Top Chef Recap: Attack of the Drunks

An expose in New York magazine of Bravo’s treatment of its reality show contestants has been much discussed in the blogosphere this week, and it offers interesting insight into our beloved chefketeers on Top Chef.

According to the article, contestants are not allowed to have money, credit cards, cell phones, newspapers, magazines, televisions, iPods, or Internet access. Which places the experience somewhere between Colonial Williamsburg and the 10th Circle of Hell. The producers claim these measures are designed to prevent cheating, because you never know if contestants might be listening to illegally downloaded recipes on their iPods.

But New York mag is savvy enough to figure out it’s really meant to spark dramatic on-screen interactions, because, really, take your pick which deprivation would put you personally over the edge first.

What’s truly bewildering to me, though, is that they’re also not allowed to have sex (at least with other people), which you’d think the producers would just be dying for, given how much it would spice things up on such a bland show.

Honestly, I don’t know where Bravo’s pollyanna streak comes from. It even dates back to how they totally screwed up Boy Meets Boy by going to all the trouble of gathering a bunch of gay guys in one dormitory and then forbidding them from hooking up. That show really should have been Boys Meet Boys … And Meets Them and Meets Them and Meets Them. It would have been a goldmine.

The reason for this enforced puritanism is apparently the network’s unwillingness to have contestants get tested for STDs and fear they’ll have to fork over some lawsuit settlement if one of them emerges with one. I’m just not buying that. With all the product placement on this show, you mean to tell me they couldn’t cut a deal for free condoms? All they needed was a Quickfire Challenge sponsored by the “Trojan Family of Products.”

“In this challenge, chefs, you’ll need to create a delectable egg dish -- but without fertilizing any of the eggs! You’ll have 20 minutes for this challenge, although most of you will be done in four.”

Anyway, it’s an interesting coincidence this article came out this week, because, as you’ll see, it goes a long way to explaining the bafflingly overwrought behavior in this episode.