skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Possums, take a look at that photograph and tell us, as gently as you can, is it possible? Might we, for once, be…wrong? Does our gaydar deceive us? Is Marcel not a Dancing Queen?We admit that, occasionally, very occasionally, our gaydar is thrown off—fooled, confused—by Canadians or Mormons, much as flocks of geese show up as false positives on radar. And, well, when we encounter a Canadian Mormon, we simply can’t be held responsible.
But with Marcel we really didn’t have any doubts. Though he mispronounced many things, he never said “aboot” for “about,” and we never saw him sporting the Mormon holy knickers. So we thought we were safe.
And really, is it any wonder we referred to him as Madame de Pompadour? Dear God, there was the hair, the whole Liberace vibe, the painful attempt to use French words to sound more sophisticated, the use of three adjectives when one would suffice (ahem), the whole battery of dramatic gestures borrowed from the pre-Johnny Stompanato Lana Turner. Definitely a first mate on the Good Ship Lollipop.
And then, on this week’s episode, after he won the Quickfire Challenge and thus immunity, we saw him doing this, this, this, jig. And we were racked with horror and doubt.
Would a gay man really do a dance channeling both Walter Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Missy Elliott in her blimpier days, a dance that's more hoedown than “down, ho!”? Would a real gay man demonstrate on national television the sort of celebratory dance an Ewok might perform at the Lucasberry harvest festival, or whatever it is that twee, twittering furry creatures do in the forests of Endor?
But Miss XaXa, ever the sensible one, offers a ray of hope: “Oh, come on! What straight man would do interpretive dance on the beach, the way he did with Elia? It was so Sprockets, so 70s shampoo commercial. I know I call him Marcel the Monkey, but really, darling, I just think he wants his monkey touched.”
We assured Miss XaXa that there would be no monkey-touching of any kind. That’s not really our sort of petting zoo. Still, she had planted an idea in our heads:
Might he just be in the larval stage?
Confidential to Marcel Vigneron, aka Mark Vines aka Madame de Pompadour, who, despite having a French name and working for Joël Robuchon (we hear he makes his employees take French lessons), is one of the worst offenders in the realm of pronunciation:
That was a nice interview you did with the TC2 Gals, and you came across as a decent whippersnapper, but we do have two comments. (1) Grant Achatz is the chef at Alinea, not Alenis. (2) When asked the perennial "boxers, briefs or commando," you say "all of the above, except tighty whities," which you "won't be caught dead in...." But the tighty whities you revile are briefs, which you say you wear. We're a little confused. Unless this means...could it be? Do you sport colored briefs? Or, God forbid, Underoos? We would ask for clarification. And anyway, we feel that in Marcel's case, the question was a tad underinclusive, since it didn't offer as one of the choices thongs from the International Male catalogue.
This episode begins with a toxic cloud of suspicion choking the bluebird of happiness that sprouted its delicate, crispy meringue wings after Team Black, composed of Spice Rack, Madame de Pompadour, and Frankie the Bull, won the Elimination Challenge after the Herculean task of convincing a group of overweight children at a fat camp to eat pizza and chocolate-peanut butter cookies. The subsequent accusations that Spice Rack had cheated by replacing Splenda with sugar in her cookie recipe resulted in no one being sent home and has tarnished the Black Team's victory.Freshly bepompadoured and looking like Jerry Lee Lewis, and with the dramatic intensity of middle-period Lana Turner, Marcel tells the camera, "I was feeling all sorts of distraught and disappointed." What did we tell you about his retreat into a world of hair gel and alliteration?
We see Elia putting on mascara in front of the bathroom mirror (so that's how she gets her eyes so es-mokie) while Spice Rack, like a dental Lady Macbeth, tries to wash the taste of treachery out of her mouth at 500 rpm and tells us that she is not a cheater.
Then Josie, sporting the hairdo of a lesbian egret, takes us into her gap-toothed, Chicleted confidence. (As Miss XaXa relates, folks in the South say, "That girl could eat corn through a fence," whereas in France a gap in one's teeth is considered a sign of sexual voracity, e.g., Madonna). "Marisa and I have been really good friends through all of this. We're the only ones that really trust each other." You could almost hear the Bernard Herrmann music on the soundtrack. That, mes enfants, is called foreshadowing. That's the gun that's going to blow someone's head off in the third act. As previously noted, the Bravo editors are masterful at this, telegraphing plot points with the subtlety of Judith Regan-O.J. Simpson specials. To seal the deal, Josie and Tarte Titass are shown sharing what looks like (oh please, saints in heaven and the MGM pantheon, grant us the strength not to make a bad pun) a HoHo, but might be a plum, and will turn out to be the fruit that turns them out of paradise.Haute couture scullery maid Padma greets the cheftestants in the Kenmore Kitchen to tell them about the Quickfire Challenge. She hasn’t even opened her mouth, and already we have a problem. The hair, through the overeager ministrations of a gay hairdresser armed with hot tongs and a grudge, is ironed so flat that it looks like Salman Rushdie slept on it. She’s back to wearing pink in the kitchen, though long-sleeved (even if unbuttoned to the third button), and she’s brought back those damned black bicycle shorts with riding boots again. We hate them not only because they’re preposterously unattractive but also because they give her the sort of bowlegged posture of a Dickensian orphan. We half expect her to break into a chorus of “Food, Glorious Food” or “Consider Yourself.”
And the make-up! We’ve refrained for weeks from talking about this, but the flat hair sends us over the edge. Padma, cara, would it kill you, just once, to wear lipstick a shade darker than Sheer Ambition or Unblushing Bride of Paunchy Postcolonial Pasha (available from MAC, with 1% of all proceeds going to fund Elton John’s ego)?
Padma is joined by guest judge Chef Michelle Bernstein, of Michy’s in Miami. The newest war bride in Jeffrey Chodorow’s culinary seraglio, Chef Bernstein used to be a dancer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and now stands in her wrinkled linen-dyed-to-look-like-denim dress with her hands on her ample hips. Tactful as ever, our chulo Chef Carlos says on his blog that Chef Bernstein, his “fellow South Floridian,” is—how does he put it?—“saucy.” You can tell that about her. She looks like a cross between Sandra Bernhard and Punky Brewster, and has the pugilistic intensity of Judy Davis incarnating Judy Garland on that tv movie of a few years ago. “You wanna piece of me?” her very stance seems to say. Miss XaXa also picked up on that half-drag queen, half-welterweight pose. “Raging Bull?” says Miss XaXa. “Try Raging Bitch.”
Padma announces that the Quickfire Challenge will be devoted to leftovers. Of course! Padma, how could we have had so little faith? That’s why you wore that heinous outfit. It’s leftovers. Of course! We keep forgetting that you try to dress for the theme. We’ll have to watch for the semiotics of your Quickfire Challenge outfits, like when the Washington press corps used to interpret Madeleine Albright’s brooches for hints to foreign policy.
The challenge will deal with offal, the “leftover” pieces of the animal after the flavorless filet mignon, etc., has been removed. The cheftestants must make a dish using one of the ingredients gathered for their gory delectation—pig trotters, lamb kidneys, beef hearts, fish heads, pig’s blood, veal tails, beef cheeks, honeycomb tripe, chicken feet, lamb hearts, veal tongues, and sweetbreads.
The food preparation montage isn’t going to have Eisenstein quaking in the great beyond. It’s rather a dull affair, with only two pronunciation clunkers, Josie saying, “OH-fal,” and Josette Eber saying, “ah-FALL.” Spice Rack tells us, “Marcel went for that pig’s blood. Kinda looks like a vampire, dontcha think?” We yawn and flick the ashes from the clove cigarette in our Syrian malachite cigarette holder.
Darling, is this really the best you can do? That whole cheating thing must really have shaken you up if you can’t come up with something bitchier, and we refuse to do your work for you. Bravo doesn’t help matters by throwing in cheesy F/X when she says the word “vampire.” Besides, it’s also unfair to those recappers who are really good with PhotoShop, as it deprives them of the opportunity to stick Marcel’s face in a photograph of Eddy Munster for fear it will seem too derivative.
Elia tells us that she’s going to clean the kidneys and sweetbreads she’s using, and tells us that sweetbreads are the glands of the veal, pointing to her neck to show us. It’s rather a sweet gesture.
It’s time for the judging. Tarte Titass tells Chef Bernstein that she’s made pappardelle and used the beef cheeks. Miss XaXa’s head turned violently toward the television. “Oh,” Miss XaXa explains, “when I heard her say ‘beef cheeks,’ I thought she was talking about herself.” We’re so amused by this that we forget to correct Tarte Titass’ pronunciation of “pappardelle.”
As Chef Berstein tastes, Miss XaXa says, “Is it me, or is she being bitchy to the female cheftestants and flirty with the men?” She chortles when Chef Bernstein breaks into a grin and purrs to Cliff, “The oxtail’s really good.” We decide not to pursue the implications of making such a statement to a beefy and attractive black man, and instead focus on something else. There was no mention of oxtails before, only veal tails. Veal is a young calf and an ox is an adult castrated male cow. Not the same thing at all.Miss XaXa is chortling again, because Chef Bernstein is back to the oxtail: “I cook it everyday…” “So you’d know,” says Padma sycophantically. “Mmm…you would hope,” retorts Chef Bernstein in a sort of icy bitchiness that takes our breath away, as if to say, “Look, you vapid, social-climbing bitch, how dare you cut in on my monologue, interfere with my pick-up, and try to impugn my competence while appearing to do the opposite?” We wonder if Padma’s scar is tingling the way Harry Potter’s does when in the presence of Lord Voldemort.
In picking her least favorite dishes, Chef Bernstein tears into Josie, telling her that at a restaurant, such a dish would be sent back. Then she tears into Elia, telling her that the kidneys weren’t cleaned properly, that she made no attempt at a sauce, and that she made something that Chef Bernstein loves to eat hard to eat. Elia’s eyes are smoky, and not from the mascara, but from the flames shooting out. “Ees thees woe-man for real? I’m supposed to make keedneey taste like ah-leevs with a sauce?”In the end, Chef Bernstein picks the dishes made by Cliff (surprise, surprise), Ilan, and Sam. In the end, the greasy Lothario, er, “hot diabetic,” wins, and we know exactly why. As he tells us, “I was excited about my dish. She was excited about the dish. Really excited to have immunity.” Sammy, we’re about to lose control, and we just can’t hide it.
It’s the second day of the challenge, and we see Elia doing yoga yet again, this time to what the closed captioning tells us is “uplifting music.” This, as Elia lifts up her knee and arms. A visual pun, say you? Someone at the closed-captioning service is a regular Magritte.
Spice Rack comes out and starts distributing what she calls “morning kisses.” Miss XaXa says, “See? Told you she was Italian.” We don’t quite see this, but it’s certainly starting to look that way. Spice Rack even asks Madame de Pompadour, “Wanna morning kiss?”, the way you might ask a parrot, “Polly want a cracker?” Surprisingly, Polly does not refuse, and doesn’t even wipe his cheek afterward.
They’re back at the Kenmore Kitchen, and this time the nutritionists aren’t around, which, as Cliff puts it, makes one think that people are on the honor system. However, just as with thieves, there may be no honor among cheftestants. Sam tells us, “I saw hands just randomly squeezing olive oil,” which actually sounds rather erotic and European art-film-like to us, like Last Year at Marienbad meets Mostly Martha, or, perhaps, to steal a joke from James Hamilton-Paterson’s Cooking with Fernet Branca, like a candle-lit scene from Under a Tuscan’s Son. And yet, the Bravo cameras are unable to show us “hands just randomly squeezing olive oil.” We occasionally see squeeze bottles of olive oil, but no one is handling them, so just how valid is Sam’s charge? We are distracted from pondering this by yet another scene from Under a Tuscan’s Son, in which we are treated to a completely gratuitous and suggestive shot of Ilan and a zucchini.
In what will prove a momentous decision, Spice Rack opts to change the recipe for her cookies, reducing the number of egg whites and using sugar instead of Splenda. She figures that this will keep her team under the 500-calorie limit while fixing her meringues. This, despite the fact that the cheftestants were told not to deviate from the recipe approved by the nutritionists. At last the prep work is done, and they head up the PCH, as we Californians refer to the Pacific Coast Highway, making their way to Malibu and Camp Glucose.
There, they encounter Padma, who clearly thinks she’s on “Grey’s Anatomy,” since she seems to be wearing sand-colored scrubs with those hideous flip flops, a tank top, and a necklace from the Tom Colicchio Collection (available on QVC and from the International Male catalogue). Tom himself looks relatively normal, but poor Gail looks bloated and unhappy in a jeans skirt, tank top, those damned flip flops, and very little make-up. We’re unhappy, too. We normally love her because she’s like the Tilda Swinton Snow Queen in the Narnia movie, but with a little cruet of maple syrup for good measure. But in that get-up and without her make-up and high heels, she looks reduced, stripped of her bolt-throwing, almond-eyed Canuck goddess majesty.
Padma tells the cheftestants that each team must provide a representative to “sell” the menu to the kids, and while they finish prepping the meals, she goes off to get the kids. This allows Padma to do her People’s Princess shtick again, suffering the little children to come unto her. She walks into the picnic-table area with the pack of teens and tots, as if she had just rescued them from the Pied Piper of Hamelin, one child on either side of her holding her hand. Camp Glucose? More like Camp Saccharine.
Our stainless steel, hazelnut-sized hearts do go out to the children, though. Not only do they have to suffer the slings and arrows that this too, too solid flesh is heir to, but they also have to endure the indignity of sporting pink tie-dyed t-shirts. Bravo, it’s bad enough being overweight without having to look like a Deadhead, too. We would advise Raggaydy Andy to at least get them Bravo t-shirts in slimming black for next time.
Josette Eber sends out Beer Bong to be the team’s salesman and representative, since, as she says, he’s a big kid at heart anyway. (We always ask ourselves why this is supposed to be a good thing.) We give her credit for a nifty bit of reverse psychology. After all, if you took a look at Beer Bong and asked yourself, “Would I buy diet food from this man?” you might not get all that positive an answer. But she was counting on the kids’ thinking, “Ok, he’s a chunko, and clearly loves his junk food, and he did say there’s chocolate cake, so maybe the food will be yummy and fattening. Let’s order it!”
But she didn’t count on the second part of that thought. “Oh, wait, this is going to be on tv, isn’t? And Mom and her gaggle of Juicy Couture-sweated divorcée pals watch Bravo. So how is it going to look in Brentwood and Sherman Oaks if I’m up here in Malibu at a fat camp taking chocolate cake from a fat guy on national television?” And that’s where you lost them, Mia. Only five kids ordered the red team’s meal, while 15 ordered the black team’s pizza.
The pizza and Sam are both hits. Clearly already practiced in the art of being a sassy fat sidekick that will serve her well should she fail to lose weight at Camp Glucose, one fierce teenage girl earns our devotion by saying to her own sassy fat sidekick, “I wanna go marry the hot diabetic over there.” Then all the cheftestants get to be heartwarming by playing soccer with the kids.
Back at the Judges’ Table, Chef Goin pronounces Elia’s cheesecake the best of all the dishes. We were, of course, duly confused, since Elia herself had referred to it as a pie, but it certainly looked like a cheesecake to us. At any rate, the Black Team with its pizza was declared the overall winner and Frankie the Bull the individual winner. What struck us about this was that, at least based on the editing, it looked as if the pizza idea had come from Spice Rack while at the supermarket and arguing against Madame de Pompadour’s asparagus, but she told the judges that it had been Frankie the Bull’s idea. Truth or sportsmanship, it was nice of her. For his pains, Frankie gets the opportunity to collaborate with Chef Goin on the menu for one of the renowned Sunday suppers at Lucques.
The teams on the hot seat, fittingly enough, were the red and orange. Sam threw out vague accusations about people having squeeze bottles of olive oil, but refused to name names because “I’m not that guy” and “I’m not going there.” Josette Eber had no such compunctions: “I’ll go there.” She called out Spice Rack and the cookies that had miraculously improved after the addition of sugar. (Of course, as Chef Colicchio points out on his blog, “others insisted they had seen Mia add sugar to her cole slaw.” Hmmmm. Curioser and curioser, Ms. Wounded Animal.)
After much yelling from the cheftestants and much throwing up of hands among the judges, it is decided that no one will go home this week, but that the cheftestants will all be on probation. What did we tell you about the “Project Runway”-fication of the show? Yes, this is quite the anticlimax, though it may pay off in an extra week of suspicion and drama, or perhaps a double elimination at some point. We believe that Splenda won’t give us cancer, and we believe the show will improve. Might we be delusional on both counts?
Now it’s time for the Elimination Challenge (we can tell, because they always say it in audible capital letters). Padma announces, rather fatuously, that “L.A. is one of the most multicultural cities in the world.” As Angelenos of a particular stripe, we snort and drink to the platitude, surprised that it has taken until Episode Two to trot it out.
The Elimination Challenge will be a team effort, with the teams focusing on two of multiculti L.A.’s cuisines, Vietnamese and Korean (to go along with the Japanese of the Quickfire Challenge). The teams will each be responsible for creating one hot dish and one cold dish, and will be judged on their team work.
The teams are created by having the chefs draw knives. The knife handles bear either a Vietnamese or (South) Korean flag (we hate to be nitpicky—oh, hell, whom are we kidding?—but it’s not the “Korean” flag, since you have both a North and a South Korea). The whole time the chefs were drawing knives, we kept looking for a “cheat sheet” posted on one side of the knife. Call us skeptical, suspicious bitches, but given the geographical literacy of the American public as a whole, the idea that some of these contestants (we’re talking to you, Beer Bong) would know what the Vietnamese or South Korean flag looks like is just preposterous.
Instantly we are struck by the geopolitical implications of the decision. These are the cuisines of two Asian nations that were or are divided by Communism on a north-south basis, and in which the United States fought a war. We hadn’t realized that the Bravo producers were so devilishly deep in their formulation of challenges. And how great is it that Marcel and Otto, the two contestants vying with Kim Jong Il for Dictatorial Coif of the Year, should both have been on Team Korea?
The teams will be presenting their food at a charity event for Project by Project, an organization established to help the Asian community. Cut to Otto the NeckerChef telling us how glad he is, since he is “hugely involved in hunger issues.” That’s all well and good, and certainly admirable, but as Season One contestant Lee Anne Wong wryly points out on her blog, Otto just “assumes that the Project by Project event will be feeding the needy and hungry Asian community of Los Angeles,” when Project by Project, according to their press materials, is actually “a national volunteer organization of social entrepreneurs that serves Asian Pacific American non-profit organizations by raising public awareness, encouraging volunteerism and building capital.”
Team Vietnam consists of Josie, Betty, Mia, Emily, Carlos, Beer Bong, and Sam. Team Korea is Frank, Otto, Ilan, Cliff, Marcel, Elia and Marisa. This means that we’re not just replaying the Cold War with cold noodles; we’re also revving up for another skirmish in the Battle of the Sexes.
Team Vietnam’s organizational meeting is a model of efficiency, cooperation and organization, with Spice Rack (unwisely baring her midriff yet again), Josette Eber, and Empress Josiefine (sporting a rather rakish newsboy cap that would do “The L Word” proud) taking charge but soliciting input from the other members.
Team Korea’s organizational meeting, as befits a divided nation, is extremely disorganized. As Cliff tells us, he, Frank and Ilan decide to make a huge batch of sangria before the meeting. (We hasten to point out that Cliff has immunity after the Quickfire Challenge; could our little Valrhona Bear be so devious?). This means we are treated to the nauseating sight of Tarte Titass flashing her tanline and shaking her nonexistent maracas in a hideous pink and white striped top. They sit around, with Elia bravely trying to get them to discuss the menu while the boys get drunker, tell incomprehensible jokes, and lasciviously stroke the rim of a glass before sucking their fingers (we’re talking to you, Ilan).
We admire Elia’s focus and spunk, as well as her very cute Marc-Jacobs-goes-to-the-souk ballet flats, but get hives looking at Marcel’s flipflops and Otto’s Roman centurion Mary Janes. Elia’s plea—“Let’s just finish the menu and then we cheell”—goes unheeded. This is also where we first hear the word lychee—pronounced “LEE-chee,” and this is very important—in the form of Marisa’s plan to make a dessert involving lychee pearls.
It’s the next morning, and we get the requisite “Good morning, Vietnaaaam!” voiceover from that Robin Williams lookalike, Spice Rack Betty. We do not, however, get a snippet of the theme from “M*A*S*H” for Team Korea. The teams are each given $500 dollars and one hour to do their shopping.
As Team Vietnam marches off to the specialty store to the strains of “Asian-inspired dance music,” courtesy of the closed captioning service, we see Josie expertly handling melons and cooing, “Yeah, baby.” Even Austin Powers couldn’t have done better. The rest of Team Vietnam’s shopping expedition proceeds just as smoothly.
Team Korea’s shopping expedition in a supermarket in Koreatown is as much of a muck-up as a “M*A*S*H” episode. We are first subjected to a Marcel interview featuring not only full-on pompadour but also a pompadour of a double-Windsor tie knot. In pink. Paisley! Did Jimmy Neutron spend the entirety of last season studying Stephen Asprinio’s mannerisms and sartorial choices? We are very disturbed, and secretly hope Stephen Asprinio has seen “Single White Female.” We can just see the remake: “Single White Sexually Ambiguous, Arrogant, Prissy, Overcompensatorily Large Tie-Knot-Wearing Chef.”
“EE-lia, did you get the LIE-chee?” asks Otto, setting our teeth on edge. For your information, NeckerChef, her name is pronounced “EH-lia” and the fruit is pronounced “LEE-chee.” 
Not that we’re obsessive or anything, but we actually counted the number of times the word “lychee” was uttered on this episode: 22 times. 11 times it was pronounced “LEE-chee” and 11 times “LIE-chee.” Of those, Otto was responsible for 9, and Ilan and Marisa for the other 2, and she was just quoting Otto (we don’t know what Ilan’s excuse is).
At the checkout, Team Korea is over budget and they have to return some items. As they take their cart to the minivan, the closed captioning informs us that we are hearing “dramatic music,” and then an unidentified voice says, “I think we got a case of LEE-chees for free.”
Marisa tells us that Otto said this to her, but our Perry Mason instincts were roused at once. That was clearly not Otto’s voice, and Otto would never have said “LEE-chee.” “Otto wuz framed! This is the type of thing that brought Dan Rather down,” whispers Miss XaXa.
Marisa, who only last episode crowed, “I use everything to my advantage that I can use to my advantage,” professes to be shocked at this unfair advantage that Otto wants to take, and makes her outrage clear to anyone who will listen during the food-preparation montage. Our favorite bit in the montage is Marcel, stealing another of Beer Bong’s lines as he exclaims, “Oh fuck, where’d that pot go?”
Betty is shown making a “refresher” with ginger, cucumber, and aloe. She proclaims herself “the bar wench” to Chef Colicchio, and then tells the camera, all the while flaunting her fun bags, that they’re going to have “so many reasons to entice these guests over to our table.” Well, I guess two reasons counts as “so many,” n’est-ce pas?
When Chef Colicchio reaches Marisa and Elia and innocently asks how things are, Lycheegate breaks and all hell breaks loose. Tom calls Team Korea together and questions Otto, forcing him to admit that he did say, “We got a case of lychees for free.” We are impressed by Tom Colicchio’s prosecutorial skills--this is how the international nuclear agency is supposed to behave with Kim Jong Il--but not so impressed by Otto’s defense. All our Perry Masoning was for nought. Otto is forced to return the nukes, er, lychees to the store, and Team Korea’s confidence is shaken.
The next day, the teams set up at the charity event, and then comes the tasting and judging. We are momentarily distracted by how fabulous Gail Simmon’s shoes are. Padma’s hair person has redeemed herself, but oy, the wardrobe--an unflattering peacock skirt and a black corset top. Padma introduces us to the guest judge, Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger Restaurant in Wellesley, Massachusetts and PBS fame. Someone has obviously briefed Ming on chef jewelry, since he sports a Colicchioesque necklace on a strap.
We’re no experts, but it looks to us like Ming Tsai has had work done. He’s certainly ballooned since we last saw him on PBS, and is starting to look like one of those Wellesley matrons we remember from college. Miss XaXa says he actually looks more like Siegfried or Roy, she can’t remember which, the one that got mauled, and is he wearing lip gloss? We're also shocked when he tastes Team Vietnam's refresher and points out that it's spicy and has chili in it. "Ginger," corrects the Spice Rack herself. The owner of Blue Ginger can't tell when something has ginger in it? Is this what things have come to?
At the Judges’ Table (we are so pleased they got the apostrophe right), we are nearly blinded by the rock on Padma’s finger, just about as large as one of the illicit lychees. They discuss the virtues of the teams’ dishes, and Padma even breaks through the Valium haze to get a little feisty about just how good the Korean-style pork was. But the others win out, and Team Vietnam is called in as the winners. Betty is declared the individual winner and given a prize, a limited-edition Kyocera ceramic sashimi knife, one of only 100 in the world. “Huh?” says Miss XaXa, “I thought Kyocera made copiers.”
Having heard the shouts of joy from Team Vietnam, Team Korea figures out that they’ve lost. Cliff declares that he’s pissed they couldn’t work together as a team. This strikes us as rather rich, considering that he was responsible for getting the team drunk in the first place.
Team Korea is called in to be worked over. After questioning by Ming Tsai, Frankie the Bull crumbles and admits that he made the rice and that it looked like “hell on a plate.” If he’s that good, let’s send Ming Tsai to do some interrogation work at Guantanamo.
For all that has subsequently been said and written, it’s interesting to note that when the issue of Otto and the lychees comes up, Marcel is actually the first to throw Otto under the bus, and then Marisa and Elia pile on.
Frankie the Bull is irate and aghast. The ethic of the team, la squadra nostra, this team of ours, has been violated. He doesn’t understand how team members can flip their loyalties on a whim: “It’s a team, and if you don’t back your team mates, you might as well take your head and shove it up your ass.” Are we imagining things, or is Frank’s restaurant called Omertà?
As the maker of the “hockey puck” that purported to be panna cotta, Marisa’s head is on the chopping block, but Otto finally fesses up and falls on his sword. See, Rummy? This is how it’s done. Marisa’s skinny, padded ass is safe for one more week. Otto waxes philosophical in a hideous chalk-stripe suit, purple shirt and yellow tie that he must have stolen from the Cleveland dinner theater production of “Guys and Dolls.”
Then come the previews from next week, featuring a fire house, and scenes of self-immolation by Beer Bong where he is raring for a fistfight with Tom Colicchio. We definitely can’t wait.
