After last week’s heartbreaking (and totally unpredictable) dismissal of Richie Farina, and Keith Rhodes’ exit the week before, I was loath to even turn on my television last night to catch the latest episode of Top Chef. As the remaining fourteen cooked their way through the Lone Star state, my fears of seeing another one of my favorites sent home seemed warranted, but ultimately proved unnecessary.

The season has just started rolling, really, and we’re left to wonder what circumstances could top the nearly 36-hour chili cook-off. As Padma approached the exhausted chefs, at the top of the episode still at the Tejas Rodeo, Sarah Gruenberg fears another Quickfire—which would push their cooking time to a marathon of nearly 48 hours. Unless their next stop is Laredo, there’s simply not a way these cooks could remain standing. “I can’t possibly take any more at this moment,” she whines, but not to worry—they’re sent back to their house for a good night’s rest. They’ll be off to Dallas in the morning.

“When I think of Dallas, I think Dallas Cowboys rings a bell,” offers Beverly Kim, a plant from the Texas Board of Tourism, while the other chefs are packing up to hit the road. “And country singers? Who’s the one with the really big…?” What? Hair? All of them. Kim laughs and finishes, “Dolly Parton! Isn’t she from Dallas?” So, big... voice is what you meant to say? Big... successful mid-80’s acting career? Yes and yes, Dolly Parton, but no. She’s from Tennessee. “Have you ever done a 360 on the highway?” Kim asks the other chefs before grabbing the keys. She'll either bore them to death or kill them on the I-35, but she’s determined to thin this field out one way or another.

Chuy calls “Beautiful Chris,” Beverly and Paul as his Toyota Sienna-mates, seemingly another strategic move. Chris will crush Paul with his lameness, Beverly will drown him in her tears or Chuy will drive him to suicide by regaling him with stories of doing everything better than anyone else, ever, but they will take down Qui, the winner of last week’s Chili Quickfire, whose chilled coconut soup with ghost pepper (the actual hottest pepper on the actual face of the planet) rightly earned him $20,000 and cred as the most fearless of the chefs.

Two Pairs of Glasses Chris (Jones) ends up riding with Heather Terhune (who is awesome and who we're not seeing enough of), but not before promising that Dallas will be the city where he shows he has “the skills to pay the bills.” While in his head both “skills” and “bills” probably end with a "z," hopefully he’s right.

Once on the road, we learn a little more about the chefs, like how intelligent and culturally sensitive they are. Lindsay Autry inquires about everyone’s “relationship status,” because you can’t friend someone until you know what’s up. Edward Lee celebrated his one year wedding anniversary with the woman he “broke down and accepted into his life” just before heading off to Texas. Ty-lör’s got a boyfriend waiting for him in Brooklyn. When asked by Ed if he thinks that winning Top Chef will earn him a float in “the Gay Pride Parade,” Ty responds that he “can’t laugh too hard or [he’ll] wreck the goddamned car,” which roughly translates as, “I can’t laugh too hard, or at all, because that’s homophobic and not funny, and I want to wreck this car because all Asians are bad drivers, right?”

Over in Chuy’s torture-Toyota, the plan to kill Paul Qui is well underway. Who could survive hearing about how Beverly gained weight during her first year at culinary school? Whose mind could withstand the paradox of Dakota packing it on during the baking units? Chuy sneaks a glance in the rearview as the mind-numbing final blow is dealt—Beautiful Chris (née Fat Chris) has lost seventy pounds over two years, because after being featured in the Chef Works catalogue, instead of calling to congratulate him all of his friends called to tell him he was fat. Who can even.

Luckily, it seems Texas Highway Patrol caught wind of the plot against Qui’s life and has set up a road block, which the vans reach before he can succumb to the torture. The drivers are told to pull off into a cornfield, which is how all traffic stops go in Texas. In the field, they find Padma and John Besh waiting. They’re in trouble, but not with the law!

Quickfire

Shallow Chris (née Beautiful Chris) is taken by “this reflection off of John Besh’s beautiful white teeth and his hair blowing in the wind, and… wow.” Wow indeed. He's gushed over Padma twice, and now he's all hot for John Besh? Besh is kind of a hunk, but does this guy think he's on a cooking competition or a dating show? I'll give him a rose if he'll pack his knives. The Besh-trance wears off as Padma announces the rules of the Quickfire. The chefs will have to create a dish using the ingredients found in the survival kits located in the trunks of the minivans furnished by Toyota, because Toyota is a Top Chef sponsor, Siennas, Toyota.

Two Pairs of Glasses Chris runs further into the field hoping that he’ll be able to display his inventiveness and commitment to fresh food by using corn straight from it. “Shucks,” he says, peeling back the husks, “this corn is too dry.” (Actually he only said the second part, but I’m a a sucker for corny jokes!) It seems Jones can’t get out of this maize, deciding to try for popcorn.

There are no cutting boards and all of the food is packaged and precooked. A bitter person might take this opportunity to point out that the beloved Keith was sent home for buying pre-cooked shrimp, but we’ll just push on with our recap. The wind in the field is preventing the burners from working properly, and all of this ready to eat food is giving the chefs little in the way of both punch lines and inspiration. Since they keep telling the same joke, which is “?! What the?!” it’s becoming entirely possible that in a Top Chef first, they’ll all make the same dish.

Chuy’s using black-eyed peas, rice and trout to make dirty rice, since his dish “needs to be some kind of Southern-ish, since… John Besh is the judge.” Beautiful Chris is using lemon drink mix to “add acidity” to his dish, and sweet Jesus, here’s hoping there’s a double elimination.

Just before time is called Chris Jones is still fiddling with the corn, but it’s just too dry to use as a food element. Unwilling to let it go, he decides to use the husk as a plating element. The dedication to making his vision a reality is admirable (one of his pairs of glasses being rose-colored, apparently), but out of place. In this competition, you’re more likely to be penalized for this kind of tunnel vision than you are rewarded. When Chef Besh and Padma start their rounds, they stop first for Chris Jones’ fried chicken on lemongrass noodles. Served inexplicably in a dry corn husk, with fried noodles on top “so you get a bit of that crunchy texture.” Here’s the thing. It’s possible Padma needs the explanation, but do you think that you need to identify textural elements to John Besh? A) he gets it, B) he’s there because he gets it, C) if you're going to be explaining things, start with the husk and D) you shouldn’t have to walk the judges through the dish; the food should speak for itself.

While the judges are tasting Shallow Chris’ spicy garbanzo beans with tofu and crab, he explains that he used the lemon drink powder “for acid.” Besh says he’s never heard of anyone using Crystal Light to sweeten anything. Shallow Chris forces his point by explaining that it was the only acid he had in the bag. It’s SUGAR, guy. It. Is. Sugar.

When time comes for a winner to be chosen, Besh has the last word on the drink mix, naming Shallow Chris, along with Dakota and Whitney, in the bottom three. Chuy, Lindsay and Ed are in the top, lauded either for their attention to detail or their inventiveness with the ingredients. In the end, Lindsay’s Vienna sausage French onion soup and saltine sandwich somehow was Besh’s favorite, earning her $5,000 and immunity for the elimination challenge.

Elimination Challenge

The chefs learn that they will be cooking a course for a progressive dinner party. Being from Massachusetts, I naturally assumed that must mean a dinner party where everyone sits around discussing how every American deserves equal access to a decent education and y’know, healthcare, BUT… it’s the opposite. Apparently, a progressive dinner party is one where guests move from manse to manse, enjoying a different course—appetizer, entrée, dessert—in each home.

The chefs arrive at their respective houses, and Chris ekes his way back into my good graces by comparing the neighborhood to Wisteria Lane. “I wouldn’t want to piss off the neighbors on this street,” he says, before heading in to shuck and jive for Dallas’ desperate housewives. Whitney Otawka seconds the endearing emotion a little more diplomatically, identifying her upbringing as “very poor” and “very different” from what she sees before her. “I’ve lived in hotel rooms,” she says, “and not nice ones.”The chefs are randomly assigned a course to cook for the 1% based on where they’re standing, and Dakota gets “stuck with dessert, again.” She’s pissed, because she “didn’t come here to make desserts,” but it seems she just can’t make desserts. If it weren’t for her immunity during the Quinceañera challenge, the cake she made from the recipe on the flour box would have sent her home.

The first course will be hosted by self-proclaimed “lifestyle and entertaining expert” Kim Whitman and her husband, Justin. Kim wants well-presented conversation starters. Sounds delicious. While she and the other wives jettisoned the horrifying theme of exclusively pink foods, Whitman still gums up the works by banning bell peppers and cilantro. When she explains that she’s not very adventurous with food, instead of asking what they’re doing there, Chris Jones asks if they’d be interested in unique, never-before-seen presentation. Through gritted teeth Mrs. Whitman responds in the affirmative, and we can see the dried husk of an idea crackling in Jones’ mind. He’s hell-bent on something already, and hopefully he’ll stop short of being sent home.

The entrée round will take place in the home of the Kari and Troy Kloewer, an unadventurous vegetarian and a spicy food-loving omnivore. Like Mrs. Whitman, Kari doesn’t care for cilantro and is a nightmare in general. The Wescotts will host dessert, and while they love fudge, bananas and cupcakes, their focus rests primarily on calories and “inner fat kids.” Come to my house, cheftestants, and cook anything you want.

In the appetizer kitchen we find Chris “pushing boundaries” with a dish that is meant to resemble a cigar, but really he’s just pushing himself toward the door. Did he miss the part when his client said they were going to ask for everything to be pink? Chris, you’ve got to know, for several reasons, that these women are not going to be into wrapping their lips around some collard green-bound phallus. They are nightmares. Culinarily unadventurous, prissy, cilantro-hating nightmares.

But it turns out the housewives aren’t the only nightmares. Beverly’s in the entrée kitchen trying her damndest to prove it’s not just the 1% that thinks exclusively of themselves, taking pots off burners, jacking colanders and doing nothing, yet again, to even pretend like she’s not a lunatic prima donna that would poison any one of these people before she gave them a hand. “I’m working on four different things here… it’s like, come on.”

There are expressions of utter horror as Chris describes his roasted chicken cigar with sweet corn, collard greens, and sesame and cumin ash. Sarah offers a soporific grilled artichoke with date purée; Lindsay’s roasted and raw beet salad is a head-scratcher. Whitney’s choice of seared scallop over sweet corn purée seems amateurish—who hasn’t seen some derivation of the sea scallop with sweet corn succotash somewhere—so it better be amazing. Conversely, there’s only one East Side King Brussels sprout salad, and Paul Qui’s Highland Park version of it rounds out the appetizer course.

I’d like to thank the directors for following up the couple’s proud pronouncements of how many guests they had at each of their undoubtedly grotesque, cookie-cutter weddings with shots of them uncomfortably trying to eat Chris’ cigar. Dallas’ high society didn’t surprise at all with their response to the dish, or any of the dishes, in fact. The cigar, the beets, and the scallops were found lacking, while Sarah and Paul’s plates were hits.

There’s more trouble brewing in the entrée kitchen, where the corn husks wrapped around Chuy’s stuffed salmon are toasted, and the fish is overcooked. “The cheese does look a little weird,” Chuy observes. By “weird” hopefully he means “on the plate at all,” because fish and cheese go together like Beverly and teamwork—not at all. Ty-lör’s worried about the presentation of his spice-rubbed grilled pork tenderloin with summer slaw and guacamole—a guacamole he must have made without cilantro. None of the guests had anything particularly nice to say about any of the entrées, with the exception of Beverly’s scallops, a fact that I am ignoring because her protein is boring and she is insufferable.

Dessert’s a mixed bag, with well-intentioned but poorly executed dishes from Shallow Chris and possibly Dakota, a showy cardamom-scented panna cotta from Ed that no one asked for and a chocolate sponge cake with caramelized bananas, crushed chocolate covered pretzels and semifreddo from Grayson. Ed’s “jiggly” panna cotta is topped with basil pudding stuffed raspberries that make it “look like an Elmo” floating around in a cantaloupe consomée. “It takes much fancier than it looks,” opines one of the housewives, and we’re rewarded for sticking it out through this idiocy with one of Colicchio’s pricelessly condescending expressions. And after Court Wescott names Chris’ cupcake one of the best he’s ever had, Colicchio awesomely crushes both chef and guest when he calls upon the classic paralipsis of a mother’s advice to, if there’s nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. After declaring Dakota’s bread pudding “worth every calorie,” the guests excuse themselves to go to a key party and deliberations amongst the judges begin.

Sarah, Grayson, Paul and Dakota are called up first, and they’re all sweating until being told that their dishes were the judges’ favorites. Praised for balance, well placed surprises, and refined flavors all, ultimately, (with no surprise here) hometown hero Paul Qui took highest honors, and makes good—real good—on his goal of representing for Texas.

Both of the Chris-es, Ty and Chuy are called as the bottom four, and there is only one contestant that I can’t see go home. Based on the dismissals of last two episodes, there’s no hope for Two Pairs of Glasses Chris… until Shallow Chris starts taking the heat for his too busy cupcake and Ty comes under fire for his lack of knife skills. Chuy’s play on lox-on-bagels is judged an overcooked disaster from start to finish, as is his defense of his dish, and it looks like maybe Chris might just pull it out. The critiques of Jones’ dish as gimmicky and overly ambitious don’t seem fatal, but Gail Simmons’ reference to his cumin “ash” as flatly unappealing don’t bode well.

Ultimately, thankfully, Chuy’s overcooked salmon and goat cheese sent the pint sized one-upper knife-packing. Sarah waves an arm just as jiggly as Ed's panna cotta and calls out “Bye, Choo-Choo!” to the Little Chef Who Couldn't, and Jones is safe... for the time being.