Queer Eye Ted finally shows up this week, bringing the tally of confirmed gays on this show up to an inspiring 2. Yay, Ted! We love Ted! Remember how much everybody loved Queer Eye for the first season and a half, right up until the “reunion” special when they looked back to see which guys were still acting queer and the hot guy who proposed to his girlfriend lost out to the shlumpy guy who made kosher foie gras?

My favorite thing about the Fab 5 was how in interviews they’d make a big deal about not being there to judge, and then they’d congregate in their secret gay lair, sip cosmos, and laugh their asses off at these poor straight doofuses. Frankly, I was convinced this show would never succeed, because I couldn’t imagine straight dudes willingly taking orders from the gays. But then I realized this has quietly been going on for millennia. I mean look at ancient Egypt – how gay was that?

And speaking of time in memoriam, seeing Ted on Top Chef made me realize that Queer Eye is the primordial ooze out of which all of Bravo’s programming evolved. Now we’ve got entire shows devoted to fashion, design, grooming, and food, and it’s only a matter of time before culture and manners gets its own show. I’m thinking something where a group of French maitre d’s and British governesses compete to be the best “etiquettestant.” It could be called Top Snob.

What? Oh, right. I’m supposed to be recapping that cooking show, the one with all the hurrying. And speaking of hurrying, it’s time for the Quickfire Challenge!

The ingredient is wheeled out in this enormous aquarium that’s filled with pretty shells, each containing some form of disgusting sea life. The contestants are each given 30 seconds to fish for as much of the stuff as they can get in this little tiny net. It’s like an elementary school carnival booth, the ones where you win a goldfish in a baggie that’s dead by the time your mother’s car hits the driveway.

Hung goes about the task with a great deal of gusto, dipping his entire arm into the tank up to his armpit, like he’s delivering a baby calf. In his exuberance to get as many barnacles as possible, he drops something on the floor with a big SPLAT! Everyone acts horrified that he refuses to clean it up. I’m horrified he didn’t at least give the unfortunate creature a decent flush down the toilet.

After everyone is done fishing, the contestants race to de-shell everything, and it’s like watching the bloopers reel from Hostel, with all these hooks and screws and knives being wackily misused. Micah announces that she lived for a while in the Bahamas so she knows what she’s doing. Apparently the way they de-shell in the Bahamas is by inserting scissors and pounding them with a frying pan. Who knew?

Brian talks about how, as a seafood chef, this challenge is made for him, and says if he loses he’ll be fired from his job. For the first time, I notice that Brian’s title on the screen is listed as “Oceanaire,” which makes him sound like he’s a veteran from some exotic nautical war. He sounds an awful lot like Tre’s “I’m from Texas, I know barbecue” shtick from last week, and since I’m still in love with him, I’m worried about how this will work out.

There’s a decent amount of Dale this week, and he’s got some great quotes. Before I pass on this one, I just want to point out that when people talk about food, it often sounds dirty. I feel compelled to comment on these lines, but I already used up “that’s what she said" last week, and I’m just too tired to come up with more. So I’m just going to present a few to you, and you can picture me tittering to myself while I type:

Dale: “In only a half hour, I don’t really have time to dick around with a conch.”

Brian (accompanied by vaguely masturbatory gestures): “I guarantee I’m going to keep coming at you … big, bold, and badass.”

Joey: “It’s so pretty I don’t want to eat it.”

Padma: “I love that slaw!”

Okay, that last one wasn’t remotely sexual, but she said it with such overzealousness that it just cracked me up.

Anyway, the guest judge is Alfred Portale of New York’s Gotham Bar and Grill. Joey comments that Portale is known for his “plating technique.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know that when I’ve eaten at Gotham, the food is piled into this precarious tower like you’re supposed to play Jenga with it. Joey says, “It’s like the Sistine Chapel,” and what is it with people on this show and the Sistine Chapel? There’s got to be a more appropriate way to describe food, because it’s not like people go to the Vatican, look at the ceiling and say, “Boy, I’d like to take a bite outta that.” I know I’m being kind of harsh on Joey here, but it’s only because I hate him.

I know nothing about his sexuality, but Portale looks like many fiftysomething gay men I know who are desperately trying to hold on to some of their youthful hipness through edgy eyewear and untucked shirts. As a judge, his style is that of stealth bomber. He doesn’t really react while tasting the food, but behind the contestants’ backs he is really nasty. If he were a Batman villain, he’d be “The Backstabber.”

He’s also half the size of Padma, and the two of them are utterly adorable together. It’s like having Dudley Moore and Susan Anton as judges.

When they go to taste Micah’s dish, she says that she’s made a “typical Bahamian combination” with “their traditional drink.” She has this really annoying habit of name dropping places she’s lived and making condescending remarks about foreign cultures, and, blissfully, it totally comes back to bite her in the ass.

Anyway, selected as the most vile are Micah, Camille (there’s someone on this show named Camille? Have we ever seen her before?), and Tre. Best are CJ, Howie, and Brian. Brian had offered the judges glasses of wine with his dish, and I have to say I didn’t realize the rules allowed you to get the judges drunk before they tasted your food. I’m wondering why everybody doesn’t do this. It seems to have worked because Portale, still tipsy from Brian’s little cocktail soiree, goes all gaga over how “well presented” Brian was. Hands off, Portale, he’s mine! Brian wins, which makes him happy, and when he’s happy, I’m horny.

They move right on to the Elimination Challenge. Portale wheels in this table covered in diner food – franks and beans, fried chicken, sloppy joes. The contestants react with utter horror. It occurs to me that this is the same set-up as on certain Survivor reward challenges, except on that show, instead of retching the contestants bid thousands of dollars to enjoy the long-forgotten sensation of hardening their arteries.

Padma explains that their task is to take these “American favorites” and reinterpret them to be more healthy, and where is the fun in that? They’re going to serve it to two generations at the Miami Elk’s Club. Based on what we later see of the senior generation, it’s clear the show is continuing to base challenges on things Florida is famous for. Last week: sunshine. This week: old people waiting to die. I think coming up with dishes with lower cholesterol is a moot point with this crowd. And based on my experience with cranky old people and food, the chefs would be best served by providing large portions accompanied by scalding hot tea.

Howie explains that this challenge is perfect for him because heart disease runs in his family and his father is dead. The theme of this season is emerging to be chefs with “Father Issues,” as if the writers from Lost have a hand in this.

The challenge doesn’t have a name, but I’ve decided to call it the “Our Viewers Could Do a Better Job Making These Dishes at Home than You Morons” Challenge because the cheftestants really suck this week. Each of them first has to go up and actually take away the dish they’re going to work with, as if they need to do experiments on it before they can truly understand it. Which in several cases here seems to be the case. A lot of them make a big deal about "Oh, I've certainly never had anything like this before." Which is why Dale is so awesome for having the guts to admit that “this is food we all eat all the time.”

Then they all rush off to the same market to shop, and I can only wonder how the unfortunate, underpaid employees at this store feel about this onslaught of anxious, obnoxious reality show contestants every day, including Sarah M. who harasses the meat counter people with the “I want that one. No that one. No, the one you just touched. Not that one, the other one” routine.

Dale explains that he’s drawing on his Lithuanian heritage to prepare chicken and dumplings. He decides to buy instant mashed potatoes in a box. Hilariously, the brand is blurred out on the box, because the manufacturer of this product wouldn’t want it associated with crowd-pleasing dishes creatively prepared by a professional chef. (Hint: it’s a brand with a big red spoon on the box).

Dale says he did this because he didn’t have time to make real mashed potatoes. A great deal is made about that decision. CJ says “it’s bullsh*t” because “Dale is a better chef than that,” and I have to agree on this one. Unless I’m doing something very wrong, I’ve never found it all that time consuming to boil some potatoes and, well, mash them.

That night, Brian goes to relax in the hot tub, and my prayers to the reality show gods are answered because he takes his shirt off. He says he likes to do this to relieve stress, and I wonder if when he’s very stressed, he’ll take off more clothes. So now I know that when he’s happy, I’m happy, and when he’s stressed, I’m also happy. It’s win-win.

Now it's the next day. We know it’s the next day because there’s this Requiem for a Dream montage with a sped-up sunrise and electronica music. We see the secret service convoy of top chefs arrive at the Elk’s lodge. Another montage reveals that the Elks like playing horseshoes and that nobody ever swims in the pool. Also, there are Elks – actual, dead, stuffed Elks. Because these people love nothing better than being surrounded by constant reminders of imminent death.

So, the chefs cook and it goes pretty badly for all of them. Then they serve the Elks, the Elk children, and the judges, and hey, there’s Ted! All of a sudden, he’s just there, without any introduction, like they tried to slip him in hoping no one would notice that although he’s billed as a regular he hasn’t shown up until now. As a judge, he is, as expected, very magnanimous and intelligent and likeable. And only a gay guy could pull off comments like, “Where’s the Wow?”

There’s lots of really gross food served here that the judges and Elks are very unhappy about. CJ admits that his take on tuna casserole is terrible and says he even hates it. Portale is particularly harsh about it, and keeps saying he hates how “green” it is and that “it’s so green, it frightens” him, as if as a child he had some traumatic experience involving Kermit the Frog and an avocado.

Lia and Dale come in entirely confident about their dishes, which is usually the sign of impending doom. Howie, after being called out for sucking two weeks in a row, is more tentative, and they play this dramatic music while the judges taste his dish but it turns out they like it fine, although to me the pork looks as raw as sushi.

Micah, who has already smugly announced, “I’m from South Africa. My reaction to American comfort food … ugh!” now presents this little round meatloaf and talks about how “Americans love their ketchup.” After she leaves, Portale says he didn’t like this and thought she had a bit of an attitude.

There’s also this weird judging dynamic with Tom Colicchio and Padma where she apes everything he says as if she’d been hypnotized by him. Tom: “It’s terrible.” Padma (in robot voice): “It’s terrible.” Tom: “She overcooked the lentils.” Padma: “The lentils are overcooked.” It’s like she’s his Mini-Me.

After the food tasting, she announces it’s time to find out what the judges thought, adding with a great deal of drama, “and the Elks.”

Anyway, the ones they like are Dale (yay Dale!) and Howie (“I love that slaw!). The crappy ones are Lia, CJ, Micah, Sarah, and Brian, who made the unfortunate decision to prepare lobster for a low-cholesterol challenge. He has immunity so he can’t be booted, but he looks very stressed about it. Awesome.

For a while it looks like Lia will be booted but she makes the judges laugh when she says, “I guess I didn’t realize just how complex franks and beans are.”

They’re also unduly harsh about Sarah M., saying her dish didn’t resemble chicken a la king, even though it used the same basic ingredients. That’s fine, but I don’t get why they’re so forgiving of Howie, given that he was supposed to do pork chops and applesauce and didn’t really do either one. Week after week he seems to benefit from this total disregard for rules that are enforced for other people. Is he Padma’s nephew? Anyway, he wins, and his big prize is to go work in Portale’s restaurant for a week. Nice prize. Maybe next week the winner will get to pick up dry cleaning.

In the end, they give Micah the good old American heave-ho, and I think her little bits of cultural commentary didn’t help her any. Also, we learn she was the Elks’ least favorite, and you just don’t mess with the Elks. She starts to cry, and I start to feel bad for what I’ve said about her, but she totally ruins it by saying, “I’m glad to go.” It’s such a weak “I meant to do that … No, I’m actually breaking up with you” kind of self defense.

Goodbye, Micah. The Elks have spoken.