Top Chef Fillets the Skeletons in Clay’s Closet
If I have ever experienced pangs of guilt over watching Top Chef---Bravo's reality show that dices up contestants as much as vegetables---then it paled in comparison to the sense of shame I felt after watching the first episode of Season 3. The high court of culinary judges booted Clay Bowen, an earnest young chef who apparently thought he was tanning leather instead of preparing wild boar chops.
OK, fine. Bowen screwed up the chops. Maybe the dish deserved Tony Bourdain's disdainfully hilarious line, in which he compared it to "economy class" chow on Air Cambodia. But let's briefly review Bowen's life story, shall we? Bowen is a self-taught cook from Mississippi who told us during Episode 1---a moment that should never have aired---that his father was a chef who committed suicide. "Things didn't work out so well for him with his restaurant," Bowen says on a video interview on Bravo's Web site.
Well, nothing like boosting a young chef's fragile ego by giving him a chance on a potentially life-changing reality show---only to kick his ass straight out the door on the first day. Maybe Top Chef can start picking on other self-taught chefs with tragic personal histories? Maybe someone whose mother died in a bizarre pizza-oven fire? Or someone whose father suffered a fatal heart attack after mistaking a line of grated ginger for coke?
Family redemption is just another subplot worthy of contempt on Top Chef.
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1:46 pm
Too right--in fact, Bravo ought only eject those contestants who don't have a compelling tragedy in their past. Doing so will ensure that the show isn't about who plates the best food, but instead about whose life story is most worthy of pity.
Having said that, potential contestants should ensure that if they don't have a suitably tragic past, that they either reconsider applying for the show or gin up a disaster to submit for consideration.
1:48 pm
If Clay didn't want to be picked on, or his personal story know, he should not have applied for the show.
He wasn't "picked on" - his food sucked. Twice.
Should Clay have been appointed the winner just so he will feel better?
2:21 pm
I actually thought Clay's fruit-inside-a-mangled-granny-smith-apple amuse-bouche deserved extra points for sheer hilarity.
The whole thing's a set-up anyway. If you watch the credits you'll see something saying that Bravo reserves the right to have input on who wins the show ... hence last season's finale between the two guys who most hated each other's guts.
2:33 pm
I felt the bald guy shoulda been auto-DQ'd for only plating one of his two ingredients. So I do think Clay did get screwed on that count.
2:40 pm
I think some of y'all might be confusing culinary decisions for ethical ones. One chat with Clay and it's clear that he's a nervous guy with a tragic background. I think the producers should have been sensitive to that fact and never put him on the show, which has only led to public humiliation. But, in fact, I think Bravo, in its secret little heart, loved playing up Clay's background. It made me feel really lousy to watch it.
3:16 pm
I'm with DeBonis. It seems like the bald guy stroked Bourdain's considerable ego with a well-timed reference to his book, and all of a sudden his egregious error wasn't all that bad after all. I think that if they're smart, the contestants will start memorizing passages from "The Food You Want to Eat"...