I won’t spoil the surprise for those of you who haven’t seen it. Jump for the winner.
It’s Melissa. What a bittersweet win it is. I wanted to be whole heartedly excited, I really, really did. I mean, how many Sunday nights have I been forced to hang alone because neither the dog nor the boyfriend nor the Dominoes delivery guy would watch this fine hour of television with me? (Answer: 9). But with last week’s reveal from TG that Dallas/Keller Mel is actually Dallas/Keller/Washington State/Mel, the bloom is off the rose. Maybe if she called me I would be happier. Okay, I’m not going to do an entire recap, because there wasn’t much to it. But I wanted to touch on a couple of points:
1) How cool was Jeffrey Saad’s house? I want to move in right now. Of course his beautiful wife and smart and funny children probably wouldn’t appreciate it. And they probably wouldn’t invite me to eat crepes, either.
2) Sad, sad, sad moment when they showed Mel “at home” in Keller. She was even volunteering for the city! Blerg.Grr.
3) Alton Brown didn’t like Jeffrey’s “cooking without borders” theme as a title. What he did like? “Ingredient Smuggler.” For some reason this title brings the McDonald’s Hamburglar to mind for me. No wonder he lost.
4) Loved when the editor of the Food Network magazine “interviewed” Jeff and Mel. First of all, doubtful the EIC would be doing the interviewing. This would be left to the lowly assistants. Secondly, she had no tape recorder or notepad, but probably just a photographic memory though, you’re right.
5) The pilots were so generic and smiley to me that it would have been very hard to pick a winner. However, two different friends of mine texted me last night saying, “U watching FN? Where can I get some harissa???” So I guess people dug Jeffrey’s harissa steak sandwich. It did look pretty good. And Mel’s “4 step chicken” was actually more like five…I mean she combined “dredge and saute” as step one…but why not just make it “5 step chicken” and call it a day?
6) The return of the finalists was just so…unnecessary. I know they needed to stretch for more time. But I will never see these people again and I don’t care about the “bromance” between faux-hawk Eddie and Teddy or the wonderful friendship between Mash-Up Mike and Healthy Katie. I mean, if they wanted to dish some drama, or talk about how much they all can’t stand “I’m Korean, ya’ll” Debbie, or who is sleeping with who, then I would have been interested, but happiness and friendship? No thanks. Somebody send an intern to steal a page of notes from Bravo’s “Reunion” notebooks, please. Thanks.
7) One page of notes FN got their hands on: the Bachelor/Bachelorette switcharoo. They really had me thinking Jeff was going to win. Also, they had me thinking that because he seemed to be more confident and better qualified. Then, they picked Mel, and I was kinda like…huh? I mean, even Jeff, her bff in house, let it slide that she should have been kicked off in the first week (meow, right?). So FN did their job a little too well, in my opinion.
8) I’m probably not going to watch either show, anyway. Will you?
