dear lord, save me...

that is, save me from top chef, the show that has replaced project runway on bravo. maybe i am suffering from project runway withdrawal (i must say that i only enjoy the challenge episodes, and not the finale episodes)?

top chef is a horrible TV show. it has such characters on it that i forget to refer to them as real people. my list of complaints:

1. who thought up this idea of doing a project runway-like cooking show? part of the allure of project runway is being able to judge the designs for yourself. you may not be able to touch them in real life, but you can at least get a sense of what the thing looks like. food? i can list a lot of things that looked way better than they tasted. do i want to take the judges' word for the way things taste? no.

2. the host - katie lee joel - is awful. what about her is awful? her monotone voice. her inability to show interest in the show. she may be pretty to some people, but if she has any interest in food, we, the viewers, aren't feeling it.

3. the structuring of the show is wrong. tom colicchio is fine as a judge or a tim gunn character, but not as both. the two roles are a conflict of interest, so he has to forego being a support to the contestants in favor of being a judge.

4. why does one of the other judges look like katie lee joel? it's like those two characters on veronica mars: both blond, tallish, tanned, and almost indistinguishable from each other unless you watch the show faithfully and carefully.

5. it's much easier to be a top fashion designer than a top chef because the nature of the fashion industry is more about image. chefs are more about the food. sure, there are a lot of "chefs" out there selling themselves out for money (emeril comes to mind) but there are many more chefs doing good to sublime food. for those chefs, the focus is on the food, not becoming world-famous. did thomas keller set out to be a world-famous chef? well, i don't know, but i'm guessing not, judging by the integrity of the food at the french laundry.

6. stephen is an asshole. stephen is the most obnoxious person i have ever seen in my life. every single atom in my body hates him. i am thrilled when he gets taken down for his pretention and overly ambitious attempts to create a new kind of cuisine. i'm kind of glad he's experimenting, but he's lost his integrity and interest in good food along the way. now he's just one of those "weird-combinations-are-intellectual-and-trendy" people. there's a fine line, my man, between perfectly balanced and melodramatic theater.

7. the show's editing is horrible! the voiceovers that are done after the show has been filmed, the choppy video action where the picture switches between people so that you're not sure if what you're seeing was actually a part of the scene...i feel like i'm being manipulated (but in this case i gleefully submit to manipulation that makes stephen look like the asshole he is).

8. in fact, i don't like anybody on the show. so logically, if there's anyone i really, really hate, then i will watch it because of my morbid fascination with the person i hate.

however, despite this long list (i am probably forgetting other things i hate about this show), i watch it. i watch it like a crack addict. my propensity for watching this show matches my hate of the clock while i am erging. dear lord, how i hate this show.

but i watch it.

i watch it every week to see stephen taken down.