[Televisionary]

"Welcome back." No truer words were ever spoken than on this week's episode of Top Chef: Las Vegas ("Culinary Olympics") in which the five remaining chefs faced their toughest challenge--a scaled down mini-version of the famed Bocuse d'Or--before getting cut down to the four chefs who would travel from Las Vegas to Napa for the season finale. To say that anything was possible is a gross understatement. It literally came down to the wire as the judges decided which of the five was the most relatively weak. To make it this far is no small feat in and of itself, especially given the caliber of chefs this season (overall, anyway) and it was clear that the judges had quite a lot of affection for each of the remaining competitors. Likewise, this week's installment was also a reminder of just how innately talented each of the remaining chefs is. I can't think of another season where all five remaining chefs were at the same level of skill as they are here.

I'm not quite sure what to make of Bravo's newest culinary competition series Chef Academy , which launches tonight. I'm a huge foodie and Top Chef might just be one of my life's main obsessions but I couldn't work up any appetite for the soggy and tasteless Chef Academy , which plays as a budget chain knock-off of the glossy and well-edited Top Chef . Chef Academy revolves around hotheaded French chef Jean Christophe Novelli, a Columbo -obsessed Michelin star winner who moves to Los Angeles with his pregnant fiancee to open up a West Coast outpost of his celebrated London-based Novelli Academy Cookery School. I could have perhaps gotten behind a docudrama that focuses on Novelli's efforts to get his Venice, California cooking academy off the ground but that's not the route that Chef Academy's producers go, instead transforming it into a reality competition series as Novelli selects nine students for his academy and attempts to transform them into chef

I have to give the producers of Bravo's addictive culinary competition series Top Chef some major credit: they know how to apply just the right pressure on the contestants to have some of them take risks and succeed while others crack under the strain. This week's episode of Top Chef: Las Vegas ("Strip Around the World") was no exception and, at this point in the competition, I would expect nothing less from the reality series' challenge organizers than some seriously arduous challenges that put these chefs through their paces. After all, the point of a reality competition isn't to create an easy environment for success but to force contestants to succeed beautifully in spite of the many obstacles being thrown at them. This week found the chefs preparing breakfast in bed for Padma and the always lovely Nigella Lawson... and they would have to do so under a tight deadline and in a remarkably cramped kitchen that only allowed two of them to cook at a time. Lat

Where there's Marcel, there's drama. Last night's Top Chef Reunion Dinner , a nice twist on the culinary series retrospective, offered both Marcel and drama in equal measure. After all, there's been maybe one other Top Chef contestant (cough, Tiffany, cough) who has stirred up as much conflict and confrontation as Marcel has. From the head-shaving almost-incident to the post-series bottle-throwing, Marcel has been at the heart of some memorably tense moments, including one from the Season Five finale that had never before been aired in which he suddenly becomes involved in a verbal battle with supercilious judge Toby Young. While I already hinted at my thoughts about the Top Chef reunion special (you can read my advance review here ), now that the episode has aired we can discuss some specific details from last night's special. Personally, I really enjoyed watching the reunion. While it was a break from the competition itself (as well as the current series), it of

It's hard to believe at times that we're nearly almost done with the sixth season of Bravo's addictive culinary competition series Top Chef . What better time then to take a look back than just before we anoint another new Top Chef to join the ranks of the blessed few? Tomorrow night, Bravo will take a break from the current competition for the Top Chef Reunion Dinner , which will offer audiences a chance to see cast members from previous seasons of Top Chef come together for an evening of conversation, competition, and confrontation. And, yes, those three things play an equal weight in the unfolding of the evening, which is hosted by Top Chef: New York competitor Fabio Viviani at Social Hollywood. Joining Fabio for the reunion are such noteworthy former competitors as Harold Dieterle, Tiffany Faison, Marcel Vigneron, Ilan Hall, Dale Levitski, Casey Thompson, Hung Huynh, Richard Blais, Lisa Fernandes, Carla Hall, and Stefan Richter. I had the opportunity to watch the reun

First off, I am not a vegetarian. I've flirted with vegetarianism at certain points in my life (perhaps, most notably, a reaction to dining hall food at university), but I've been a blissfully happy carnivore for the majority of my life and I don't see that changing anytime soon. That said, vegetarians often get a raw deal in restaurants and sometimes have to deal with chefs that don't understand how to satiate someone's hunger without the inclusion of meat. But vegetarian cuisine can be just as nourishing, comforting, and filling as carnivorous dishes; it's just a matter of replacing protein with protein and making sure that the dish is more than a collection of cooked vegetable side dishes. Last night's episode of Top Chef ("Meat Natalie") found the cheftestants grappling with the unexpected. After arriving at Tom Colicchio's craftsteak in Las Vegas, they all made a very big assumption and believed that they would be creating steak-based dis

Cameras are funny things. They're meant to capture the reality of a moment but there's something inherently artificial about them being there in the first place. Reality television isn't exactly reality as it exists; it's an edited-together version of actual events, threaded together into a cohesive narrative for television. It gives us an image of reality but not the whole picture. The reason I'm bringing this up is that I'm still in shock about last night's dramatic and intensely stressful Flipping Out: Season Three Reunion on Bravo. While the reunion special brought up a number of intriguing (and in some cases hilarious) plot strands from the third season of Flipping Out including "rollover Number Two minutes," Roomba (dubbed a "big bitch" by Zoila), the poisoned bacon, and the status of Valley Oak, the main set piece in the episode was a confrontation between Jeff Lewis and his former business partner Ryan Brown. It was, shall we sa

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. The Hollywood Reporter 's Nellie Andreeva is reporting that TNT is very close to a deal with Warner Bros. Television to acquire cancelled NBC cop drama Southland . The deal, which is now said to appear "likely," would save the series--which produced six new installments for a second season at NBC--from cancellation, after NBC axed the series before launching the series' second season. ( Hollywood Reporter ) Bravo has ordered a spinoff of its culinary competition series Top Chef entitled Top Chef: Just Desserts , which will air next year and focus on a showdown between pastry chefs in a weekly competition. Top Chef producers Magical Elves are on board for the spinoff, which will begin casting this week. No host or judges have been determined yet for the series, which will air in between cycles of Top Chef and Top Chef Masters . ( Variety ) The Wrap's Josef Adalian takes a look at what appear to be the first two

Ah, Restaurant Wars. My favorite Top Chef elimination challenge got even more heated last night with a showdown between the two teams that had to be seen to be believed. While you read my advance review of last night's episode of Top Chef ("Restaurant Wars") , now that the episode has aired, there are still a few things left to to discuss that I couldn't until now. For one, I was completely shocked to see just how poorly the blue team performed in last night's badge of honor challenge (or to quote Tom Colicchio, "badge of courage"). Was it overconfidence? Nerves? Lack of support from front of house? Or all of the above, really? I'm not entirely sure what went down in the blue team's kitchen in their upscale eatery, Mission, while I was certain that everything would implode in the red team's kitchen, especially with confrontation between the Voltaggio brothers an inevitability and the fractious paring of Eli and Robin. So what exactly happen

There are few series more stressful (in the best possible way) than Bravo's culinary competition series Top Chef . And there are few challenges that are more stressful that that of the pressure-intensive Restaurant Wars, a highlight of each and every season in which the chefs are split into two groups of four and told to open a restaurant in a matter of hours, planning everything from the menu to the decor and service. On other series, this could be the culmination of the entire season, but on Top Chef , it's the halfway point, with the eight remaining chefs forced to not only participate in a team challenge (with their individual dishes either making or breaking their continued participation in the competition) but also to work their station, stay true to their vision, feed a dining room full of hungry customers, and turn out inventive, imaginative, and delicious dishes. It should be a cakewalk for these talented chefs, many of whom work on the line professionally, but it'

And just like that, Season Three of Flipping Out came to a close last night. Not with a bang but with Jeff walking off of Ryan's property during Chloe's third birthday party, with what seemed like a heavy heart. I already alluded to much of the action in Flipping Out 's third season finale ("Baby Boom") via my advance review of the episode , but now that the episode has aired, I can speak a little more freely about what actually went down this week. I do feel for Jeff. Given the recent problems in his relationship with business partner Ryan Brown, Jeff is beset by a swirl of change in his professional and personal life: Ryan and his family might be moving to Santa Barbara, Jeff could be selling his own home, and there's a sort of biological clock ticking over the action, a sound that's all the more loud thanks to Jett's news that his girlfriend is expecting a baby. Granted, Jeff isn't one for tact. (That's certainly apparent from the last thre

Over the past three seasons, I've waxed enthusiastically about the charms of Bravo's unscripted series Flipping Out , which wraps up its third season tonight. Nominally about OCD-afflicted real estate investor Jeff Lewis and the quirky employees of his spec business, the series is in fact a deft portrait of a meticulous businessman and the eccentric individuals that he surrounds himself with. It also happens to be one of the funniest programs, scripted or unscripted, on television, thanks to the biting sarcasm of Lewis, the general awesomeness of his indefatigable right-hand-woman Jenni Pulos, and his surly housekeeper Zoila. While I find myself laughing aloud (sometimes until it hurts) each week, every now and then a rare beat of genuine emotion makes its way into the mix on Flipping Out , lending an aura of poignancy and heartache to an otherwise sunny (if, thanks to Jeff, stressful) series. I had the opportunity to watch an early copy of tonight's season finale ("Ba

I love pinot noir so this week's episode of Top Chef ("Pigs and Pinot") would have already been a treat but the producers stacked things further in my favor by adding in the pork element, courtesy of Charlie Palmer. There's a rich chocolate and coffee-spiked earthiness to pinot that makes it the ideal red wine for me; it can be full-bodied without knocking you to the ground like some Cabs and it stands up well to pairings. Which was essentially the theme of this week's Top Chef , which had the chefs pairing not one but two dishes this week. The Quickfire Challenge was a hellishly tricky one (in my estimation, anyway), with the contestants tasked with pairing a dish with a particular Alexia snack. Food and alcohol pairings have proven difficult for some contestants so food and snack pairing? Even trickier. But it was the Elimination Challenge where the pressure was truly on: they'd have to pair a pork-based dish (the part of the pig decided by blindly drawing