→ February 8, 2012
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Sherlock, season one.

My annual ranking of the 30 MLB farm systems is up for Insiders. The top 100 follows tomorrow, with chats at noon ET (Spanish) and 1 pm ET (English).

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I admit to some reluctance to watch the BBC series Sherlock, which takes the famed detective character and reimagines him in the present day, solving crimes loosely based on some of the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. I didn’t expect to like a series that so dramatically alters the setting of the original, and inevitably changes the character as well, but it’s surprisingly well done and engaging despite the occasional bit of TV-friendly drama to keep the hoi polloi interested. (The first season just aired on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery last month.)

Rather than directly adapt Conan Doyle’s stories into individual episodes, series creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss chose to write new stories based on one or more of the originals, stretching them out to about 88 minutes apiece, with three episodes per season. Benedict Cumberbatch, who played a significant supporting role in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, plays the title character, a “consulting detective” who solves crimes the police can’t and keeps a blog on his exploits, infusing Holmes with substantial charisma despite his incredible aloofness and professed disinterest in human connections. Martin Freeman (of the UK version of The Office and the middling film adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide) plays Dr. John Watson, an Afghan war veteran paired up with Holmes by chance, forming an uneasy working relationship that’s more balanced than the partnership in Conan Doyle’s works, with Watson actually standing up for himself when he thinks Holmes is merely trying to humiliate him. (It doesn’t work, but at least he tried.)

The first season comprises three episodes, with the final one the tightest all around as the characters had become more developed and the crime (and its solution) was more clever and intricate. The first episode, “A Study in Pink,” has to get the two main characters together and define all manner of relationships within the show, and then has a drawn-out standoff between Sherlock and the killer because the BBC asked the producers to add another 30 minutes to the original hourlong show; the second episode was more focused on the crime, but the denouement was also over the top and involved a character who threatens to throw off the show’s equilibrium. The series does put Sherlock in danger a bit too often – while he did die in one of the original short stories, only to be resurrected by a recalcitrant Conan Doyle due to reader demand – even though we know he has to live till the next episode, making the drama from those scenes seem a little false, although I suppose it would be just as absurd to have the main character never find himself in any jeopardy at all.

Comparing Cumberbatch’s Holmes to the character from Conan Doyle’s stories is an exercise in frustration; I view the new Sherlock as inspired by the original character, rather than a mere adaptation. The series puts Sherlock in more situations that explore his lack of social skills, and Watson is more than just a foil for Holmes’ genius, providing commentary on Holmes’ bizarre behavior and personality. I did find myself regularly comparing this Sherlock Holmes to another TV character inspired by the literary one, Dr. Gregory House.

House is an unlikely protagonist for an American TV series, an antihero who aims for perfect rationality in his life and behavior, who solves cases for their puzzle aspects rather than any human elements, who abhors religion and other forms of authority, an unpleasant character you like because he’s clever, not because you love to hate him. Yet despite his claims of rational thought, he shows a malicious streak under the guise of flouting authority or establishing how much his superiors need him, whereas neither the literary Holmes nor the new BBC version exhibit any such behavior. Cumberbatch’s Holmes can be insulting – his line to Watson and a police officers, “Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring,” is brilliantly dismissive – but there’s no malice involved.

In just three episodes so far, we see subtle hints that Sherlock is aware he doesn’t quite fit in and might even be a little sad or ashamed about it, such as the time he lies to a potential client about how he knew the latter had recently traveled around the world. He’s arrogant, while House is misanthropic; Sherlock calls himself a sociopath (in response to the accusation that he’s a psychopath), but despite their shared focus on solving the puzzle for its own sake, Sherlock shows more glimmers of humanity in three episodes than House has in eight seasons. House has to rely on humor to make the show watchable, and with the show becoming less funny and its lead character more spiteful, the show’s quality has declined noticeably. Sherlock has some humor, but the stories and the two lead characters can drive the show on their own because there’s more to see and understand in the title character than there is in Dr. House.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a Klaw review of a British series without a mention of Foyle’s War, tied to Sherlock by (at least) a significant guest-starring role by Andrew Scott (who also appeared in The Hour). DCS Foyle is nothing like Holmes, of course; he has a normal range of emotions, but keeps them inside, producing a brooding, melancholy exterior that has become sharper with age. But what the two detectives do share is an attention to detail that characterizes most great literary detectives as well – crimes are solved when the investigator identifies some tiny inconsistency that exposes a wider range of evidence against the guilty party. Holmes solves his crimes through research, Foyle through interrogation, but both solve via deduction. The shows particularly differ in pacing, however – the London-based Sherlock moves quickly, not just in editing, but in dialogue and action, while Foyle’s War is almost leisurely and methodical, reflecting its bucolic setting and the illusion of peace while a war rages mere miles away. So if you’re a Sherlock fan looking for another British mystery series while you wait for season two to arrive here, give Foyle’s War a try.

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→ February 6, 2012
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Shadow of the Wind.

I read Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s best-selling novel The Shadow of the Wind last week between vacation and the long trip to Bristol (during which I also watched the first half of season 4 of The Wire) after a reader recommended it and I discovered my wife wanted to read it as well. It’s quick-moving with some interesting subtexts, but with a lot of silly, predictable plot elements and some least-common-denominator writing that drags the book down to a pulpier level.

The novel starts promisingly enough as the narrator/protagonist, Daniel, is introduced by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a slightly mystical edifice in Barcelona where the keepers attempt to obtain a copy of every book ever written so that they may never be permanently forgotten. Daniel’s father tells him to find one book and become its champion, of sorts, and Daniel is drawn to a book called Shadow of the Wind, by an unknown author named Julián Carax. Daniel’s attempts to learn more about the book and Carax then drive the remainder of the novel’s plot, which has almost nothing to do with books or literature but instead revolves more around the history of Spain from its civil war forward, and around the city of Barcelona itself, which is the book’s real center and its main character.

It turns out that some madman is running around burning every copy of Carax’s books that he can find, and when that madman finds Daniel as a result of the boy’s inquiries about the book and its author, it plunges Daniel into the story he’s chasing, one that dates back to Carax’s boyhood and features a doomed romance and childhood grudges that have become deadly in time, while paralleling developments in Daniel’s own life, including a forbidden romance of his own that almost (but, fortunately, not completely) mirrors Julián’s.

Ruiz Zafón’s best passages have little to do with the plot, or with dialogue (it may be the translation, which was done by Lucia Graves, the daughter of I, Claudius author Robert Graves, but Zafón’s language comes off as stilted), but with Barcelona itself. His prose is most evocative when he’s describing street scenes from what is a very scenic, memorable city, a city that mixes architectural styles and landscapes and features the kind of old buildings required for the novel’s gothic-horror-lite elements.

Unfortunately, I could never fully buy into the story’s plot, not the madman’s actions, not the acts of the violent policeman who also stalks Daniel, not the romance between Julián and his intended, nor her father’s actions when their affair is discovered. The madman’s identity was easy to figure out, and while I didn’t see the twist with Julián and Penelope coming, it’s not remotely original and I thought it was played more for shock value than anything else, a trick Ruiz Zafón also uses when Daniel pronounces, American Beauty-style, that in seven days, he will be dead. (Spoiler, which I think anyone could guess, but you should avert your eyes if you really don’t want to know: He ends up dead for a few seconds before he’s revived. Cheap.) I kept looking for a deeper meaning in the book relating to the dark period of fascism in Spain that lasted four decades, but either I’m not familiar enough with Spanish history to find it, or it just wasn’t there.

If you want a real page-turner with gothic horror elements, go for the longer but far more enjoyable Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. If you like the idea of a novel revolving around books, I’d recommend the tremendously fun The Eyre Affair (which I recommend all the time) or the clever if not entirely plot-driven City of Dreaming Books.

–

I should also mention Dorothy Sayers’ mystery Whose Body?, which introduced the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey with a clever device involving the discovery of an unknown victim’s naked body in the tub of a working-class house in London. I like a good mystery, having read twenty-odd Agatha Christie novels, but Sayers’ writing and the resolution of the story both left me cold, particularly since the killer’s identity is revealed with about ten percent of the novel remaining, after which we get a long, drawn-out monologue (in epistolary form) from him explaining why he did what he did. Sayers also has Lord Wimsey speaking a very common vernacular that doesn’t gel with what we learn of his upbringing and seems like affect, and not the charming affect of, say, M. Poirot. The series has a devoted following but I don’t feel any need to go on to the next title.

Next up: Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt.

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→ February 4, 2012
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Caylus iOS app.

The complex strategy game Caylus is one of the top-rated games on Boardgamegeek, a site where voters tend to favor intricate games with pages upon pages of rules and little to no luck involved. It’s the kind of game I can’t imagine playing as a rookie against someone who’s played a few times – an experience I had with Agricola that ended up with me getting my ass handed to me by a slightly more seasoned player (who is, most likely, about to read this review). It’s also the kind of game that makes me say I’m not a “serious” boardgamer – I love smart games, but the complexity and length of games like Caylus (and Agricola, and Le Havre, for which I still owe everyone a review) keeps them off the top tier of my own list.

So I’m pleased to report that the Caylus app for iOS is very strong, with outstanding graphics, a very easy-to-use layout (no mean feat given the amount of information a player might need midgame), and, after a recent update, no issues with stability. The AIs could be better, and the rules included in the app are not sufficient, but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to play and keeps you thinking the entire time – 15-20 minutes for a game against AI players. (I have yet to try this multiplayer, but that is available through GameCenter.)

Caylus is a worker-placement game: Each player has a small number of workers to place each turn on buildings that might return money, resources, or points; allow the exchange of some of those things for others; or allow him/her to construct something of value. Caylus operates around five resources, the value and supply of which fluctuate as the game progresses, and offers multiple paths to victory (although I found one the AIs just can’t seem to beat*). There’s really no luck involved, and because most buildings on the board allow just one worker per turn, each decision, from small to large, requires the player to consider not just his own future moves but those of every opponent as well.

* The strategy requires gold, the scarcest resource in the game. A human player would see that I was stockpiling gold and certain other resources and would at least try to made it harder for me to get gold from the gold mine, the one place to get gold for no cost beyond the cost of the worker. A human player would be trying to get gold for himself anyway. But the AI players don’t do either of these things, and I don’t think the AI players are that good at pursuing points via multiple, simultaneous strategies. I’ll come back to that.

The centerpiece of the game is the castle, which players build in blocks during three separate phases, after which their contributions to the castle are scored. Building certain numbers of blocks, or just building the most in any particular turn, grants the player one or more “royal favors” – money, a resource, victory points, or the ability to build a building at a discount. Failing to build at all in any of the three phases costs a player two victory points, but the opportunity cost is just as significant.

The graphics in this app are the best I’ve seen for any boardgame app so far, clear, bright, and very easy to look at for the length of a game. The layout is another strength, with critical information available in a left-hand sidebar that the player can rotate through several screens or can shrink to half its size to see more of the board. Moving workers is straightforward, and in the banner on the right from where the player drags a worker the app displays key info like money remaining (since placing a worker costs at least one unit of money).

I found the AI players all pretty easy to beat, working my way up from a two-player game against the easiest AI opponent to a five-player game against the two strongest AI players and two more from the next level of difficulty. The primary problem is that the AI players can’t detect a human player’s long-term strategy – an issue evident in other apps and one I expect to see in the upcoming implementations of Agricola and Le Havre. The simpler the game, generally the simpler it is to program a strong AI, either because it can pursue an optimal strategy that’s hard to beat or because the tree of potential human-player moves isn’t that wide.

The lack of in-game information is the other flaw here, one that creates a steeper-than-necessary learning curve for new players. The rules and tutorial show you how to use the app more than they show you how to successfully play the game. Buildings aren’t marked on the board; their icons are unique, so a player can look in the building directory in the left-hand sidebar and try to match them up, but allowing a player to tap any building and see its identity would be an easy addition. The app will also allow a player to select a favor that s/he can’t afford, with no opportunity to undo it as a player would have when playing the physical game.

For $4.99, I’ve already gotten my money’s worth from Caylus, spending close to three hours total across all games I’ve played so far. I’ll still play it occasionally, but they’ll need to offer a better AI for this to be something I continue to play regularly without GameCenter (and since I play on planes, that’s a key issue for me). The weaker AI makes the app more of a Caylus tutorial, or even an advertisement for the physical game – albeit a very slick, easy to use one, once you figure out the rules, which you might have to do outside of the app. It’s really well done, and if they can offer a stronger AI player down the line, it’ll join that top tier of boardgame apps.

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→ February 2, 2012
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Top Chef, S9E13.

Recapping the worst episode of Top Chef I’ve ever seen…

* First order of business is to discuss the guest judge this week, Pee Wee Herman. I was too old for his original kids’ show, and never quite got the hipster-chic of it. I really don’t care about the public-indecency arrest, nor do I think it’s germane to a discussion of his appearance on this show. The real problem with Pee Wee Herman is that the character isn’t funny – and an unfunny guest judge who spurs the other judges to try (and fail) to be funny creates a very awkward show that, for me, was unpleasant to watch even before we got to the elimination-challenge foolishness.

* Quickfire: Twenty minutes to make pancakes. I love this challenge, because pancakes are such a classic dish, very American, often badly done, like lead in the stomach, tasting just of buttermilk or of the artificially-flavored syrup in which they are drowned. A pancake is one of the quickest of quickbreads, and while I prefer waffles – better surface/interior ratio, so you get more browning and more crunch – I like the way this gave chefs a blank canvas.

* Was it just the editing, or were most of the chefs just eyeballing their batter? I’m obsessed about measuring ingredients for doughs or batters of any sort, usually with a scale.

* The ricotta pancake thing, for me, is a little played out, and two chefs employed it – lemon-ricotta from Lindsay, ricotta-buttermilk from Grayson (who used chiffonade of basil in her fruit topping, which I love, as it has a surprisingly sweet flavor). Ricotta does produce a really light, fluffy end product though, including the zeppole at Via Napoli in Epcot, so maybe I’m criticizing a trend that is more of a new technique. But we didn’t get a lot of unusual flours, which surprised me because it seems like an easy way to change flavors and textures.

* Probably worth pointing out how incredibly forced the laughter from the chefs was during this entire episode. Grayson at least seemed to have some nostalgia for Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but that was it. Herman’s “the best pancakes I’ve ever had” gag was lame – anyone who didn’t see that coming shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

* Ed wins by going Jackson Pollock with the batter so he serves mostly the crispy edges of pancakes without the doughy interiors. This reminded me of a customer-from-hell incident my wife and I witnessed in a Cracker Barrel in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1998 (a story I may have told before, so bear with me). The burly guy in the next booth, dining alone, orders the pancakes “extra crispy,” and right before the waitress leaves to put in the order, shouts, “did I emphasize crispy?” So, in a development as obvious as a Pee-Wee Herman gag, the guys sends back multiple plates of pancakes because they’re “not crispy enough.” To this day I really have no idea what a crispy pancake would look like or whether that clown ever got what he wanted, or what he deserved for treating the server the way he did.

* Elimination challenge: This was a new low for Top Chef, surpassing the previous low, set when Pee Wee Herman walked into the kitchen at the start of the episode. The chefs had to head out on bicycles to find their ingredients at the farmers’ market in the Alamo district, and then had to find restaurants that would allow them to cook their meals in their kitchens. This is ridiculous for more reasons than I can list, but I’ll start with these.

1. The show is called “Top Chef,” right? So what part of this challenge is remotely relevant to being a chef? It had little or nothing to do with cooking, or even running a kitchen, which I could argue is a relevant consideration for evaluating someone’s cheffing skills.

2. Requiring the chefs to ride all over town on bikes is a pretty big handicap for anyone who’s not in shape, or has bad knees, or is otherwise physically limited. And given how hot it was during the filming of this season, weren’t they asking for someone to get hurt or pass out?

3. It had to be more structured than the editing made it appear. The show’s producers arranged this with restaurant owners beforehand, right? I mean, clearly these restaurant chefs/owners aren’t that surprised to have a TV crew and a random cook show up and ask to use their kitchens, and the chefs keep showing up at the same places, which can’t be a coincidence. So did the contestants get a list of restaurants to hit? And were the restaurants separately compensated? (Or was it just for the free publicity?) They had to know beforehand so they knew they would be asked to write up bills for the chefs. And if I’m right, why not make that clear to the audience?

4. None of that part of the show was even a little entertaining, let alone instructive about food or cooking.

* Moving along rapidly, Ed decides he wants to get proteins at the restaurant, which seems kind of foolhardy; don’t you build your dish around your proteins? He ends up using chicken breast instead of what he hoped for, shrimp, and is nearly eliminated because of it.

* Grayson says, “game night at the Schmitz house, usually one of us breaks down and cries.” I hear ya, girl – Ticket to Ride matches can get pretty fierce.

* Lindsay falls way behind the other chefs in getting ingredients – again, what are we judging here? Then she loses the kitchen she arranged to use because they don’t hold her spot and Sarah shows up. We sure learned a lot about Lindsay’s culinary vision by watching her get screwed over like that. The judges criticize her dish for having a little too much goat cheese, and Pee Wee Herman keeps talking about how amazing it is to have food served in “little boats,” so apparently he’s never seen an endive in his life.

* Sarah makes a “chicken skin vinagrette,” but it wasn’t just from the fat rendered from the skin, since she crisped it on the grill. I haven’t seen a recipe yet but am very interested now. The judges loved her okra, crush her for not seasoning her perfectly-cooked soft-boiled eggs. Outside of that – and chefs do get the axe all the time here for improper seasoning – this could have been a winner as a reconceptualization of a classic dish, a formula that always plays well on Top Chef.

* Ed got a little weird about sharing the kitchen with the guy who actually owned the place, although he was better humored about it at judges’ table than he was in the confessional. I get the criticism of the chicken’s texture if he pulled it too early and didn’t allow it to carry over, but Gail’s comment that poaching in beef fat isn’t flavorful made zero sense to me. Everyone knows the last time McDonald’s fries were good was when they still fried them in beef tallow.

* Grayson makes stuffed chicken breasts, which I’m not crazy about since they tend to dry out fairly easily, especially cooked without skin, because you’re trying to get the stuffing to at least get hot if not actually cooked through, by which time the breast meet is dry. Tom loves the combo of ingredients and loves her butternut squash but not in concert with tomatoes. Weird that Grayson would get large chicken breasts at a farmer’s market – you’d expect smaller ones if they’re really free-range or pasture-raised.

* Paul remains wildly ambitious even when working in someone else’s kitchen. It also seemed like he got along the best with his hosts, which says the easygoing manner we’re seeing post-editing is probably legitimate. He worried, as usual, about the sweet/sour balance, which the judges liked as long as you got all of the elements at once. Only David Tyree could stop him now.

* Can I just emphasize again how terribly unfunny this whole episode was? If Pee Wee Herman isn’t able to provide humor, what the hell is he doing here? Charlize had better insight into the food, and she’s hot. Just bring her back next time instead of letting some has-been comedian be a guest judge.

* Winner: Lindsay. Sounds like she just had the least flawed dish. Paul gets the thumbs-up as well, so I assume it’s fair to call him the runner-up this week.

* Loser: Given what we saw, which of course is a limited look, I expected Sarah or Ed to go home over Grayson. Grayson had a hell of a run though; she seemed early on like she lacked the range, but proved that she could succeed within her limits, and (not that it matters for judging) came off on TV better than anyone other than Paul.

* Last Chance Kitchen: Editing made Grayson look like the winner, but Ed betting the pack of cigarettes that it’s Beverly makes me think that’s who really won the LCK finale. Tom has the line of the week, funnier than anything PWH said, to Grayson: “I would not wake up this early in the morning just to fuck with you.” One preposition makes all the difference.

* Other LCK observations: Interesting to hear eliminated chefs, mostly men, now praising Beverly … Please stop saying “Asian” like it’s one fucking cuisine. Bev is Korean and her dish was more Thai than anything else; they’re no more similar than two European cuisines from different countries. It’s beyond annoying to hear Asian cuisine dismissed like it’s a gimmick, or some narrow style that could be summarized in a Dummies book.

* Final three: I’m sticking with Paul, Ed, and Lindsay.

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→ January 26, 2012
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Top Chef, S9E12.

Recap of last night’s Top Chef: Frozen Food Infomercial…

* Charlize in the stew room! I’m impressed – if nothing else, it looks like she didn’t big league anyone, and really is just a fan of the show. So she and I have … one thing in common. We can build a relationship on this, right?

* Quickfire: Prep three ingredients, then make a dish incorporating all of them. Guest judge this week is Cat Cora, who might be the least impressive TV chef I’ve ever seen. I did watch Iron Chef America for the first year or two that she was on it, and found her stuff less imaginative and a lot less appealing than any of the other Iron Chefs at the time; Boston chef Ken Oringer (of Toro, Clio, Coppa, and La Verdad – he’s legit) just destroyed her in one of the last episodes I watched before I gave up on the show. Cora may be a wonderful person, but given what I’ve seen from her on TV I’m not sure why she’s here.

* And then she criticizes the deep-fried bacon for not having “flavor.” Really? Deep-fried bacon lacks flavor? If you want to criticize them for not rendering the bacon at all, I guess that’s valid, although bacon fat is loaded with flavor, so really, what the hell was she talking about?

* Back to the quickfire … Padma looks like she’s wearing her boyfriend’s clothes, assuming she’s dating a lumberjack, or perhaps is just wearing his tablecloth. Then she refers to the prize money as “ten thousand smackeroos,” so someone forgot that she’s not at home talking to her baby.

* Chris J. and Grayson are one team, and their styles don’t meld that well, with Grayson – who nearly botches the fresh pasta beyond repair; I’d love to know what she did to rescue a dough so dry it was tearing in the roller – telling Chris to get a move on, and Chris saying, “Fast is slow, and slow is smooth,” reciting something he apparently once read in a fortune cookie. “Good fortune happy lucky big time for you and family.”

* Paul and Ed, the dream team combo, end up DQ’d because Paul forgot to cook the shrimp. He didn’t just forget to add them, as Bev did with her curried rice krispies – he didn’t even cook them. He might have been the last of the six chefs I’d expect to brain-cramp like that, even if he was once a dope dealer.

* Despite all their issues, including finishing in the final seconds, Grayson and Chris win, leaving Lindsay and Sara as bitter as raw radicchio. (Foreshadowing!) Sara says in the confessional that her dish was better, which would be entirely plausible if we’d ever seen her touch Grayson and Chris’ dish. No immunity, though, which makes sense since we’re almost to the finale.

* Elimination challenge: feed 200 people at a block party with your take on a traditional block-party dish, which is then twisted into a commercial for Healthy Choice, which pushes low-calorie, low-fat, low-salt, dishes made with cheaply-sourced factory-farmed ingredients and pretends they’re good for you. Anyway, how come I never get invited to these parties? I need to get my agent on this.

* Anyway, the chefs pick their dishes, and are then told to lighten them up because the sponsor says so. Healthier versions? Come on, it’s Top Chef, not The Biggest Loser. I want fat served on a bed of fat, topped with hollandaise.

* We keep hearing about how the chefs reduced the salt in their dishes. Is it unfair of me to expect a show that’s all about food, with chefs and judges who talk about fresh ingredients, to understand that for a person with normal blood pressure, salt is not a problem? If you’re not eating processed foods, and your blood pressure is fine, you’re not eating too much salt. I could understand saying that part of the challenge for the chefs is to force them to amplify flavors without salt, but please, stop repeating the myth that salt is unhealthful.

* The chefs only get two and a half hours, including prep time. They did know ahead of time, so they could plan accordingly, but on the flip side, the mise en place must have taken up half of that time.

* Lindsay and Sara are making meatballs. Sara switches to turkey, but other than seeing them come off the grilltop a little flat we don’t get much more info on them. Lindsay goes with veal and lamb. Why lamb in meatballs? That has to be the fattiest meat option available. I don’t really like lamb – just lost my taste for it all of a sudden – but when I’ve had ground lamb dishes, I always find them a little greasy. For a low-fat challenge, it seems like an odd choice. Lindsay binds her meatballs with Greek yogurt, which sounds weird, but she gets props for using chickpea flour, which I think is an underutilized kitchen weapon – I’ve used it for a slew of things, including savory crepes and fresh pasta. I’m also eager to try her quinoa and black pea salad with a garlic-parsley vinaigrette. (But did she really use garlic powder in the dish?)

* Grayson and Chris end up with chicken salad sandwiches, Grayson’s choice because Chris was too busy pondering the true meaning of “block.” Chris kills the mayo and uses a tofu emulsion, reminiscent of Alton Brown’s egg-less Caesar salad dressing, so not only is it lower in fat but it’s now friendly to people with egg allergies. Grayson is crunched for time, as always, but her choice to make the sandwiches to order turns out to be her trump card over Chris. I did think Chris’ watermelon salad side dish, with a frozen pineapple slush poured on top, looked far better than Grayson’s trendy watermelon salad with feta and whatever you lost me after you put goat cheese with watermelon.

* Paul and Ed push the envelope, of course, with their takes on a Korean dish called galbi, grilled beef ribs first marinated in a salty-sweet mixture and often cooked table-side in restaurants or at cookouts. I’ve never had it, but you pretty much had me at “beef ribs.” Ed refuses to tone down any of the fat other than trimming the short ribs, which is kind of a fool’s errand because there’s so much fat laced in the meat itself, and then pairs it with a white-flour steamed bun. Paul switches to ground turkey, mixes in eggplant, and serves it in a lettuce wrap with a white-peach kimchi and a nonfat yogurt-miso sauce. Paul says at judges’ table that he added eggplant for the fat, which I assume is just nerves talking because, um, it has almost no fat. Ed, meanwhile, has to deal with kids stealing his bread, which is also probably a sign it’s not health food.

* Winners: Paul, Lindsay, and Grayson. Tom loves Paul’s kimchi. Grayson stands up to Tom at judges’ table and I think rendered him speechless. Paul wins again, no shock, but he did have the most out-of-the-box dish, including the things he did to maintain flavor while losing fat, and apparently executed it.

* Losers: Ed, Sarah, Chris, although the judges say nobody really flopped. Sarah kind of gets a pass for a good dish that wasn’t as good as her competitor’s; the biggest complaint was uneven mixing of the salad, which sounds like a terrible nitpick. Ed loses to Deep Blue, but also gets points off for punting on the healthful part of the challenge and bullshitting the judges. Chris J. is the pretty obvious choice for elimination here, and I think he was the worst remaining contestant, at least in odds of winning the whole thing. Grayson blames herself for picking chicken salad, which didn’t play to Chris’ strengths, but he was there for the decision on what to cook and didn’t come up with a valid alternative.

* Last Chance Kitchen: Mystery Box challenge. Bev and Chris make almost identical dishes. Tom doesn’t say so, but I think the deciding factor may have been the white anchovy, which Bev integrated in her dish, but Chris didn’t after suffering chef’s block.

* Final three: I’m sticking with Paul, Ed, and Lindsay. I still think Sarah is too limited – both of her dishes in this episode were Italian-plus, at best – and Grayson is probably the weakest chef remaining. Looks like we’ll get a re-entry from LCK after next week’s episode.

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→ January 23, 2012
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Folks, This Ain’t Normal.

I’m not a big fan of polemics in general, since, regardless of subject matter, they all tend to share two traits: They are poorly written and lightly evidenced. Joel Salatin’s Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World fits that description perfectly, with a complete lack of footnotes and scant detail even in anecdotes that should, in theory, help prove his points, and while Salatin is clearly a bright guy, he’s no writer, and whoever edited his book didn’t do him many favors. Yet despite those glaring flaws, and the clear bias with which he writes (one to which I’m sympathetic), there’s still a fair amount of value to be had from reading Folks… because of the questions his arguments on agriculture and our modern, unsustainable food supply will raise in your mind.

Joel Salatin is a self-described “environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer,” as well as a libertarian, a Christian, and to some degree a bit of a chauvinist, so 350 pages of his thoughts will inevitably contain something to aggravate any reader – a tactic, however, that can have the positive effect of causing readers to investigate Salatin’s claims further to try to debunk them. He runs an extensive, traditional farm in rural Virginia called Polyface, pasture-raising livestock; eschewing the use of pesticides, antibiotics, and genetically modified crops; and employing a holistic approach to land management that relies on natural processes and diets to maintain soil quality, limit water usage, and minimize his carbon footprint.

Salatin follows three main tracks, ignoring some of the extraneous rants in the book such as his thoughts on child-rearing, that are relevant to the consumer:

  1. He explains why industrially-produced food is inferior in quality, safety, and environmental impact to food from individual farmers practicing his style of agriculture.
  2. He blames government regulators, generally in cahoots with large-scale industrial food producers, for masking the true costs of industrially-produced food, making it less cost-effective for small-scale farmers to start and grow their businesses, and limiting those local farmers’ access to markets through suffocating regulations. He even saves some ire for the government’s relationship with Big Oil, since cheap fuel distorts the market for local food, to say nothing of cheap fertilizers.
  3. And he ends every chapter with advice to the consumer on how to improve his/her impact on the food supply, including many admonitions to grow as much of your own produce as you can, as well as to raise chickens in your backyard for their eggs*, feeding them kitchen scraps and using their manure for compost.

* One of our daughter’s best friends in kindergarten has chickens in her backyard, and her mom gave us a half-dozen of the eggs last week. I have never come across any egg with shells that strong, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a greenish egg, which apparently means the hen was an Araucana. The yolks were also very well-defined. If my daughter and I weren’t both so allergic to feathers, I’d set up a coop right away.

As I mentioned earlier, however, Folks, This Ain’t Normal ain’t a great read. He backs up virtually none of what he says unless he can discuss a specific experience at Polyface; at one point, he mentions a centrally-planned city in China that grew up practically overnight, with 250,000 people and gardens on nearly every rooftop, but never mentions one minor detail – the city’s name – without which the story is much tougher to verify. You may nod your head at first to his arguments about corrupt regulators, market externalities, nanny-state policies, or the hijacking of the term “organic,” but his arguments consistently lack evidence. I think most of what he says is right – our government is way too involved in the food supply, and our policies on food and oil have led to poor land usage, soil mismanagement, the inevitability of water crises, and substandard products at the grocery store* – but it would be tough for me to carry out any of these arguments myself based solely on his book.

*Another rant: Have you ever had a truly pasture-raised chicken? The chicken breasts are small, while the legs are larger, because the chickens are more active, building muscle in the thighs and drumsticks (well, what eventually become the drumsticks), while burning off the calories that, in a caged bird, would otherwise lead to larger breasts. (Stop snickering.) I happen to prefer dark poultry meat anyway, since it has more fat, leading to better texture and less dryness, but it’s also a lot more natural; industrally-raised birds’ organs can’t keep up with the muscle growth in the breasts, so they must be slaughtered earlier so they don’t die of organ failure. And, as it turns out, pasture-raised cows and chickens produce more healthful milk and eggs than feedlot or caged livestock does, just as compost-raised produce contains more nutrients than fertilizer-raised produce.

Folks, This Ain’t Normal at least encouraged me to continue what I’ve started in our yard, composting and growing regionally and seasonally appropriate crops, and to be smarter about what I buy and where I buy it. Salatin mentioned The Cornucopia Institute, which ranks organic dairies and organic egg producers on how true their claims of organic practices are. (In Arizona, the executive summary is: Organic Valley and Clover = good, Horizon and Shamrock = bad.) They’ve also led the fight on behalf of almond farmers who want to sell raw almonds to the public, winning a lawsuit allowing California almond farmers to challenge a USDA regulation that forbids the sale of almonds that haven’t been treated with a toxic fumigant or at very high heat, a regulation in response to a salmonella outbreak at one of the nation’s largest industrial nut producers. This kind of policy – where the sins of a large corporation lead to regulations with fixed costs that crush smaller producers – is exactly what Salatin targets when he rants about intrusive, anti-farmer regulations. I had never heard of the Cornucopia Institute before picking up his book, or many of the other books he mentions (such as Gene Logsdon’s memorably titled Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind), so Salatin’s book did at least achieve one goal – forcing me to reexamine the food my family eats, from how it’s grown to where we get it. But had he researched and supported his book with more hard data or secondary sources, Folks, This Ain’t Normal might have become a classic in its narrow field.

Next up: As I mentioned on Twitter, I’m working my way through Raymond Carver’s short story collection Where I’m Calling From – and yes, I’m aware of the controversy over his editor’s role in changing some of the text.

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→ January 22, 2012
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Animal Kingdom.

I’m a bit behind here as I’ve been researching and now writing up the top 100 prospects, but I’ll try to at least get some fresh content up on the dish this week.

When I was slowly making my way through the 2010 nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture over the course of the second half of 2011, several readers mentioned the Australian drama Animal Kingdom as an unjustly overlooked candidate for that honor (although Jacki Weaver did receive a Best Supporting Actress nod). It’s a harsh, bleak film that uses crime as a springboard for examining motivations behind individual decisions – including the fungible ties of family – without ever lapsing into pure crime drama, with a minimalist approach to dialogue and plot that kept the pace up even with such stark subject matter. And it was far better than two of the Best Picture nominees I saw, Black Swan and The Kids Are All Right, and is probably ahead of The Fighter for me as well.

As the film opens, we see Jay, a sullen teenager, calling 911 (or the Australian equivalent, I suppose) without any emotion to report that his mother, sitting next to him on the couch, appears to have OD’d on heroin. Even after her death, he calls his grandmother, Janine Cody (Weaver), from whom his mother was estranged, to ask for help, yet still shows very little emotion at all – what could be shock, of course, but turns out to be more than that. Janine is the head of an organized crime family, based on the real-life Pettingill family and the real murder of two police officers of which one of the Pettingill sons was accused, and Jay finds himself gradually folded into the family business without ever quite understanding his role in it until he’s arrested after the deaths of two police officers. From there, Jay finds himself forced to choose between the only family he has left and the morally correct option presented to him by the lead investigator, Sergeant Leckie (Guy Pearce, excellent as always), who tries to offer Jay a way out in exchange for the testimony to damn his uncles.

Although the Cody brothers are violent and disturbed, particularly Andrew (“Pope”, played by Ben Mendelsohn) and the paranoid Craig, the film’s setup puts them in the role of prey rather than predator, which at least explains their actions as those of desperate criminals rather than criminals who are violent for violence’s sake. Pope is at least a sociopath, Craig’s paranoia is the cause or result (or both) of his drug abuse, and it’s hinted that Darren is suppressing his homosexuality; all three in an unhealthy home environment, chased by a crooked police force, create a powder keg that the viewer expects to explode. (That’s not to forgive any of their violent acts, but provides depth to the characters beyond the simple “bad guy does bad thing” motif.) Jay, on the other hand, spends most of the film as its Nick Jenkins, mostly passive observer, occasional fringe participant, until events force him to choose sides and grab the wheel of his own fate.

Much of the dialogue in the film, especially spoken by Jay and his uncle Darren, is mumbled, and between that and their Australian accents I had to rewind a few times to catch what was said, although I assume the mumbling was by design, as those two characters share a certain reluctance to go all-in on the family’s activities. The film is often dimly lit, adding to the bleak feel but making it a little tough to watch. And since the film is driven not by violence (although there is some) or by action, but by dialogue and reactions between pairs of characters, it doesn’t fit neatly into buckets like “crime drama” or “action film” that might have made it more of a commercial success. (It earned just over $4.9 million at the box office in Australia, which made it one of the top earners of the year in that country – a fact that surprised me, since I tend to think of Australia as more populated than it actually is.)

Animal Kingdom was largely ignored by the Oscars, but it set records in Australia’s version of the awards for both nominations (18) and wins (10), the latter including best picture, director, screenplay, actress (Weaver), actor (Mendelsohn), and supporting actor (Joel Edgerton, as Barry “Baz” Brown, which was an odd choice if you’ve seen the film). It is loaded with strong performances and one of the most perfect endings I can remember to any film – it resolves one major plot strand, yet opens a new one just as large that remains unanswered.

I’d be curious if any of you have seen another Australian film written by Edgerton, The Square, a neo-noir drama that also received much critical acclaim.

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→ January 19, 2012
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Top Chef, S9E11.

A recap of this week’s edition of Top Chef: Beverly…

* We lead in with residual bitterness from last week, when Beverly won on her dish, leading Lindsay and Sara to cry wee wee wee all the way back to San Antonio. Paul clearly thinks it’s funny that Beverly won. I think Paul is awesome for thinking that.

* Speaking of Paul and awesome, he’s waffling things for breakfast at the house. The Waffleizer would be proud.

* Quickfire: Grab ingredients off a fairly quick-moving conveyor belt and craft a dish using at least three of them. The belt has a weird mix of processed foods (I saw some Oreos on there; I’m offended that no one took them and sincerely hope they did not go to waste) and the occasional high-end item, like lobster, which provided perhaps the best comic relief of the season when Chris J. made like a cat chasing a laser pointer (except that eventually he caught one). But wasn’t there a general lack of proteins on the belt?

* I actually had no idea what whole bitter melon looked like, but I have eaten it … and it’s bitter. I have made that face that Eric Ripert made after tasting Paul’s deesh.

* Ed’s sauerkraut soup just sounded awful, as did Sara’s cottage cheese sauce (which Eric called “surprising,” but never said it was good). I like cottage cheese anyway, but it’s kind of grainy and lumpy, and I don’t know how you would get that smooth enough for a sauce.

* Ed’s comment that Bev should have cheated was funny, prescient, and wildly ignorant of the Defcon 5-level bitching that would have ensued had she done it. Although watching Sara’s head explode may have been worth it.

* Is it just me, or do they love to say that a chef DQ’d in a Quickfire would have won had s/he finished the dish? Bev just forgets one element, gets disqualified, and her Moriarty wins. But even Lindsay acknowledges in confessional that she came in second. Can she and Sarah finally shut it after Bev won an elimination challenge and had the best dish in the subsequent Quickfire?

* Did Padma get dressed in the dark for the Quickfire? My wife wondered if Padma was going to drive the train back to San Antonio after the show.

* I enjoyed the in-show commercial for this upcoming Snow White movie. Note: I may not actually have enjoyed this at all.

* Charlize Theron is lovely. But Seth Rogen and I still prefer Kate Beckinsale.

* I really don’t need to see the chefs’ phone calls home, although now that we know Chris J. is married, I have to say I can’t believe his wife hasn’t cut off his unicorn-ponytail in the middle of the night.

* Elimination challenge: Make a wickedly beautiful dish. How seven chefs took those instructions to Whole Foods without a single one of them even suggesting squid ink is beyond me.

* Beverly picked halibut as an FU to Lindsay. I don’t care what anyone says. And I fully respect this. Speaking of which, Bev using a ten-inch chef’s knife that looked longer than her forearm made me laugh.

* I had never heard of black chicken, but credit to Grayson for cooking something she apparently hadn’t tried before. The New York Times ran an article on these birds, properly called Silkie chickens, referring to their “deep, gamy flavor,” which says to me that they are probably easy to dry out if cooked incorrectly. Grayson seems more attractive now that I know she has a macabre sense of humor.

* Her table-side explanation was over the top, but Ed … come on already, the food’s getting cold.

* Charlize loves to eat, but weighs 90 pounds. Either she’s lying about how much she eats or she used her mirror-on-the-wall to steal the metabolism of a 15-year-old boy.

* Other elimination thoughts: Paul’s handprint was a brilliant touch, as was the off-to-one-side presentation, too gimmicky for a restaurant dish but perfect for this particular challenge … Chris’ apple-pie twist looked like it was rotting, which was a good thing for once; Tom was visibly giddy which he hasn’t been for anything all season … Sara’s risotto with amarone (a dry, Italian red wine – yes, I had to look it up) didn’t translate to TV; it looked mealy and clumpy like a thick sauce, but the judges loved the lamb heart and the presentation of the risotto, so it was probably just the difference between reality and TV … Beverly’s dish was the only one that didn’t seem “wicked” enough, with the dark element, forbidden rice, hidden under the halibut … Lindsay putting the spices from the stew on the dragon beans didn’t seem so revolutionary, but Tom thought it was, and his opinion matters more than mine does … After three dishes Parma looked worried because all three were too good. I don’t remember ever seeing that before.

* Very fun to see an episode where every chef nailed it. The judging snark is usually pretty entertaining, but to then see judges who can, at times, be quite vicious (especially Tom at several points this year) falling all over themselves to praise even the bottom three chefs made for one of the best episodes I’ve seen.

* Winner: Paul, proving once again he’s the guy to beat, since he can lose two elements and still win. This seems to me like Chris’s last stand; if he can’t win this challenge, perfectly suited to his mad-scientist-with-bad-hair approach, I don’t see him winning anything else.

* Judges’ table: I think the editing really did us a disservice here; the judges must have asked the three chefs to defend themselves, but we didn’t see that, only the defenses grafted awkwardly on to the end of the back-and-forth between the judges and chefs about the dishes. Beverly’s dish may have thickened as it cooled, a challenge of the competition but also not the greatest reason to go home. Is this really a coincidence that she barely missed immunity, and was then sent home? I suppose it is – Colicchio has always been adamant in defending the integrity of the show’s judging, which separates Top Chef from most reality competition shows – but that was the kind of drama a show like this wants to get word of mouth up. Also interesting to note that the male chefs clearly respected Beverly more than the female chefs did (including Grayson, who sideswiped Beverly at judging).

* Last Chance Kitchen: Just watch it. A photo finish. That’s real (TV) drama.

* Final three: Paul, Edward, (big gap), Lindsay. I still say Sara’s lack of range is her downfall.

* I don’t see a Hugh Acheson blog post this week, but reader Toby S. passes along this eatocracy piece by Hugh in which he puts down Paula Deen in a devastatingly polite manner.

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→ January 15, 2012
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The Wire, season three.

Season three of The Wire marks a pretty significant departure from the compact story arcs of the first two seasons, a shift with both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, this was the most abjectly political of the three seasons I’ve watched so far, making clear, cogent statements on the futility of the War on Drugs, the nature of government bureaucracies, and the immutable law of unintended consequences; it surprises me, in hindsight, to hear that senior government officials loved this show when it puts the lie to several of their policies. On the negative side, however, I found it the least compelling of the three seasons as it approached its conclusion because there wasn’t much of a conclusion; the one major storyline that ended in the penultimate episode (spoilers below) had such a slow buildup that the climax felt anticlimactic.

Season three continues with the theme of urban decay from the first two seasons, but the camera pulls back to show rot and corruption in more areas, particularly how the entrenched interests across the city will work to thwart attempts at reform, or any sort of unorthodox thinking. Major Bunny Colvin, under pressure to reduce violent crime in his district, carves out three “free zones” where the sale and use of drugs is effectively decriminalized, resulting in safer streets everywhere else in the neighborhood. He does this without the knowledge or sanction of any of his superiors, and is eventually undermined by the officers below him who can’t change their mindset from “catch bad guys” to “keep the neighborhood safe.” (Nothing in this season was more vicious than the depiction of the opportunistic, short-sighted media jumping all over the free zone story without an iota of consideration for its merits.)

The Colvin storyline intertwines loosely with the ambitious city councilman Tommy Carcetti, who is looking for a cause to help him make a run for mayor despite the disadvantage of being a white politician in a largely black city. (By the way, either they dropped the ‘h’ after the second ‘c,’ or everyone is pronouncing his name wrong – as it’s spelled, it should be ‘car-CHET-tee.’) Yet for most of the season Carcetti is just a run-of-the-mill politician, uninteresting and uninspiring until making one speech in the closing scenes of the season finale that starts to redeem the character at least in terms of his appeal to the public, if not in any actual substance. Perhaps his character improves in future seasons, but in this one, I found him, and his storyline, flat, far less compelling than any other story arc I’ve seen on the series.

The return of the battle between the Major Case Squad and the Barksdale crew was welcome, as it worked on a macro level and on an interpersonal level, within each group and in the enmity between McNulty and Stringer Bell. The contrast in styles and aims between Avon and Stringer could stand in for almost any organization that has grown to the point where it faces attacks on all sides – from smaller upstarts, from government regulators, from suppliers, from would-be partners – or to the divergent goals of U.S. political and military leaders in the war in Iraq, to which this season made several allusions (including the series finale’s episode title, “Mission Accomplished”). The cat and mouse game involving the burn phones, including the MCS’s maneuver to move from one step behind Barksdale to one step ahead, was easily the best plot thread of the season, including Clarke Peters (as Lester Freamon) getting to step out of character as a slick con man.

But the resolution of the Barksdale/MCS storyline fell short of expectations for me. The death of Stringer, my favorite character – one of the few things on this series that has actually surprised me – speaks strongly to the emptiness of the drug war in the inner city. When McNulty is brooding over Bell’s corpse, the victory seems hollow for a host of reasons, from the fact that the death of a major player does nothing to stop the use or sale of drugs to McNulty’s personal disappointment in losing Bell before he could put him in cuffs. (And it speaks to the emphasis on chasing individuals rather than looking at the problem holistically, such as working to reduce demand, rather than supply, while decriminalizing use.) But from a plot perspective, Stringer’s falling out with Avon had been so far under the surface for so long that the acceleration over episodes S3E10 and E11 was too quick to generate the tension involved in, say, the Frank Sobotka storyline in the previous season. The discord was there, but without any crescendo until right before Avon sets Stringer up (reluctantly, as opposed to what Stringer does to Avon at the same time). A character as good as Stringer Bell shouldn’t be so easily written out of a series.

The season was just as smart as previous seasons, but just didn’t have that same narrative greed; I enjoyed individual episodes, but didn’t spend hours trying to figure out when I could watch the next episode as I did toward the ends of the previous two seasons. A disappointing Wire season is still miles ahead of a good network police procedural season, though.

Stray bullets…

* When Brother Mouzone handed the weapon to Omar and said he trusted Omar would “do it proper,” did he mean disposing of the weapon – or disposing of Dante? (Or both, really.)

* The war in Iraq was just 20 months old at the time the episode aired. I suppose you could at least argue that the war in Iraq had an end, but I wonder how much angrier David Simon would have made this season had he seen how much longer U.S. troops would be on the ground in that country.

* Good riddance to Johnny, perhaps my least favorite recurring character. Bubbles didn’t really need him as a foil.

* Finally, the series’ use of gratuitous sex scenes became ridiculous in this season, to the point where it’s just a distraction from what is otherwise one of the most intelligently-written American TV series I’ve ever seen. Carcetti cheating on his (very cute) wife with a trashy woman he met at a fund-raiser seemed more like a failed attempt at comic relief than any kind of illumination on his character – Terry D’Agostino, his campaign manager with a strong sexual appetite, provides far more humor in the bedroom (through role reversal) without anything that would force me to fast-forward if I’m watching it on an airplane. (McNulty’s experience in the brothel in season two? Now that was funny.) The Barksdale crew party house also served no obvious purpose for the plot or for laughs. Boardwalk Empire had the same problem in the eight episodes I watched before I gave up; does HBO just encourage producers to introduce sex scenes because, hey, it’s HBO, so let’s show some skin? It’s not offensive; it’s just silly, demeaning to the actors and the audience at the same time.

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→ January 12, 2012
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Top Chef, S9E10.

Restaurant Wars! This show makes me more nervous than the finale, because I have yet to see a Restaurant Wars episode where neither team ended up in the soup and at each others’ throats. Edward even gets the ball rolling by trashing Sarah, which becomes doubly ridiculous when we see that he shows more respect to servers who forget to put table numbers on tickets than he does to a competitor who suffered from heat exhaustion in triple-digit temperatures.

As much as I like Restaurant Wars, however, there are fundamental flaws in the execution. This year, the producers split the challenge over two days rather than having the teams operate their restaurants simultaneously, which seemed like a big advantage to the team that went second. We always get two chefs handling front of the house duties, thus forcing them to hand off their dish to a competitor who will inevitably not make the dish up to the first chef’s standards (even ignoring, for a moment, the second chef’s incentive to focus on his/her own dishes, let alone the possibility of sabotage). The chefs are also forced to waste time on décor, which would be great if this was Top Design; are the chefs really judged on this crap or is it just product placement for the sponsors?

To the bullets…

* The men (the chefs were split into two teams by gender) name their restaurant “Canteen” and not one person drops a “You’ll need a tray” reference? I am disappoint. Anyway, as is typical of Restaurant Wars, the teams worry more about restaurant names than they do about execution, as in the case of the men, who forget about the need for an expediter because they’ve never watched “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.”

* Canteen’s menu seemed to take a page – or a whole book – from Thomas Keller with dishes called ham and eggs, Almond Joy, and Cracker Jack, and if you’re coming at the king of clever nomenclature, you’d best not miss. They missed, although the peanut butter “noodles” seemed like a cool concept that just didn’t work out.

* The diner who said she’s “not a big pork belly fan” but loved Paul’s dish has probably never had pork belly done correctly. Seeing him judged by the standards of his previous output is a bit unfair, since it seems like Below Average Paul is still above everyone else here. He’s also the one chef who, both in live action and in the confessionals, shows some actual grace under pressure, focusing on getting the job done while trying not to offend Ty or Chris J., both of whom failed in some of their responsibilities.

* Ty gets hammered on the Thai lettuce cups, but I was more weirded out by the caramel sauce – I know caramel is a big thing now in savory dishes, but I find caramel (which I love in dessert) so overbearing that I can’t imagine putting it in a dish where it might overshadow the main protein.

* Chris J. makes one dessert, and it looked kind of like a kid gorged on Halloween candy and then threw it all up before he could digest any of it. Even before considering whether peanut butter and cherries are a good combo (I’ll vote no), I would flunk that dish on presentation.

* Edward makes a chocolate almond dessert and calls it Almond Joy because once, back in the kitchen, it sat next to a coconut. Good luck with that.

* To the women, who named their place Half bushel (snicker) … It’s Sarah’s turn to be the villain, bossing everyone around like she’s been possessed by the spirit of Heather, even after she’s told everyone that they have to remain calm in the kitchen, thus flambéing her credibility with her colleagues.

* Did Lindsay just happen to have an outfit that coordinated with the décor of their restaurant? Did she just pick up a few separates at the interior design store?

* Every year on Restaurant Wars, we see the judges arrive at one restaurant when the host(ess) is in the back or otherwise absent. Is that staged? Although in this case, Lindsay was clearly spending too much time in the kitchen – I don’t think they ever showed Edward in the back – so it wouldn’t have been hard to have the judges show up when she wasn’t out front.

* Speaking of which, this was the ideal judges’ panel: Padma and three legit chefs, one of whom is Hugh, who had less opportunity for snark this week. Although one week they need to have Paddington at Judges’ Table, because he can do that cold, dark stare they do better than anyone.

* Grayson’s salad looked like a work of art, but was it too simple? Anyone could make that if you could get the produce, although Hugh pointed out that the cheese was at the right temperature, which I imagine is tricky in a hot kitchen. And good for Grayson for standing up to Lindsay multiple times.

* Why is Sarah firing three courses? Three chefs in the back, six dishes, so … check my math for me here … but isn’t that two per chef? I think Paul did the same, but of course, he’s a better chef.

* Did Lindsay actually explain Schaum torte to the judges, or was that just for our benefit?

* So, at judges’ table: Lindsay throws the team under the bus before learning they won. She seemed to have the worst individual performance. Her dish wasn’t well made (of course, not entirely her fault), but she was also in the wrong place much of the time she was on camera.

* The verdict: The women beat the men, and Beverly beats the women. Grayson smiles, Lindsay and Sarah are steaming like a couple of xiao long baozi. Hey ladies, maybe if you hadn’t tried to put Beverly in timeout earlier, this would have gone better for you. Meanwhile, Ty’s dull Thai wrap was … I’m not saying it. He’s been on the bottom enough times that I never thought he had a chance to win this thing, and while he may not have been the worst of the eight chefs remaining, he wasn’t top three material anyway.

* LCK: Make a dessert in 30 minutes, using one of the eliminated chefs as your sous. Nyesha makes a baked custard with coconut and lime. Ty’s “dark chocolate mousse” (melted dark chocolate combined with mascarpone) looked like pâté, an unappetizing color combo that I think gave him a distinct disadvantage against Nyesha, who wins yet again. (I did predict a long winning streak for her, and I believe this gives her four.) Very impressive to see Heather and Malibu Chris work as if their own fates were on the line.

* Final three: Paul and Edward, probably still Lindsay despite the bad week, but Grayson coming on strong (I feel like I thought she lacked range as a chef, but other than the modernist quickfire, has that ever really been accurate), and Nyesha a legit threat if she does end up the winner of LCK. But this is still Paul’s competition to lose.

* One final thought. Hugh Acheson’s blog post on this episode has Lindsay calling Beverly “fucking retarded,” and if that is true (I didn’t catch it), she should be ashamed of herself, to the point where producers should have considered whether to keep her on the show. Using the r-word in a pejorative sense is always reprehensible, but using it as a direct insult to another person’s face is worse than inappropriate, worse than unprofessional. We’re in hostile work environment territory with this one. So the prediction that Lindsay makes the final three is not a rooting interest.

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