After a few episodes of lifelessly ambling along, Top Chef finally started to show some fire in the belly last night.

The main portion of interest came in the form of a bizarre post-script after Zoi gave her parting chef-ituary (the part where they say “I just love to cook” and put on a hard-eyed smile and say “you haven’t heard the last from me”). The editors chose to cut to Spike yelling at Antonia yelling at Spike. They were arguing in chef speak, saying things like “stand behind your dish” — it was almost (not quite) as dorky as Elan shrieking about paprika to Marcel way back when.

Then Dale gets involved, which causes Lisa to chime in, which gives them a whole reason to get mad at each other because Dale was mad at her for being a Negative Nancy.

I don’t know that I really want the season to disintegrate into aimless bickering — we all remember the horror and cruelty of season two — but it’s nice to see some competitive spirit and intrigue with personalities.

Ooh, ooh — and there was this part where Jen clapped her hands really hard like she was excited about getting into a fight. And then she kicked a metal folding chair against the wall. It was pretty awesome.

Aside from that end part and a promising “Next on Top Chef,” the episode was standard fare. Judge Tom is still unbelievably obnoxious, Padma is pretty window dressing and Gail is lovely but barely there.

The burgeoning Andy/Angela romance. Jack’s escapade with a liberal congresswoman. Dwight gives a tour of Schrute Farms. Tracy Jordan talks to a pigeon.

You remember what we left behind so many months ago? Well, the wait is FINALLY over and new episodes of The Office and 30 Rock start tonight!

And, just because we’ve noticed you’ve been looking pretty hot lately, we’ve decided to share a blogger-exclusive preview of tonight’s episode of 30 Rock. You know the times — be sure to tune into NBC tonight.

Last night’s Top Chef featured a massive, incomprehensible brawl. I won’t give away any of the specifics, but suffice to say there was swearing and screaming and chair-throwing.

The haphazard and time-jumpy way it was edited naturally made me think of this. Start at 5 minutes and 30 seconds for the full effect.

Eerie, right?

And if someone could explain what the hell happened to those chefs, I’d be very grateful.

UPDATE: Here’s the clip from Top Chef (spoilers on that page) for comparison and research.

• Sad news, Monk star Stanley Kamel found dead
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• Cylon Number Six scored a deal with Fox
• Oprah spinning off vajayjay doctor
• The gay on Pushing Daisies is…
• Lots of Office scoop! Including the fact Lauren Graham may be in the Office spinoff!
• Mike Myers will host the 2008 MTV Movie Awards
• So I guess Oprah is going to appear on 30 Rock? Also some spoilers for tonight’s episode
• Will Jericho ever die? Possible third season on cable, expect the 4th season at your local community theater.
• The Onion interviews John Krasinski

Project Runwaygate: Day 3

• Project Runway feud was a long time coming
• Lifetime is promising that Sophie and Dorothy will not be judges on Project Runway but the Boston Herald begs to differ
• Lifetime also bought the rights to a Project Runway spinoff