ProcrastiBlog

I have been remiss in blogging Top Chef and Battlestar Galactica this year. Suffice it to say I'm watching and enjoying, but my ardor for both has somewhat dimmed.

Unlike previous seasons of Top Chef, I don't have a real rooting interest in any of the cheftestants this year. If I were forced to choose I would guess Richard is probably going to win (he's about as well-liked as Stephanie and more consistent). I—along with the rest of the world—loathe Lisa, but she's just kind of a bad trip, not really a boo-hiss, lie-to-your-face villain in the Tiffani/Omarosa mold. An interesting bit of data, for those Lisa-haters who suspect they are suffering from an irrational aversion to her attitude, looks, and posture: she has—by far—the worst record of any cheftestant to appear in a Top Chef finale (1 Elimination win, 1 place, no Quickfire wins; she has been up for elimination or on the losing team in the last seven consecutive episodes (!)). Incidentally, Richard (3 Elimination wins, 5 places, and 2 Quickfire wins) and Stephanie (4 Elimination wins, 5 places, and 1 Quickfire win) have by far the best records of any previous cheftestant, period. (In comparison, the previous three winners (Harold, Ilan, and Hung) had only 4 Elimination wins total.)

On the other side, BSG has been doing a lot of the mythical flim-flam (I don't really care where Earth is or whether they ever find it) and not so much of the intense post-9/11 fractured-mirror business that made the first three seasons so addictive. The characters have been getting pushed around the chessboard willy-nilly without much attention paid to consistency or plausibility (to wit: President Lee Adama), all in service of a presumed "mind-blowing" series finale (to arrive not before calendar year 2009, as I understand it) that I am quite certain will disappoint (I'm not going to be X-Files'ed ever again).

So there's your TV-blogging for the year. Back to work.

BSG: Razor is basically a very solid, two-part flashback episode in TV movie form. Admiral Cane is resurrected* for some Hot Lesbian Action and to dictate a torture memo** ("Pain, degradation, fear, shame... Be as creative as you feel the need to be"). Eighties vintage Cylons are resurrected for no apparent reason. New characters are introduced and then killed off with ruthless efficiency. There was a bit of the old, vague mytho-babble ("All of this has already happened... and will happen again") pointing towards the next season, which makes me terribly worried the show will end badly, in grand X-Files and/or Twin Peaks style.

It doesn't look like Razor is scheduled to re-air, if you missed it, but it will be out on DVD next week (in an annoyingly expanded version). Season 4 is scheduled to begin in March (or April?). Till then, work...

* Not in the "she's a Cylon" sense.

** Isn't it fun how "torture memo" is now a cultural reference?

Well, then! Congratulations to Chef Hung! I think it was as simple as (to paraphrase Howard Hawks) "one great dish, no bad dishes." I was very surprised to see Casey self-destruct in that way. I think she had a more than 50% chance going in and then... what happened? The only dish the judges like was... Howie's? And she admitted it too! (Take that, Tiffany!)

A note to future cheftestants: I do not advocate ever making a dessert. If it's good, the best you'll get is a "meh" (as Hung did last night) and, if it's bad, your judgment will be called into question ("Why did you choose to make a dessert? Was that the very best dish you could have presented?"). You will not get points for "daring." Nor does it matter that any paying customer would demand something sweet at the end of a tasting menu: the judges aren't paying customers and you aren't a pastry chef. Stick to what you know.

My heart is with Hung. Dude's got mad skills. The worst charge leveled at him so far is that his food lacks "soul" and is not "him."* I have a feeling, if he stays focused, produces at his usual high level, and surprises them with some tasty, "soulful" food, he can take the prize. I don't know, somehow I just identify with the cerebral social outcast. He is Marcel's revenge.

I will not be in the least surprised or upset if Casey wins. She's been consistently excellent, especially in the second half of the season (with the notable exception of the Onion Incident). She's smart, likeable, and cute as a button. If Bravo has anything to say about it, she's a shoe-in.

I will be surprised but not terribly upset if Dale wins. He has a tendency to lose his head in the heat of competition (e.g., miscounting his servings, forgetting his sauce) and is far more prone to misfires (especially, for some reason, adding too much hot pepper) than either Hung or Casey. He also has a hideous faux-hawk. So there's that.

* I love the following, from a Village Voice interview with Hung: "What does that mean, when [Colicchio] says 'We don't see Hung.'? What should I do, make sweet and sour chicken and wontons? I'm trained in French food. I love French food. That is me."

Lots of juicy developments, most of which were so vague and ambiguous as to render analysis pointless. To summarize: there is some mystical connection between President Roslyn, Boomer, and Caprica Six which centers in some way on their connection to the human-Cylon baby, Hera; four principal cast members (well, two A-listers and two B-listers) become convinced that they are Cylons—four of the "final five"?—and it's just possible that the last unknown Cylon is either Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix; one of the new Cylons had a baby this season, so there is a second probable human-Cylon baby out there that nobody is having any apocalyptic visions about; and a certain supposedly dead Galactican is not dead, is a Cylon, or has transcended such issues in the Fourth Dimension (or else a certain ace pilot, defense attorney, and prodigal son is seeing things in much the same way that certain other people saw certain things before crossing over into a certain Fourth Dimension).

The only issue that's really worth chewing over here is the acquittal of one Gaius Baltar. It is fairly gratifying that the lack of accountability aboard Galactica I have noted a few times in the past was a significant plot point this week. Apollo's speech was fairly convincing in an emotional-impact kind of way, but I was surprised that it carried the day. It seems to me that the signed death warrant—on which Gaeta's perjured testimony could not be contradicted, except by Baltar and a few Cylons—was pretty much grounds for conviction by itself. (The irony being that Baltar can't really be held responsible for the death warrant.... but the jury didn't know that!) That said, it was very clever for the writers to push Baltar into a new situation, where his instinct for survival and skill at improvisation can serve him in new and possibly interesting ways.

Season 4 is scheduled for 2008 and "a special two-hour extended event" will air "fourth quarter 2007." What am I supposed to do till then? Work?

There be SPOILERS ahead.

File this one under: be careful what you wish for. Ballsiness aside, I have a feeling we'll be seeing Starbuck again in one form or another. Which will it be: Cylon, dream sequence, or creature of pure energy?

As much as I've enjoyed Katee Sackoff throughout the series (in those scenes where she wasn't making puppy-dog eyes at Apollo), I think I would prefer if the point of this episode was that Starbuck totally lost her mind and died for no reason, rather than following her spirit into the fourth dimension wherein she will fulfill her Destiny. I'm getting pretty tired of all this Destiny crap.

As H said to me last night, "So, remind me of what it is you like about this show again?" To which I respond... I think the last few episodes of last season and the first few episodes of this were some of the best that BSG has ever done. But ever since "The Exodus" from New Caprica, I feel as if the drama of the show has gone slack. I'm afraid we may have jumped the shark... Here's hoping for a rocking season finale.

P.S. Last week's episode, which barely merits comment, provided some new data for my ongoing research into discipline aboard Galactica: treason merits a slap on the wrist, fomenting a general strike will almost get your family shot.

Speaking of sharks, remember when that was a website and not just a cliche? The vast majority of people who bothered to vote seem to think The Gilmore Girls took a wrong turn sometime in the last two seasons (this is ignoring "Never Jumped" voters, who are ignorant pigs).

My own feeling is that the show started to decline in quality around the time that Rory started seriously dating Logan and did a nosedive after she became disillusioned and dropped out of Yale. Which, you'll recall, was the same time that she started flirting with DAR membership and stopped speaking to Lorelai---a more severe case of misunderstanding your own show's core appeal I have never seen. It was like sending the cast of ER to spend a summer at the happy puppy farm.

I watch too much TV! It's embarrassing!

Has any show ever fallen farther faster than The Gilmore Girls? What went wrong exactly? Is it just the ineluctable storyline exhaustion of a sixth season? Is it, as Virginia Heffernan claims, the loss of "despotic creator" Amy Sherman-Palladino?

It's not just the on-again, off-again Luke-Christopher-maybe-Luke-again thrum of Lorelai's love life or the dreary attraction-dating-marriage-baby death-march of Lane and Zach. It's not even Rory's soul-killing romance with a callow trust-fund jerk. It's just... boring. It's flat where it used to be spritely. It's preposterous where it used to quirky. It's deathly dull and obvious where it used to crackle with intelligence.

And... sputter... I'm a man! I didn't ever even properly love this show the way it was meant to be loved.

Blah.

I don't think the show was ever fated to survive Rory's departure for college. It's appeal was too much based on the central relationship between Rory and Lorelai to survive their physical separation, even with Rory driving home for an implausibly large number of laundry loads and local dance recitals. There's too many damn scenes with them yapping on the phone that are cut head shot, head shot, head shot, head shot, "Bye," "Bye," click, end scene.

Argh.

In case you can't tell, I'm typing this while Hilleary watches the show against my will.

Gronk.

Roslyn to Adama: "I'd love to turn you on."

BSG gives off the vibe of a show where the stakes are high, but the only semi-major characters who have ever died were Ellen Tigh and Kat.* This is getting pretty unbelievable... How many planets has Starbuck crashed and been abandoned on? Cally and Chief aren't even in fighting trim... they're supposed to survive explosive decompression with nothing more than a burst blood vessel?

I have no use for these bonus scenes. Cut it into the episode or put it on the DVD. I don't need your leftovers.

* The Sopranos benefits from the same perception and suffers from the same problem. You think nobody is off limits, but the only long-term character to die since Big Pussy was Adrianna. Characters like Ralph Cifaretto are blatantly brought on to get whacked---the only surprise in that case was how long it took and why it happened. Would it kill you to lose a Paulie Walnuts just to maintain some believability here?

I assume that in the last season, we can expect a little more blood to flow. Though I also assume, since the idea of a Sopranos movie has been knocked around, that we can expect Tony to survive.

I did not like this episode. Specifically:

1. In partial answer to Query the Second, it turns out treason and sabotage won't get you court-martialed, but it will get you busted down to administering a refugee camp in the basement.


The last thing in the world Helo needed was for his God complex to get a little boost. This episode would have been much more dramatically interesting if he had turned out to be wrong, if the stress of being the "man (who's not Baltar) who loves a Cylon" was making him paranoid and delusional. The episode could have gone in this direction right up to the last minutes, but opted for the pat, feel-good ending instead.


2. The Mystery Disease could have been handled in more dramatically interesting ways as well. As Matt Zoller Seitz suggests, if the disease had been incurable, this could have led to an interesting long-term arc that would mirror the AIDS epidemic. If the disease had been more virulent, the theme of public health vs. religious anti-medical conviction could have been developed further.



3. Where is the constituency that will rise up in insurrection if Baltar goes on trial? Baltar publicly collaborated with the Cylons in the enslavement of humankind. It's as if the writers just take it for granted "every event has a real-world parallel" (in this case, obviously, Saddam Hussein) without going to the effort of setting the parallels up properly: remember, guys, the Galacticans were the insurgency and Baltar was Ahmed Chalabi...



4. What's the deal with the titles, lately?

Now, that I've calmed down a bit...

I'm still a little perplexed by the decision. Ilan played it safe last week and very nearly got sent home. He played it safe again this week and took the title. According to my sources on the Internets (including Lee Anne Wong), several of his dishes this week and last were more-or-less straight from the menu of Casa Mono (including the bay leaf dessert).

By my count, they each had one miss (Marcel's salad w/o tear-drop vinaigrette, Ilan's angulas from a can), 3 strong dishes, and one "meh" (Marcel's dessert, Ilan's short ribs). The way the show was cut, I thought the diners were much more impressed with Marcel's food. And Marcel's "meh" was at least more creative and interesting than Ilan's.

Here are the good reasons to send Marcel home that I didn't hear come out of the Judge's mouths: the salad course and the missing hamachi showed poor planning and bad judgment (even if the non-hamachi dish ended up being a hit); he's probably less ready to go open his own restaurant tomorrow, considering his style of cuisine will only work in a high-end fine dining atmosphere and he's not quite there yet (Ilan, on the other hand, could probably open a successful downtown comfort food joint next week); in short, Marcel is less capable of realizing his grand ambitions than Ilan is of realizing his own modest ones.

Still, it was a completely uninspiring end to the season. They failed to pick the obviously best chef, which was Sam. And they chose a guy who was a self-regarding, small-minded, ignorant jerk. Seriously, I think that his part in the Marcel-shaving incident---notwithstanding the fact that he never laid a hand on him---was probably worse than Cliff's. Cliff was just physically following through on the logic of the moment, and he did so without excessive malice or force. Meanwhile, Ilan stood by shrieking and laughing, egging Cliff, Sam, and Elia on. He's the only one that seemed genuinely disappointed that Marcel escaped with his hair. And after several months to contemplate what had happened, he fell right back into bullying Marcel without a second thought.

It makes me sick to my stomach. It really does.

That and the big pile of barbecue I just ate.

My faith in reality television is shattered.

Are you psyched for the finale?! If Ilan wins, I think I might cry. Here's my attempt at an objective assessment.

Marcel

Pros: He's creative and interesting. He has a sense of humor about himself and a remarkably professional attitude towards those who teased, taunted, and assaulted him. His colleagues at The Mansion seem to respect him, even if none of his fellow contestants did. He kicked ass last week.

Cons: He didn't make a single memorably delicious-seeming dish all season. He seems to lack some basic cooking chops and gets lost when he doesn't have access to xanthan gum or a thermal immersion circulator. He made foams at least as often as Sam made pickles. And, it must be noted, almost everybody on the show hated him.


Ilan

Pros: He seems to be a skilled cook. He has prepared several dishes through the season that look delicious and which the judges all enjoyed. He showed some leadership skills in the course of the season.

Cons: The leadership he showed was in inspiring others to hate Marcel. So, more your cold prickly Hitler-y leadership,* not your warm fuzzy FDR-y stuff. He's an asshole. Every successful dish he made (e.g., paella, fideos) could have come (did come?) from the menu of his restaurant. The things he made that weren't classic Spanish recipes (e.g., chocolate-covered liver) were often disgusting. Both Gail and Padma seemed ready to send him home last week.**

My Prediction: Marcel by a nose.***

Bonus Prediction: The final Elimination Challenge will not bring back previously eliminated contestants to work under the finalists: this set-up hurt Tiffani's chances last year (recall that all four helper chefs, including her own teammates, picked Harold to win) and it would probably be ruinous to Marcel. I could swear there was promo footage of Stephen Asprinio towards the beginning of the season... Maybe they'll bring back last year's contestants as kitchen helpers? Stephen and Marcel would make a great team...

* Hell yeah, I just went there.
** Although I am typically a very credulous reality television viewer, I must say that choosing Ilan over Sam last week seems to betray an interest in "good television" over "good food."
*** The "by a nose" bit is meaningless. The judge's always present it as if it's "by a nose," especially in the finale.

UPDATE: I meant to say, also, that it is obviously the case that neither Marcel nor Ilan can hold a candle to Harold (or even Tiffani) (and probably Lee Anne). That said, I will note that this is a cooking-themed reality television show and not an objective search for the Best Chef in the Universe. (I believe that's called The Next Food Network Star.) You gotta play them as they lay.

Yeah, this episode reminded me of "Cheers."

Despite its use of one of my great filmic pet peeves, the revelatory dream sequence, this was one of my favorite episodes in a long time. I have little patience for the "mythological" elements of the show (e.g., the Arrow of Apollo, the Eye of Jupiter, and the Quest for Earth) and this season has been thick with them. Consequently, there have been episodes this season (particularly 3.5, "Torn," the episode that took us inside a Cylon basestar for the first time, alongside Baltar) that bored me senseless. I think the show is strongest when it's dealing with the grim reality of its characters' situation, sucking in the bleakest realities of our modern age and remixing/re-contextualizing them in surprising and insightful ways. We got a bit of that this week, a little canon of coercive interrogation with an unexpected hint of MK-ULTRA, and the promise of more to come (does anybody think the trial of Gaius Baltar may contain a dash or two of Saddam Hussein?).

Query the First: Given that BSG has a habit of omitting key events in character's relationships until they become dramatically useful (e.g., the tryst between Apollo and Starbuck that occurred half a season before we got a hint of it) and given the odd and inappropriate snuggling between Laura Roslin and Admiral Adama in this and previous episodes (see 3.9, "Unfinished Business"), may I assume their relationship is sexual in nature?

Query the Second: In this season, we have: Helo sabotaging a plan that could have ended the human/Cylon war forever (3.7, "A Measure of Salvation"); Helo "delivering" Sharon to the Cylons, to whom she may have provided sensitive intelligence (3.11, "Rapture); and Gaeta stabbing a high-value detainee in the neck. Again, I ask: is there anything a person can do to get court-martialled on this ship?

Query the Third: Is it "court-martialled" or "court-martialed"? Google is inconclusive. Blogger doesn't like me verbing "martial".

Wow, I thought Sam was going to take it. Marcel really stepped up and cooked this week. And Elia took a nose dive, from sweet and talented to just another bully to clawing desperately on her way out. What is wrong with her? And what is wrong with Ilan? Which do you think is more debilitating: Ilan's inability to sac up and just pretend Marcel doesn't exist, or Ilan's inability to cook anything that doesn't contain saffron?

P.S. There goes the prevailing Internet theory that the timeline manipulation (and ex post Elia-cropping) in the last episode was meant to whitewash Elia's involvement in the whole affair because she was the winner... What's the deal, Bravo? Because, if Ilan wins, none of your editing did anything to make him look any less like a quivering sack of shit... And it's got all the Internets confused and paranoid...

A pretty strong start to the second half of the season, but... I'm losing track of which Cylons are which. And tell me: is there anything Helo could possibly do to get charged with treason? Anything at all?

P.S. If there's anyone in the world who actually checked out Battlestar Galactica this season on my recommendation, I apologize. I mean, did you understand a single word?

I wasn't going to blog about this week's Top Chef---partly because Tom Colicchio already said pretty much exactly what I was thinking---but I'm doing some late-night web surfing while I wait for some evening coffee to wear off and I come across this stunning little factoid: the footage was edited in a way that tends to cast the participants in the "prank" in a more positive light (WTF?): they were yucking it up and shaving their heads after Cliff assaulted Marcel and, according to Marcel, the assault didn't end when he broke free and left the room. (Via Reality Blurred and Java Junkie.) From there, things get way out of hand... We have people analyzing the lighting and video quality in the footage and digging up new conspiracies.

And here's an interview---conducted before this episode aired, but months after the events depicted---with Sam, Ilan, and Cliff being totally unrepentant (which you might also guess from Ilan's---possibly fake---MySpace page). Way to class it up, boys.

P.S. Besides being a passive-aggressive jack-off, I couldn't believe Sam's whole wuss-bag, "I'll do it if you do. No, not really. You guys are crazy!" attitude about the head shaving. It's "crazy" to cut your hair really short? Even for a man? (And how long was Ilan's hair, anyway? About two inches?) Maybe it's "crazy" when your lustrous, flowing tresses got you voted New York's Sexiest Chef...?

This post is all about the SPOILERS.

Seems like every plot development of Season 2 has been washed away: the Pegasus is gone, Laura Roslyn is president once again, the Cylon/human baby is a Cylon/human baby, and New Caprica is the new Old Caprica. Everybody's back on the Galactica, in search of a place called... wait a sec, nobody's talking about Earth anymore. Whatever happened to the Arrow of Apollo?

Random thoughts:

• I don't like how Tigh handled that situation. If there's one thing I learned from Army of Shadows, it's that traitors want to be killed, and publicly. I expected to either see Old Testament Saul wring Ellen's neck with his bare hands (which is what she deserved, after all, for being so damn annoying for so damn long) or for him to say, "I know what needs to be done, but I can't do it myself" (see: Christopher Moltisanti in re Adrianna La Cerva).


• Shorter Gaeta to Baltar: "All logic and emotion [ed: ah, heck, this is the Sci Fi Channel... all Spock and McCoy] are telling me to shoot you in the face, but somewhere I hear some writer's screaming, 'Don't do it! He's a principal and a fan favorite!'..." Although, I have to say I admire how the writers have made my sympathize with Baltar who is, in his own selfish and fundamentally flawed way, trying to do what he thinks is best (at least since after he handed a nuke over to the Cylon infiltrator...).


• Starbuck: I told you so! I told you so! I told you so! Still, and yet, if the Cylons had just thought to change the brat's name, Starbuck could have said, "I'm sorry lady, you've got the wrong kid." (Is the moppet a mute?)


• Will D'Anna (stupid sci fi name) be transformed by her love into an annoying simp?


• Don't you think Adama seemed a little overly chipper to be back on the run in the far reaches of outer space? See you later, 'stache!


• We didn't pull out of Iraq; Iraq pulled out of us!

So, let me see: the Cylons were drawn to New Caprica by evidence of nuclear weaponry; the decided to invade and occupy in order to help improve the humans way of life; are surprised by a committed and fierce resistance, getting trapped in a cycle of increasing violence and repression; recruit and train native police who are put to use as death squads, while the insurgency decides to experiment with suicide bombings targetting "collaborators"...

Nope, doesn't sound familiar at all.

The situation for the humans of the 12 Colonies continues to be bleak. Can Starbuck be stupid enough to actually fall for that cloying little moppet? (I thought she was working up the courage to snap the kid's neck when the "accident" happened.) Will Apollo go low-carb or low-fat? Will Adama shave off that damn moustache? How will Roslin manage to survive a Centurion firing squad? (Or will BG suddenly become a show where major characters can die? (Billy doesn't count. Billy was lame.)) What is the game plan here, Cylons? And, hey, Caprica Six, are you sure that sweaty, small little man is the object of your transcendent love?

[UPDATE 10/8/2006] Expert commentary here and here. A chat with the creators and cast here.

Go forth and watch it. I beg you. 9 PM EST on the Sci Fi Channel. Check your local listings. If you don't believe me, there's a fairly convincing case towards the end of this post, written by a real honest-to-god professional.

Don't let the channel scare you: there's almost no science in this fiction, really none in the "if we reverse the polarity of the positrons we can inhibit the valence of their gamma ray field!" vein. Yes, it is set in space. But here's what it's really about: a human race on the brink of extinction, making hard choices, and being scared out of their fucking minds. Go watch! Good good good!

[UPDATE 10/6/2006] There's an official primer. Season 2 marathon all day today on Sci Fi. "The Story So Far" airs at 5 PM. All previous seasons are available on DVD.

You have no excuse! Only your milquetoast aversion to high quality television!