Live Blogging: Chopped - Make No Mistake

I haven't live-blogged in a while, and I'm now feeling bitchy enough to critique that intense "create it in a heartbeat" cooking competition show Chopped.  I originally thought this was a finale to the Chopped Champions program.  I don't think this is the case, so I may be live-blogging a new episode.  So here I am, ready to live-blog the "Make No Mistake" episode of Chopped!  This ep featuring four former first-round losers was aired on Sunday, when most people were watching various characters get killed off on The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey and The Grammy Awards.  So it's not new new, but it is one of the newest.

Let us proceed.  Just as soon as Face-Off is over.

10:00 This is not a show for those of us with ADD.

10:01 Let's meet our former losers: first up, fireman-cum-chef John.  Messes up buffalo wings.  Dude.

Chef Monica: I remember her!  She got ingredients she had never used. Oopsie.

10:02 Chef Owen didn't put anything on his plate?  Really???  Maybe he'll actually get stuff on his plate this time.

10:03 Chef Marja gave her least favorite dish: raw dough!  Hold the cookies.

10:04 And now the goodies: mix pulpo (octopus), chioggia beets, fava beans and pickled garlic.  Hey, not so bad.  At least there's no cotton candy or gummy fish.

10:05 I should have had beer with me.  I now remember one reason why I never liked this show: SOFASTPACEDOHMYGODDDDDD!!!!!1!!!

Hey, at least Monica is playing for a cancer charity.

MY mother never shelled fava beans :p

10:06 Aaaaaand tonight's douchebag judges: Chris Santos, Amanda Freitag and Geof Zakarian!

10:08 Y'know, I think Ted is actually semi-excited at the thought of the pasta being done in time.

10:11 I bet they include these VitaMelts in a future Chopped challenge.

10:12 There ya go, John, multitask for us.  Just don't julienne a finger or something!

In general, what they're making looks god.  I just hope some of our intrepid chefs know what t do with this stuff ***COUGHMONICACOUGH***

10:13 This is actually mildly exciting.

Aaaaaand already we may have an appetizer round loser.  Shoulda grabbed those julienned beets, John, or really hope everything else sucks.

10:15 One man's "carpaccio" is another man's "carpaccio-style pulpo".

10:17 So overall the dishes are creative and not bad.  Man, I was hoping for some suck.  We might have some with all that sesame oil in Marja's dish though.

10:20 Gee, I'm finding this is not terribly interesting an exercise.  Something a bit sillier, on the level of The Next Food Network Star or Top Chef might be more fun to do.

10:24 And so Marja packs her knives and goes again.  We hardly knew ye and yon fava beans. FFFFFFFFFFFF.

10:25 Okay, a slightly weirder set of ingredients: wild boar roast, nopales, sweet potato chips and açai berry juice!

10:26 I did not realize that boar was dry.  See I wouldn't have known that were I in that situation.  Not a fan of nopales I might add.  Too slimy for my tastes.

Oh shite, will John know to scrape out the spines?  Doesn't matter: they've apparently been de-spined.

10:27 Liking the idea of that salad of Monica's. Doubting John's plans for the nopales.

10:29 Interesting.  Frenchifying the nopales by treating them as green beans.

10:30 Is she using the boar to thicken the sauce???  No. What is she doing? SCREW IT JUST SLICE THAT SHIT AND PLATE IT!

10:31 Okay, what did John forget this time?  The açai.  Sigh.  The judges really are pulling for him though.

10:36 Oh John.  So sad what happened to ya.  But apparently his is not the only one that sucks.  Monica's is not terribly edible either.  Let's see about Owen.

10:37 So dumping sweet potato chips on a plate is not acceptable to you Americans?  Bah!

10:38 Maybe they could just send 'em all home...

10:39 Good point: give John a few extra minutes and he might finish the whole thing.

10:40 And the next Chopp-ee... after these commercial messages.  Wah waah.

10:42 My God, how many of these cooking competition shows are there???

10:43 MONICA goes home??? Seriously?  Again they went with the taste.

10:44 Frenchy?

10:45 The dessert round includes tangerines, cranberry sauce, chocolate chip cookies, and.. gorgonzola dolce???  I know what John's leaving out this round...

10:47 Learning by baptism with that ice cream there.  And of course the French guy adds wine!

10:49 When life gives you little bits of lemons, er, gorgonzola ice cream, grab shot glasses.  Wait, gorgonzola ice cream?

10:49 The judges' reactions to the kitchen drama are priceless, by the way.  Not so douchey as in the early episodes of this series.

10:52 That moment when you realize that turkeys actually have heads: priceless.

10:54 And now for the assessment - Gorgonzola parfait: seductive, successful, mellowed.  Gorgonzola ice cream and cranberry CCC crumble: almondy, oddly delicious, beautiful.  Hey, way not to f*** up, guys!

10:56 Can we just fast forward to the winner?  I'm getting sleepy.

10:59 And so John heads home after making his best dish.  Congrats to the French guy!

Conclusion: Not sure if I would want to live-blog this program again.  It pretty much follows the same formula, doesn't it?  Still, the show has gotten better since it first started.  The judges always seemed to be assholes, gratuitously so at that.  Now they're cheering on our intrepid chefs.  But for live-blogging, it really doesn't work.  Ah well.