You nailed it with your personality comment. Padma seems so cold and remote. And yeah, she's beautiful, but in a really generic way that I don't find very interesting. Gail has an offbeat, more unique type of beauty. Also, she's smart, funny, and seems like she'd be a lot of fun to just hang out with.

I knew her first as Sookie (who, I've mentioned here before, reminds me a whole lot of my wife), and that's the main reason I'm still a fan and am happy for her success, even though I don't really enjoy her current shtick.

That is definitely true. Kristen just came into it later, so it didn't get to be as obvious or repetitive.

Top Chef Canada season 2 is one of my favorite seasons of Top Chef period. I was a little bit disappointed that Carl the Robot won over Jonathan, but not much.

Right. It was a poorly-constructed episode (immunity among only 6 people, followed by a challenge where teams were judged as a whole and one judge's performance affected the whole team).

Oh man, that guy *does* look like a Fraggle. How sad for Fraggles.

That's one of the reasons that Last Chance Kitchen really started to bug me this year. After a certain point, it seemed like Tom had just decided that Louis was going to win no matter what.

Sounds a lot like the clearly-rigged nonsense of the last couple seasons of Next Iron Chef. In S4, Geoffrey Zakarian was repeatedly forgiven for ignoring challenges. And then in S5, he was a judge and his sometime-sous chef Alex Guarnaschelli was given the same treatment.

Hmm. Now you're making me want to rewatch season 3.

Yeah, Gail's awesome. I don't have one of those "five celebrities I wish my wife would let me sleep with" lists, but if I did, it would be at least 2/5 Top Chef-related (Gail and Stephanie Izard).

That, and it felt like he should have been eliminated at least twice before (the corn silk nest thing, and also the one where Carlos made a seafood tamal that the judges seemed generally impressed with and Nick made something else that was under seasoned, but Carlos went home.)

It sure was. Maybe the show's all-time most Bravo-y moment. Of course, I wouldn't even remember that guy Cliff's name if he hadn't tried to shave Marcel's head.

Wow, people were upset about Hung?! (I didn't start watching until around season 6, and then I went back and caught up on the others) Who was the favorite that supposedly should have won? Weren't the other two finalists just Casey and White Dale?

Re: the season 9 ski, shoot, cook semi-final -

Only a couple of times so far (season 3 and season 10).

But it almost never ends up counting in Restaurant Wars anyway. They bring it up, but always seem to decide based on the food alone.

That's how I feel too (although I haven't posted anything as in-depth as you).

But everyone agreed that Stefan's squab was the best dish of the night!

I really wanted Elia to win that season.

I agree that the should have kept everyone and done a double elimination the next week (which they have done at least once before - in the All-Stars season when it was down to the Top 5). My main problem with it is, like you say, that they still had immunity when there were only six contestants left. That's way too…