New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

The episode begins with Antonia crying over her narrow loss in the Best Bite tiebreaker. Mike takes this as a sign that his time is now. What he ought to take from it is that he and Richard just cooked in a competition and Richard won. I understand the need to psych himself up, but Mike is going to have to show more than he did in the prior episode to have a chance. Of course, Richard indicates that he had already beaten Antonia once and felt confident he could beat her again. She was the one he wanted to win the Best Bite, not Mike. This surprises me in that just a couple of episodes ago, immediately after a grease fire, Richard was the most worried about Antonia of any remaining competitor. Momentum truly is everything in these challenges.

“I’m gonna beat Richard. I’m a better cook than he is. Period.” – Mike Isabella, making a statement no one else believes.

Tom and Padma meet with the two remaining All Stars. Tom calmly informs them that there will be no twists this week, a welcome change from the prior episode’s Quickfire boondoggle. Instead, both challengers will be given everything they need to create the restaurant of their dreams. All Richard and Mike need to do is bring it to life. Richard says he gets goosebumps, an understandable sensation. The two gentlemen then spend the morning debating who is the underdog. Mike, who was just saying he was the better cook, now turns around and indicates that Richard has won a lot more than him; ergo, he is a huge favorite. Let’s hope that Mike’s dishes offer more consistency than his thoughts.

When the players arrive in the kitchen, friendly faces are there to greet them. All of the eliminated competitors from this season of Top Chef (except for Dale Levitski) have been flown to the Bahamas. They will be asked to prepare a dish. Richard and Mike will be the judges in a blind taste test. Each of them will choose three eliminated contestants to staff the kitchen of their dream restaurants. This adds a layer of intrigue in that Mike cannot simply choose his buddy, Jennifer Carroll, nor can Richard pick his new BFF, Fabio. Instead, luck of the draw factors in. This goes both ways as well in that all of the returning cast members have big plans for the afternoon in the Bahamas. Many of them, Spike being the loudest, make it clear that they do not want to be selected, because that will cut down on their play time. They have jet ski reservations, apparently. They didn’t come back to work; this is a vacation to most of them. It will be interesting to see whether the six players who are selected let this disappointment impact their performances.

When Mike picks, he has three goals. The first one is to get his aforementioned comrade-in-arms, Jennifer, on his team. Perhaps the even more important one is to avoid Marcel’s presence. We already know that Marcel will not keep his mouth shut when he is supposedly aiding another chef. Given that the two despised one another during Restaurant Wars, such a pairing would be disastrous. To a lesser extent, Mike also wants to avoid Jamie, who is notorious for her slow prep work in the kitchen. Richard wants his buddies, Dale Talde and Angelo, in particular although he also notes his desire to have Jennifer Carroll on his team, believing that she would have his back. I’m sure that she likes Richard a lot, but I think that her connection to Mike is unmistakable. I doubt she would sabotage Richard or anything yet I still believe that would work out about the same way as a Marcel/Mike pairing.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5