I was so surprised when Tre went home. He was such a solid player in this competition. Howie needs to go.

I dont know why Howie wasn't booted from this show weeks ago! He has made several major errors (not finishing his dish, overcooking, undercooking, etc) and managed to slip through, while a mature talented chef like Tre gets the boot.

It's because he's thrown someone under the bus each time - and they've gone home instead. And from the looks of next weeks episode, he's gonna do it again.

Ratings of course. He causes controversy which causes people to watch the show. The producers clearly want to see that. He may not make it all the way to the end but they'll milk him for all they can until they finally do decide to cut him. The calm, competent professional ones are just not a lot of fun to watch because they simply get the job done. The flakes on the other hand generate ratings.

How true. Especially for Top Chef, where the producers do have a big say in who gets booted off.

Each week is judged as if it were the only week. Tre got the boot because he deserved it for this particular week. He might be mature and talented but he can't make a bread pudding, that's for sure. He failed on two of his dishes, he couldn't motivate Casey (aka the mad chopper), he couldn't keep a handle on CJ. He actually couldn't manage CJ in the first Restowar. I don't know why he thought that letting CJ be a crap line cook would work in the second. It's like they forgot that there's $100k and a lot of cool prizes on the line. If the dream team had actually stepped up and beat the bad news bears instead of resting on their laurels, Howie would have probably gone home. Tre even said in one of the cutouts that he was going to coast through the process since they did well the first time. That's not how you win a competition.

When is the next new ep? Nothing last Wed. Is it back this Wed? Sure hope so.

yep, new episode Wednesday 10pm EDT.

Great, thanks. Anyone catch the marathon on around 9PM last night? Was able to catch a bunch of the most recent episodes.

Just found this thread and love the show.

The cancer survive and Hung are my two favorites to win.

Tonight looks like a good episode - always love it when they drag the cooks somewhere awkward...i think tonight's episode is shot on a boat.

should be cool to see Tony Bourbain back on the panel - always think he's great.

Was anyone else highly amused by Hung's smurf-village quick-fire along with his comments that the judges were just too "closed-minded" to appreciate it?

-FlyerBeek

I thought Hung's creation was pretty funny. It seemed that only Brian took the quickfire seriously last night - $10 for a "great dish" was such a curveball, loved it. reminded me of the "snack machine" challenge last year.

Hung's comment certainly wasn't surprising. He always makes a comment like that when the chef doesn't like his dish. According to Hung, he is never the problem.

I thought the quickfire last night was very entertaining. Not only was the challange weird, but everyone was acting really strange too. Like they were on something.