Live Blogging - Top Chef Season 5: Episode 4

11:00
Alex leaves and returns home to get married, not too surprising or upsetting, especially considering that I could barely remember him on a week to week basis. Next week the chefs have to cook for Gail's bridal shower, which Carla describes as a "frickin' disaster" and during which Fabio woos dozens of middle-aged women. Looks like another good one!

10:50
Haha, that psycho Kathy Lee is helping judge the winner, and it's not pretty as she spits out Jeff's shrimp right of camera. Ariane takes the win, and Carla claps and screams excitedly in the apartment. She seems more into it than Ariane herself. Rocco gives her a lame tool set of cooking tools, but her better prize is a live spot on the Today Show tomorrow, so tune in everyone, because I'm sure it will be absolutely riveting to watch her make a salad with watermelon. I think Jamie will be safe just based on past performances, but it's a toss-up between Alex, for his faulty creme brulee, and Melissa, a victim of apparently inedibly spicy shrimp, for the boot.

10:38
I'm not really sure what the point of doing the demonstrations ahead of time for the judges is. In the interest of entertaining television, I would just throw them on camera completely raw and watch them crash and burn. I mean nothing happens at all during the fourth hour of the Today Show anyways. So they chose the top 3, which includes Jeff, Fabio, and Ariane for the first time. She may be around longer than I anticipated. Jamie falls to the bottom 3 courtesy of the raw egg on top of her salad. She better get her act together, of else Team Rainbow will disolve completely. Tom comes to wake up the top 3 at 2 AM to take them to the studio at 30 Rock. I think that's the average bedtime of most Penn students these days.

10:23
That segment was seriously like 3 minutes long, and all we got to see was the shopping portion at Whole Foods, which never ceases to entertain me and Lea saying that she was planning on making a seared duck breast with corn and blueberrys. She says it works, but I think that she's lucky that she has immunity for this one.

10: 14
Ok, sorry. I knew I said that I would blog last week, but I didn't get around to watching the Tivo-ed episode until like 11 on Thanksgiving night, and I was in a semi-vegetative tryptophan induced state, so I barely recall the hopefuls assembling Thanksgiving dinner for the Foo Fighters in microwaves and toaster ovens. I do remember quite vividly Ariane rising from the ashes of the bottom three with a successful turkey and being dubbed a cougar by her teammates.

The quickfire this week is to make a breakfast amuse-bouche, and everyone does decently in impressing guest judge Rocco DiSpirito. Actually, I want to eat 90% of what the chefs cook, especially Jamie's mini breakfast BLT. Lea comes away with the win and gets a paperback of Rocco's new book. Paperback, come on, I think you can provide the hardback copy of your own book Mr. DiSpirito. Padma introduces the elimination challenge: cooking a 2.5 minute segment live on the Today Show. Carla, who is quickly rising the ranks of my favorites, says that if you go over your time limit, the producers will "cut you." I'm pretty sure she meant "cut you off," but I'll forgive her, because she reminded me of Bon Qui Qui and because she's repping my hometown of Washington, DC