TNFNS, Season 6, Ep. 3

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Highlights from this week’s The Next Food Network Star:

Aarti continued to rock the challenges. She’s firmly entrenched as the favorite. Not sure who’s going to step up to challenge her. Dzintra continued to annoy everyone, even shushing Aria. And yet another contestant went to the hospital. This time it was Serena and her foot that “turned blue” after getting stepped on by Brianna. Am I the only one who thought Serena was faking the injury like a World Cup soccer player? Did we see Brianna’s foot make contact? I think Serena flopped hoping to draw a yellow card.

Did anyone else notice Aria asking how to turn on an oven at the very beginning of the first challenge? Seems like she should know how to do that. Bob even mentioned that she was moving to the middle – is the love affair over? And speaking of Aria, I doubt she was ever in danger of getting voted off even though she was in the bottom four, but I do think she should have been graded on a curve for degree of difficulty for having been paired with Dzintra. Did I mention she got shushed?

So that brings us to Dzintra. I’d call it a mild shocker that she got voted off. Mild because she was an absolute comedy of errors yet again. But a surprise because I really thought Paul did everything he needed to in order to get the boot this week. At the end I think the judges were just tired of listening to Dzintra. At least she didn’t disappoint on her last show. She managed to talk in the third person for the third episode in a row. She did twirls on the red carpet. She talked about hairballs with the judges. And she even managed to cry at the end. Solid performance overall. The weird thing is, I think we’re going to miss Dzintra. She was nothing if not entertaining in her own crazy way.

Going back to Paul, I’m not sure what more he could have done to get voted off. He was terrible in the first challenge, and then broke the bottle into his cabbage while showing off his knife "skills" in the second challenge. You have to love when the trained professional tries to show-off and then screws up. And then at the judging he starts disparaging Serena (his teammate for the challenge). Has he never seen one of these shows before? You can’t talk smack about your fellow contestants. The judges always bait these contestants and they keep falling for it. I thought that was the end for Paul, but he survives to cook another week (and probably only another week).

And finally, Bob continued to be the king of the one liner with his assessment of Tom and DAS’s collaborative dish (a tempura banana with spicy cabbage slaw) by stating, “I don’t know how you get so many unpleasant flavors into one little bite”. Mrs. and I both laughed out loud. We’re looking forward to Bob’s appearance at Caesar’s palace next month.