'Top Chef': And the Cat Runs Out of Lives

Eight chefs are still standing -- half of them women -- and it's that time when a Quickfire win no longer earns immunity. Which apparently does nothing to minimize Dale's competitive streak, because he wins the award tonight for cursing so fast that it's hard to bleep him out (and he dents a locker in a hissy fit).

It's relay-race day, and the chefs draw knives to make teams that will last for both challenges. Richard, Stephanie, Antonia (who between them have won several weeks' worth of competitions) and Andrew form one team; annoyed Dale is on the other with those inferior teammates Nikki (okay, I can understand him on that one), Lisa and Spike.

Lisa kicks Antonia's butt on the first leg of the race (sectioning five oranges), but Spike blows her lead when it comes to the artichokes. So Dale and Richard are dead even as they clean a monkfish and make filets, and pretty much stay that way. That leaves Nikki vs. Stephanie in the race to the finish, which involves hand-beating some mayo. Guess who wins? Yup. Nikki gets killed and Dale has a tantrum worthy of a 4-year-old.

Up next: the Evil Wedding Challenge. Some restaurant-owning couple is getting married and is willing to turn over the catering to the cheftestants on one day's notice. (Back in Season 1 when they did this, I naively wondered what idiots would want to leave the entire food planning for their wedding till the night before; just some minor mental math on what it costs to serve 250 guests filet mignon and Chilean sea bass this time around leaves me thinking, um, duh! -- how about getting a major five-figure freebie?)

The winning Quickfire team gets the "advantage" of deciding whether to cook for the groom's side or the bride's side. Richard says that his team should take the bride because a wedding is "the bride's day" and that makes it more important (it also makes it more likely their team will be dealing with a bridezilla, as opposed to a just-make-sure-there's-enough-booze groom). Spike is agog at the choice, for those very reasons.

Bride Team finds out its girl is from South (Atlanta) and wants a meat-and-potatoes kind of thing. Groom Team finds out that its guy wants an Italian spread, which seems like a ding!-ding!-ding! win for Nikki. Not.

But let's cut to the chase: Who is going to get stuck making the cakes? Snaps to Stephanie and Lisa for stepping up on that front, especially Stephanie. All the groom wants is something chocolate with nuts; the bride expects something with permanent photographic splendor. So Stephanie boldly goes forward into the land of fondant icing and flower-covered foodstuffs -- with a guest judge who is a pastry expert, no less.

The Bride Side decides to make some relatively strange appetizers (a pulled pork sandwich at a wedding? Do they know how difficult it is to clean those dresses?) but manages to pull it off, especially with a prosciutto pizza that gets the bride's approval.

The groom's side, at Nikki's urging (at this early point, Nikki is acting as if she's going to play exec chef for her team -- a logical choice given her Italian cooking background), make a lot of flatbreads -- a fancy term for pizzas that aren't as good as the one Antonia made -- and bruschetta that is served on crostini so crusty that a dentist ought to be on standby.

Part of the challenge is the marathon nature of the whole thing -- no sleeping this whole show --which gets Andrew, um, "excited" on a culinary level. It also gives Dale this bizarre idea that he needs to cook absolutely everything, or at least try to, by himself, which leads to a much longer and more annoying tantrum-a-thon. In fact, when Bravo poses the poll question "Who is the most annoying?" with Dale, Lisa or Spike as options, Dale runs away with the win, even though Lisa has about a half-dozen episodes of annoying-ness under her belt.

Everybody decides they need to make a very safe filet mignon, though Richard makes a far better horseradish sauce to go with the bridal version. Bride People also make a brisket (again, Richard), a potato gratin, some creamed spinach (with star anise? what?!) and Andrew insists on some crispy chicken because, you know, the judges liked it when he made that last week.

Groom People have Nikki rolling out some more of her homemade pasta, this time for tortellini, an array of grilled veggies and cheeses, that filet, Chilean sea bass and orecchiette with a ragu. Did I mention that Dale makes everything? Um, kind of. Spike has to chop all those veggies, and eventually he commandeers the sea bass because he can see that cranky Dale is trying to be king of the hill.

Nikki's brief burst of industriousness and leadership immediately goes pffftttt in the kitchen, where she starts laying the groundwork for not being seen as the driver of this operation. What kind of Top Chef actively tries to be sure she's not responsible for running the show in a challenge? Especially a challenge that's so clearly right up her alley that you just know Tom is going to be calling her out on it. But noooo. Nikki goes from being all "same-wavelength, same palette, look at us bond! with Mr. Groom" to actively refusing to make choices -- or, worse yet, actively disavowing her teammates' choices -- in the cooking process. And she's only worse in at judges' table.

Bride Team wins, and the judges anoint Richard -- who did step up and act like an executive chef on his team -- as the winner. Richard magnanimously says that he wants to give the win, and the prize, to Stephanie, for being Cake Girl. In the end, they seem to decide to split the $2,000 Crate & Barrel gift certificate, and are all team-happy. Given that Richard soared through a challenge two weeks ago when he had to cook with Dale, and they were all happy-happy, perfect teammates, his star is only looking brighter and brighter. The man is not only leading the pack in talent, but he's also doing his best to win the Miss Congeniality award.

Out go the winners, in come the losers, with the chip on Dale's shoulder having grown to approximately the size of a California redwood and Spike just itching to get into a spat. Lisa --whose cake is the color of turd, but tastes pretty good -- might as well not be there. She keeps her mouth pretty much shut and is all but ignored by the judges. Dale, of course, declares again that he did everything and Spike eggs him on, while Lisa rolls her eyes and Nikki just keeps chiming in with reassurances that she really wasn't in charge of this ("Definitely not me!" she declares, with the monumental stupidity of someone who doesn't realize she's nailing closed her own coffin). Spike is accused of not doing enough, but the thing he did do--the fish--is the good part, so he's cool. ("You should have liked it," snipes Dale to the judges. "It took him three hours to make it.")

But it's Week 9 of this competition, which means that Nikki's finally out of lives (or maybe this was supposed to be her last life -- I'm not really sure on the math). She gets sent packing. And it's about time. This time out, even her one-trick pony, the homemade pasta, is totally blech.

Meanwhile, the teaser for next week suggests that Spike goes all bad, bad, bad and does things like turn up the heat (!) on one of Lisa's dishes in a sabotage attempt. Hmmmm. Stay tuned.

-- JENNIFER FREY

Jennifer Frey  |  May 8, 2008; 11:10 AM ET Top Chef
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