The reality of the letdown

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You know that feeling when you are all excited because it’s your favorite holiday and everything is awesome and yummy and fun and then you wake up the next day with a sugar hangover and cleanup duty?

That is totally what this week’s reality back-to-back of “Top Chef” and “Project Runway” felt like to me. First the amazing, couldn’t-have-been-better upside, then a long, long, looooooong slide down the other side to the one great bit huge letdown.

This week was one of the most anticipated shows of the “Top Chef” season: Restaurant wars. The chefs split into two teams and open their own restaurant for a single night. It’s a big challenge that usually ends up with a clash of personalities under the stress of time constraints, a full restaurant and impressing the judges with an entire menu. Plus, we as viewers get to see the chefs in their natural environment: a big, busy restaurant kitchen. Major bonus.

And of course, with the talent level this season, it was set up to be a great installment of restaurant wars from the get-go. We got a nice appetizer with a really unique quickfire challenge — a 40-minute “relay” where each chef member had 10 minutes to work on a team dish. The team members were chosen by two randomly anointed leaders (Jennifer and Michael Voltaggio) and weren’t allowed to talk to each other about the dish. So, from start to finish, the quickfire was like one big game of telephone.

In a word, the challenge was creative and interesting and told the viewer a lot about the thought process of the chefs.

The teams, of course, ended up being the teams for restaurant wars. The first team, which won the quickfire, was Jennifer, Kevin, Laurine and Mike I. The second team was Robin, Eli and the two Voltaggios, Mike and Bryan. The challenge was that their one-night-only restaurant would aim to serve sustainable seafood in the vein of Rick Moonen, the celeb chef hosting the contestants at his two-floor restaurant fortress in Vegas.

Of course, the most interesting team is the oil-and-water pairing of Robin and Eli, who have a mutual disrespect, and the brothers, who are both amazingly talented but have a brotherly way of wanting to dominate each other.

The preview of the Voltaggios yelling at Robin was shown heavily in anticipation of the episode, and in the thick of the moment it was just as heated, but in reality, that’s not really were the drama of the episode was at all. The dramatic fireworks were in the other kitchen, where the usually steady Jennifer was having a meltdown under the weight of two complicated fish dishes. Meanwhile, Kevin wasn’t at his best either, and Laurine, working the front of the house, was as meek as could be.

I really thought Jennifer would be going home, as the producers decided to open the show with a shot of her in a bikini. (It seemed like they just wanted to get in bikini footage and now might be their last chance.) And man, was I worried, because she clearly produced her worst food of the competition, despite being clearly one of the most talented chefs there.

But my prediction of a Voltaggio-Kevin-Jennifer final showdown is still intact as the judges smartly sent the underperforming Laurine packing first. The real shocker though was that Robin’s dish was praised by the judges, but it wasn’t good enough to get Robin a first elimination win. The honor instead went to Michael Voltaggio, who deserved it for keeping everyone in line and on their toes, despite kind of acting like a jerk.

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And well, on to that, ahem, other show. You know, the one with really boring challenges, a horrible cast and absolutely no “wow” factor whatsoever.

This week was another boring challenge in which a normally entertaining designer — Michael Kors — put on too much bronzer and addressed a team of sub-par designers to inform them they would be designing pieces inspired by his favorite places (yawn). Sounds like a school project: “Take this picture and write a story about it. Go!” Ugh.

The most interesting part, to me, at least was that Carol Hannah chose Palm Beach, a place I’m quite familiar with after living there for four years. OK, I lived in West Palm Beach, because no journalist this side of the “Today Show” lineup actually has the money to live on Palm Beach. Anyway, the dress Carol Hannah created was cute enough, but it really didn’t say “Palm Beach” as much as it said “Uli from season 3.” And Uli was from Miami — very, very different style aesthetic. It’s like the difference between Carolina and Kansas City barbecue.

In any case, Ice Queen Irina was right at home with her location of inspiration, Aspen, and won outright with a really neat and lux-looking outfit that would keep even the slimmest person warm while camping out in Irina’s cold, cold heart.

In the bottom AGAIN was Christopher, who just can’t seem to do anything right since doing so well in the first couple of challenges. Also there were Nicolas, who really, really had trouble finding inspiration in Greece, and Logan, whose young Hollywood look was deemed a bit too safe for those worth mentioning more than a year ago when this was filmed.

Amazingly, Christopher survived, and Nicolas was sent home. This, despite the fact that this was Christopher’s fourth time in the bottom and Heidi called his dress “unwearable.”

I guess Lifetime is painting him to be a dark horse, but instead of caring, I just crawled into bed mad that I stayed up for that kind of bad TV in the first place.

Random thoughts:

• Christopher should design a chef’s coat for Robin should she make it to the finale of “Top Chef.”

• The Voltaggios are cute when they’re mad.

• I guess the producers will now have free-range on the “Top Chef” bikini shots — my husband probably won’t mind. Ironically, they probably show more skin on “Project Runway” but he almost fell asleep during it last night.

• Next week we get another exciting challenge because I know Natalie Portman’s culinary secret: She’s vegan! Can’t wait to see how the chefs deal with that.

• “Project Runway” should have a no fabric challenge if “Top Chef” does a no animal byproducts challenge. Oh wait, “Project Runway” has decided creativity isn’t “in” this season. What was I thinking?

• If you’re really missing on the lack of fashion this season, I highly recommend checking out “The September Issue” when it hits DVD. Real fashion, really interesting. It’s everything “Project Runway” isn’t.