Now you may hate us for standing in the "judge each week on it’s own merits" corner, and personally subscribe to the "judge each week by overall performance" camp, but consider for a moment if we did judge each contestant based on their cumulative merits -- by whose analysis, exactly? And how do we arrive at a consensus? My idea of how the chefs rank may vary widely from Ted or Gail’s. And what about our Guest Judge -- he or she doesn’t know any of the chefs -- of what value at that point is their input? The debate would shift from "who won this episode?" to "who’s won the most episodes?" and "should we factor in the Quickfires?" "Does attitude or likability count?" "How about we assign each dish a score, tally them up, and then knock people off by the numbers?" Etc. etc .... It opens a huge, even more contentious can of worms. The "week-by-week" logic may be only incrementally fairer than the "overall performance" argument, but it’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

That said, I felt manipulated by the week-before-last’s show -- it really did seem like Lisa should have been sent home over Dale. I wrote this in my blog not to sell my fellow judges up the river, but rather to empathize with viewers who are left to wonder, How did that happen?" It’s hard to boil four or more hours of nuanced debate into a few minutes of screen time, and I can see why the results don’t always mesh with what viewers have seen.

I can only resolve to follow my gut each week about the food in front of me, and hope that Top Chef fans stick it out with us and keep writing in. Your thoughts and comments, even when I don’t agree, are an essential part of making this a dish that works.

Tom