The TV Zone

Hung won; no surprise there. He was the acknowledged leader in technical skills, and the judges wisely stopped harping on his inability “to cook with love” when push came to shove. Two weeks ago, culinary eminence Andre Soltner had identified Hung as the one he’d hire. Enough said.

Dale did himself proud, but Casey seemed to fall apart. She’s had execution problems in the past (remember the raw elk?) but her great strength was her mature, restrained taste. She was always the one contestant you could be counted on not to clutter up her dish with extraneous ingredients, but there she was putting salmon roe on two of her four dishes.

For me, the finale failed to redeem what had become a boring season of Top Chef. The judges often said that the level of cooking this season was higher than it had ever been. Who am I to argue? That is so not the point. The judges get to taste the food that the contestants cook. The viewers can only watch.

Project Runway, on which Top Chef is modeled, is the perfect competition show. What the contestants are creating is essentially visual, and we, the audience, can judge the finished product because we can see the finished product. Ditto with Dancing with the Stars or Extreme Makeover or even Top Hair—or whatever it’s called.

The essential problem with Top Chef is that we can’t legitimately judge the finished results because we can’t taste them. So we must rely on the contestants’ personalities and conflicts for our fun. This round of contestants, talented as they were, just weren’t that much fun to watch.

I’m looking forward to Project Runway.