Well, that was totally predictable. I don’t particularly mind seeing Aaron win, since he was one of three contestants whose shows I might have watched (Adam and Shane were the other two), and I think that what he does poorly (relate to the camera) can be taught, especially if his problem is nerves. The only thing that I dislike about Aaron is his butchering of the language – things like subject-verb agreement are not really optional in my book – but he’s likeable and I’m interested in his food.

If Lisa said “za-ba-YONE” one more time, I was going to punch the television. She referred to it as an Italian sauce, but the Italian word is zabaglione, four syllables with a defined “L” sound in the middle. In Italy, it’s also more likely to be a dessert – it’s egg yolks, sugar, and dry Marsala, whisked to the ribbon stage over simmering water – rather than a savory sauce. The savory version is the French sabayon, without a “z” in sight. If you can’t pronounce it properly, fine, just don’t over-enunciate it every damn time you say it. My wife was watching with me, and when I finally said, “Why the hell is she pronouncing it like that?” my wife’s response was dead-on: “Because she’s a snob.”

Adam was great on camera, as usual, but beer-can chicken isn’t all that special a dish, and it’s a little bit white-trashy. I didn’t walk away from his pilot feeling like there was a real show there. And by the way, McCall was a ringer, right? She talked like she was reading lines off a script.

I wish they’d shown a little more of the behind-the-scenes stuff with Gordon Elliott, either more of the “pitch” meetings or more of the directions he was giving the talent during the tapings. And it’s a pretty bad job by FN to say that Aaron’s show (“Big Daddy’s Kitchen”) will air in one week, when we all know that that final episode was taped ages ago, and when his show is nowhere to be found on any FN schedule. I’d like to at least give one episode a shot, but odds are by the time it comes around I’ll have forgotten all about it.

Unrelated note … my wife also likes the analogous HGTV series Design Star, and I watched their last episode with her on Sunday. (The winner is chosen by audience vote, rather than by judges, so there’s one more episode coming where they announce the winner.) One of the two contestants, Jen, painted horizontal stripes on the wall in two close but not identical shades of beige, and kept calling it an “architectural feature.” I liked the way the walls looked, but what the heck is an architectural feature? Why is that a good thing? You can’t drop jargon into a show aimed at a lay audience. I wouldn’t go on ESPNEWS and start talking about a back-side collapse or a hook or stab without either explaining it further or substituting a more accessible term. I’m not saying Jen shouldn’t win, but I was surprised that none of the judges criticized her for her use of the industry vernacular.

Sort of a surprise ending, with the judges deciding to keep all three contestants for the final showdown, but with Aaron spitting the bit, it would have been hard for them to justify sending Lisa home.

• What the heck was Aaron thinking? Is his sense of humor just broken? That started bad and got worse as he went on. I’m not even sure what the underlying joke was.
• I was impressed by Lisa’s singing – bit of a Joss Stone impression? – but unless she’s going to do a cabaret cooking show, I’m not seeing the relevance to the competition.
• If I was the cameraman following Lisa around the grocery store, I would have stopped the tape and told her she dropped the package of fish. As much as I dislike her on-air persona, there’s no way she should have been penalized just because something fell out of her cart. The fact that the cameraman saw it and zoomed in on the lost package disgusted me.
• It was surprising to hear Bob Tuschmann, who strikes me as painfully nice to the point where he hates to deliver any serious criticism, raise the question of whether viewers will like Lisa enough to watch 30 minutes of her. He’s right, of course, but I didn’t think he’d be the one to bring it up – and he did seem uncomfortable as he made the point.
• Why do they all pronounce Guy Fieri’s surname like it has two t’s in it? If you can’t roll your r’s, then replacing an r with a soft “t” sounds ridiculous. Just say Fee-air-ee. It’s not that big of a deal.

Disappointing outcome, as I thought Shane had a lot of potential. Ultimately, he was dinged for lack of life experience – although they never explained how that specifically makes him an inferior option for a show host – and for not working well with his assigned Girl Scout, also a silly criterion. Shane did sink himself with his answer about why he is obsessed with French cuisine. Don’t say you love the French life if you’ve never set foot in France. At best, it comes across as young, and at worst, fake.

• Good to see Adam finally nail the food. He was a complete natural on the set, more than any other contestant. Aaron’s flour on the cheek move and then play to the camera was pretty brilliant too.
• Lisa … I can’t tell you how surprised I was that she advanced. The show’s producers wrecked her reputation by showing her in full-on B. Otch mode with Kelsey (refusing to answer a basic question from Kelsey about whether or not to remove the sausage casings), and then she froze up completely on air with RaeRay. Oh, and her dish wasn’t tailored in any way to a child’s palate. I’m not clear on what she did right this week that got her (effectively) third place. I also can’t imagine watching a half-hour of her smarm, but that’s another story.
• Back to the part where she froze up, I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: You can’t think on camera. You have to know what you’re going to say before you start talking, and then once you begin talking, you finish your original thought and wrap. Thinking about what you’re saying – or, worse, what you just said – is a potentially fatal error. Lisa compounded this by continuing to think about her performance while the clock was ticking. What we’ve seen of her the last few weeks wouldn’t work on television, even if it’s taped.
• Whether or not I could stand a half-hour of Kelsey’s perkiness is another question, but I thought the judges were unduly harsh on her. They told her to be more authoritative. She was bossy. They dinged her for it. Well, she did what you told her to do, guys. If that means she’s not right for the Food Network, then just tell her and move on, but stop killing her (or anyone else, for that matter) for listening to your criticisms.

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Unrelated note/question: America’s Test Kitchen’s most recent episode included a review of safety can openers, and their winner was this $35 can opener from Rösle. I’m curious whether anyone has it or has seen it. It seems like a mint to pay for a can opener, even a good one.

And if you did see that episode, did you notice how the onion that Bridget was dicing slid all over the cutting board while she was making horizontal cuts in it? Yeah. That’s why the three-cut method is stupid and dangerous. Stick with Alton’s method: radial cuts all around the onion half (from cut end to bulb top), rotate 90 degrees, then cut straight down for a pretty even and much safer dice.

Just playing a little catch-up here…

• I said last time that this show is about humiliating the contestants, and this week was no exception. How exactly did the first challenge – do a one-minute instructional video on a topic you may or may not be familiar with and have only seconds to prepare – relate to the challenge of being a TV chef? Are the instructional videos we see on FN.com unscripted? Are they all successfully shot on the first take? Giving the contestants a few minutes to think or jot down some notes would have been perfectly reasonable and avoided a lot of the ugly things that we saw, like Aaron going totally off the rails on presentation.
• I thought he had the easiest task, too; dismantling a pineapple is a snap. Hardest was either Kelsey’s – she totally cheated by taking the bone off, since Frenching means leaving the rack intact – or Shane’s, since you can’t dismantle a coconut in sixty seconds. Alton Brown even suggests baking them for 20 minutes.
• Nipa needed to go, clearly, but she caught a pretty raw deal this week, since she clearly doesn’t cook much with seafood, and may not really need to if her idea is to bring Indian cooking to the masses. That said, she didn’t carry herself well, had poor presence, and like Michael Symon I was offended by the way she wasted most of the meat on that trout.
• Symon said one of the most profound things you’re going to hear on this show when he pointed out that even if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you need to act like you do. We all know that the air of authority can cover up the stench of ignorance.
• The frustrating part about watching Jennifer is that her problem is totally fixable: When you’re on camera, don’t think. If you start to think through what you’re saying – or worse, what you just said – you’re lost. And it goes pear-shaped very quickly after that.
• Kelsey’s pretty clearly taken the lead, not just because she won both challenges, but because the judges are saying that they liked her new persona this week. I thought from the start that white chocolate would be my choice of the bullshit Iron Chef ingredients, since it’s full of cocoa butter, a fat with great mouth-feel. She made another good call with tilapia, which is pretty versatile.
• Adam: Crepes plus halibut cooked two ways in sixty minutes? What are you on? A crepe takes at least 75 seconds to cook, and doing two at once in adjacent pans still means almost 20 minutes just to cook the crepes. Bad idea.
• I distinctly remember saying “stop crying,” but no one listened.