The Black Donnellys,more Dirt and Top Chef's restaurant wars

The big Top Chef challenge this week was to set up a restaurant within 24 hours. Marcel and Sam got to pick who would be on their team as the prize for winning the Quickfire. Marcel chose Elia and Cliff,leaving Mike and Ilan(who still has a mad hate on for Marcel)for Sam to work with.


Sam's group decided to go Italian and named their place Lalalina(a combo of the names of their wives and girlfriends)but for some reason,didn't buy wine to serve with the food. Not a smart idea,fellas! Not having wine for Italian cusine is like not having jelly with your peanut butter;you can still eat it but it's not going to be as good as it could be with it. Marcel and co first wanted to have a Mediterranean place but changed their minds and went with Elia's idea of an upscale diner. The name M.E.C. is from their initials which is okay but not too creative.





There was no winner chosen after this challenge,due to both teams being dead even in lacking finesse. Cliff was the Front of the House for his team and kept the judges waiting for nearly twenty minutes,with barely any contact or customer service to keep them content. Atleast M.E.C. had beer for them to drink while they waited. When they went to Lalalina,Padma found an olive pit on the table(no one thought to have a dish to put those in)and all of them were grossed out by Sam's dessert that was made of watermelon,cream and blue cheese. I'm not a big fan of watermelon but cream and blue cheese with it sounds nasty to me. Elia created a lemon Oreo pie for her dessert which was just as weird but I'd try that over the watermelon gunk anyday.



Mike wound up hitting the road,due to his lackadasial performance. He was the one who bought all the dishes for his team and had a hundred bucks leftover to boot. When the judges asked him why he didn't get something to put the olive pits in,he kept bleating"I followed the list!" Dude,even with a list,sometime you have to think on the fly and go outside the box. Mike was pretty weak in this challenge but I would've sent Cliff home. His people skills sucked and when the judges asked him if he should go,he not only insisted on staying but threw both Elia and Marcel under the bus and suggested a loser be chosen"between the two of them"! Way to be loyal to your team there,Cliff.

Next week's show seems to have some serious shenanagans as a prank played on someone(I'm guessing Marcel)goes awry. All this ganging up on Marcel stuff is getting way overboard-Stephan on season 1 of TC was just as bad but nobody dogpiled on him. Elia is the only one on his side and she needs to step up her own game and not let guys like Cliff and Ilan bully her,too. Ilan's telling her to blame Marcel in front of the judges if her team lost the challenge was petty and mean.




I watched the Heroes Season Summary DVD but all it had to offer was a very long promo with no new clips of the next episode or any other interesting tidbits that fans of the show are familar with. What it does have is the pilot episode of The Black Donnellys,a midseason crime drama about a quartet of Irish brothers in Hell's Kitchen who wind up being major league criminals. Jonathan Tucker stars as Tommy,the brother with artistic talent who wants to move beyond the wild and crazy lifestyle of his siblings. The show looks pretty good and the slapdash narrative pace of it reminds me abit of Boondock Saints.

There was also a promo for a Jeff Goldblum cop drama called Raines,where his character solves murders by having imaginary conversations with the victim. Goldblum's deadpan wit is tailormade for a project like this and I hope it gets on the air sometime soon. Otherwise,this disc is not really worth a Netflix rental.



Watched the second episode of Dirt and I'm convinced that this show needs more of Don Konkey;his vision of about-to-be-cremated starlet Keira Kelly wrapped in flaming skeletal arms was the only memorable scene of the show. Lucy Spiller's big idea to combo both magazines to save her job was something I saw a mile away,particularly from the first episode.

Also,can we have less shots of Lucy with her penlight vibrator? She doesn't come off as aroused when she uses that thing,her facial expression is more like akin to someone taking way too much fiber in their diet.

Random Notes:

Smallville: We finally get a new episode tonight but the bad news is that Tori Spelling is the guest star. She plays a gossip columnist with some wicked watery skills(bad acting a obvious given)who clashes with Chloe. Hey,if Paris Hilton couldn't destroy Veronica Mars with her wooden line reading,I guess that the show can stomach some of Spelling onscreen:



Gilmore Girls: The show's still in repeats for two more weeks but since I didn't watch "Knit,People,Knit" when it was first on(A Charlie Brown Christmas was on that night and CBC can not be ignored in December!),it was good to catch up on. Luke was right to get in Anna's face about April and Christopher is just so clueless about how to fit into Stars Hollow that he needs to get himself a "Small Town for Dummies" manual or something. Here's a nice college of clips from that episode:



And here's a look at Paris and Doyle"scorching the floorboards" from that show: