During the Olympics

Hello all.  I know the Olympics are over.  Thanks to NBC re-running it's primetime telecast and poor production, I was able to see my fave shows but some shows were chicken and ran re-runs themselves.  The Olympics telecast wasn't great.  NBC has a really bad habit of showing more talk and in show commercials for it's shows than actual competition.  I watched a lot more NBCSN (sports network).  Michelle Beadle was a great host who knew what she was talking about but didn't have to hog the camera time.  Also, she always seemed fresh and fun too w/ that glint in her eye that told you she wasn't taking anything too seriously.  They also showed a really wide variety of events on that channel too.  I heard the name of our champion swimmer wayyyy too many times.  How come it took a whole week to hear the British National anthem when Great Britain had won 5 gold medals already?  I love to hear everybody partying and singing; even if it's not Americans.  NBC needs to get rid of it's old dinosaurs like Bob Costas and Al Michaels but not bring in dumb twits like Ryan Seacrest.  At least they didn't do all those athlete profiles they loved to use to waste time.  With today's internet, we can look up bios ourselves.  Oh well.  I hear they have the Olympics contract through 2020.  Good Lord.  Maybe by then, we'll be able to see the games in virtual reality or something and won't have to even hear the letters NBC.

Ok, enough of the ranting.  Let's get to the shows that actually had the stones to air during the Olympics.

Top Chef Masters had a wedding episode.  This time it wasn't a wedding wars.  No teams and everybody had to do their own dish.  Oh wait, they couldn't start w/out hearing the bride and groom's sob stories:  dead maid of honor and scammed out of venue deposit.  Really?  That was it?  I've heard worse.  At least there's leeway w/ the food because the couple is Asian and not vegan, diabetic, heart healthy or some other weird dietary quirk.  So the chefs pow-wow a bit and then set off to shop for ingredients.  I love this section of the show cuz some chefs run around like madmen (Chris Cosentino) or women and some chefs toodle around like a day in the park (Thierry and Art Smith).  Ok, so the chefs got cooking.  Art Smith worked on the cake and it was pineapple upside down.  Really?  For a wedding?  These people are Asian not white trash.  He also made sure to drop some famous names to really make his cake taste good.  Geez.  He and Cosentino also got into it over the ovens.  I think Cosentino is the only person who doesn't let Art sweetly steamroll over him in the way those southerners can do.  At the wedding, the chefs all helped each other plate and all of the food seemed to be delicious.  Patricia Yeo (I think that's her name) was declared the winner w/ her spoonful of tasty treat.  The bottom 3 consisted of the unfortunates.  The people who just didn't have luck w/ them that day were Art who had the leaning tower of cake, Mark w/ his unplanned sashimi salmon and the blonde chef chick who grilled her cabbage.  The blonde chick left and I still don't know her name.  Bye!

Last week on Top Chef Masters, the chefs had a quickfire, unlike last week when they just gave them more time for the wedding.  The quickfire consisted of cooking any type of seafood they wanted except w/out heat.  A lot of crudo, ceviche and carpaccio ensued.  The funniest part was when the chefs noted that Chef Takashi had the advantage.  I loved the face he pulled at them.  It was LOL classic.  Well guess who showed up to judge; Brian Boitano.  Patricia thought he was a good judge but we didn't get to see him taste her dish.  Long story short, Takashi won and nobody was surprised.  I loved the fact that he mainly did his garnish and sauce the whole time and in the last five minutes cut the fish and plated.  He made the whole thing look easy and unstressful.  For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to work in teams of 3 and cook teppanyaki style.  Oh boy!  Art and Chris landed on the same team after the knife pull and I was just hoping Chris wouldn't put his fist through Art's face somewhere down the line.  The frantic shopping trip went off w/out a hitch except Thierry stopping to get a 1 minute massage while at the store.  Chris had a bit of a fit w/ that one.  As it turned out, each team had 30 minutes to cook and serve all their dishes.  Yikes!  Now you would think chefs who are not young have experienced and observed teppanyaki food before but maybe their lives are all about their own food and work.  Whatever.  The white team is up first.  Heffernen made something Asian, Mark made scallops and Lorena made flied lice.  Lorena was the time caller which made sense since she was the one who had to cook last and in order to have her own time, she had to push everybody along.  Unfortunately, they didn't want to taste test their food in front of the judges.  Well why the heck not?  I had a teppan chef taste his fried rice in front of me and it didn't bother me a bit.  If that's what it takes to make the food taste good, go for it.  I also wasn't sure about mango juice in the fried rice.  Ick.  Next up, yellow team which was Takashi w/ immunity, Patricia and Mark's Husband.  Takashi made a squid dish w/ pancake but instead of using rice flour which would've made them delicate, he used wheat flour which made them more crepey.  Mark's Husband threw lobster tails on the grill in their shell.  That was different.  Patricia made some Korean golgi which was smart since a lot of Korean meat dishes are grilled on a flattop.  Finally, the red team of Art, Thierry and Chris were on.  While setting up their carts to push out to the grille, Chris gave Art one task which was to put the mandoline on his cart when he was done w/ it.  That seemed easy and why didn't Art have his own mandoline?  So Art made cheesey grits and shrimp.  I love that he intended for his grits to be in cakes but when they fell apart, he just went with it and served them in a little pile.  Since Art likes to give long narratives about his food, Chris had to push him along.  Chris cooked next and found Art didn't leave the mandoline for him and a nice curseword was issued.  Hee hee hee.  I wouldn't have let Art use the mandoline in the first place.  Chris learned his lesson.  Anyhoo, Chris made a Korean meat dish too and Mary Sue Miliken who was judging, gave a smile when she saw him tasting his sauce.  Thierry ended the day w/ dessert and made crepes.  He found it's very hard to babysit a lot of crepes at once on a very hot grill.  When it came to judging, the judges remarked that they didn't get to see much showmanship from some of the chefs?  Are you kidding?  They only had 10 minutes and no practice.  They didn't even get tips from a teppanyaki chef.  The red team won the day.  Of the red team, Art came out the winner.  He set alcohol on fire and the judges called that a show.  Ok.  Art Smith took it w/ the giddy elation of a little girl at her birthday party.  The white team landed on the bottom.  They were criticized for not enough seasoning and not enough show.  Mark was sent home for overcooked scallops.  Too bad.  He always made me think of what Macauly Culkin should've looked like as a grown up.  Bye Mark, go home and practice cooking seafood.

Project Runway didn't hide out either.   The challenge for the week was to make a red carpet dress but work in teams of 2.  Oh and they had past season contestants as clients.  I'm not sure why, but they met their clients in different parts of town.  Wouldn't it have saved time and money to just have them meet at Parson's?  It's not like they took inspiration from the meeting place.  Oh but they did get in the car commercial by having the teams pair up around a car and demanding the car color be part of the dress.  It was kinda cheesey.  I felt really bad for Gunnar and Kooan the Kooky Kabuki.  They met w/ Irena and she's just as bitchy as ever.  Ven and his sewing partner met up w/ Kenley who lied about herself w/ a smile plastered on her face, "I'm classic and vintage but modern and fashionable."  Uh huh.  I think she invented quad oxymoron.  Dmitry and his girl goth partner had purple haired goth girl from a past season.  Michael was paired up w/ haggy old Andrea and they had Anya who basically told them not to copy her, but in a nice way.  The depressed Russian girl had that crazy English punk girl and their client was Laura who wasn't pregnant and much nicer than usual.  Finally, Sonjia was paired up w/ that black guy and their client was Valerie who was really nice as usual.  So on to Mood and we got to see Swatch trying to avoid the cameraman.  Awww...who's a shy little puppy?  Back to Parsons and those cheap brother sewing machines.  Halfway through the work Tim Gunn showed up w/ each client to peruse the work.  A lot of I don't like that, I don't think you should use that, and that doesn't look right happened.  I think the clients were told not to give any design advice or help.  The porkpie hat, Raul, and girl team really needed help cuz both said they only did menswear?  Really?  Even the girl?  So instead of making a killer suit, they attempted a gown.  Not smart; Doh!  Gunnar and Kooan had to repair a saggy butt thing on the gown they made for Irena and to hide the backside mess, they threw a train on her.  Valarie looked great in her gold sequined gown.  I didn't understand goth girl's gown which looked like a square of satin draped on her w/ the open back.  Laura looked like the mother of the bride w/ some weird pink sheeth covered by black diaphanous pleated something but it did have big shoulders.  Poor Anya, who can make a potato sack look good, had to wear that crap colored dress that made her look like the homesewn wallflower at the prom.  Even though her dress was too short and made of weird bathrobe material w/ puckered seams, she made it work but the look on her face said, "God, how I hate this mess."  Kenley beebopped out in a navy blue short dress w/ cool constructed bodice and poodle skirt w/ out the poodle.  Finally, Mila came out in her badly constructed black dress w/ red piping made by the people who only do men's wear.  Unfortunately, she looked like an amateur drag queen.  Somehow Gunnar and Kooan made top 2 teams.  Really?  Was Irena holding a large handbag in front of her dress?  Ven and his partner were also on top and w/ a lot of giggling and nasally gushing from Kenley, they won.  Poor Ven was declared the ultimate winner w/ the prize being attending the Emmy's w/ Kenley.  Is that a prize or a punishment?  The porkpie hat guy and girl who dressed Mila were declared the losers and the Raul, the porkpie hat wearer, was sent home.  In the last 2 minutes of the show, we found Andrea was MIA.  Yay!  The whole show became much better looking.

Last week, they let the Project Runway designers work alone again.  I'm glad to see less group projects.  The designers hate it and we feel for them.  First though, what happened to Andrea?  Nobody knew except one lady who found her missing in the middle of the night.  Kooan was also not looking well and said as much.  The designers met at Michael Kors' studio and the group was told Andrea's fine but gone.  I found out that when designers are eliminated, they don't really go home.  They're sequestered in another place but still have to hang around the designers so people can't see who's been eliminated.  The way Andrea left, she basically escaped.  I guess those cameramen sleep after all hee hee hee.  WTG and I hope they don't sue her for breach of contract.   So for the challenge....wait.  Kooan wants to leave too.  Oh boy!  He graciously bows out; literally.   Well bye then.  He was cannon fodder anyway.  The challenge was given;  make a look for a woman on the go.  What the heck does that mean?  Is that a traveling woman?  Is it a woman who works in an office til late and then wants to have cocktails after work?  Is that a sporty woman?  Is that a woman who chases kids around all day?  Tim and Mikey told everyone it's all about non-wrinkle material.  Ohhhhh....  On to Mood and we saw Swatch dart in and out of 1 shot while the designers ran around like mad.  At Parsons, Raul was brought back to make up for the missing designers and proceeded to look like a dumb schmuck by bragging how good he is.  Uh huh.  Ok, so they showed a lot of sewing, Gunn's critique and the usual designer panic.  Raul was the last out of the room and literally threw accessories onto his model.  Raul landed on the bottom w/ his ugly pants and weird no shape top.  So did that English punk girl who had a poorly made pink sheath covered by a diaphanous black overlay.  Hey, wasn't that kind of what she made last week?  Except the pink dress last week was made by the Russian girl who can sew.  Also on the bottom was the turbaned black guy who's dress I didn't mind too much.  On the top was Sonjia w/ the cutest charcoal grey dress, Dmitry w/ a cute charcoal grey dress (I'm sensing a theme here) and someone else.  Sonjia is declared the winner and Buffy, English punk girl, is auffed.  Bye!  Work on your sewing skills on your downtime.  You never know if you'll be pulled back onto the show again.

Well, that's about it.  Next post will review the new spin-off of The Closer; Major Crimes.  Until then loyal TV watchers. Stay tuned.