[Televisionary]

Still scratching your head over last night's season finale of Top Chef ? Head over to The Daily Beast, where you can read my latest feature, " Top Chef 's Surprise Finish," an exclusive interview with the culinary competition series' executive producers Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz--yes, the brains behind the ubiquitous Magical Elves--as we discuss the winner, what went wrong this season, culinary tourism, the language of reality television, and Justin Bieber. (Yes, you read that last bit correctly.) Head to the comments section to share your thoughts about the now-wrapped Washington D.C.-set season of Top Chef and whether you enjoyed the season or thought that it lacked the sophisticated palate of previous seasons... and what you'd do to correct any of the show's current issues, should you have any.

Um, yeah. After a seriously contentious season of Top Chef , the Washington D.C.-set seventh season came to a close with a final showdown between Angelo, Kevin, and Ed in Singapore, amid a head-scratching judges' decision that made me question just what they were thinking... and what we'd seen throughout the course of the season as members of the home audience. I watched the season finale earlier this week and had a very difficult time keeping my mouth shut about the winner and my intense disappointment over the outcome of the season. While the Singapore installments gave the series a much-needed jolt, it didn't remove the bad taste in mouth about this season as a whole nor the decision to crown a particular person the ultimate winner and bearer of the title of Top Chef. (If you haven't already, head over to The Daily Beast to read my exclusive interview with Top Chef 's executive producers , where we discuss my criticisms of the past season, what went wrong, and th

Bon Temps has long been a place where telepathic waitresses could rub shoulders with vampires while a shifter barkeep looked on enviously, but of late this backwoods Louisiana berg feels positively overflowing with supernatural types. From vamps and werepanthers to witches and faeries, this season of True Blood brought out just about every thing that goes bump in the night and deposited them in this once sleepy town, leaving the human-to-creature ratio dwindling even further. While I understand that the confluence of supernatural entities is part of the overarching mythology of the series, it's beginning to make Bon Temps seem like it's on top of a Hellmouth or something. While it's been mentioned in the past that supernaturals feel drawn to the site, I'm hoping next season can shed some light on just why Bon Temps is a nexus of supernatural occurrence, particularly as now it seems that just about everyone that passes by Merlotte's has some sort of otherworldly nat

After a lackluster season of Top Chef , having even a single enjoyable and tense episode is a step in the right direction, really. Last night's episode ("Finale, Part One"), which saw the final four contestants jet off to Singapore for the last few challenges before the ultimate culinary showdown, seemed to showcase the spark and magic that this season has been largely missing, forcing the contestants to jump through some pretty narrow hoops as the finish line inches its way ever closer. Perhaps the producers were smart to leave behind stuffy Washington D.C. for the street markets of sweltering Singapore; each of the chefs seemed to far more awake and creative as a whole than we've seen them collectively this season, invigorated by the flavors and scents of Southeast Asia. I have to say that I was extremely impressed by the performance of each of the four. While there were some technical issues at play, each of them turned out gorgeous and complex plates that

I promised you some thoughts about next week's summer season finale of USA's slick and stylish drama series White Collar and I hate to disappoint. Airing on Tuesday evening, the summer season comes to an end with next week's fantastic and taut installment ("Point Blank"), after which we'll have to wait until January to find out just what happens to Peter, Neal, Mozzie, and the others. Suffice it to say, the wait will be especially difficult, given the cliffhanger ending that creator Jeff Eastin and his crack writing team have left us with. It's far more intoxicating--and far less head-scratching--than the Peter/Ring scenario that they left us with halfway through the first season. While there's no sign of Hilarie Burton's savvy insurance investigator Sara (sorry, folks!), the episode itself is extremely mythology-heavy, which makes it rather difficult to enmesh newbie Sara to the action right now. But while Burton is not present, Sara's absenc

I'll admit that I didn't expect to enjoy Bravo's Work of Art: The Next Great Artist as much as I did in the end. Before the season began, I was curious just how the format would work. After all, true art takes time to develop, and the series seemed based around the type of severe time restraints that could hamper true creativity. But a funny thing happened: I found myself sucked in and captivated by what was unfolding before me. I had hoped, all along, that the final three contestants standing would be Miles, Abdi, and Peregrine. And that's just what happened going into last night's season finale of Work of Art ("The Big Show"), in which the final three artists presented a group show, with one of them walking away the winner of the season and their very own show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. For one thing, I loved just how very different each of these artists was, how each of them focused on different subject matters and expressed their artistic tempera

I have a hard time imagining a world without Party Down . While Starz's critically adored by ratings-challenged comedy has only been on for two seasons (the second of which wraps its run tonight), Party Down has served as a beacon of hope, particularly in light of watching the crop of comedy pilots ordered to series for next season. Tonight's season finale of Party Down ("Constance Carmell Wedding") arrives at a time when the future of the series is even more uncertain than when the season began back in April. Starz hasn't picked up the series for a third season and many of its cast members--including Adam Scott and Ryan Hansen--have signed on to star in other shows. (You can read my feature on The Daily Beast from April about the situation here and the outtakes from my interview with Scott--in which we talk about Parks and Recreation and Party Down --here .) In its twenty episodes, Party Down found the pitch-perfect balance between sweet and sour and between

I really enjoyed this season of Top Chef Masters , which came to a close last night with a heart-stopping final showdown between three of the strongest chefs in the competition. It was only fitting that the season finale ("Top Chef Master") would ask each of these master chefs to reflect back on their lives and their careers and pull together a final three-course meal for the critics that reflected where they had been and where they were going. Happy childhoods, struggles, and painful memories--as well as creative awakening--were all demonstrated on the plate as Marcus Samuelsson, Susur Lee, and Rick Moonen faced off for the title of Top Chef Master and a substantial donation to the charity they were playing for. So how did they do? And who walked out of the Top Chef Masters kitchen as the ultimate winner? Let's discuss. At this point in the competition, I'm glad that we didn't see a final Quickfire Challenge and instead the time that would have been used focusin

It's only fitting that FX's lawman drama Justified should go out with a bang. The first season of Justified , based on characters created by the incomparable Elmore Leonard, wraps up its run tonight with a fantastic installment ("Bulletville") that is more than aptly titled. Over the course of the thirteen-episode run, Justified has succeeded in creating a vividly drawn world of crime and punishment, a Southern Gothic landscape set in the hills of Kentucky (and the offices of Lexington) where violence runs amok, fugitives are caught, and the good guy dons a cowboy hat and slings a gun with the best of them. In the capable hands of Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins, Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder have become some of the most deftly drawn adversaries on television, former friends turned enemies whose relationship is a constantly shifting morass of blame, confession, and enmity. Like Raylan, the audience has never been sure of whether to fully believe Boyd's alle

I just wanted to offer a few quick words about one of my favorite series, Showtime's deliciously dark comedy Nurse Jackie , which wraps up its second season tonight. I've been a ardent viewer of Nurse Jackie since before it premiered and the second season hasn't disappointed at all. While many series suffer through a sophomore slump, Jackie has actually become more acutely pointed and shocking in its second year, deepening its characters rather than making them cartoonish, and giving everyone in the talented cast--Edie Falco, Merritt Wever, Eve Best, Paul Schulze, Dominic Fumusa, Anna Deavere Smith, Stephen Wallem, Arjun Gupta, and Peter Facinelli--moments in the spotlight in which to shine. (Deavere Smith's Akalitus has become, over the course of the second season, a personal favorite thanks to some deft shading.) What makes these characters instantly fascinating isn't that they are likeable but because their flaws and quirks are relatable. Jackie Peyton's qu

"Maybe being a spy is in our blood." Season Three of Chuck came to a close last night, with a fantastic two-hour installment that shook up the status quo of the NBC action-comedy in so many ways, introducing a number of possible new directions for Chuck and Company and tying up some of the dangling story threads from the third season. For once, we're going into the long hiatus knowing that Chuck will be returning next season, which placed my mind at ease watching the two-part season finale ("Chuck Versus the Subway" and "Chuck Versus the Ring, Part II," written respectively by Ali Adler and Phil Klemmer and Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak (and directed by Matt Shakman and Robert Duncan McNeill), which offered the opportunity to clear the decks and go into the summer with a feeling of unpredictability about just what the future holds for Team Bartowski. (You can read what Fedak had to say about the finale in an interview he did with Hitfix's Alan Se

"No one can tell you why you're here." I'm of two minds (and two hearts) about the two-and-a-half hour series finale of Lost ("The End"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender, which brought a finality to the story of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 and the characters with which we've spent six years. At its heart, Lost has been about the two bookends of the human existence, birth and death, and the choices we make in between. Do we choose to live together or die alone? Can we let go of our past traumas to become better people? When we have nothing else left to give, can we make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good? In that sense, the series finale of Lost brought to a close the stories of the crash survivors and those who joined them among the wreckage over the course of more than 100 days on the island (and their return), offering up a coda to their lives and their deaths, a sort of purgatory for found, r