f13.net

http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef-masters/season-1/bios

It begins. Or somesuch. Grabbing episode 1 now since Hulu is being... lazy and only putting up clips.

Prepare to be underwhelmed. 

Only because Keller is WAY too good. But me and voodoo knew that before the show even aired. It's just not right :(

I liked the format and liked Keller. I think this one will be relatively drama free, which is good after the shit splat that was last season. The 4-man competition per episode really gave the guys some room to shine.

Yar, I just said that to voodoo. The bracket/4-man thing is what they should do for regular top chef and never show them outside of the kitchen. Unless they're shopping, the shopping trips are always amusing.

Problem with the format for me is that you don't get the opportunity to see a learning curve among the contestants.  It's a clever show in that you get to see how food geniuses deal with Top Chef problems.  It loses some punch with me because watching rich and successful chefs make stupid mistakes really is disappointing.  

That's awesome: the page defaults to displaying 24 entries per page. There are 25 chefs. Lucky guy number 25.

The first thing that came to mind for me was watching The Next Iron Chef.

When I realized that it could never possibly be that bad, I calmed down a bit.

I don't know about this one.  I dozed off in the middle so I backed it up to watch over and I dozed off again.   :ye_gods: 

I really liked it. No drama. They seem to be having fun. No sniff and sneer by the bored Tom Colliochio.

I liked the brackets. Maybe they could do something for the regular show with larger ones--like take six people and after 3 weeks eliminate the bottom three. That would also get out of the "you made one dumb mistake and you're out forever" thing. It made it a lot more manageable. Sometimes in the regular show we look back and have forgotten who some of the people in the credits are.

And yeah, I knew who was going to win once they were introduced. Next week's lineup looks interesting.

Geekpoints: According to TWOP it's the same dorm used in Real Genius.

This is better than it has any right to be, considering that at first glance it's a horrible Iron Chef knockoff.

I think the best part is seeing how silly food critics can be.

Current season is really kind of eh. I like some of the chefs, I'm tired of the "you must cook in a fetid bathroom in a rest stop in Arizona for a little old lady who really loves applesauce" kinds of challenges. That's not the Masters thing, that's for the up-and-comings. Fine, constrain their ingredients or make them adapt, but let's do it with a slight touch of grandeur, guys.

Plus James Oseland's screaming gayosity is really beginning to grind me down a bit, and I am as queer-positive a breeder as you're going to see. When his former intern shows up, it really goes a bit off the rails.

Fixed it for you.   :why_so_serious:

Going to have to agree with Khaldun. These guys don't FEEL like Masters to me, mainly because I've never heard of any of them. Unibrow guy was quirky at first but now he's just fucking annoying. I want to punch the younger blogger judge in the face every time I see him - he just has the doucheface. Watching the female blogger practically throw herself at the pretty boy Aussie host doesn't help either. And yeah, let's stop with the cook a meal while parachuting 3000 feet type of challenges. Let the fuckers cook.

I recognized a lot of the chefs in the two prior seasons, particularly once you got past the preliminary. I don't know who any of these people are. It seems to me that the "masters" are heading downhill and the "regular" top chef is heading up hill in terms of chefs.

I still like the fact that nobody on masters seems to be hating on each other, but the tasks are over the top in terms of goofy. Leave the goofy stuff for the quickfire. Some of them are outright rubbish and obviously faked up. Really, the driver of the tour bus is so ungentle that the refrigerator doors are flying open and stuff is going on the floor? And the bands put up with this? Give me a break.

I know John Sedlar really well, have eaten in his various places a bunch. I think his "personal emergency" may have been "get me the fuck out of here, I hate this shit". I was really surprised that he'd agreed to it in the first place, it's not his kind of thing. I've eaten in Naomi Pomeroy's place in Portland, it's very good, and she was on Iron Chef, beat Garces.

What a boring season. Nothing against the chefs, who were all fine people, but the challenges were dumb and the judging generally even dumber. James Oseland isn't just obnoxious, he convinced me at least six or seven times that he doesn't even know what the fuck he's talking about. But it isn't even worth getting upset about it--the season was that boring.

Formula needs a make-over, stat.

I liked some of the chefs, especially Floyd, but yeah, the challenges were generally just dumb, meant to take the chefs off their game instead of letting them really stretch their chops.

I've really been a fan of not just TC, but also its predecessor Project Runway. The genre is spent. It needs a rest.