUR DOLLARS for supplies and labor, so this really should be no surprise.

Ruh-roh!  OranJello’s in trouble!  He’s put his peanut butter mousse into the foam gun and then discovered that the valve on it is broken, it won’t dispense the mousse, it’s just making farty noises!  What’s he gonna do?  Well, he goes ‘round the corner to ask JerseyMoobs if he can borrow the top off of one of his whipped cream guns.  JerseyMoobs refuses, saying “I only have THREE of them!”…

“And I need to use a new one every 17 kids or so!”

Bitch, please!  The D.C. crowd is officially lame.  I dunno if you guys remember a few weeks ago when the Masters were on, and they’d all be like “If I’m going to beat my competition, I want it to be because the FOOD I cook is better than theirs, not because of some dumb technicality.”  Not true for THIS bunch of assclowns.

Granted, OranJello prolly hasn’t endeared himself to the other chefs by, you know, KICKING THEIR ASSES IN EVERY CHALLENGE, but that was still a dick move on JerseyMoobs’ part.  Why else (after OranJello leaves) would he seek validation from his fellow group members that he did the right thing in denying the guy a piece of extra equipment that he clearly could have spared?

And the REALLY stupid thing is that it doesn’t really faze OranJello that much, he’s busy thinking a way around it.  This causes KennEgo to get upset that OranJello’s spending so much time concentrating on his peanut butter mousse that “he’s not helping the team.”  Again, YOU’RE NOT ON A TEAM!!!!!  The guy has to get his dish ready, nobody’s gonna help him with that!  Worry about your own shit.

dickweed

Ahhh, here comes Daddy Tom (in his sexy Royal Purple chef’s coat) to write out some Reality Checks™ for these assholes!  He says this challenge is near and dear to him because Mama Colicchio ran a school lunch program for 20 years, so he knows exactly what they’re up against.

He’s actually impressed with JerseyMoobs’ idea to make melon skewers and serve them with a yogurt foam, since kids don’t always like yogurt, but they love whipped cream.  Next he checks in with HomeSchooled Jackie, who spins her tale of woe that they couldn’t afford cocoa or chocolate or eggs for her banana-choco-pudding, so she was forced to go with just plain banana.  “Kinda handicaps you, doesn’t it?” he asks.  She tells him she’s a little worried about that, but insists that it has really good banana flavor and IT’S NOT TOO SWEET…

yeah, he’s gonna be making this face later when you mention the whole “two-pounds-of-added-sugar” thing

Then he comes upon Miss Swan’s Mutineers, and GayNold makes sure to take stage front and center (while Instructor LynnBian and ChesTiffany try to block Miss Swan from even making it into Daddy Tom’s line of vision) and he’s telling Daddy Tom alllll about the tacos THEY made with oatmeal tortillas THEY made.  Swan will not be stopped though, and she calls out from behind LynnBian’s bulk “I am ultimately responsible for the carnitas!”, which prompts LynnBian to immediately insist “We all really jumped all over her out of fear that our own dishes were totally lame helped each other a lot!”

“Pay no attention to that woman behind the big butch lesbian!”

GayNold’s trotting out his whole I-Worked-Really-Fast-To-Be-There-For-The-ENTIRE-TEAM-By-Which-I-Mean-LynnBian-And-ChesTiffany-Only-Because-Miss-Swan’s-A-Great-Big-Booger-Who-Wants-To-Actually-Take-Credit-For-Her-Own-Work thing.  Yeah, Daddy Tom isn’t fooled:  “I actually don’t LIKE when they say ‘We all did it’!  That’s why they’re forced to take responsibility for one thing, because if someone’s completely on their own and it’s a failure of a dish THERE’S NOWHERE TO HIDE.”  Word, Daddy.

As the final minutes tick away, ShortyPants is just now realizing that Bloody Mandy’s dish made with ALCOHOLIC SHERRY WINE is “inappropriate for kids” and wants to change the name of the dish to hide that fact from the judges.  Please, this bitch has fought so hard for that sherry, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t show up at Judges’ Table with the bottle cradled in her arms.

Remember how fucked up OranJello was going to be because JerseyMoobs withheld lending him one of his foam dispensers?  Well, he found a way to thin his mixture out a little and put it in a pastry bag and viola!  Instant manual mousse dispenser!…

“In your FACE, Moobsy!”

Miss Swan is still gamely trying to be more of a “team player” and tries to suggest to Her Majesty GayNold that perhaps his dish needs a little more salt.  His pissy response?  “I agree, but I tasted the other components and I think it works all together!”  I would have probably stuffed a can of Morton’s up his ass at that point, but Miss Swan has far more restraint than I.

Time’s up, and the herd of kids is upon them!…

night-mares are made of thi-iis, who am I to dis-a-gre-hee?

The judges arrive and head towards Big-Haired Andrea’s group…

holy shit, most intricate food screenshot EVAH!

Scar wants to know how they made their cole slaw healthier, because it looks like it’s made with the evil mayonnaise.  Andrea says it uses a little mayo, but way more yogurt.  Plus, she points out that their BBQ sauce uses apple cider instead of sugar, Nosferatu mentions the chicken is skinless and roasted, and Bobby Brown tells them the crust on the mac & cheese is from whole-wheat bread, with skim milk and lowfat cheese.  JerseyMoobs says he made melon skewers, and he needed ALL THREE of his yogurt foam dispensers.

Sexy Sammy loves the cole slaw, and Scar praises Nosferatu’s chicken and calls JerseyMoobs’ melon-kabob tasty.  Daddy Tom is quick to point out that the weak dish in the bunch is Bobby Brown’s mac & cheese.

Next they visit OranJello’s Bitches…

which is an uneasy mix of fine-dining and food you order out of the mouth of a clown

Immediately both Scar and Sexy Sammy pounce all over MassholEd’s sweet potato puree for having “a pound of pepper” in it, and Gail agrees it’s not a dish that should be served in a kids cafeteria.  Daddy Tom seems to like KennEgo’s bread pudding, saying it’s moist and not overly sweet, and he thinks Trucksy’s chicken burger is pretty good as well.  However, they’re less than impressed with OranJello’s peanut butter and celery on a tuile cookie.  Scar doesn’t think it’s a BAD dish, but it seems like they’ve almost got two desserts, and Sexy Sammy wants to know where the veggies are on their plate.

Now it’s time for them to dive on into Group Haterade’s lunch…

and they look ready for it!

Immediately I notice something similar about their lunch…

it also has basically two desserts

Gail is immediately excited by all the color on the plate, and Daddy Tom LOVES the taco that MISS SWAN made.  Sexy Sammy agrees it’s a “solid taco”.  Daddy also thinks GayNold’s tasty corn salad cools things off nicely… and I would bet you bibles to blowjobs that if GayNold heard this, he’d be all about taking SOLO credit for this dish, and fuck that “working for the greater good of the team” bullshit.  As for LynnBian’s bean cake, Scar thinks it was a little spicy, and Gail notes that she didn’t think ChesTiffany’s sweet pertaters’n’chocolate was going to taste good together, but it actually does.

Lastly we have the Menu From Dumbass Hell…

words escape me

Gail immediately says what they’re all thinking:  “I have to say, the words ‘sherry jus’ don’t often come into the lunchtime scenario.”  They’re all chewing, and nobody’s talking.  Then Scar says she likes the flavor of Tamesha’s salad.  Next  they try HomeSchooled Jackie’s Nanapuddin’.  Immediately there are grimaces, Sexy Sammy says “Something happened in there.”, Daddy Tom says it’s too starchy, and Sammy opines that it’s way too sweet.  Scar likes the strawberries at least.  As for ShortyPants’ rice dish, Gail thinks it tastes okay, but also brands it mushy.  Cue kids saying they didn’t like the dish with “the rice and all that nasty stuff.”  Cut to HomeSchooled Jackie being all excited because her dessert “sold out really fast!”  Maybe because it was FULL OF SUGAR??!?  FAIL.

Back in the Stew Room, JerseyMoobs winds up succumbing to exhaustion…

as are probably a few of you trying to slog through this insanely long recap

Scar comes in and asks to see OranJello’s Bitches and Group Haterade first, which leaves the other eight chefs fuming that they’ve lost once AGAIN.  Once inside Judges’ Table, Daddy Tom starts talking about how the challenge was all about making low-fat healthy foods that were appropriate for kids, and making them flavorful… and ShortyPants is just shy of breaking into a winner’s grin…

clearly he isn’t really paying attention to anyone else’s facial expressions

“Both your teams had the worst menus of the day.” Says Scar, and you can HEAR the sound of egos deflating a little…

and it sounds like angels singing a smackdown hymn

ShortyPants is trying to defend his pallid rice, saying that because of the budget constraints, they had to “sacrifice creativity” to keep substance in the meal.  Gail says that was the whole point, for them to understand what public schools are dealing with.  Then HomeSchooled mentions how her dessert was cut back to nothing due to budget, and Sexy Sammy wants to know if she had to add any sugar to combat the starchyness of her boiled bananas.  At least she’s honest:  “I believe there was… about… two… pounds… of sugar…”

but Daddy Tom! Justa two pounds of sugar helps the medicine go down!

Next, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, as Sexy Sammy asks “Whose idea was the sherry jus?”  Bloody Mandy meekly says it was hers, and Sammy immediately wants to know “You had the budget to buy sherry?”  Bloody Mandy has no answer for this other than a lame “My bad!” face…

as HomeSchooled mentally dismembers her

Next they take MassholEd to task for spiking his sweet potatoes with CHILI POWDER thereby rendering them pretty far outside of a child’s palate (unless you’re that Smoking Baby in Sumatra, then you prolly need a little extra spice because you’ve killed most of your taste buds with menthol).  Sexy Sammy says there was a clear lack of effort to provide any veggies on OranJello’s team.

KennEgo just can’t take it anymore, and decides he’s going to sass back by pointing out they DID pay attention to their lack of vegetables, which is why they ended up roasting a tomato on the chicken burgers.  Oooooh, no he DI-ent!  Smiling broady, Sexy Sammy delivers a crushing blow to KennEgo:  “Tomato is a fruit…”

KennEgo just lost some major chefcred, and MassholEd’s righteously embarrassed for him

Sexy Sammy continues, “…so our vegetable was that piece of celery essentially.”  Daddy Tom wants to know if OranJello would have made that celery plus peanut butter thing if he didn’t have immunity.  Instead of lying, OranJello just says “I can’t answer that right now.”  Which is as good as a “No!”  Daddy Tom insists that he’s not suggesting OranJello threw the competition, and OranJello insists he didn’t stop any of the others from doing a vegetable dish.  Gail wants to know who on the team was looking at the lunch as a whole and bothering to notice that there was no nutritional value in it.  KennEgo tries to blame Trucksy and OranJello and their Irrelevant Immunity as having “made up other decisions” and that they had to come to an agreement and go along with it.  Because he’s an Alpha Dawg, and that’s what Alpha Dawgs do, is roll over and let other people tell them what to do.

Welcome to Hell.  Suddenly ShortyPants is giving HIS two cents worth, saying he thinks it’s bullshit that KennEgo knew there were no veggies and just let it slide instead of trying to “champion a cause”.  KennEgo cuts him off with “So, it’s acceptable to have pudding that has 2 pounds of sugar in it, whereas mine had less than 8 ounces total?”  Bloody Mandy fires back with “Do you have any idea how much sugar is in processed peanut butter?  It’s ridiculous!  It’s like maybe one of the worst things in the world for children to eat.”  Then MassholEd trumps her peanut butter card by asking “Does sherry wine even need to be in an elementary school?”  This is totally immature!  And fun to watch!

Gail seizes on that and asks Bloody Mandy outright “Why DID you choose to use sherry?”  Mandy’s brilliant answer?  “Because, for me, I just… I really like… chicken braised with sherry.”  Gail’s all, “I like it, too!  There’s a lot of things I like!  I love vodka, but I’m not cookin’ with it!”…

“So suck on that, ya boozehound!”

Even though he’s laughing, Daddy Tom also looks like he can’t believe this bunch of boobs could be so stupid.  Scar sends them back to the Stew Room so they can all rehash the amazing trashfest they just witnessed…

while OranJello’s busy stating the obvious

Eventually Scar returns and asks for Group Haterade to come before the judges, and they award the win to…

Miss Swan and her Amazing Carnitas Tacos that she had very little help with!

Scar dismisses them and asks them to send back KennEgo, MassholEd, Bloody Mandy and HomeSchooled Jackie.  And the loozah going home tonight is… gonna have to wait until after we see the results of tonight’s EXTRA-useless Viewer Poll…

please, I’d rather share a pair of underwear with Daddy Tom than a stupid apron

The cheftestant being kicked off tonight is HomeSchooled Jackie.  Guess who looks totally guilty because we all know she should be going home…

not Jackie

I’m pissed, because I seriously think that Bloody Mandy’s insistence on ignoring the kids palate and instead cooking a dish that SHE liked (at the expense of HomeSchooled’s dessert ingredients) was blatantly stupid and selfish.  Daddy Tom even said that her chicken looked like a bunch of turds on the table, and there’s no way kids are going to flock to that shit!  Ugh.  Well, at least we have a SECOND villain to hate on besides OranJello and KennEgo.

I bet you never thought you’d read these words, but there we have it!  What did you think of this episode?  Do you think OranJello actually threw the challenge?  Should Bloody Mandy have gone home instead, or was it just HomeSchooled Jackie’s time?  And what did you think of the whole Miss Swan Vs. The Mob thing?  Could GayNold BE any more annoying?  I’m sure he can.

Thanks so much for sticking with me through this long-ass recap, and also for all your fun comments, much love to everybody!

Love,  J-Mo  : )