Real Time Web Analytics Foodie Gossip: Top Chef All Stars – Episode 6: Who’s Ahead, Who’s Behind and Who Will Pack Their Knives in the End

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Top Chef All Stars – Episode 6: Who’s Ahead, Who’s Behind and Who Will Pack Their Knives in the End

A new episode of Bravo TV’s Top Chef All Stars airs tonight and I can’t imagine who isn’t eager to see which chef will be the next to depart. And while many have been hoping that this will be Jamie Lauren’s last round, I’d like to take a moment to look at season 8 of Top Chef from a more analytical approach – because I’m nerdy like that.

I did a little digging and found a chart in the Top Chef All Stars Wikipedia page that has tracked the performance of the chefs by episode. Wikipedia color-coded each ranking, but it was still difficult to figure out who was ahead and who was falling behind, so I assigned points to each one:

8 pts. = (WIN) The chef won that episode's Elimination Challenge.
7 pts. = (HIGH) The chef was selected as one of the top entries in the Elimination Challenge, but did not win.
1 pt. = (SAFE) The chef won the Quickfire Challenge, which exempted them from participation in the Elimination Challenge.
5 pts. = [IN (+)] The chef won a pair or team challenge but was not chosen as one of the judges' favorites.
4 pts. = [IN] The chef neither won nor lost that week's Elimination Challenge. They also were not up to be eliminated.
3 pts. = [IN (-)] The chef lost a pair or team challenge but was not selected as one of the judges' least favorites.
2 pts. = (LOW) The chef was selected as one of the bottom entries in the Elimination Challenge, but was not eliminated.
1 pt. = (OUT) The chef lost that week's Elimination Challenge and was out of the competition.

And after calculating the score, here is the actual ranking of the remaining chefs (from top to bottom):

Top Chef Standings
Angelo = 35
Richard = 30
Dale T. = 29
Fabio = 25
Carla = 23
Marcel = 23
Antonia = 22
Mike = 22
Jamie = 20
Tiffani = 19
Tiffany = 19
Tre = 19

I was shocked to find that Angelo had that much of a lead over everyone else. I was sure Richard would have been in first place. And while it appears that Jamie is ahead of Tiffani, Tiffany and Tre, that’s only because she hid behind a table in episode 4 to avoid competing. If she had competed in episode 4, she would have been up for elimination (minus 1 point) and probably sent home.

In tomorrow night’s Top Chef All Stars episode, "We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat", the chefs will head to the beach to catch and cook a fish dish for an end-of-summer beach party – and I would be surprised if this isn’t the episode that sends Jamie Lauren home with knives packed.

It’s not that I don’t think Chef Jamie capable of cooking a good fish, but fishing can be a high-pressure sport and we all know that she’s usually the first to crumble in high-stress situations. That said, Jamie is also a most amazing escape artist and could find a way to avoid the elimination round all together by:

1. Having someone do her work for her (like Antonia did in the last episode)
2. Hiding in the boat cabin bathroom (she hid behind a table in episode 4)
3. “Accidentally” falling overboard to escape competing all together (just like her 2-stich knife-incident in episode 2).

Either way, I’m not sure I can confidently predict Jamie’s departure tomorrow. Can you?



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