Top Chef - Noooooooo!

The Tailgate Scandal



Oh my God. I've barely learned your name!

Eric, right? No, Bobby! Jake! I think it's Jake. (Oh, it's Ryan. I had to check Bravo's website.)

Whatever. You were the most adorably cute, "I-can-sit-here-on-the-couch-with- my-Haagen-Daas-and-still-feel-like-we- are-developing-a-relationship" person in all of reality television... well, at least on Bravo... and at least for the year of 2008... or at the very least for the first half of the year.

How could they have voted you off? Can't they see how cute you are, standing there arms crossed raising your eyebrows in the super-fitted chef's jacket, or whatever they call it. This would never have happened on Idol!

Besides, you were just starting to reveal to us, through specially-designed hints and clues, that you were probably almost ready to start letting us know that you may, under certain circumstances, quite possibly be a totally raging, out-of-control homoholic.

Exhibit A: You were just warming up to calling everyone "Honey."
Exhibit B: Just this episode you blithely admitted that you knew next to nothing about football, that you preferred to spend your time and money on clothes.
Exhibit C: You completely failed at barbecuing for a bunch of tailgaters, people who would chomp down on a squirrel foot if it were slathered in BBQ sauce and slow-roasted over mesquite.
Exhibit Duh: You're from San Francisco.

Ryan, don't you see that they set up a trap for you?! A tailgate BBQ to draw out the gays! And you sauntered right into it. All the other guys on the show (a whole 6-lane-pileup of failed sexualities) even they knew how to play it. Crazy-guy-with- all-the-hats ran "straight" for the chicken wings. Crazy-Aussie-guy (who a mere twelve hours earlier was in a bubble bath with Crazy-hats-guy) even he went for charcoaled chicken skewers, as fey as those squidgy twisted things turned out. For God's sake, even little lesbian Richard had enough sense to shape his pate - pate! - like a burger to throw the judges and fans off the trail of his gayness. And it worked: those football fans pawed his pate like it was the brownie batter at the bottom of the bowl.

Granted, I guess it can be said that you tried, too. I mean, at the very least you did cook your food on a gas grill, outdoors, at a tailgate party, in the ominous shadow of a football stadium. Mustering all of the straightness that you learned from your endless childhood watching of Happy Days, you tried - with every wrinkle-free fiber of your being - to conjure up a nice sandwichy meal "for the masses." But in the end the best you could do was "Lamb Crepinette with Piperade Cilantro-Pine Nut Puree & Espelette." Sorry, Ryan, it just wasn't enough.

I guess some people, like that adorable Billy Elliot who tap-danced his way into the colicky, bigoted hearts and minds of some small Scottish mining town, some people just can't not shine their light. That was you, Ryan. That was you.

But by this point it was too late - your fate was as sealed as a GladWare Freeze-and-Fresh container. The weakest gazelle had been separated from the herd, and it was all tears and tantrums from here on out.

Bottom line, you were just too beautiful for television and I think the judges had it in for you. That ball-point-pig Tom Callichio had obviously had enough, sitting there week after week, pan-searing in his envy at your beautiful, full head of hair and your super-super-square jawline. And that's not even taking into account your doe-like eyes or your preternatural adorableness.

But, case in point that it was totally rigged and that they all totally knew how it was gonna shake down: the usually colorful and sparkling Padma came out instead wearing this gray-and-black, striped, off-the-shoulder jersey material thing, making her look like Cameron Diaz at a West Hollywood funeral. I think she knew the end was nigh. I think backstage, despite all the protestations and beatings-of-the-breast, I think she was simply outvoted. So there she bravely stood, both pre-mourning your exit and silently protesting, like the mother of a fallen Greek hero staring out from the ramparts of Troy, saying, just as I am right now, that I don't care one lick about all your consolations, people, I am gonna grieve this... meanwhile, I am late for my Pilates class.

Which is what Jake, or Carl, or Ryan or whatever his name is would have wanted us to do. He would have wanted us all to carry on, to bravely go on shopping, to go off on our yoga retreats, to find new and interesting uses for escarole, or mango. He would have liked for all of us to try to construct our lives, try, so that one day we might achieve even half of the beauty that was already so easily his.

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