Top Chef: Lobsters, Vice, and Craps

Your food is... crappy.

Viva Top Chef! Or: Top Chef, Baby,Top Chef. Or, I guess: What happens on Top Chef stays on Top Chef. Sigh. Top Chef is in Las Vegas this season, is what I'm meaning to say. Bravo's gone and invited a bunch of booze-swilling, tattooed crazy people who also happen to cook to the middle of the desert so they can battle it out to the emulsified death. It's a wacky plan--hatched by Mr. Clean's older brother Tom Colicchio and an undead princess zombie with a minor Ambien problem named Padma Lakshmi--that just might work in the end. Those nutty kids, coming up with yet another harebrained scheme to have a group of emotionally damaged alcoholics kill each other so the pair can harvest their bones and flesh for their own devious devices. That said, it's still one of the perkiest reality projects on television.

Perky because it's always so bright and noisy, with tea kettles bleating and knives making brandishing Whisshhhes and Padma's low and terrifying moan sending tremors of dread through the steel kitchens of everyone's hearts. It's also so pleasing and perky to look at all the cute little food thingies these idiots put together. They cut steak in funny square shapes! And then put things on top of that steak, in a tiny little stack. A steak stack. Steak Stack. My new restaurant venture. ("Yes... I'll have the steak... Stacked on... Pizza. A pizza steak stack, please." "Excellent choice, sir.") They also eat wild sea-bugs, like prawns and lobsters and other gross creepy crawlies. And they adorably think Wolfgang Puck is some sort of credible human being, when in reality he is a little gnome that some Dutch person found in their shoe one morning and made a pet (and a friend) of and taught to cook. This is all to say that chef type people think and speak in a strange and vaguely unsettling language, one that is very different from our normal tongue, but it is all very... perky. It's perky. That's the word of the day.

So, what had happened on the first episode: 17 hungover loudmouths showed up to a former porn set in the desert, a tricked out pad complete with waterslide into the pool (where Trixie Nixon and Feather Waite did some great scenes) and acres of harsh lighting. The contestants this year seem like a qualified group. There are James Beard Award nominees, which is confusing because only a couple of people actually have beards. I guess everyone shaved before they got there. James must be disappointed. ("They were such nice beards," he said forlornly last night, weakly holding the little trophy he planned to give to the winner.) There are also executive chefs, Le Corbin Bleu academy trainees, sous chefs, self-taughters, and of course egos abound. It's hard to really remember anyone's name at this point--it's like army captains who don't want to learn their privates' names because they know most of them will die and that will make it sadder. So let's just kinda go by looks and attitudes.

The most important person we have to talk about is Ari Gold. Ari Gold is the guy with the spiky hair and the slightly leathery face who is all bluster and bragging in his little talking head interviews. He's one of those TV jackasses who's more show than reality. We get it, dude, you think you're awesome and you don't want to get beat by a girl and aren't you fast-paced and interesting. What a character!, I think we're supposed to say, wanting to see more of him so the producers won't let the judges eliminate him. That seems to be his strategy. And I guess it might work. I mean, it worked for that Spike nincompoop a couple of seasons back. Remember that behatted assface? Ugh. Ari Gold is basically the new Spike, only worse, because he is more arrogant. Kind of like Hung. Shudder.

There are a couple of other notables worth singling out. There's Mattin, the darlingly French little twinkie-doo who cooks in San Francisco and wears everything at a jaunty angle and you can tell that he knows he's cute. He'll either be like Marcel or that weird wine guy that one season (the first season?) or he'll be a sleeper hit. I'm hoping for the latter. Oh, Edie Falco's on the show. Yeah, Edie Falco dyed her hair purple and decided to show up and do some cooking, so that's fun. Everyone kinda shrugged their shoulders and said "Oh, look, Edie Falco." So that's nice. Shame to hear that she's sick. (Seriously, that is sad.) Your crazy uncle from Atlanta who lives in a basement and likes to tinker with old computers is on the show this season. He has a glorious auburn beard and a big belly full of spiced meats. He's also apparently a pretty good chef, so there's that. We have a big jolly guy whose name I really can't remember. He kind of sounds like the announcer in the Zatarain's rice commercial. All kind of excited and maybe a little manic. It's great. He, too, is apparently talented.

There's your typical host of sort of blandly ambitious ladies and some aw-shucksy red shirts, but only a few real personalities emerged in the first episode. Which is fine. The focus should be on the food, at this point at least. And on the food it was! The Quick Fire challenge was that oldest and hallowedest of Top Chef traditions: A food prep relay race! Teams of four (Edie Falco got a magical gold coin that kept her out of the Quick Fire and protected her from elimination and Padma bites) had to race to see who could open clams and shell lobsters and prawns and make a big hunk of cow meat look pretty the fastest. Most people seemed pretty capable. Sadly Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire, who's also on the show, couldn't really deliver. She just kept banging away on those clam bones, while the rest of her team watched on, sad and wild-eyed and helpless. Another girl on another team practically cut her damn finger off, which was gross and horrifying.

At one point Ari Gold was up against one of the strongest competitors we've seen thus far, a blonde lady who will probably kill you. Blonde Lady Who Will Probably Kill You has a sharp tongue and fast food fingers, and Ari Gold does not like the idea of a woman beating him. Because in Ari Gold's world women are only for two things: objectifying and then being nice and sexy to if they're your wife. That's it. Well, rest assured little Ari, you won this round. Yes, Ari was more adept at clams than the lady was. Take that as you will.

That was only part one of the Quick Fire. After the teams had finished the relay, the two fastest teams then had to cook individually against each other, preparing something from the poorly and hastily-cleaned shellfish and little steak lollipops. Everyone seemed to do OK, nothing was met with that despairing look of revulsion that Tom Colicchio has perfected over the years. Padma did another good job of pretending she wanted to eat food, all the while furtively and hungrily eying all the contestants' delicious flesh. In the end there could be only one winner. And that winner was... that lady who's going to kill you! Suck on that, Ari Gold. So I was happy for her, because she reminded me of a harsher and (let's be honest) less attractive Casey, who was maybe my favorite Top Chef contestant of all time. (Until you, little Mattin. Red scarf flapping in the desert breeze.)

On to the main event, which was centered around vices. See Las Vegas is a city of legal vices--like gambling away your kids' college fund because you just can't stop and then using your daughter's stolen bat mitzvah money to pay some other guy's daughter to boredly sex you in some sad and over air conditioned hotel room, the lights of the city glowing dimly in the window, the faint sound of elevator pings coming from down the hallway--so that was the idea. Most people, predictably, picked booze. Because, in case I haven't said it before, chefs are insane drunks. All they do is drink and then yell at you. It is their only way. Everyone rushed through a gorgeous, gleaming, and empty Whole Foods (the employees standing erect and ready, hands clasped behind their back like sailors on deck) and grumbled to the cameras privately about everyone's choices. ("He bought too many scallops!" "Who uses seitan?" "My feet hurt" "I'm Edie Falco, what the hell am I doing here?")

Then of course it was back to the kitchen, where everyone ran around and shrieked and screamed and peed themselves trying to get their stuff done. A big scary accented guy with a beard (not as glorious as your uncle's, definitely not James's favorite) delicately tossed an enormous steak into the deep fryer. People said that was craaazyy, but I thought it looked deeliiicciouss. Speaking of fried things that are delicious? That nice woman who's going to murder you? Homegirl made donuts with bacon in them. I'm not kidding. Donuts... with bacon in them. That is a better idea than the whole Steak Stack menu. Donuts with bacon in them in some small way hint at the existence of God to me. Fried delicious things filled with bacon. I'm in love. (Sorry, Mattin.)

The top four were: Zatarain's fish dish, Fried Heaven Bacon Balls, Ari Gold's tuna surprise, and your Atlanta uncle's green and pink fish stink. At the judges' panel, Wolfgang Puck said some strange gnome words and then did a haunting jig for an hour or two. When he was done, all the the straw in the whole studio had been spun into gold. He's pretty amazing, that Wolfgang. Gail Simmons was there, bobbing her head in that authoritative way that she does, always with her glass of red wine at the ready. Padma dejectedly pushed the food around her plate, wishing it was delicious human brains. And papa bear Tommy Tom Tom Colicchio said nice things to the top kids. Eventually Wolfgang smiled his devilish gnome grin and announced that the winner was... Your basement-dwelling uncle! The fellow chortled and shook his sweets-filled belly and beamed his greasy grin and we were all happy for him, because he seems nice. Ari Gold looked pissed, as did the woman who is going to wait in the parking lot for you when you're coming out of the Target so she can stab you. The other guy just clapped his hands and shouted "Zatarain's!" and it made us all smile.

The bottom four were: the lumbering steak fryer, Polly McAnonymous and her scrimps, Piercings O'Houlihan and her dry ass chricken, and Ear Lobes Foster, a lady with gauges the size of doorknobs in her hearing holes and a terrible case of flavorless rellenos. Padma moaned softly and Wolfgang skittered around whispering strange incantations to himself and Gail was passed out drunk on the floor, snoozing away, and Tom shook his tremendous bald head and scolded them all. Eventually Padma, mouth watering in anticipation of a delicious screaming meal, lowered the boom on old Door Knobs. So punk Kelly from The Office had to leave and we all felt sad, and we all felt glad that it wasn't someone we liked more. Like the woman who will cut the brakes on your car someday, sending you shrieking into the bay. Or like little French koala bear Mattin. Or even the two brothers who I've not yet mentioned. One is clean cut, the other is tattooed. I look forward to the moment when they have a big fight on the lawn and a weary Edie Falco has to shuffle out in her house slippers and spray them with the hose to get them to knock it off.

So here we go! Another season of Top Chef bubbling on the stove, one contestant already devoured, several others already well deserving of being devoured. Ari Gold, I'm looking at you kiddo. Mattin, I'm looking at you too, but in a different way. Lady who's going to hide behind your car seat with an axe while a trucker behind you flashes his high beams in vain? You are on my shortlist.

Everyone else? Ya burnt.

And you?