Top Chef: I have a feeling Tim Gunn isn’t watching his back

Posted by Dan March 23rd, 2006 at 04:56pm In Guilty Pleasures Reality

I really wasn’t planning on watching Top Chef — the reality cooking show that took Project Runway’s spot after its season finale. I mean, it’s like when you’re a kid and you drop your ice cream and start crying. Your mom says “we’ll get you another one” but you can’t be consoled. You start sniffling and sobbing and shouting “I don’t want another one! I want THAT one!”

So imagine my surprise, when I tune in (because there really isn’t anything else on at that time) and find that it’s actually a pretty watchable show. Let’s not get crazy — it doesn’t hold a candle to Heidi and company, but the contestants are lively and the challenges are interesting.

Last week’s episode, “Food of Love,” was reasonably disturbing, seeing as how it involved some dominatrix judging the sexiness of the various dishes. Scarily enough, the top prize went to this dude for a sampling of desserts called The Total Orgasm (basically, it was cream puffs and jello).

This week’s challenge: get eight-year-olds to eat monkfish. The obvious answer? Fry the shit out of them.

The contestants are all pretty interesting, but there aren’t that many who really demand your attention (i.e. Santino). In any case, here are a few:

Stephen is the kind of reality show jerk where, at the reunion show, will say the oft-repeated phrase, “I didn’t come here to make friends, I came here to win” in an attempt to justify their assy behavior. Presumably, this even applies to the unnecessarily catty comments made during interviews.

Candice, who is 23, doesn’t stand much of a chance of winning, it seems, but last night she got into a screaming match with Stephen and called him a douchebag. And it was every bit as awesome as you’d expect it to be.

Other fun characters include Dave (the gayest gay that ever gayed), Lee Anne (who is pretty much awesome, and manages to pull off the tough-talking persona without being an ass — a rare feat) and Tiffani (who sucks). Last night, Cynthia left the competition because her father was dying and it was a rare sad moment in reality TV. Sad, as in actually sad, and not as in “Jodi, I can’t vote Ibis into the Gauntlet because she was on my season of Road Rules! What am I going to DO!”

One of the show’s big weaknesses is host Katie Lee Joel — who is as pretty as a peach and has just as much charisma. While watching the show, it’s really easy to forget that she’s involved with the production at all, and when she comes up to take a bite of someone’s Tomato Succo with Octopus Frit you suddenly realize the show actually has a host.

At first I wondered why they would get a fairly generic pretty girl to host a cooking show. Then, I read her Bravo bio, only to discover that Katie Lee Joel is married to none other than Billy Joel. First off, ew! Secondly, at least this makes sense in that it was just a little case of nepotistic ladder-climbing. You would have thought that they would find some celebrity chef to do it (Bobby Flay, Molto Mario or, sigh, my Tyler) or at least someone who didn’t look exactly like one of the judges.