Gregory is probably right regarding the judges' reactions to vegetarian dishes, but I would be very surprised if whining about vegetarian challenges from the competitors ever stops.

I mean, they kind of did. It probably wasn't a good dish anyway, and she did a terrible job, but Katsuji very clearly thought pre-making the crepes was a terrible idea and kept it to himself. They included a confessional thing of him admitting as much, along with footage of him side-eyeing her when she was cooking…

Nah, it was her first appearance on the show proper. She is in one of the credit card commercials (I think it's for a credit card, but I'm not positive) that they pepper throughout the show, and people have talked about that in the comments here.

I really like her. She's kind of mean and unlikable, but she has clearly been one of the more talented chefs the whole time, and her sour attitude is pretty appealing to me for some reason.

They maybe started with fewer and didn't add more like they did in the Seattle(?) season, but they have also been kicking people off faster. Two episodes have sent two people home, and next episode will try to do it again.

I saw an advertisement on-screen at some point that indicated that the next episode would indeed be restaurant wars, I'm pretty sure. It was a recording of the second broadcast of the episode, so who knows if it was in the first broadcast.

I'm always pleased if we get to that point in a season, but I always have to remember that this is a Bravo show, and the producers and editors will try to find something they can mine for it. I'm fully expecting them to start trying to mold someone else into a villain if possible.

Yeah, the season having been filmed months ago makes the idea of this being thanksgiving pretty funny. The inclusion of a bunch of seasonal spring ingredients didn't help to sell the illusion.

Stacy can at least cook chicken, I guess. Her properly cooked chicken saved both Keriann and Aaron in that team challenge a few weeks ago, despite their best efforts to ruin it. Having said that, she doesn't seem very strong and will probably leave soon, having clearly started to doubt herself, even if she was a…

I still think the saving grace of that season was that Paul was so clearly talented and at least came across as a really reasonable and good guy. That he came out of top was not even a little bit of a surprise, so that maybe cut into people's enjoyment, if they were looking for suspense or drama in determining the…

I just think that even getting to the tie breakers involved too much disregarding of elements that they frequently use in determining a winner for it to be a good explanation.

I don't know that Tom's defense really did a great job of selling the decision, at least in my opinion. It was basically "once we eliminated all of the elements that Nina did much better and all of the elements that Nicholas did much worse, we could judge them evenly." Maybe those things were all irrelevant, but they…

Tom going after Stephanie's dish was almost certainly just them covering the bases and offering a criticism of everyone on the losing team, just so the editors can leave more ambiguity about who is going home. There is some dumb minor criticism like that at least once a season, directed at someone who clearly isn't…

I'm not so sure Jason was eliminated just because of a technical error. At some point during the judges' discussion, tom mentioned that if Jason's wrap had just been soggy, that would have been one thing, but that what was inside of it was bad, too. Gail jumped in after to agree and comment on the mediocre texture. So…