Wait, it’s over? I must have dozed off back in… it’s October already? This season of Top Chef wasn’t exactly the easiest pill to swallow – mostly because the pill was really big (we started in mid-June!) and kind of boring. The first month was particularly rough. Trying to figure out who didn’t suck was hard enough without Bravo forcing a superfluous reunion special down our throats with “exclusive” interviews from the first two TC3 rejects. Any excuse for Andy Cohen to be in front of the camera!
Once the season was in full swing, and we had chosen our favorites, Top Chef quickly became a slow-motion car wreck. We could see the oncoming Hung victory, but there was nothing we could do to stop it. There was a glimmer of hope from Casey in the last couple of weeks, but she buckled under the pressures of reality TV and completely blew it. Even sweet, gay Dale became more of a contender than expected (Lamb poached in Duck fat? Yes, please!), but there was just no stopping the technical mastery and obnoxiousness of Hung.
In their first ever live finale, they screened the elimination challenge before an audience in the arbitrarily chosen city of Chicago, before the three finalists faced the awkward panel. Only Padma (who looked like she was trying to hide a baby belly under that dress) wasn’t alarmed by the cameras. Like an autistic child with a burning desire to pee, Hung spent the live portion bouncing around and making animal noises. No one has ever expected anything more. In his latest showing of robotic emotion, Hung thanked America for supporting him. He must have been referring to the non-texting portion of the country though, because he only 12% of the live poll wanted him to win.
There won’t be an excuse for a recap from the weird YouTube ladies for quite a while, so without further adieu, here is some additional commentary with a green screen and tiaras: