Blais's strategic problem is that while he's a very good chef even without the science, a lot of molecular gastronomy depends on surprise. (E.g., Wilie Dufrense makes something that looks just like an egg but tastes like a delicious coconut dessert, but the food has to be both surprising and delicious for the trick…

Comments
1) I totally agree that the late-season challenges have been lame. It's disappointing because the challenges at the beginning were inventive, challenging, and fun to watch, so the contrast is particularly off-putting.

I thought Antonia was way off base when she picked on Dale for making a no-bake cookie. They're called no-bake COOKIES for a reason.

I thought Telly's comments were the most insightful of the three guests. He did a nice job anchoring Elmo and Cookie's craziness. (Oddly, I'm being serious).

Romeo must die
The best bit is Jet Li's prison breakout in the first act. Second best is the water bottle fight. The final boss fight is a distant third. That is all.

Only remotely relevant
One of the best Onion headlines ever: "PLO Takes Responsibility for Bombing of Krippendorf's Tribe." ("and if you do not release the following political prisoners, we will release a Steve Gutenberg-Shelley Long romantic comedy the likes of which the world has never seen!"

"Single Ladies"
. . . was a "daring video?" Now Ima going to have to go watch it, Rabin, so you better be right. I had thought it was 3 minutes of Beyonce repeating the same 15 words in slightly different combinations while her backup singers did the same lame dance move, but maybe I was wrong.

NPR
NPR's reviewer loved this, and kept going on about how clever it was to have the gnomes come to life when no one was looking, how awesome it was to have a kids movie set to classic pop songs, and how great it was that at 84 minutes, the movie knew exactly how long it could go without overstaying its welcome. I…

FWIW, Isabella also referred to Eli as a "little monkey" back during their season, so it seems to be a go-to insult for Mikey.

Oh, and to quote Felicia Day: "That's really funny as long as someone doesn't have a vestigial tail!"

Serious question: Is there a history of calling Asians "monkeys?" I've never done it, and now I never will, but I wasn't aware of it.

The way to tell is if after you've done it, your partner asks: "What was your favorite part," waits three seconds, then says "I liked that too! Thanks for helping!"

Carla doesn't have the range of some of the chefs, but what she does, she does really well, and she's good at responding to the challenges in a way that lets her do her thing. She could easily win.

I was with Jimmy. As soon as I heard "cheese steak with gourmet sauce on a pretzel roll", I thought "that should be the best sandwich ever."

Did anybody else think that . . .
. . . Jimmy Fallon looks like a prettier version of Antonia?

It's a good visual prop. Raylan thinks he's a gunfighter, and he wants to let the bad guys know it. The hat is a good way to say that.

Extraordinarily late comment
Thought one: Why did Sherlock slide the bomb down the walkway instead of throwing in the pool? That's where *I* would throw a bomb that still had an active remote control?

No one should help their kid turn to the Dark Side.

There were 3 preteen/teen girls at the Superbowl party I was at. (10, 12, and 13). They all excused themselves from dinner and ran off to watch the Peas sing. One came running in 30 seconds in to shout at us that we were missing the greatest thing ever because the Peas' "clothes light up!"

A few late observations
1) How could Olivia seriously think that Peter might chose Fauxlivia over her? Yes, it might take a while to get over someone you've been that close to, but Peter knows that Fauxlivia is sufficiently close to evil to make the whole thing moot. Fauxlivia killed witnesses and murdered some…