Top Pffffft

I gotta admit, I'm a Top Chef junkie. And I was set to be swept away by the new Top Chef Masters, which started this week. Unfortunately, this concept SUCKS.

First of all, there's no Tom Colicchio. There's not Padma. This is pretty much vacation time for anyone associated with the regular show. Instead, there's a bunch of judges and hosts I've never heard of before, and 24 "celebrity" chefs competing for charity. Oh, but wait - they really aren't competing. Instead of all competing together and getting picked off, one at a time, this season has the chefs "competing" in groups of 4. Each week, a new group of 4 goes up and only one of the 4 goes on to compete in the final group. Which might be ok, if it didn't look like each group of 4 is going to consist of 3 up-and-coming chefs nobody's ever heard of and one ringer.

On the first episode, the ringer was legendary chef Hubert Keller. The other three were nice, young guys who've won some awards but, let's face it, are no Hubert Keller. No, these three are some saps who have offered themselves up as Top Chef chum in order to get a little free publicity for the one episode when they'll appear. The judges are very kind to them, everyone's a great chef, no one gets harsh criticism, and the ringer proceeds to the finals.

The real master chefs know they're in for the finals. Chefs like Rick Bayless, John Besh, Wylie Dufresne, and the afore-mentioned Keller aren't seriously going to compete with no-names. And in the end, I predict, those will be the finalists. Which may very well make the last 4 or 5 episodes worth watching. But the first half of the season is rigged. And that sucks.