First thing's first, congrats to Michael. Not the least bit troubled by that win. He provided some of the most striking and exciting dishes of the competition, and whether or not he rubs you the wrong way, you can't deny the guy's talent. I'm very, very happy for him and happy with the result.
On the flipside, I'm possibly more pissed at the elves than I've ever been tonight. You need to throw twists into the finale? Fine. Add a dish. Have a mystery box. Send Mom in to judge. But don't send one of the people who's fought through 13 episodes into the final gunfight with a knife. Forget fair. It's just cruel. Doesn't matter who got the shaft. It could have been any of them (or none of them). But it's just a lame, lame, lame coda to an incredibly strong season with contestants who deserve -- who have EARNED -- better.
Footnote to the late-developing Bryan as favorite crowd... the breaks went his way. Heck, the mystery box was even centered on a fish that's enormously popular in Maryland. And it seemed as though he executed everything the way he wanted. But he still couldn't overcome a flawed performance by Michael. We'll see what the blogs say, but the guy's food, wonderful as I'm sure it is, has been inspiring more admiration than passion, and I suspect that just didn't cut it when it came time to handing out the title.
I was running way behind everybody else, so I need to do some catching up. I've swept all of the liveblog comments into the postmortem thread, here, so it's all in one place.
Talk amongst yourselves, and I'll jump in either late tonight or tomorrow afternoon.
UPDATE : Forgive the cheesy metaphor, but I can't think of a better way to express it. In a Kevin/Michael/Bryan finale, the TC producers were given the gift of a beautiful, incredibly marbled piece of beef. It's a damn shame they chose to toss it in a pot of boiling water.
UPDATE II : Season postmortem tomorrow!
UPDATE III : Er... um... make that Monday. Got a little tied up today. With apologies...
Comments