Top Chef 6/18/08--"Reunion" summary

It’s reunion show time! Woo! Oh, when will “Top Chef” learn from “Project Runway” and not let Andy Cohen anywhere near them? I dislike him so much.(click for more)

First things first: Richard isn’t at the reunion. It looks like they filmed this soon after the finale because his wife hasn’t given birth yet, and he’s at home with her. Andy starts by replaying the moment Stephanie wins. She’s so cute. She says it didn’t feel real. Ted says she always looked like she was about to be killed, until something good happened. Andy asks how shocked everyone was when Richard said he choked, so we have to watch that. Gail was surprised he said it, but Tom and Ted agree that it’s Richard’s personality to do something like that. Antonia nods. Now we have to let Lisa talk about how she was confident and did she think she won? Oh, I’m OK with losing to Stephanie. Whatever. Tom asks a good question of Stephanie: would you rather be “winner of season 4”? Or “first female Top Chef”? Good question. Stephanie would rather just be the winner of season 4, she doesn’t want people to think she won just because she’s a girl. She’s going to open a restaurant with the money. Yay!

Viewer question time! What is it like watching yourselves? Any regrets? Oh, you might as well have tacked the LISA on the end of that. Dale wouldn’t have made scallops in butterscotch sauce. Padma says she regrets that too. Hee. Jen wishes she hadn’t said “phallus” so much and made smaller croutons. Heh. She says Padma’s face was priceless. Andy prompts them to keep talking, and Spike says the bath was too hot. Andy of course if very interested in cute boys in the bath together, even though Mark plays it down. Ted declares it “man soup” and says “Nice”. (Me and Kmanpat: “Agreed.“) Then he uses the horrid word “bromance”. Ugh, it’s Ben and Ronnie all over again. Stop forcing your fantasies on us. We get the clip of them in the tub together. Spike is sculpting things out of bubbles. Now…Dale and Richard? Huh? Dale is in the kitchen, announcing that “someone” watched him put lotion on this morning. Shot of Dale in the bathroom rubbing himself and sticking his tongue out. Right. Cut back to the kitchen and Richard telling him he has gorgeous nipples. Dale jokes about it. These reunion shows just get stupider every year. Now we have Andrew and Spike, and I don’t remember them flirting at all, just sharing a brain, which isn’t the same thing. (Kmanpat: “Hey, we share a brain!” Me: “Speak for yourself, but I have all of my brain.”) I don’t know that this is a “bromance” so much as it is dorks finding like minded dorks. Then Andrew contradicts me by saying that while he isn’t gay he’d let Spike bang him. I missed Andrew’s nonsensical sound bites. Back in the studio, Mark says he got married (dang) and that he’ll be in the country for a while.

Now we have to talk about the real relationship of Jen and Zoe. Do we get to count all the times Jen said she was doing it for Zoe? They tried to be fair and not support each other too much. Some viewer asked how they felt about Spike’s attitude, and Jen said that on the show they had no idea. Spike of course claims he has no problems, and Andy is quick to remind him that he said he thought they had an unfair advantage. Well…that’s not the same as saying you have a problem with their relationship. Zoe thinks they both would have been better had the other one not been there. Now, respond to the internet rumors that you’ve split up! Far, far too long of a pause. Jen finally says they’ve gone through some “bumps” and Zoe refuses to discuss it. Translation: We split up.

Someone says Spike was their favorite because he “played the game”. If by “play the game” you mean “be an asshat”, then I agree. Andy makes us watch the asshattery. They leave out the parts where it totally backfires on him. Stephanie says she’s worked with cocky a**holes, but in the end he’s trying to win. A few people think he might win fan favorite, but since they just featured him in a montage, I’m going to say no.

Montage of people’s nightmares. Apparently people were having nightmares about the show. Dale had one about lamb, Richard’s told he’s on the bottom before he knows the challenge, Spike is wandering the store with no idea what is going on. Didn’t that really happen? Jen dreams that Tom is staring her down, and there’s this great shot of Tom with this dead-eyed stare, all creepy. Richard dreamed he was having sex with his wife and Mark walked in. Hee. Mark refuses to share. All of them say they still have nightmares. They all woke up terrified every day, every time. A lot of them had watched the show, but the reality was super different. Generally that’s how that works.

Andy says that some of them would say anything to try to save a bad dish, and by “some of them” he means “Ryan”. Montage of Ryan babbling and everyone looking irritated. I do kind of remember that. Various contestants say he talks a lot. That fade-in and fade-out edit they do to make it seem like a person talked for hours. He won’t answer Andy’s questions. Ha.

Some viewer asks about “the curse of Casey”, and I’m not sure what that means. Andy agrees with the viewer that this curse was passed onto Antonia. Antonia doesn’t know what they’re talking about either. People are clapping. OH! I remember. Any time Casey would say that a person was her best friend, that person would get eliminated. Montage. Lisa fills us in that Antonia’s nickname is “The Black Hammer”. The difference here is that when you have a season with so many team challenges, being on her team was the kiss of death. Andy tries to start a fight by asking Valerie if she thought Antonia threw her under the bus by saying she’d hire Stephanie over her, and she said she did at the time. And then we never mention it again. Andy discovers several people who think Antonia could be fan favorite. You fools! We just had her montage!

Now we have to tolerate another “viewer” question. I put “viewer” in quotes because she asks what the Stew Room is. Are you kidding me? How can you watch the show and not know what the Stew Room is? Andrew sums it up nicely in two quotes: “the fifth level of hell”, and “the dirtiest, nastiest bar ever with people you may or may not like.” Montage of Stew Room outtakes. They aren’t that great, although I think the contestants are playing Scattergories, or something, because Stephanie is asking for “things you find at the zoo.” To which Antonia replies “Hookers.” Hee! Now they’re wrapping Mark in saran wrap. And hiding in a hot box and shouting about cooking hobbits. Oh wait, Tony Bourdain outtakes! “Are we over?” “No, then we have to smash the hopes and dreams of the losers.” Tony should be on more. Mark playing on a giant roll of plastic like a didgeridoo and the judges looking over that way confused. Andy reveals that in between camera changes and during down time Gail took naps. New montage of judges being super critical and saying mean tings about everyone. Nothing new. But it’s kind of fun.
Reader question: who is the toughest judge to impress? Spike jumps in and says Tony Bourdain: he’s well spoken and quick with the words. Agreed.

Now we have the part of the show where the contestants get to challenge the judges on whatever they want. Lisa asks if her groom’s cake was really that ugly. Yes. Yes it was. A question about the scales Richard left on his fish, and why that got by. Apparently not everyone had scales, but everyone had the nasty mushrooms Zoe made. I think it was Zoe. Tom says he’ll stand by all decisions. However, Tom wasn’t around when Dale got eliminated, and as it turns out, he disagreed with the decision. But he’s quick to clarify that based on what he saw, he disagrees: Lisa screwed up two dishes, Dale screwed up one. Ted asks Dale if he feels wronged, and Dale says when he screws up a dish in the restaurant it’s on his head. He’s OK with it.

Now is the time to call Lisa to task for her bitchy attitude. Back in the studio she seems to be amused. People are giving her nasty looks on the street. Shocking. Apparently she was at some party and these two girls, after watching her for a while, finally came over and said they were afraid to introduce themselves because she looked like such a bitch. Oh, you laugh now. But she said “looked” not “seem”. It makes me think that she was standing there scowling and not inviting anyone to talk to her. She goes on to say that in the “real world” she has no problems taking criticism, as long as you tell her why. Then Andy makes Andrew talk about how Lisa threw him under the bus. He says he was disappointed because to him it was desperation and unnecessary. Lisa agrees and says she regretted it, but does not say she apologized. Well, that was a bust. No one called her on anything. P.S., I could totally afford to eat at your restaurant, not that I ever will, so bite me.

Andrew montage! Everyone thinks he’s on drugs! But first he says that there’s a lot of talk about ADD and that’s so odd because he hasn’t played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for years. Ha! Such a goofball. Ryan says that if he was on drugs he couldn’t come up with the stuff Andrew does. He sings while prepping. Lots of flailing. Getting stuck in the football helmet, which was so great. And we finish with the culinary boner. Somehow Andy must share that he thinks there’s something between Andrew and Gail. No one cares that much.

According to Andy it’s a “Top Chef tradition” that they make a T-shirt each season with a quote. Did they make one last year? I only remember “I’m not your bitch, bitch!” Oh, and they had “Oh, big time!” for CJ, even though he never really said it that much that we saw. I guess season 2 didn’t really say anything they wanted to put into print. Andy tells Spike to reveal this season’s shirt, which he does by stripping. “I have a culinary boner”. Well, that’s good and inappropriate. Could Andrew be the fan favorite? “I have a f***ing T-shirt!” Indeed.

Top Chef fights. Blah. #4: Dale vs. Spike, when they had that team challenge when Dale did all the work and Spike called him a little bitch. #3: Lisa vs. Dale, the stupid argument they had about the rice. #2: Lisa vs. Andrew, when she threw him under the bus. #1: the melee of Spike, Antonia, and Jen, after Zoe lost, with a little Lisa/Dale thrown in for good measure. Andy was confused by the last fight. Why? It makes sense. Jen says she was in the middle of the fight and all of a sudden Dale is fighting and she was confused. Antonia is left to explain to Andy, who apparently doesn’t watch the show.

Several comments about the amount of swearing, from viewers who use the phrase “toilet mouths” and for some reason think people who swear shouldn’t touch their food. Montage of cursing, but it’s all bleeped so it’s no fun. But Andrew says “Cheers, bitches” and they leave it alone. Dale says his mom called him because all of her church was rooting for him and he cursed a lot. Padma was shocked at the stuff that happened backstage. They all vented during confessionals, because the producers is unbiased, so that’s where a lot of the cursing took place. Tom just reminds them that they need to think about if this is how they want to be portrayed.

Andy says Richard is close to coming on, so now is the montage of “our Willy Wonka”. Oh, the peach and sweet tea glazed pizza. I have to say, that sounded really weird but also I really want to try it and I don’t like peaches. Now we get a live feed of Richard. He’s all tired because I guess his wife went into false later last night. He’s just opened a new restaurant in Atlanta. Now he’s forced to talk about telling Dale he had gorgeous nipples. And he doesn’t really say anything, so now he explains that at the end he over thought, forced some things, and just didn’t make it. He knows the final challenge he didn’t make the best meal of his life, and he doesn’t seem to regret saying that. Andy says Bravo got Richard a baby gift, and he should open it now. Andrew asks if it’s a culinary boner t-shirt. No, just a “Top Chef” onesie. Aww. Barf.

Fan Favorite time! Everyone speculates. Tom says Lisa won’t win. Heh. Stephanie wins! She says dinner and drinks are on her. Andy is like, this never happens! There have only been 4 seasons. I don’t think they had fan favorite the first season, possibly not the second. Shut up, Andy. Stephanie montage, with everyone talking about how awesome she is.

Advice for next season. Nothing you couldn’t guess at. They make Tom say this is the most talented group of chefs ever. Woo! We’re done! Thanks to everyone for reading all season! I’ll be back with “Project Runway” and possibly a few comments on “Shear Genius”. See you later!