Pop Culture Princess

Pop Culture Princess
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Thursday, March 08, 2012

Top Chef Tx's raucous reunion, two TAR teams in a Detour duel and Julianne Moore makes a Game Change



Top Chef Texas wrapped up it's ninth season with their typical reunion special that showcased a lot of bloopers from both contenders and judges,along with a few playful parodies such as Mediocre Chef(jokingly suggested by Ed)and a mock negative ad for Judge Gail Simmons.

The whole Beverly vs. the Mean Girls(Heather,Sarah and Lindsay)situation was discussed,with two of the ladies having made amends to Bev for their behavior but there was one holdout and you can pretty much guess who that was. Yep,Heather insisted on sticking by her words regarding Beverly's work ethic and to be fair,she didn't blame editing room antics on how she was portrayed during the competition.



One thing that was annoying was that they didn't announce the Fan Favorite at all and insisted upon reveling the winner on host Andy Cohen's late night show(give me a break,Andy-enough with the cheap tactics to get folks to watch your little shindig!).

Anyway,Chris Crary was chosen as Fan Favorite,so congrats to him. Personally,I would have preferred Grayson or Beverly for this honor but this seems to be more based on looks rather than personality or actual talent in the kitchen. Sorry,dude but you didn't make that much of an impression onscreen which would make your victory here that completely understandable.

The most intriguing moment of the night was when Sarah was asked about her attitude after the winner was declared on the finale episode. Apparently,she wasn't too composed with one of the judges and told him to "F" off(and the F does not stand for fun,if you know what I mean). She tried to deny it at first but it became crystal clear that Sarah's loose lips did sink a rather important ship there in terms of her culinary future.

True,nobody's perfect and things can be said in the heat of a disappointing moment yet it would have been better if Sarah had fessed up to that verbal faux pas right away and made a proper amends to Emeril. He acted like a gentleman about the entire thing and while he doesn't appear to be the vindictive type,other folks in the field may have a few qualms about working with her later on. Hopefully,this will blow over quickly for Sarah and perhaps teach her a lesson in humility:





The Amazing Race took the teams to Paraguay where the Detour challenge really slowed down two of them. Vanessa and Ralph were having a hard time with the stack the watermelons into a pyramid portion and he wanted to tackle the string the harp section instead.

Vanessa,however,was hellbound to finish what they had started and even though they didn't complete the pyramid until nightfall,the two of them managed to make it to the Pitstop on time.



Meanwhile,twins Elliot and Andrew were stalled on the harp challenge,possibly a bit overconfident due to one of them having experience with stringing guitars.

They considered switching over to the watermelons but changed their minds and eventually completed the task. Unfortunately,they wound up being the last ones to arrive and were thus eliminated from the Race. The brothers did make a good effort at least but their frustrations just got the better of them:





The big movie on HBO this weekend is Game Change,based on the portions of the book by Mark Helperin and John Heilermann that covered Sarah Palin's run as vice presidential candidate back in '08. Julianne Moore plays Palin,with Ed Harris as John McCain and Woody Harrelson as campaign adviser Steve Schmidt.

Normally,I don't bother with political films,particularly if they appear far too soon after the actual events have occurred(and yes,I do consider four years later to be too soon to gain a real perspective on the matter).

However,Moore is an exceptional actress and seeing her interpretation of Palin should be interesting. Love her or hate her,Sarah Palin is a woman whose immediate effect on that campaign was ground breaking and should be examined by those invested in political and social history. Folks are already predicting an Emmy for Julianne Moore here,so let's see what all of the fuss is about:



RANDOM NOTES:



No Kitchen Required: BBC America will be debuting a new cooking show in April that places a trio of chefs out in remote locations to find ingredients to make a locally inspired meal.

What truly makes me interested in this new series is that one of the chefs is Chopped champion Madison Cowan,no stranger to the rough and tumble life. Many fans of Chopped have been wishing for Madison to have his own show and this appears to be the start of something big for him in that regard. Cheers,Madison,we'll be watching!:

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