Top Chef. For once, I know something you don’t know.

Full disclosure?  I totally forgot Top Chef was on tonight.  And I swear to god, if Billy didn’t have such a huge fucking crush on Padma, I’d probably just put block this miserable season out entirely and take a mulligan next season, but if he were a schoolboy he’d have pictures of Padma under his mattress (shit, maybe he does now, I don’t know), so I’m stuck with it.  Still, I found this episode more tolerable than most of the ones leading up to it, largely because I thought the Elimination Challenge was creative and made sense with the DC theme.  But I’m getting ahead here.

The Quickfire was high stakes (which, again, made sense in Vegas but not so much in DC), and Tiffany won it, but you know … the whole mystery box is pretty lame.  But you know what’ll blow your mind?  It’s a total ripoff of Chopped which is kind of a ripoff of Top Chef, so is Top Chef indirectly ripping ITSELF off?  Somebody pass the blunt, I need to ponder this one.

OH, but before I got off on that weird tangent, I was going to say that Angelo commented that his beard fiancee lives in Russia and he lives in New York.  Uhhhhh … what?  I honestly had no idea that the mail order bride business was still going strong, but okay.  Do you think she’s like Ryan Gosling’s fiancee in Lars and the Real Girl?  I hope so.  I like imagining that.

Anyway, disguising classic dishes, or giving them a new identity, for the CIA was a pretty cool concept for a challenge.  And interesting, and also a good challenge for Wylie Dufresne to judge.  The food itself was … I don’t know, not that exciting to me (probably spoiled by an entire season of the Voltaggios doing this for every challenge), but I did like that some of the competitors seem like they’re starting to come around to a more traditional sportsmanship for this show.  Tiffany was helping Kelly out because she doesn’t want to win on shit going wrong for someone else, she wants to compete against people at their best, and Amanda didn’t wish bad things on Alex even if it meant something good for her because he’s her friend.

And you know, Kelly did end up in the top three with Tiffany’s help, but Tiffany still won the challenge and the trip to Paris, so you know, good things happen to good people.  Ed looked a little sad, probably because he wants to stick his Eiffel Tower in her Arc de Triomphe or whatever.  (Billy made the joke that she’d be staying in the Paris Hilton, but Jimmy Fallon already covered that base so I’ll leave it to the master.)  And Tiffany won the QF as well, so she had a pretty bitchin’ week.

We had a Triple A bottom three, Alex, Amanda, and Angelo, and Alex went home.  Wah wah, long overdue in my opinion.  Amanda correctly claimed that her dish wasn’t disguised enough and that Helen Keller would know what it was (oh, Amanda), Angelo had a shit week, and Alex has good ideas but can’t cook.  Which seems like a pretty big offense.  He didn’t want to be seventh best but I think that old boy was lucky to make it that far, so I will not be crying for him.

Tom hilariously took over Toby Young’s lines in this episode, telling the bottom three that their dishes blew their cover, that the chefs really only disguised themselves as bad cooks, and that he’s had better food at street fairs.  Billy was like, “Tom’s acting like those dishes fucked his mother!”  True.

Just a few other random thoughts and I’ll hand off to you guys.  Let’s go with bullets (which is what I usually want to put into my head during this season of Top Chef, but thankfully not tonight).

• I was a little surprised by Kelly’s disaster with the rice cooker, mostly because I have a less fancy model and I ADORE it.  It always cooks right and there’s just no thinking involved–you put it in and then you come back later to tasty, tasty rice.  It does come out differently than when you put it on the stove, maybe a little stickier, but it’s good.  My guess is that she put too much water in with the rice, because however much you put in there, every last drop gets absorbed into the rice.
• So, Tiffany’s gyro.  I’m very concerned about the pronunciation of this thing.  The CIA guy called it a JI-ro, and I was like … uhhhh?  And then Eric Ripert called it that too.  I mean, he IS French, so maybe they call it something different, but he’s also a chef so I’m sure he knows the right word.  I thought it was a YE-ro, or maybe a HYE-ro, or HE-ro.  In fact, I used to call the TV show “Heroes” “JI-ros” to be funny, because I thought it was not only the wrong word, but a mispronunciation.  Was I wrong all along?  Someone tell me how to pronounce this damn word!
• Also, why does Eric Ripert eat off his knife?  Is this fancy, or just French?  Because my mom always told me that was rude and also that I would cut my tongue off.  She’s not prone to exaggeration or anything.
• How about the CIA director getting called out on business during the dinner?  That was serious!  Shit totally got real there.  But when Padma said “dine and dash” I totally giggled.
• The DVR buster was really hilarious this time.  Kelly being so animated about all the stuff that the CIA director knows (who killed JFK, where the aliens live) made me really like her.  It was endearing.  And Angelo was also hilarious, saying that he knows where the aliens live–in L.A., and pointing to Alex.  Hee!  Well played, Angelo.

Alright, I’m done.  What did you guys think?  I’m glad it was more tolerable this episode, but really … I’m just read to move on to Just Desserts.  Are you guys going to watch that?  Tell me in the comments and … well, I suppose we can talk about this episode too.  Why the hell not, right?