The 12 Days of Bitchmas -- Day One: Let the Flaming Begin

Possums, before Top Chef premieres 12 days from now, we might as well come out and say something to you, and to Mr. Andrew Cohen of Bravo, aka Raggaydy Andy. We, for one, intend to complain to the FCC, the FTC, and the FFC—

“Wait, what’s the FFC?” interrupted Miss Xaxa.

“The Fairies & Fruitflies Commission.”

“Is that a federal agency?”

“No, but that won’t stop us from making a federal case out of this.”

And what are we going to complain about?

Why, false advertising, of course.

For several weeks now, we’ve been bombarded with ads for the Chicago-filmed fourth season of Top Chef featuring Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi moving slowly and ominously, as though in a Madonna video, through an orange set that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the original Starship Enterprise. How any of this is supposed to signify Chicago is beyond us, but it’s the tagline that gets us: “Let the flames begin.”

For, you see, possums, we learned that “there are no openly gay men on this season (a first since Season 1).”

Qué what???

“Wait,” said Miss XaXa, “isn’t this Bravo?”

Exactly.

Oh, Raggaydy Andy, what will you say when Kathy Griffin asks, “Where are my gays?”

We had a look at all the cheftestant bios and videos, and nary a homosexual among the chaps. In fact, most of them seem rather dull. Let the flames begin, indeed! ‘Tis false advertising, we say.

Bravo makes a Classical allusion with its “Let the flames begin” tagline for this season, but, having had a gander at the cheftestants, we fear that another Classical tag may be more apt: We who are about to die—of boredom—salute you.

We haven’t abandoned all hope for the season, of course. Still, as RuPaul might have commanded, “Flambé, chantez!” Raggaydy Andy, you’d better work.