Top Chef Contestants Overview: Season 2

My rundown of Season 2's chefs (contains elimination spoilers).

Contestants in Order of Elimination

Chef: Suyai ("Soo-jye") Steinhauer
Personality: She seemed nice, but we didn't get to see her very long.
Cooking: Not enough to be able to tell.
Stand-out moments: Being gleeful about flambé.
Elimination notes: Her nerves got the better of her, which is a shame, but understandable.

Chef: Otto Borsich
Personality: A little weird, but in a nice way.
Cooking: Gone too soon to stand out in any way for me.
Stand-out moments: Lychee-gate (see below).
Elimination notes: Self-eliminated as the combination of the possibly-stolen lychees and his absence while returning them hurt his team.

Chef: Emily Sprissler
Personality: Came off a bit bitchy.
Cooking: Nothing memorable, really.
Stand-out moments: Bitching about having to serve ice cream to kids. Hear my eyes rolling? They are rolling.
Elimination notes: Eliminated for salting her dish into inedibility. Also, honestly, how surf-and-turf is a childhood classic, I don't know.

Chef: Marisa Churchill
Personality: Bland, despite the sex-kitten attempt.
Cooking: Well, you could tell she's a pastry chef.
Stand-out moments: "This is what happens when pastry chefs handle sharp knives."
Elimination notes: Eliminated with teammate Josie for some not-so-great-looking "palate cleansers". Honestly I give her props for having the balls to try to expand herself from "pastry chef" to "top chef", but I didn't really think she'd win.

Chef: Josie Smithe-Malave
Personality: Loud, cheerful, slightly braying.
Cooking: I'm forced to admit I barely remember what she cooked.
Stand-out moments: Her laugh, which was, erm, memorable.
Elimination notes: Eliminated with teammate Marisa for what I also could call a "questionable intermezzo". Sort of a pity, I'd like to have seen what else she could do, provided she didn't laugh anymore.

Chef: Carlos Fernandez
Personality: Seemed like a really nice guy overall
Cooking: Seemed oddly uninspired considering what he went on to do.
Stand-out moments: Sitting around not doing anything besides salad.
Elimination notes: Eliminated for pretty much just sitting around not doing anything besides salad. Now has his own web show, Miami Spice, on which he does more complex dishes in less time... go fig.

Chef: Frank Terzoli
Personality: Macho, prone to bullying.
Cooking: Sloppy, venturing into strange.
Stand-out moments: Threatening Marcel with a beating.
Elimination notes: Shoulda gone when he did the insane Alice in Wonderland thing, IMO, but his poor showing at the beach breakfast got him instead. Also, goodbye bully!

Chef: Mia Gaines-Alt
Personality: Tough lady with a hard past, and it showed, but maybe a little too by design.
Cooking: Sounded really good overall, clearly influenced by Southern styles.
Stand-out moments: Cooking despite being sick; giving up her place for someone else.
Elimination notes: For all that I don't like that she backstabbed people a couple times, I have to give her serious credit for volunteering to go home rather than let Elia—who she considered more talented—be eliminated. If she hadn't left, she might've made it to the finals.

Chef: Betty Fraser
Personality: I thought she was gonna be another Cynthia, but she turned into a screeching harridan instead.
Cooking: Sloppy presentation, comfort-food style, a little one-note.
Stand-out moments: Screeching at Marcel like a harridan. Many times.
Elimination notes: Went home for sloppy, sloppy glasses of boring soup, and aren't we glad?

Chef: Michael Midgely
Personality: Like, um, dude, were, like, you on, like, drugs?
Cooking: Not hugely inventive or particularly notable, but obviously not bad, either.
Stand-out moments: Painkillers improving his focus. Seriously.
Elimination notes: After taking both the Quickfire and Elimination in round 9 with some really good-sounding food, he got sent home the next episode, which seems kinda harsh. I was saying it would be funny if he made it to the top, but it was not to be.

Chef: Cliff Crooks
Personality: Often quiet, but had a temper.
Cooking: Good stuff, most of the time.
Stand-out moments: The Case of the Shaved Head
Elimination notes: Cliff was not eliminated; he was disqualified for breaking the "no aggressive contact" rule. (See commentary below.)

Chef: Elia Aboumrad
Personality: Dedicated and driven, but later showed a petty streak.
Cooking: I really found her ideas to be either serious hits or serious misses, but note that some of what I thought sounded bad was regarded as good.
Stand-out moments: Chocolate facial meltdown; The Case of the Shaved Head.
Elimination notes: I would have far rather her in the final episode than Ilan, but from what I saw it was fair... the food wasn't bad, it just wasn't what they were looking for.

Chef: Sam Talbot
Personality: Another quiet one, though we saw him snap a few times.
Cooking: Overall, he was decidedly a serious contender for the win.
Stand-out moments: Stupidly bitching out Marcel; not helping Marcel in The Case of the Shaved Head.
Elimination notes: Definitely should've gone into the finals rather than Ilan; he was robbed. Yes, I'm picking on Ilan. Deal.

Chef: Marcel Vigneron
Personality: Geeky undersocialized annoying little brother type.
Cooking: Not as freaky as you'd expect from a self-proclaimed "molecular gastronomist"; actually interesting and tasty-sounding.
Stand-out moments: Standing up to Betty; rapping on the roof.
Elimination notes: Personally I'd much rather he'd won than Ilan, and it wasn't just because I detest Ilan, but also because I thought his menu, flaws and all, was far more inventive.

Chef: Ilan Hall
Personality: Butthead. I liked him at first, but really? Butthead.
Cooking: One-note. Sorry, but seriously, get another style besides Spanish and put down the Saffron. Yes, it was obviously often good, but seriously.
Stand-out moments: The Case of the Shaved Head.
Elimination notes: Alas, he wasn't eliminated. Second winner of Top Chef.

Overall impressions

This season was full of a lot of very petty and immature people. Two particular things stand out the most.

The Case of the Shaved Head (and why I mention things in relation to Marcel a lot)

Here's what you should know: I didn't really like Marcel that much, but while at first I wanted to just smack him for being another Stephen, it turned out to be more complex than that. Marcel's problem is that he's a geek, and like many geeks, most of his socialization skills are only practiced through talking about what he likes, and therefore are a little lacking. He's also got that "annoying little brother" vibe. If he were a little younger he'd probably get more slack but he needs to grow out of it.

So, I can understand how he rubs so many people the wrong way, but the hand, it was gotten out of considerably, to the point where people were reacting badly to him not being annoying. A lot of people really lost a lot of my respect for how they treated Marcel, and I was pretty sympathetic to him even though I do think he needs to mature some before he's good company.

Then came the episode that Cliff was disqualified for: the Case of the Head Shaving. Apparently, Ilan and Elia decided it'd be fun to shave their heads, and somehow that turned into the idea that it'd be fun to forcibly shave Marcel's admittedly-ridiculous hair off. Cliff made the mistake of holding him down—see what I mean about that "little brother" vibe? I think that Cliff realized he'd gone too far even before he had the sit-down with Colicchio, and in all fairness to him he took his disqualification gracefully and offered what I think was a sincere apology to Marcel (who was in turn reasonably cool about the incident; I think he just wanted everyone to shut up about it so he could get back to cooking).

I seem to recall Colicchio wanted to send them all home (Sam should've intervened and didn't) and was vetoed by the producers.

Aiming for the Middle and Possible Cheating

This was the rest of what bugged me about this season. Overall, as the judges repeatedly pointed out, it seemed like a lot of people weren't cooking to win, but rather cooking to not lose. In addition, there was the possible cheating in the Camp Glucose episode, and some hints that there may've been more of that going on in other episodes. I was not impressed with the dedication of many of the contestants, and if they were cheating on top of it? Bad, bad mojo.

Speaking of cheating, I love that Elia accused Marcel of cheating but couldn't name a single instance. In fact Elia was really the person who disappointed me the most. At first she sort-of-stuck-up for Marcel, who she knew before the show; she admitted he could be annoying but didn't think he was as bad as people made out. Somewhere along the line, though—possibly after her crisis of motivation in the Thanksgiving episode—she stopped playing the cooking game and started playing the Hate Marcel game. When she was involved in the stupid head-shaving incident, I lost all respect for her, but she took it even lower when she made unbackable claims of cheating. At one point I would've been happy if she won, but not after that.

By the end, despite Marcel's annoyance factor, he was the only one I wanted to win. Ilan didn't deserve the win in my opinion, and his head has only been swollen by it. And I was really hoping they'd get a better bunch for Season 3. Luckily, they did, something I'll be posting about soon.