Top Chef 6.2 "Bachelor/Ette Party"

There are three out GLBT contestants on this season's Top Chef and last night's episode put them in the awkward position of competing in an elimination challenge that celebrated traditional marriage.

Probably the most political of Team Gay, Ashley Merriman said: "I find it beyond comprehension that they're making us go do a wedding challenge when effectively at least three of us aren't even allowed in that insitution!"

Ashley Merriman

The only gay male contestant, Ash Fulk, had little to say about the irony of the elimination challenge, but the other lesbian contestant, Preeti Mistry basically told her fired up teammate Ashley to chill.

Preeti, happily partnered to another woman for 12 years, understood why Ashley was upset, "but this is the world we live in today."

Ash Fulk (left) and Preeti Mistry

To be honest, I thought that, given the amount of time this episode gave to airing Ashley's concerns, the show was going to throw us a curveball and that the bachelor and bachelorette introduced briefly early in the episode would turn out to be gay themselves, and their unrelated parties would be thrown by their respective gay and lesbian friends!  

As most of the male chefs (except for Ash) commented on how attractive the female guests were at the bachelorette party I kept waiting for the big, ironic reveal, but it never came.

Turns out the chefs were cooking for run-of-the-mill hetero bachelor/ette celebrations.

The bachelor/ette party guests
 

Fortunately, Ashley rallies and the show generously gives her a chance to be magnanimous. "You know, in this challenge being gay is really hard," she says in a voiceover. "But I'm gonna take a step back and just do my best, because I'm excited for the couple that we're cooking for, that they found each other, and that they're able to legally get married.

Honestly, I was pretty impressed with the editing of this episode. The producers used it as a vehicle to discuss the issue of gay marriage, and did it without making any of the gay contestants seem overly thin skinned. To me it seems a bit like a lost opportunity that they weren't cooking for a gay wedding celebration, but I recall they did that challenge in the first season of Top Chef, so doing so now wouldn't have tread new ground.

Who else is watching Top Chef this season? What did you think of last night's episode, and more generally, what do you think of Team Gay: Ashley, Pretti, and Ash? Fortunately, all three survived last night's elimination challenge - though none with particular distinction.