Food Network Star 6/19/11

I'm posting the comments from both myself and Dave, since Dave is out of town.  I know I'm an episode behind, but we just watched this episode on Wednesday and it seemed like a good one to start with.


So, our fearless (except for Alicia) contestants enter a new day of competition having lost two players instead of one in the last episode.  Their Camera Challenge is using chocolate candies of different sorts in savory entrees.  Our first reaction: Susie plus mole should equal WIN, but will it?  In the end it does, but not as much as Jyll's coconut shrimp, which wins her the right to choose her team for the Star Challenge.  We also learn that Jeff has a mojo-collecting headband to avoid sweating into his food like he did in the last episode.

Between the challenges, Chris tries to help another player (Vic, I believe) to regroup for the Star Challenge, saying, "Just get pissed off and do better."  I generally think Chris is an idiot, but he actually gave some good advice there.

For the Star Challenge, Duff and Robert Irvine challenge teams to make desserts, with 2 collective desserts per team and one dessert per person.  Robert directs his team to create over-the-top impossible desserts with interesting flavor combinations.  Duff, channeling the little boy inside of him as usual, directs his team to create sophisticated desserts that a 6-year-old would love.  Jyll gets to choose not only her team, but which challenge her team will face.  Jyll takes Duff's challenge and picks all of the girls except Penny, leaving her and the boys on the other team and creating the teams I then called Queen Bees and Wannabes.

The Queen Bees and the Wannabes end up with vastly different leadership styles between them that highlight the differences often seen between men and women on teams.  The Queen Bees fall into a collaborative pattern where they each add to the ideas and focus on how much fun they had together.  This works well in terms of coming up with ideas, but not as well in the kitchen, where Orchid and others feel that leadership is lacking.  The Wannabes, on the other hand, struggle some over who is the leader.  Chris tries to take charge and be everywhere and doing everything, but Justin B and others on the team have the attitude of, "He may think he's the leader, but I don't care what he says."  Chris is in the middle of everything and not doing a good job of keeping ANYTHING clean or making his food or his contribution to the collaborative dish.  When Chef Robert comes in and sees the kitchen, he fires Chris from the leadership role.  Robert gets called "the swift hammer of justice" here, which is amusing given that on Dinner: Impossible he tries to avoid the swift hammer of justice by completing his tasks!  The team nominates Justin B, who shows a very different leadership style, coordinating tasks rather than being in the middle of all of them.  Figures that I'd end up talking about leadership on the first real post, when the main contributors so far are an advisory chair, a section chair, and the national president of a service fraternity that has leadership as a cardinal principle.  I guess I never really end up getting that far away from APO no matter what I do!

Dave had a couple of priceless comments about the desserts that people made.  Although they ended up as pancakes due to a lack of frying oil, Susie originally tried to make churros.  This led to Dave saying that we would have "a little Benicio del Churro action" on the Duff team.  Also, when Robert came to inspect the Wannabes, he asks Chris what's impossible about his dish.  Dave, speaking as Chris: "What's impossible is that I don't have the skill to pull it off."

The teams go back home to destress before the evaluation, and the girls use an ingredient that Dave finds inferior.  "Box wine?  Seriously?  I don't care if it's for sangria!"

During the evaluation, the Wannabes win and are all safe for that week.  Dave's reaction to this: "Well, Chris, you got lucky.  Your team bailed you out.  And now I have to look at you on my tv for another week."  Justin B is criticized again for his lack of personality, and Bob tells him, "I'm waiting for you to come out of your shell.  Is that something you want to do?"  Dave replies for Justin, "No."  I think Dave's right, looking at the look on his face when Bob asked that.

During the evaluation of the Queen Bees, Dave thinks that Susie is being unfair in saying that she doesn't see Orchid growing as a competitor.  "Susie wants to see her growing, but how can she grow when she's already so good?"  My response was that, for the people that survive to the end, this is the ultimate training program.  Orchid does still have some weaknesses (canned oysters, anyone?), and Susie would like to see her work on them.  Dave: "Being the frontrunner in the beginning is dangerous!  Then again, it did work well for Aarti last season."

When they evaluate Jyll, the Big Three criticize her lack of leadership in the Star Challenge, reminding her of what she has said in the past about not being competitive and asking whether she has the desire to win.  Jyll defends this by essentially saying that she does not want to be like Penny in the last episode.  Dave: "See, now Jyll starts to get it...or not.  She really doesn't want to be cut-throat.  Cut-throat is digging through the trash and seeing all your competitors' food in there.  Competitive is wanting to win but doing it graciously...enough.  Maybe she doesn't have that at all."

In the end, Alicia goes home and tears up again.  I know that if I were ever on the show (not that it's likely to happen, but a girl can dream, right?), I'd have problems with self-confidence and tearing up too easily.  The ultimate question is, would I end up like Aarti or Alicia?

At the end, we have the group preparing for the next week, a little commercial clip with Jyll, and scenes from 6/26.  Chris says he's going to do better next time, and Dave says, "Chris, didn't you say that same thing last week?  Please, Chris, go the f*&% to sleep!!."  As Jyll repeats words too many times in her clip, Dave decides, "Jyll, I'm starting to love love love you a little less less less."  We learn that the next week involves cooking for the cast of Cougar Town, a frat boy's dream, and Dave asks, "Hey, Chris, think you can handle it?"

As soon as we or any other authors get a chance to watch the episode from 6/26, we'll put up a new post.  Until next time, boys and girls!