EATS

Even though we've seen it before, how great the relay race was to watch? Some of the most compelling action yet this season. Two teams: Richard, Stephanie, Andrew and Antonia were the forks, and Dale, Lisa, Nikki and Spike were the spoons. They were faced with four challenges in this order: Cut five oranges into supremes (i.e., cut away the rind and pith to make pretty orange sections), trim five artichokes, stem on; clean a monkfish, one of the ugliest beasts on the planet, until you have two nice filets; and make a quart of mayonnaise by hand.

Splice in a comment from Stephanie about last season's relay race, when Casey Thompson took "like, five hours to peel an onion." Heh. Sorry, Case.

No such this year. Each chef tackled his or her task ferociously. In short: Lisa bounds ahead of Antonia during the orange segmenting, then Andrew impressively catches up to Spike on the artichoke rounds. Richard and Dale are neck-and-neck butchering the monkfish, and finally Stephanie rocks out the mayo over Nikki.

Team Fork laughs and cries and group-hugs, and then, like a big baby, Dale punches a locker and yells out his favorite four-letter word, barely bleeped. Seriously, I hope Dale was sitting somewhere last night cringing as he watched himself. That ain't professional behavior, homie. Have some self control, particularly with cameras rolling.

Now, this whole Wedding Wars business (buffets for both the bride and groom to feed 125 people each; they have essentially 24 hours to do all this, including a wedding cake) ... I don't know. It's another one of those moments where people get put into reality show situations that have little to do with real restaurant lives. Sure, there are brutal situations (like, famously, interning stages in high-caliber restaurants in France) where cooks are expected to pump out incredibly good food for long hours on no sleep - but this didn't translate as well as the restaurant scenario.

Just not a big fan of the sleep deprivation challenges. Sure, cooks have to perform under major pressure and time constraints in real life, but this was reality TV torture without the entertainment value to back it.

Restaurant Wars is so much more satisfying because the thought process is tangible: someone in the group has to take charge of the front of the house, and set up a design scheme for the room, and others have to figure out a menu with choices. That's way more engaging than another dang buffet.

The most interesting part of this? Lisa and Stephanie whipping up those cakes, without recipes I'm assuming, and Gale Gand (a GREAT Chicago pastry chef who even markets her own delicious root beer) coming on board to judge. Stephanie's was way prettier, but Lisa's chocolate-hazelnut cake, which Colicchio said looked like a battle ship, tasted better, according to the judges. But seemed like Stephanie's still has decent flavor. Nice that these folks are pulling off some dessert prowess this season.

A few more random observations:

The ever-present foreshadowing at the beginning of the episode, where Antonia mentions that this is the first season where, with eight contestants left, the chefs are evenly split between men and women, pretty much told you a woman was going home last night.

Nikki is probably competent in the career she has going, operating a restaurant and all, but she's been a middle-of-the-road contestant the whole way. She really should have taken the lead on the Italian-themed buffet for the groom, and she deserved to get the boot.

Poor Lisa looked like she was literally falling asleep standing up during the judging.

And yay for my boi, Richard! And awww that he shared his $2,000 gift certificate from Crate and Barrel (official sponsor of the Wedding Wars episode?) with Stephanie. Richard does like to be boss, though. Anyone else feel the smackdown between him and Andrew looming on the horizon?