One Chef Falls Apart And One Judge Shows Compassion

Top Chef Just Desserts - Cocktail with a Twist

The chefs are in the house, their Top Chef house, I mean. I LOVE the lime green and brown color scheme on the bed linens. I HATE the enormous welt (zit?) on the side of Seth’s neck. Goiter maybe? He should have that looked at.

Morgan says he and Seth are getting to be friends, because they admire the same chefs and they’re both straight.

I’m loving Tim. He’s the one that makes coffee for everyone and he calls himself the “Go-To Mama”.

Time to bake. Gail, wearing a cute headband, greets them in a kitchen full of candy. (Was that always there?) Elizabeth Falkner is next to her. (Remember her on Top Chef Masters?)

Their Quickfire challenge is to create a dish that celebrates penny candy. Heather says exactly what I’m thinking – that she’s more of a chocolate lover than a candy lover. I SO agree!

Give me a Snickers, Baby Ruth, some Reese’s pieces and forget the jelly beans, jujyfruits, fruit slices, even licorice. They just don’t move me. I’m so with Heather that all those artificial looking, teeth and tongue staining, little pellets of highly refined sugar and carnauba wax do not inspire me.

The winner will get immunity. They have one hour and they have to use at least some of that candy. I’m not that interested in this. Oh, Tim is making ice cream. Of course, he is. THAT could be good. Seth’s mom can’t eat atomic fireballs because of her health problems (Perhaps, CAUSED by eating all those atomic fireballs, whatever they are.)

Here are all the desserts. They look amazing, except for all that candy junk in them.

Seth cries when his ice cream doesn’t freeze. He made it for his mom. BTW, Tim’s looks amazing - Orange and Pistachio Parfait with Mascarpone and Cream. Heather H’s is ingenious too - Vanilla Panna Cotta with Passion Fruit Gelée.

The other Heather gets the hairy eyeball (that should be the name of one of those dishes) from Gail and Elizabeth, because SHE DIDN’T ACTUALLY USE ANY CANDY IN HER DISH. What a mo’! The challenge was to use the candy. I hope she goes home. How did Zac make a Ho-Ho in an hour?

Seth is weeping as he explains his dish to the judges AND he’s wearing safety goggles for no discernable reason.

Then he actually falls onto, and under, the countertop, wailing, and his buddy, Morgan, tries to console him.

Much more affecting than him falling apart (let’s be honest…this is AWKWARD) is Elizabeth giving him a giant hug and telling him that she’s done a lot of these competitions and she’s never won.

Elizabeth says she’s totally on his team…she’s reminding me of someone…who is it? SHE totally did not have to step outside her box of “judging” him to comfort him and she totally did. I LOVE her. Seth should man up a bit, “The red hots are for my mommy”, but Elizabeth is wonderful and she’d be a fantastic mentor in the kitchen…and out. (WHO is it that she’s reminding me of?)

The Quickfire results - The worst starts with Heather C., of course, since she didn’t even bother DOING the challenge and Eric, who didn’t do enough with his malted balls. ;-) (I feel like I haven’t seen half of these people before.)

I wonder if Elizabeth has the nerve to put Seth in the bottom. If she doesn’t, won’t she be buying into his drama? WAIT, she DOES put him in the bottom, saying that she’s absolutely been there and he just has to keep going. Good for her.

The best – Heather H. (YES!!!) and Danielle, whoever she is, and Elizabeth also likes Zac’s dessert. The winner is Danielle and she gets immunity.

They go to the The Tar Pit, (the bar, not the actual pools of tar) to find out about the next Elimination Challenge. They meet up with Mark Peel and Gail tells them that they have to create a dish inspired by a cocktail. THAT’S a cool challenge.

I hope they don’t screw it up for the chefs by changing something halfway through or making them work in teams. Oh, the twist is that they can only use ingredients they find from behind the bar. This doesn’t seem quite fair. All the limes and fruit garnishes are going fast.

Oy, THIS is not good. Seth has his 2 minutes behind the bar and he’s looking specifically for pink grapefruit juice for his cocktail. He can’t find it and he starts to panic. The other chefs are really nice and shouting encouraging things to him to spur him on. He just grabs something and comes out from behind the bar and then just loses it.

Seth starts screaming, “I don’t understand why anyone is against me.” (THEY WEREN’T!!!) Then he goes on about his mother having huge medical bills. He’s getting positively unhinged.

I actually think he should get out of there and work out his problems and be with mom.

Then it gets even ickier as he says he’s broke and not there for fun, he’s there to safe his life. Gail just looks away and Mark looks clueless (not in a bad way, just that he has no clue how to handle Seth’s rantings). Even Morgan tells Seth he’s being an ass*%#@. That shuts him up. Gail ignores the whole thing and says they have to move on.

Listen, everyone has trials, but Seth didn’t make anyone feel sorry for him, he made them mad in the end, by making everything about HIM. He seems so needy that he sucks the lifeblood out of everyone around him. Time to go bye for HIS sake, the other chefs AND us.

Heather tells us that she was really uncomfortable with the whole thing and then she tells Seth that he needs to apologize to the other contestants. To his credit, he completely agrees.

The judges and other lucky tasters arrive at the Tar Pitt. They get to eat ELEVEN desserts. The Tar Pit is absolutely gorgeous inside. Slick and sophisticated, it looks like a place where you would order a sidecar or a dry, very dry, martini.

Ooh, Hubert Keller is there too with Johnny, Gail, Elizabeth and Mark Peel. And so is Mark’s business partner (and wife) Daphne Brogdon. I’m confused, I thought he was married to Nancy Silverton. Oh, WAS is the operative word. Actually, Daphne is funny. She says ALL her comments were edited out.

Here are the desserts. There’s isn’t one I wouldn’t gobble down.

I STILL can’t think who Elizabeth is the clone of, and, no, it’s NOT Ellen DeGeneres, it’s someone else.

The most noteworthy comment from Elizabeth, as she’s tasting all the desserts, is “blue in the pastry world is usually a faux pas”. That was in response to Seth’s blue cake. Interesting.

There’s drama in the kitchen when all of Zac’s best chocolate squares for garnish are knocked over – with Seth standing nearby, swearing he had nothing to do with it. Zac was saving those for the judges’ plates and Gail ends up NOT getting a tuile. Sacre Bleu!

Back at Judges’ Table, Erika, Yigit, and Erik get called in. Hubert is there with them. There’s a bit of a dust-up with Seth in the stew room. He’s a jerk.

Those three are the top finishers. That’s interesting because Erika realized at the last minute that she didn’t have enough desserts to serve, so she cut them all in half which showed the beautiful interior. Her plate was lovely. And the winner is…Erika. That’s nice. She’s sweet and her dessert looked yummy.

The bottom three are Malika, Tim and Seth.

If Seth doesn’t go home, I’ll…well, actually, I just don’t want Tim to go home. Uh-oh, Tim gives them a bad answer when they ask if the dessert was what he envisioned. He says YES it was. He should have said SOMETHING was wrong with it.

Then Gail makes the mistake of asking Seth what was going on when he fell apart. Eye Yi Yi, don’t engage him, Gail!

I don’t care who it is, just don’t send Tim home. Elizabeth asks Seth how they can be sure he won’t fall apart again if he stays. He says he can’t promise he won’t. Buh-bye then. That should be obvious. They go back to the stew room.

The judges confer. Seth’s dessert was scattered. Tim’s had great flavor, but the dessert collapsed. Mailka’s was too sweet. They come back in…It’s GOT to be Seth. And it’s…TIM. WHAT??!!!!!!!!! Oh, come on. You have to be kidding me!. I’m disgusted.

The producers MUST have come in and said they HAD to keep Seth. This stinks. This has to be a record at how quickly my early favorite went home. This really, really is an outrage. ALL the judges commented on Tim's superior palate and his dish was not worse than Seth's super-blue cake.

Probably, as with so many of these situations, Seth will be following Tim out of the door next week. For a show about sweet delights, this is one bitter outcome!