There you have it baby! A thrilling end to a thrilling season of Top Chef. Unpredictable until the last 15 minutes, we saw twists and turns that at least I was not expecting. And we got a live reveal of the winner to finish it all up. For the finale, the chefs were at the Aspen Mountain Lodge, which costs more than $100,000 to be a member of. That's five zeros my friends. I don't know what's there, but for that much money, I'd expect naked women, bacon in my hand every time I snap my fingers and um… naked women. I mentioned that twice, didn't I? Hey, it's $100,000 — there better be a ton of naked women. Coincidentally, the winner of Top Chef gets $100,000, too. As is usually the case with the last episode, the chefs are told to make their best meal ever for the judges. They needed to come up with three courses and hand the menu to Tom. I like the handing-the-menu-to-Tom thing, as it forces the chefs to stick to their initial game plans and not go to plan C when their foam ...
read more
Ah, now this was what I missed so much last week. Forget reunions. I need Joey and Howie opening their big mouths, Sara whining and Hung being a “douche’ as CJ called him. Right from the moment Joey spoke for the first time, you knew it was going to be fun. He said if he had to “throw someone over the bus” he’d do so at this point in the game. I definitely would choose that over the more traditional throwing someone under the bus. I mean, under the bus you really have no shot at making it, but over it just gives you so many more opportunities. You could land on your feet or in a row of bushes. There could be a trampoline on the other side or maybe a river and you could just swim to the bank. If I were those chefs, I’d take that option rather than the second choice of throwing someone “over the balcony.” They probably can’t fly but I’d bet they could walk away from landing on the hood of a 2001 Honda Accord. In all seriousness though,...
read more
Either they had nothing better to put on or they've finally realized that it's time to put The Apprentice out of its misery and throw some love at the pressure cooker that is Bravo's Top Chef. Either way, tonight at 10 pm/ET, NBC is repeating the Rocco DiSpirito episode of the reality cook-off.... Hilary Duff and Wild 'N Out's Nick Cannon have been tapped to host Teen Choice 2007 on Aug. 26. So don't expect any awards to go to Good Charlotte. (Hil's ex is their lead singer, don't ya know.).... Hostel Part II hits video stores on Oct. 23. So you don't have to rent Glitter again this Halloween.... ABC Family has picked up 10 more episodes of its college drama Greek. Not to be confused with Rome. I mean, seriously not to be confused with Rome.... ESPN is shooting a two-hour documentary on ex-New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine's rise to fame as a Japanese baseball star. It is expected to premiere next spring. The cabler has also bought Hellfighters, a doc about a Harlem high school f...
read more
Celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito is cooking up more TV drama. By now, we've all heard he's embroiled in a lawsuit with business partner Jeffery Chodorow, his Manhattan bistro's financial backer. That means his litigious strife will dominate Season 2 of NBC's The Restaurant, which starts April 19. Rocco's grumpy about it, but his distress is nothing compared to the hand-wringing of the show's Italian matriarch, Nicolina "Mama" DiSpirito.
"The stress of the litigation has definitely affected Mama," he says. "One of the benefits of opening this restaurant — and having her be involved — was that I got to see her more and work with her. One of the disadvantages of that is now she knows more about the business of doing all this stuff. People sue each other; it happens all the time. But for her, it's a monumental event.
"She thinks Jeffery's going to take our house away and put us in the street," DiSpirito continues with a chu
read more
