Sweet, Sweet Candy...Bam.

Our long national nightmare is at an end. Food is safe for another television season. Marcel Vigneron has been defeated.

Let me say at the outset, for all my hatred of Marcel, he is technically a very good cook. And the stuff he is doing, while mostly cracked-out, is at the very least an homage to the avant-garde, if not itself avant-garde (more on this in a moment). But he is most certainly not a chef. I think the judges were all thinking about what might have been when they named Ilan the Top Chef last evening. When Sam told them he prepared Marcel's third dish of the evening, the producer's wonderment could barely be contained by the producers who wanted to capture some semblance of drama between the two contestants. Sam probably should have gotten to the final over Ilan, but it is my belief that the producers of the show, and Tom Colicchio (a man I continue to respect and admire, of course) thought Ilan and Marcel's battle royale would make better television.

In the end, Ilan cooked the meal of his life and Marcel screwed around with his chemistry set and simply failed. The judges wanted to give him the crown after the head shaving incident, but they simply could not on the weakness of his dishes last evening. They even put Wylie Dufresne, Marcel's culinary god and the beacon of hope to all so-called "molecular gastronomists" out in the world on the judges panel, and he was, at best, bemused my Marcel's vague attempts to be original. Soul beats toys every time in the kitchen. Last night's Top Chef proved it.