There were really only three questions going into the finale of Top Chef Season 5: Will Carla continue her hot streak? Will Stefan's early- and mid-season dominance re-emerge? Will Hosea's two front teeth come together to form the Power Sword and reestablish Prince Adam's dominance over Eternia?

(I was so proud of that joke, I couldn't throw it away with the rest of the tease.)

We return to New Orleans for the last installment of the Season of Stefan, so named because it seems like everyone (Stefan included) was hung up on Stefan. Also because he ran roughshod over the competition for the first nine weeks of the show. After that, Carla very clearly established dominance, winning two challenges and being at the top for the other two. Hosea's just kind of been there. All year.

It's that kind of brilliance and keen grasp of the nature of the competition that leads to the following bon mot from the fish guy: "If there was ever 'do or die' in this competition, this is it." Why yes, Hosea, I think you've nailed it!

Full disclosure: LOST ran long this week, so I missed the first few minutes of Top Chef the first time 'round. So there were certain moments prior to the beginning of prep that resonated as though they were placed into that point in the chronology having come from the end of the action. I'll let them be just in case you're actually reading this to find out what happened.

The chefs arrive at The Historic New Orleans Collection, where Padma and Tom assign them the "make the best three-course meal of your life" task. Each course will serve simultaneously, no desserts necessary, and cooking will take place at Commander's Palace. Twelve guests and judges will be dining.

And in the spirit of Top Chef finales, your extra helpers will be....past runners-up of Top Chef! Out walk Marcel (Season 2), Casey (Season 3), and Richard (Season 4), looking more or less like they just walked off the set. Marcel's much cooler now; did you see them shades? He killin 'em.

Knife block determines the order in which each chef will pick, and Carla gets to draw first. Unfortunately, she draws 3, and will have the dregs. Stefan turns his pick over to Hosea (like the arrogant tool he is--sorry, I'm off the Stefan Train), who in turn picks 1.

Hosea chooses Richard because Marcel reminds him of Stefan (hello, obsession) and apparently doesn't think enough of Casey. Stefan takes Marcel, also not thinking too long on the decision ("He's a bit of a twat, but who's not?"). Carla, always the optimist, tells Casey that she wanted her anyway! Yay!

Prep at the Audubon Tea Room begins contentiously, as Stefan's idly tossed-aside foie gras gets snatched up by Hosea before Stefan can stop him. Personally, I think this is a non-issue, but it makes for good chest-puffing fun. Hosea gets to be magnanimous, and Stefan gets to play the suffering saint.

Hosea's thinking seafood (shock!), mostly scallops, but also is running with that foie gras he nabbed. Stefan on the other hand doesn't want "a bunch of bullshit," unless of course he had gotten his foie gras. Carla, in keeping with her general style, wants to do meat and potatoes, classed up slightly. This turns out to be one of those "drums in the deep" moments where people who have watched Top Chef know that something bad is happening. Casey suggests to Carla, and eventually convinces her, that the sirloin should be prepared sous-vide. Does this sound like something Carla would normally do? Meditate on that.

The mid-break vignette features a "voodoo" fortune teller visiting the chefs, and Stefan revealing that he's still got a non-culinary boner for Jamie. A nice crystallization of how far off-track Stefan's gotten as the season has progressed. Chasing tail and buying voodoo dolls of his competition, rather than actually going out and winning like he always used to.

When the chefs return to Commander's Palace, Tom greets them with a tray of some crazy-ass foodstuffs. Crab, redfish, and alligator (which I must note I have eaten and written about here). The twist? You'll be making a fourth course--rather, a new first course of a passed appetizer featuring one of these ingredients. To decide the assignments, you will.....EAT THIS KING CAKE. BUM BUM BUMMMMMMM.

King cakes are known for having a small baby icon baked into one section, and the person who gets the baby gets a prize. The chefs dig in, and Hosea (drawer of the first knife, lest you forgot) gets the baby. As winner, he gets to assign all three strange meats. Naturally, he takes redfish. You know where the rest is going, right? Arch-nemesis Stefan gets the gator (and a finger in the confessional from Hosea), and Carla is left with crabs. D'oh!

Final prep and cooking begins with Stefan unceremoniously chopping off an alligator tail (nauseating many a Top Chef live-tweeter, from the looks of it). Carla gets pinched by a crab, but worse is getting sidetracked by them. She doesn't feel like she's focusing on her main three dishes.

Hosea's plan includes a sashimi trio, scallops with foie gras over pain perdu, and venison. Stefan has in mind a meal of halibut and salmon carpaccio, squab with braised cabbage and schupfnudeln (potato noodles that I'm fairly certain were spelled incorrectly by Bravo), and ice cream. Yeah, basically ice cream. Woo. Sous chef Marcel, meanwhile, is quite dubious of Stefan's plan to freeze the salmon in order to slice it very, very thinly.

Carla's got ideas for red snapper with saffron aioli, that sous-vide New York strip sirloin, and a cheese plate that would include a custard tart. In steps sous chef Casey, who opines that it would be just smashing if Carla swapped out the tart for a bleu cheese soufflé. Let me say that again: A SOUFFLÉ. DECIDED ON THIS LATE IN THE GAME. You know you hear it. ::DOOM....DOOM::

The meal is about to begin, and we get to meet the luminaries that will be dining on the finale meal. There's Fabio! Ti Martin, proprietor of Commander's Palace. Renowned French chef Hubert Keller. NOLA chefs Susan Spicer and John Besh (who lost out to that giggling weirdo Michael Symon to become the newest member of Iron Chef: America). Rocco, Toby... Oh, and in a kind of cool random inclusion, Branford Marsalis.

PASSED APPETIZERS

Hosea's blackened redfish on a corn cake with Creole remoulade, corn shoots, and micro salad VS. Stefan's alligator soup with celeriac, parsley, and a puff pastry "crouton" VS. Carla's shiso crab soup with chayote Thai salsa

This course is almost a complete wash. All three chefs put together strong dishes that each offer something exceptional. Hosea's presentation meets if not surpasses his flavor, while Stefan's puff pastry nugget is a welcome change from the usual crouton, and Carla's managed to once again bring out the best flavors of her main ingredient.

FIRST COURSE

Stefan's smoked salmon and halibut carpaccio with microgreens, American caviar, and a citrus vinaigrette VS. Carla's seared red snapper with saffron aioli, braised fennel, and grilled clam VS. Hosea's tuna, hamachi, and black bass sashimi with hot fennel oil, citrus segments, and fried tempura bits

Since when is Marcel so prescient? His disdain for frozen salmon is repeated nearly verbatim by Tom, who notes the watery presentation of Stefan's carpaccio. The winner of this round is Carla, whose flavors are well-balanced. Hosea's dish has promise, but is a bit bland. I would put a hurt on a bowl of tempura bits, though.

SECOND COURSE

Carla's sous-vide sirloin with seared potato rod and a merlot sauce VS. Stefan's pan-seared squab with braised cabbage, foie gras, schupfnudeln, and a grape jus VS. Hosea's seared scallop with foie gras over pain perdu, apple preserves, foie gras foam, and candied pecans

Oh, Carla. When has a chef sacrificed his or her vision for someone else's and succeeded? Seriously, never. Her sirloin by way of Casey is tough and clearly not "Carla," as multiple diners note. Her sauce, however, is great. What's really great, though, is Stefan's squab. It's Tom's favorite dish of the night, and surpasses Hosea's perfectly fine scallop (although High-Livin' Rocco is frankly tired of scallops and foie gras--good on Gail for rolling her eyes!).

(it's at this point in the kitchen, as Stefan is riding Hosea for doing venison when doing glorified chocolate ice cream himself, that Carla royally fucks up the Casey soufflés and chooses not to serve them)

THIRD COURSE

Strefan's straciatella ice cream and chocolate mousse with vanilla syrup and a banana lollipop VS. Carla's apple tart "coin" with bleu cheese, walnut crumble, and cress salad VS. Hosea's pan-roasted venison with chestnut celery root puree, wild mushrooms, and carbonated blackberries via Richard

Gail throws down some serious commentary in this round, expressing relief that Carla didn't come up with such an incomplete and unimpressive dish as her final product, but that it's extremely disappointing that the full course can't be served. She also slams Stefan's dessert as "very 1982" in its construction and presentation. While Hubert thinks it's weak to back out of doing a dessert course because you're not comfortable with it, Fabio repeats exactly what Hosea expressed much earlier in the episode: a sucky and half-hearted dessert is not the last dish anyone wants to serve on Top Chef. Hosea takes this round, though not uncontestedly.

In the kitchen, Carla knows she blew it. She repeats a sentiment expressed way back at the beginning of the episode, one of the ones I withheld at the time, about success being born of continuing to do what got her here. "The parts that my heart and soul were in, were good." Absolutely and truly heartbreaking.

At Judges' Table, Carla cops to taking Casey's advice on the sous-vide and the soufflé. Other than the appetizer, she didn't create a meal that reflected her as a chef. Hosea's glee in being able to assign alligator to Stefan was not hidden from Tom, although it really didn't amount to much. The venison, his best dish of the night, was a good progression but the blackberries were a throwaway gesture. Hosea defends his choice to abstain from dessert. Stefan challenged Tom to say that his frozen salmon didn't taste good, and Tom lived right on up to that challenge. Stefan almost seemed surprised (that's his problem in a nutshell). More praise for the squab, and more delusion from Stefan in defending his dessert as the best way to close out his cooking on Top Chef.

Then, the question no one likes: "why do you deserve to win?" At least it's not "why should X be eliminated?", which is even worse. Stefan points to his (nearly) season-long dominance. Hosea argues that his food represented him and it tasted good. Carla, clearly out of the running, clearly cognizant of what went wrong, simply states, "When I cook my food, it's really delicious." She cries. Stefan, of all people, comes to her shoulder also in tears. For a sometimes-boring ass season, this was some genuine and honestly compelling emotion.

So it's down to Hosea and Stefan (just like Hosea predicted, over and over and over and over...), and the judges start breaking it down. Stefan's squab was the best dish of all of them tonight, but his salmon was a letdown and his dessert was boring and played-out (despite the fact that Toby liked it, but then he's boring and played-out too). Hosea's progression of dishes was the most intelligent, and his venison was the most satisfying final course of the three.

Toby questions Hosea's abstention from dessert, and Tom reminds him that it wasn't a requirement. Stefan's level of soulfulness in his cooking is discussed, and Toby smartly, if pointlessly, remarks that "if we're going to give it to the most soulful chef, we should give it to Carla." At least Carla, my girlfriend comments, got herself a new car.

The chefs come back out, and it's clear they like Carla the best. She gets the most praise, maybe because they can give it to her without spoiling who will win, but maybe because she should have won had she stuck to her guns. As the ringing note of that disappointment dies, Hosea is declared the winner of Season 5 of Top Chef.

Stefan thinks he only lost for the dessert, which is half-true. Carla breaks down for the confessional, but feels vindicated in that she tried to compete in an unconventional way--with love--and succeeded at that. And oh my god, who's that skanky groupie that made it onto the set and latched onto Hos--oh, it's just Leah.

Congratulations, Hosea. I picked you out as a strong candidate back in the first week, and actually thought you had the look of a potential winner in the promos before the season started. I just wish you'd been more exemplary, but then that's the way this show goes: the true innovators stumble now and then, like Richard and Marcel, while the steady and competent chefs generally make it to the end. Carla should have been that chef, but Hosea won it fair and square.

Normally, I'd tell you now that you can stick around for Project Runway recaps, but I'm sure you've heard by now that the entire season (including the finale) is in the can and has no set air date. It's gonna be a weird season if it ever makes it to the screen. I'm not holding my breath. So in the meantime, I'll continue blogging about food, and LOST, and other random crap, and I hope you stay and read.

Last night, we saw Kate return to Jack's side minus the little bambino. Aaron, she told Jack, and specifically his whereabouts, was a hands-off topic. If Jack wanted her to come with him, he was never, ever to ask about what happened to Aaron.

Most folks have surmised that she gave him up, perhaps with the words of Ben (and earlier, Jack) ringing in her ears: "He's not your son." Other folks think she might have been visited by Spectral Claire again, and was convinced to leave Aaron behind rather than "bring him back" to the Island.

Maybe she turned him over to Grandma Littleton. Maybe to her own mother? Social Services?

Nah. I think she killed him.

Dark, eh? This was the first thing we thought of on the LOST Viewing Pedestal (aka the couch) at my house. We've obviously got some unresolved issues.

But think about it. Mrs. Hawking said that the circumstances of Oceanic Flight 815 had to be replicated as closely to the original as possible on Ajira Flight 316. So someone carried a guitar case. Someone arrived in custody. Someone arrived very late.

On 815, someone arrived on the run for murder. Kate. For the murder of a man to whom she did not believe she was related, but who reminded her of terrible things whenever she saw him.

LOST would be awfully daring to introduce such an element, but I think after we've come face to face with time travel, reincarnation, and a fuselage full of rotting, waterlogged corpses, Aaron might have reason to be worried about his future screen time.

ADDED 4/9/09: Clearly, I was wrong. But it would have been awesome, in a nasty and brutal sort of way, no?

It's a good call from Top Chef to film the semi-finals in New Orleans. It allows the show to massage its calendar to show Mardi Gras-themed events without having to force Christmas onto an AIDS awareness event, or Thanksgiving onto the Foo Fighters in late summer.

It also allows for a little more attention to be paid to New Orleans. Some folks might think that the whole post-Katrina thing is stretching thin, but the place still has a good way to go before it's back to business as usual. Getting economic attention is a very good thing; if you've seen Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations episode filmed in NOLA, you know that restaurants there are in dire need of patrons.

Our chefs come into town all schnazzed up from some time away from the cameras and basking in their newfound celebrity. Fabio's got a 'hawk and a very pink scarf (and not a masculine one from the looks of it), Carla straightened the crazy right outta her hair, Stefan got all doughy, and Hosea continuess to be the beanpole doofus he's been all season.

At Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, the chefs meet up with Padma, Tom, and the mighty fireplug that is Emeril Lagasse. He runs ten restaurants in New Orleans. Good thing he's not doing the show anymore; I think he needs the free time.

The Quickfire is an interesting one; the final four won't be doing anything because as it turns out they're not really the final four. Out come Jamie, Jeff, and Leah (as my girlfriend pointed out, someone told Leah how shitty she looked without makeup), who will be competing for a resurrection and potential spot in the finals. The winner will get a spot in this week's Elimination Challenge, but will have to win the Elimination to make it to the finals. Fabio's all peesed.

With one hour to create a dish highlighting the NOLA staple, crawfish, the dead chefs walking get to work. Surprise surprise, Leah's never worked with crawfish either. She ran a seafood station, right? What seafood has she worked with, exactly? Fish sticks? And now Stefan's saying that she's a good chef, too?

Leah immediately falls back on gumbo, which isn't really an "easy" thing to cook, but is an easy thing to conceptualize at least. By the time she serves it to Emeril, however, it's a crawfish soup. Jamie wants to steer clear of the gumbo cliché, and instead whips up a crawfish-topped corn cake with greens, a poached egg, and a tasso ham and andouille cream sauce. At least she and Leah are aware of the holy trinity, if only from watching Food Network.

The win will not go to either of these offerings, however. Jeff, who has finally seen the light about quieting his "creative monkeys," crafts a crawfish version of shrimp-n-grits, using andouille and beer, as well as some crispy okra (knowing that Tom doesn't like slimy okra). This is clearly not the Jeff we came to know, as the clarity and simplicity of the offering was a selling point for Emeril.

Jeff and his new book go back to the line-up with the other 4 chefs, and we get to say goodbye to Jamie and Leah. I could say goodbye to Leah all day. All five competing chefs head to Emeril's Delmonico for a lovely meal (lovely for all except Stefan and Hosea, who of course get into a passive-aggressive pissing match), and then the Hotel Monteleone for the night. The girlfriend chimes in again, telling Hosea (who she has come to loathe) to "stop chewing like a cow!" He must have picked it up from Ariane.

The Elimination Challenge comes early the following morning, as the chefs all arrive at a Mardi Gras...storage warehouse? Museum? There's a bunch of NOLA/Mardi Gras paraphernalia packed into this dark, cavernous space. Obviously, the challenge will be to find Emeril's coffin and drive a wooden spike through his heart.

But that's silly, of course. He can't be killed. No, the challenge will be to cater a masquerade ball. Each chef will create two dishes and one cocktail to serve 100, and one of the dishes has to feature Creole influence. Hosea immediately conflates Creole and cajun cooking, which should surprise no one.

They'll get to cook at Delmonico (and make use of all of Emeril's foodstuffs and hardware), and will serve at the ball. Two chefs will leave at the end of the competition, whether it's Jeff and one other or two chefs other than Jeff (should he win). The winner gets a new Toyota Venza. Did you know the Venza has a whole bunch of doggie-related option accessories? It's a pet package. Off-topic, but cool.

Delmonico really is an amazing place, if you ask Fabio. It's got "all kinds of tools--ovens, stove..." Oh Fabio, your minimal grasp of English is just so damned charming. The chefs all hop aboard those amazing ovens and stoves, and get to work. Except Stefan decides to take a smoke break, impressing exactly no one. Including Tom, who makes a visit to the kitchen for one of the relatively few times this season.

Tom learns that Fabio will be adapting Italian food with Creole flavors, having studied the palate of Creole cooking more than the dishes themselves. Hm, says Tom. Color him dubious. Carla is hand-shucking oysters, and Tom wonders if she knows that she could lightly steam 'em to open 'em up and make her life easier. I'm gonna say no. Hosea's working a roux for the gumbo, and Tom hopes he makes it dark enough. And Stefan, Tom notes, is way too confident. Cocky, even. Welcome aboard, Tom.

The chefs pack up, and Hosea nearly pulls a Marcel and leaves his fish out. With one hour to place and prep before service, Carla is still shucking oysters at the dinner site (the other chefs come to her looking for various forms of assistance, but she notes out loud that none of them are offering to help her shuck oysters--go get 'em, Carla!). The judges arrive, masked, and the part of Toby Young is being played by none other than Gail Simmons, THANK YOU JEEBUS. Tom looks like he wants to stuff his mask down a producer's throat.

Without further ado, the menu for this week's Elimination Challenge:

Jeff
-Fried oyster with andouille and arugula
-Crawfish pots de crème
-Cucumber mojito

Jeff loses some points from me for not knowing how to pronounce "chipotle," but gets strong praise for his clean-flavored mojito. It's the judges' favorite drink of the night. His pot de crème is also imbued with great flavor, and the handmade sausage in his fried oyster dish is praiseworth (as compared to Stefan, at whom Jeff takes a thinly-veiled shot during Judges' Table). Jeff has definitely brought it to this challenge, and is already in the running to win.

Stefan
-Duck and rabbit gumbo over grits
-Apple beignet with pecan brittle
-Black cherry/cranberry/cinnamon with rum

The same cannot be said for Stefan, who A) violates tradition by serving (admittedly tasty, if not quite dark enough) gumbo over (admittedly good) grits rather than rice, B) serves a merely okay beignet whose flavor gets washed out by a C) really terrible cocktail. Of course, Stefan is confident, and also thinks that Hosea's food sucks. I'm shocked--SHOCKED--that he'd say such a thing.

Fabio
-Sausage and rabbit maque choux with grits
-Crawfish and crab stew with caserecci pasta
-Muffaletta bread
-"Trinitini" of macerated red pepper, lime juice, grapefruit, and dark rum

All those masks are making Fabio think of old pornos (he says something like "Beautiful Master," but I'm at work and don't really want to look it up). His food has a great aroma, but from the way-too-zweet cocktail on, the flavor doesn't deliver. The maque choux isn't spicy enough, nor was the sauce on the pasta dish. Handmade pasta earns points, but the flavors aren't deep enough. Things are not looking good for the Euros.

Carla
-Oyster stew with potato, bacon and scallions
-Shrimp and andouille beignet with a shameful BAM of Emeril seasoning
-Cranberry/lime/ginger spritzer, non-alcoholic

Carla's Creole experience is limited, but she's spent the last few challenges showing that minimal experience is less important than strong technique and clarity of concept. Emeril loves the beignet, as does pretty much everyone else. Tom actually chuckles, he likes the stew so much. That was a telling moment for me. I've never seen him taken aback by the superior quality of food before. The NA drink is due to her teetotalling ways, but the lack of booze doesn't seem to turn anyone off, Emeril included. She's serving the beignets as they come out, which means some folks have to wait. This gets praise from Emeril, too. The freshness and flavor are wowing all the judges. Carla has become the dominant chef in this competition, as unlikely as it seemed a month or two ago.

Hosea
-Duck, andouille, chicken gumbo with a (blue?) cornbread muffin on top
-Pecan-crusted catfish with sweet potatoes and a bacon-Tabasco beurre blanc
-Pomegranate and Grand Marnier hurricane

The last couple challenges should have revealed to Hosea that he needs to be much more careful about blending strong traditional recipes with "Hosea-ocity," but he goes ahead and does it again with his dishes this week. This time, however, it appears to have worked in his favor. His gumbo over rice is restaurant-ready by Emeril's estimation, with a deep, cooked-through flavor coming from the dark roux. Tom was concerned for the apparent complicated nature of the catfish dish, but it arrived on the plate with simplicity and harmony. That's the sign that a chef is doing something right, as much as my TV-watching companion might hate to admit it. Hosea's slightly watered-down hurricane (which Emeril notes is the lingua franca of NOLA hurricanes, what with the tourist bar-crush in the French Quarter) has enough flavor to not ruin the success of the offerings.

(Accidental line of the night: Hosea's Tabasco beurre blanc has "the tang I'm looking for at the end of the night," according to Gail. Well, Gail! I declare! Your husband's going to be one happy man, or a lonely one.)

After dinner, the chefs get their beads the easy way, with no flashing. This is good, because no one wants to see Hosea's pigeon chest. Although come to think of it, he didn't appear to have any beads even without a flashing requirement. Everyone packs up and heads to Judges' Table.

My pre-judging thought was that Jeff didn't have enough to make it all the way. As I thought about it during judging, however, my mind changed. I don't think people would have been outraged if his dishes got him the win. Moreover, there were two chefs who produced a clearly lacking menu, and Jeff was not one of them. A Jeff win would have sent home the two poorer efforts of Fabio and Stefan, whose shitty attitude continues to bring him down.

Stefan doesn't do much to endear himself to the judges with his "I'm an established, older chef. If I win, I win; if I don't, oh well" mentality. The judges note that his food lacked soul. Carla, bless her heart, was worried about the amount of bay in the stew, with absolutely no basis in reality. Hosea's ability to transport fish that didn't end up too dry impresses Emeril. Fabio's flavors were shallow and lacked nuance and boldness.

Emeril gets to announce the winner of what turned out to be a really good competition, with successes and few outright failures and an outcome that was difficult to predict right up to the end. For strengths of balance, flavor, temperature, and creative simplicity, he pronounces Carla to be the winner, which unfortunately sends Jeff home. I'm of two minds on the gimmick judging, because while his return was clearly an exceptional situation, the quirk of needing to win to move forward allowed for what happened next.

That is, Stefan sticking around for another unimpressive showing. With Hosea obviously safe, Stefan's retention means Fabio, zweet Fabio, has to go home to the wife and grand-mama. It sucks, but the reason he lost is the reason for pretty much any and all stumbles he had throughout the season. Stefan on the other hand has lost the drive to win (if he ever had it), and instead is just fucking with everyone. With Carla turning into the prohibitive favorite, I don't see how Stefan can muster the discipline to surpass her in the grand finale.

I think the judges should have massaged this finale so Jeff could win and Stefan and Fabio could (rightfully) go home. But it's hard to argue for the same old one-week-only judging standard when Jeff's presence was an exception. So I guess I can live with it. Next week is the big tamale, where the chefs will have to make their best three-course meal for the judges. They'll have mystery helpers as usual, and Stefan and Hosea appear to finally get down to hair-pulling and eye-scratching in the kitchen. And why does Rocco of all people get finale duty?

What do you get if you hook up with me on Twitter? Monologues like this, which I personally find very funny.

*****

God, the music in this Subway is AWFUL.
12:04 PM Feb 13th from mobile web

Oh, sweet Jesus... Bread. And not the "we bake it fresh" kind.
12:05 PM Feb 13th from mobile web

Are they trying to keep teenagers out or something? Like a hawk statue on a barn?
12:06 PM Feb 13th from mobile web

That hawk thing is only shown to work on bats, not teenagers. Though it would be cool to see a hawk herding a pack of P!atD fans.
12:09 PM Feb 13th from mobile web

Note to self: get hawk, go to mall.
12:10 PM Feb 13th from mobile web

*****

The only trick to Twitter is learning to read from the bottom up, or standing on your head. I think.

Island nerd-king Daniel Faraday compared time to a string in the season premiere, "Because You Left." I'd like to refine that to a guitar string.

One of the beefs people have with the time flashes this year is that the concept of recollection and recognition seems fuzzy. Why didn't Rousseau recognize Jin back on the beach?, for example.

Very simply, my explanation is this: what happens paradoxically in the past (someone who wasn't there the "first time through" comes in and changes something) doesn't come to bear until the "bleeding edge" of time. Think of time like you'd think of space: since the Big Bang, space has been expanding. That means there's a leading edge, a blast radius or event horizon.

Paradoxical changes in the past only come to bear on the future at the furthest extent of that future. That's why Desmond remembered Faraday in "real time," as opposed to, say, the day Locke pounded on the hatch window.

The guitar string analogy comes in to explain it all thusly: you can wag around a guitar string all you want, but it won't make any noise unless it's attached at both the beginning and the end.

The playoff matchups are set. The championship is in sight for one of the four remaining chefs. We're one week closer to the end of Season 5 of Top Chef, which might be cause for anticipation, remorse, or (I'm guessing this covers a lot of us) relief.

Relief that maybe Season 6 will offer a little more competitive balance. Relief that we'll have a respite from Toby Young, if not an apology for his presence. Relief that OH MY GOD LEAH IS FINALLY FUCKING GONE AND SHE'S NEVER COMING BACK.

Ahem. (composure, composure...)

There was actually an episode in between the opening credits and the dumbest clapper-monkey to ever make it within a stone's throw of the finals; I'm going to have to restrain myself and my Schadenfreude and actually convey it to you.

As we saw in the promo last week, this week would feature some real all-star chefs (not just Camille and Miguel...you remember them, right?). Right off the bat, we get whiz kid Wiley Dufresne (it's French, Fabio. It's not doo-FREZ-nee, ya meatball) imparting another breakfasty Quickfire Challenge to the chefs. Cook me an egg!, he intones, And make it interesting!

"Interesting" coming from Wiley Doofreznee sends everyone scrambling for their tabletop chemistry sets. Continuing their season-long Euro mind meld, Stefan and Fabio both make a panna cotta with mango puree filling that looks like a poached egg when you cut into it. Hosea wants to make egg whites into a nori substitute and tempura-fry a whole egg. Leah...well, Leah does something with bacon. I am shocked--SHOCKED--at this.

Only Carla stays relatively simple. She thinks of green eggs and ham, busts out some spinach (crazy science!) to turn the eggs greenish, and uses jalepeño oil to dot the landscape green. She knows she's not big on molecular gastronomy, and does what she knows (and does it calmly, as opposed to Fabio who is "running like Flesh"--that's "Flash" for the rest of us). She and Stefan get top honors from Wiley, and in the continuing drama of Carla-as-dark horse, she takes the win.

Out comes the knife block, and the chefs begin drawing knives, and names. Each knife represents a pillar of the culinary community: Fabio draws Lydia Bastianich (Italian specialty, which makes Fabio verr verr happy). Hosea gets Susan Ungaro. Stefan chooses Marcus Samuelsson, who is the improbable combination of Egyptian ancestry and Swedish nationality. Leah gets the laziest of all draws (natch): Wiley Doofreznee. Carla, with the last draw, picks Jacques Pepin (yes, anonymous commenter from last week, it's the old guy I didn't recognize last week). As QF winner, she can swap chefs with anyone, but decides to stick with what she's got.

The assignment is simple, if extremely morbid. Each of these chefs has chosen the meal they'd like to have as their last meal. The TC chefs will have to create that dish for the chef they each drew out of the block. Lydia: roasted chicken and potatoes. Jacques: squab and peas. Susan: shrimp scampi. Wiley: eggs Benedict. Marcus: salmon and spinach.

There's a nice, and telling, vignette this week wherein the remaining chefs all dine at Season 1 winner Harold's restaurant, Perilla. All the chefs, Leah in particular, talk up the difficulty of this season. Microwaves! The horror! Harold clearly is holding back his disdain for this crew, and it figures that Stefan would think that there's a big difference from Season 1 to Season 5. Yes, Stefan, there is. In Seasons 1 through 4, you wouldn't be running away with the competition.

Carla's definitely winning fans from week to week, as she is clearly having the most pure fun in the process. It's not really that far from what I said a few weeks back, when it looked like she just wanted to be a part of Top Chef. I still think that's true, but she really has shown that she wants to win Top Chef. But the way she cracked herself up with the "two peas in a pod" line really is infectious and appealing.

Hosea and Stefan continue their confessional sniping. It's unclear why Hosea thinks he's Stefan's #1 competitor, or why he thinks each week will bring ultimate victory for him, but he's running with it. Stefan just makes another comment about Hosea's balls. And Leah. Leah stands in Whole Foods and--I'm not making this up--asks "Where are eggs, and butter?"

In the kitchen, Carla continues her "less is more" philosophy. Chefs be workin', and then FABIO BREAKS HIS DAMNED FINGER. Like, for real. I don't know how it happened, and people watching and posting on Twitter who have worked in professional kitchens don't really know how it could have happened, but boy, did it happen. Fabio, to his credit (and to the glee of his ever-growing fan base), says he'd rather chop it off (a la another footballer, Ronnie Lott), sear the wound on the flattop, and deal with 9 fingers tomorrow. You fuckin' tell 'em, Fabio!

Of course, this kind of bravado brings about certain complications, like being unable to peel all those potatoes and cipollinis you're working with. "I got so many keek in my ass," he moans. I am so using this line from now on. He struggles onward, and as Tom comes in just to tell the chefs to not be an embarrassment, the serving begins.

As does the HOLY SACRILEGE, BATMAN. No, this challenge isn't just a "last meal" challenge--it's a "Last Supper" challenge, replete with long table, single-side seating, and an oddly soft focus from the cameras.

Leah serves first. Her slow-poached egg over challah and a lightly-dressed salad on the side don't blow anyone away. The egg is undercooked, and the hollandaise is too thin: both are signs of playing it too safely. Sage analysis: "don't bother me with salad on my last day."

Stefan's salmon and spinach dish goes next. He's in his wheelhouse in terms of flavors and ingredients. He tries to prepare his spinach two ways to cover his bases (Carla's incredulous at this decision); turns out his two ways are pretty indistinguishable. Worse, his salmon is vastly overcooked, and his potatoes don't have enough crispiness. The seasoning is on, the preparation is definitively off.

Hosea continues to provide good napping opportunities with his shrimp scampi presentation. It's unimpressive, kind of boring, kind of okay. The shrimp have probably been over-creamed (no jokes please), and under-garlicked. He knew he was walking a line between traditional and "signature Hosea" (whatever that is), but the judges don't much care for his blending of approaches. The shrimp are, at least, pretty well-cooked.

Fabio's difficulties in chopping up his whole roasted chicken behind him, his meal comes next. Finally, a dish that everyone really likes. Mister Doofreznee-if-you-please feels that this is this is the first dish wherein the chef really channeled the requested dish. It's simple, it's tasty, it could go straight to a restaurant menu. Except not his salad, which Wiley compares to airline food. Ouch.

Carla closes the meal with her squab and hand-shelled peas. Susan Ungaro has been made a convert to squab with Carla's effort. There's a clear generational difference between the older chefs (who like squab more cooked-through) and the younger (who prefer it to be more rare than Carla served hers), but everyone agrees that it was well-presented and possessed of a clarity of purpose (she's got something working with that simplicity and "less-is-more". Jacques loves his peas, and everyone backs him up.

The divisions between top and bottom are obvious, and Padma comes to the stew room to call everyone out. As is always the case, there were flaws with each dish. Carla's peas and Fabio's chicken, however, are distinctly at the top of the mountain. The airline critique doesn't sit well with Fabio, though; he's not finding the humor. Poor guy--he does have a broken finger, y'know.

After the first round of commentary, I am sure that Stefan is going home. His flaws were more glaring than even Leah's. But then it strikes me that, in old-school Iron Chef fashion, we haven't heard the full commentary on each aspect of Stefan's dish. We don't know if the salmon at least tasted good. I still think he could have gone home, but I wasn't sure of it anymore.

The judges debate whether or not to take Fabio's finger into account in the judging. We don't know what their decision was, due to some fancy cuts from the editors, but either way, they liked Fabio's dish the best. For a rough couple hours working with the food he most enjoyed, Fabio takes home the last win of the regular season and secures a spot in the (semi!) finals in New Orleans. Carla, in what might be the most surprising season-long advance in Top Chef history, comfortably arrives at second place and a spot in the semi-finals as well.

There's not much more to say about Leah getting axed than has already been said, by me and anyone else throughout the last few weeks. She's awful, both personally (from everything we've seen, anyway) and professionally. Carla's been pretty on-key lately, but her comment about Leah beig a talented chef is just plain out of left field. I don't see it. Her bacon was greasy (as have a lot of her other dishes), and really--not knowing where the eggs and butter are? Not deboning a salmon fillet before slicing it? No chops. None. Sayonara.

Sage analysis from me here: everyone's gunning for Stefan. Hosea's got a hard-on for taking him down, and now we see that Fabio wants to bring Stefan down a notch as well. Only Carla has nothing to say in the trash talk department. She's got the right kind of focus through the last couple episodes, and now the competition moves to NOLA and superstar catchphrase generator Emeril Lagasse. She's square in her wheelhouse, and I see her making a serious run at winning out.

The finals start next week! Stay tuned for Fabio's new mohawk, and maybe some cooking as well.

image credits Deadspin and John Reardon (from the blog linked above), respectively.

It's been one hairy week. Work's been a mess; I'm down to one clerk and a shitload of stuff to accomplish. I've been working on two new articles for thedailypage.com (one just went up today, on the new comfort food dinner events at L'Etoile, and the other is a new Fringe Foods coming later this week).

So my apologies for letting last week's Top Chef recap linger at the top of the queue.

Mmm...queue. I've been in a very barbecue place lately. Between the meal at L'Etoile last night and the trip to Appleton last weekend that included a bountiful visit to Bates City Bar-B-Cue (that I just can't seem to shut up about), I've been downing slow-cooked smoky pork in alarming quantities.

I think this is probably indicative of my eagerness for warm weather again. The yearning for summer has been hitting me earlier and earlier the last few years. I've always been a fall/winter guy. This summer's kind of a big deal for me, though (y'know, gettin' married and all).

You can't fault me for looking ahead to sunny weekends, maybe finally having a house of our own, and being able to use the big grill for the first time in years. It's a Simpsons grill. Mmmm....grill power.

See you tomorrow for a hot, fresh, Top Chef recap.

I hate to give the chefs, especially Eric Ripert, short shrift with this week's recap title, but it needs to be said as often as possible. The Toby Young Era needs to come to a close immediately if not sooner. Pablo fucking Escolar? Are you kidding me? This wouldn't even be funny in print; in person, it's the pinnacle of that cheek-flushing embarrassment that you feel for all of mankind for having to share a genome with this clapper-monkey.

I wanted to title this recap something about za'atar, the heretofore unknown spice who got top billing throughout much of the Elimination Challenge. Props if you picked za'atar in your Top Chef Fantasy League draft; you earned some points last night. It joins vadouvan and last year's ras al hanout on the "Hesaywhat?" Index of Top Chef seasonings. Still don't know that Penzey's will be seeing a run on either, but who knows?

The producers are clearly trying to burn us out with the surety of knowing that face-time with the Sidekick 2 will get a brother eliminated, because it's been wrong as often as it's been right this season. Fabio gets to call home to the wifey this time, and it's as yelly and multilingual an affair as you'd hope or expect. I just wanna peench his cheeks.

Everyone's favorite French teddy bear chef, Eric Ripert, is waiting with Padma in the kitchen. Just in time for the announcement of his new show, conspicuously not on Bravo. I'd guess that he's annoyed with being billed in the press as "frequent Top Chef guest judge" almost more than "award-winning chef of Le Bernardin," but I don't think dude gets annoyed at anyone. Could there be a better or more likeable foil for someone like Anthony Bourdain? Don't think so.

The Quickfire Challenge will pay respect to Ripert's reputation as a piscatorial whiz; the chefs will compete in a three-round fish prep tournament. Round one: fillet two sardines, using Ripert's. Soft, small, and with delicate bone structure, these guys prove a challenge for pretty much everyone except Stefan (typical). Jamie and Carla are eliminated, while Leah of all people does a respectable job and finishes second (despite whining, "I should just go home right now" while considering her crappy track record with fish).

Round two: arctic char, same task. This time, Leah actually just stops in mid-debone, and gives up. She literally gives up, retires, stops working. Just stands there, arms crossed, looking pathetic. This time, Hosea's fish knowledge shines through and he is clearly the best of this round. Fabio and of course Leah are done.

Round three: this is the one everyone was waiting for. Freshwater eel, freshly killed but still twitching and writhing. It's Hosea vs. Stefan (again!) FTW. Hosea has clearly never watched Iron Chef, as he is clueless to that which Stefan is hep: nail down the head and peel back from there. Stefan's technique is pro-level, and his station is immaculate afterwards. Hosea's fillets look like hell, although in a vacuum they're not bad for a first-timer. Stefan takes the win.

Eric invites all the chefs over for lunch at Le Bernardin the following day, and naturally this means that they all wake up at 10:30. Lazy bastards. Tom and Eric are waiting for them at the table. Everyone will enjoy a six-course meal...which should have been clue enough as to the Elimination Challenge, although it's not made clear until after the meal. Each chef will have to re-create one of the six dishes they just enjoyed (or not, in the case of Jamie, who was bored with the food by the third course).

Stefan, as QF winner, gets to choose. The rest go to the knife block. He picks the baked lobster with asparagus and hollandaise; Hosea tells the confessional that this is typical Stefan, and the dish is the easiest of the six. Maybe, but dude beat your ass in the QF, fish man. You win, you get to pick the easy dish.

The knives assign the rest: Carla gets oil-poached escolar with potato crisps in a red wine béarnaise. Hosea chooses za'atar-spiced monkfish with black garlic. Uninterested and sucky Leah selects the very alliterative baked mahi mahi with white miso and matsutake mushroom miso sauce. Fabio will prepare the sourdough-encrusted red snapper (or znapper, as he says it) with basil consomme. Lastly, sourpuss Jamie is awarded the sauteed black bass with braised celery and Serrano ham peppercorn sauce. That was the dish she disliked the most from the meal, and I'm sorry to say that it serves her right for being a grouch.

The chefs will get two hours to prep and practice, as well as receive some constructive criticism from Chef Ripert, and then will head to the Le Bernardin main kitchen to do the final cooking for the judges.

There are some new experiences for the chefs in this challenge, which is a very good thing. Jamie's never broken down a Serrano ham. Carla's never poached in olive oil before. Hosea's never used za'atar (who has?). On the other hand, Stefan's old hat at pulling out lobster butts, and someone somewhere assigned Leah to be the head fish cook at a restaurant. With her lack of intuition and technique (see: big, Paula Deen-sized hunk of butter in her miso sauce), I don't know that I'd assign her to make cat food.

Line of the night isn't so much of a line as it is a phrase. Fabio's delightful pronunciation results in him calling Eric Ripert (pronounced like "repair") "Eric Ripper," like he was some sort of serial killer. Now that show would not be on PBS.

When Eric the Ripper comes around to check up on the chefs, it's clear there's still work to be done. Hosea has shellacked his monkfish in za'atar, and Stefan cooked what should have been raw asparagus. We learn later that Jamie "didn't have time" for Eric to taste her dish, so she went without critique. Friggin' martyr complex. Quit being such a grumpy asshole.

The time has come for the chefs to serve the judges (Ripert, Colicchio, Padma, and the insufferable Toby Young). Fabio's znapper goes first, and I'd like to add that it was very nice of Bravo to include side-by-side photos of the original dish and the TC recreation. Clearly, Fabio over-toasted the sourdough; it's too done, and too thick anyway. While the subtlety is lacking (a common theme, as you will see), Eric is generally pleased and thinks the flavor is very close.

Leah struggles to get her fish cooked evenly, and serves an inconsistent meal to the judges. Eric's is overcooked, Tom's is undercooked. She looks dour and mopey, as usual. Only the flavor of ginger comes through, and everything else is muted and bland (kind of like Leah!). The miso is almost completely absent, as she just plopped a little bit under each piece of fish. The sauce is oily (hello, butter) and doesn't integrate with the miso at all. Toby also takes an inexplicable and apropos-of-nothing shot at Caribbean fish. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

Ahem. Stefan goes next, and plates some fine looking lobster along with a hollandaise that looks more like spinach-artichoke dip. Eric reveals at the table that they make theirs in a blender, while Stefan did it by hand. Even with the beyond-viscous sauce, Padma tells Eric that Stefan is "dangerously nipping at [his] heels." Clearly, Stefan is the front-runner once again.

Longshot Carla, though, has something to say about that. She's classically trained in French cooking, mind you. While 20 minutes is insufficient to get the frying oil hot enough for her chips, she deduces that the red wine "béarnaise" isn't really a béarnaise and nails it. Eric, who appeared to be warming to Carla at lunch, praises her faithfulness to the original concept. Tom is impressed.

Hosea the fish man comes up with his monkfish, and he's not riding a wave of confidence, exactly. His fish looks wet, sloppy, and overseasoned -- and turns out to be wet, sloppy, and overseasoned. The fish, Eric explains, is seared before seasoning is applied, rather than encrusted (wouldn't the menu have called it "encrusted," Hosea?) before cooking. The sauce is pretty close to a match, though, so at least Hosea's doing something right. Still, Tom criticizes him for being the fish guy and apparently not knowing that monkfish needs to rest before being sliced. It's bad when you're even less precise than Leah, bro.

Jamie pops up from inside her garbage can to offer up a lackluster piece of black bass. In her creative lethargy, she leaves the celery over heat for too long, and it reduces to nothing but overcooked celery and salt. Yum! She knows it, and has to serve it anyway. Meh meh meh. It's a salt lick. The dish looks close, but Toby's hyperbole-meter is pegged on the less-than-mediocrity of Jamie's performance. Eric, to his credit, is obviously and rightfully uncomfortable with Toby's method of expression. Good on ya, Eric.

Padma comes to the stew room and calls out Fabio, Stefan, and Carla. They're the obvious top three. Stefan, pleased with his performance, is only knocked for his thick sauce, and knocked lightly at that. The only thing that will keep him from winning this is whether degree of difficulty, and the distance between baseline skill and how close the chefs came to approximating Eric's skill, will weigh more heavily than whether the final dish tasted close to the original.

Carla is the obvious competition for Stefan this time around. While Fabio defeated Eric's expectation of burned bread and made a respectable and tasty znapper, Carla took arguably the most challenging dish and picked up on the right hints and took the food in the right direction. There were no major flaws to her recreation; only the soggy chips. If only Toby were as flawless. His "Pablo Escolar" line was forced, unfunny, and clearly left the room in awkward silence for a few beats.

But in the end, even Carla's superlative effort could not carry her past Stefan's excellent technique and mimicry; he wins one hell of a prize. He'll get to shadow Eric at his three restaurants, get put up at a swanky hotel, and then accompany Ripert to the Food and Wine Festival at Pebble Beach. Oh, and he gets a copy of Eric's book too.

Out come the losers, and everyone at the judges' table is scowling except Ripert. Seriously, how could anyone not like this guy? Hosea takes his lumps for the errors of his technique, and at least claims that he knows what he did wrong without the judges telling him. True or not, Tom gives him credit for proper hindsight (that's always been a little bewildering to me, that the judges buy that as often as they do).

Leah, on the other hand, had no understanding of her dish whatsoever. Clearly wasn't paying attention at lunch, and presented an un-subtle, greasy pile of blah. Tom also calls her out for quitting during the Quickfire; he asks if she feels like this it the time to quit the whole thing, and of course she speaks up for her renewed conviction.

Padma wished she could have quit Jamie's course (that's how you do a cornball pun, Toby), as it was unpleasant both to the tongue and to the eye. Tom notes again that she appears to "get it," but couldn't put "it" into practice. The dish was basically inedible, however. That's not good.

So despite a complete failure in all aspects of chefdom (and a really ugly duckface pout), Leah survives another week and is now one elimination away from the final four (which appears to be the predetermined goal of this season). Jamie's awful black bass, born of a terrible attitude toward things she dosn't like, gets her booted. I won't miss her; she did nothing to endear herself to anyone but herself, as far as I'm concerned.

Next week: There's apparently Vaseline and a star filter on the lens as the chefs try to not embarrass Tom in front of Wiley Dufresne and some old guy who could die. And Fabio damn near cuts off a finger.

Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC was notorious for its continuity problems. No character's back story, within the comic books, was entirely self-consistent and reliable. For example, Superman originally couldn't fly (he could instead leap over an eighth of a mile), and his powers came from having evolved on a planet with stronger gravity than Earth's. Over time, he became able to fly, his powers were explained as coming from a yellow sun, and a more complex origin back story was invented. ... There was also an issue of character aging. For instance, Batman, an Earth-born human being without superpowers, retained his youth and vitality well into the 1980s despite having been an active hero during World War II, and his sidekick Robin never seemed to age beyond adolescence in over 30 years.

These issues were addressed during the Silver Age by DC creating parallel worlds in a multiverse: Earth-One was the contemporary DC Universe, which had been depicted since the advent of the Silver Age; Earth-Two was the parallel world where the Golden Age events took place, and where the heroes who were active during that period had aged more or less realistically since that time; Earth-Three was an "opposite" world where heroes were villains, and historical events happened the reverse of how they did in real life (such as, for instance, President John Wilkes Booth being assassinated by a rebel named Abraham Lincoln); Earth Prime was ostensibly the "real world," used to explain how real-life DC staffers (such as Julius Schwartz) could occasionally appear in comics stories; and so forth. If something happened outside current continuity (such as the so-called "Imaginary Stories" that were a staple of DC's Silver Age publications), it was explained away as happening on a parallel world, a premise not dissimilar to the company's current "Elseworlds" imprint.