Go Get Your Shinebox

Joey has - mercifully - taken his leave from Top Chef. The Brooklyn-born meathead, who some may have found endearing in the same way Mike was last season, finally let his mule-like obstinacy get in the way of preparing a dish correctly, and it caught up with him. I agree with the judges' decision, but also am keenly aware that apart from Howie, who might just be a more refined form of Joey, each of the contestants at Judges Table could have gone home last night for cause.

Let's start with Sara Mair. For god's sake, Howie's tirade was spot on. She brought nothing to the table last night. And she is obviously not going to win this competition. However, her sins did not loom as large as Joey's by the mere fact that her were sins of omission, not execution. By contrast, Joey executed his dish incorrectly and paid the price. All Sara did was gainsay all of Howie's ideas, to the point where the dish became an unsettled mess. But even her lack of fundamental execution did not rise high enough amidst the chaos and confusion to warrant being second in the line of fire in my view.

That honor goes to Hung and his ridiculous behavior in the kitchen. As Anthony Bourdain would say, Hung displayed an incredible lack of "chefly qualities." When you run a kitchen, if one of the guys you work with is doing something wrong, you beat him with a frying pan until he gets it. Hung, very quietly, said "Gee whiz, Joey, we really oughta freeze things individually." And then when Joey the meathead didn't get it, he shut up and let the dish fail! Had it been my decision to make, Hung's actions would almost have risen to the level of Joey's transgressions and definitely merited discussion about sending him home. He is clearly a very gifted cook, but he is not a chef. Full stop. He can't run a kitchen and that became obvious last night. Now maybe he will learn from these experiences and hone that part of his craft a little finer as he ages and gets wiser, but Hung proved last night that he does not deserve the title of Top Chef.

In the end, however, the dish that sank Joey was doomed from the start. It honestly wouldn't have been very good before it was frozen, especially against masterwork like that presented by Tre and CJ and the extremely surprising effort from Casey and Dale. So Joey's time was up. He went about as far as I would have expected him too, exceeding expectations a few times and only meeting them for the rest.