TCFL 16 // Episode 9 Recap

Hello Food Friends. Thanks for indulging my rant on Crossover TV last week. I'll spare you this week by going straight into Random Thoughts:

Michelle saying that the Boat Party Challenge was tougher than Restaurant Wars is insane.
Production being moved to Tennessee for an episode is not a good look for Kentucky.
Two episodes in a row: Heavy BMW X2 integration and Adrienne being super ill. Obviously that means that it was the BMW made Adrienne sick, right? Also, how did no one else catch what she had? She had to have been contagious.
You all know that I support Padma 99.9% of the time. Part of the 0.1% where I don't includes this week's hairstyle while at the Grand Ole Opry.
For some reason, part of the Grand Ole Opry's stage signage was purposely blocked off and because I'm weird, it was super distracting. Turns out all it was was a website and a hashtag (see picture above). Did Bravo make them do that? If so, why? Does anyone else in TCFL care about this stuff? Just me? Cool.

I have no clue who Hunter Hayes is, but I'm with him on being weirded out by having people watch him eat.
Props to David for caring about knowing how to make an omelette. As fans of the show, you may recall that this was a Sudden Death Quickfire challenge last season and the chefs fucked it up pretty badly. TCFL vets may remember that it led me to this rant:

Outside of straight up immunity and a cash prize, an extra hour of cooking has to be the best Quickfire reward you can get.
Unpopular opinion alert: The Beatles are overrated.
My favorite play on the Elimination Challenge was Eric's. Not only is the song (Big Poppa) a classic, but to get as granular as singling out a lyric ("A T-bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch's grape") is fantastic.

Fun Fact: as a proud alum, my favorite Biggie lyric is off of It's All About The Benjamins: "Fuck the state pen, fuck hoes at Penn State"

Funner Fact: Biggie's daughter, T'yanna ended up going to Penn State and didn't know about the lyric till she got on campus.

Like David, I also have distinct memories of Incubus' album Morning View. I used to listen to it every morning on the bus to school sophomore year. I still think that start-to-finish, it's a better album than their more popular Make Yourself. I remember the cover art, disc art, and even the portable CD player I had at the time.

Michelle is officially a dark horse moving into borderline front-runner. It was totally bad-ass that she basically shrugged off the judges telling her that Sean Brock wanted to hire her on the spot.
Mrs. Commish's Shade of the Week: (on Kelsey) "It's interesting that in the same episode she cooks her ex-boyfriend's dish and then her husband's favorite dish... and she sucked at both."
This again was another episode where the chef's camaraderie was on full display. They all tasted each other's food and helped each other plate. But we are getting into the nitty gritty and if you stuck around for "Next week on..." you saw that we finally have some animosity (Adrienne vs. Sara) in the form of another boxed waffle fiasco. Fans of Kwame can probably guess how it'll end...

Fantasy Update:

As always, updated scoring can be found here.
Rare occurrence this week: It was the same three chefs (Kelsey, Eddie, and David) who were on the bottom of both the Quickfire and Elimination Challenge each earning a total of -5.
Obvious, but the five teams that have Michelle all made big jumps this week.
1st, 2nd, and 3rd place are separated by a measly two points.