I am so glad that Paul won. Appalled by how rude so many other contestants were toward Beverly.

Padma, I, and many others, think you are a warm, lovely and wonderful person, (as is Gail!) It is a shame that you both had to witness and participate in a degraded Top Chef. I was embarrassed for you both.

Pure crazy to think people
would cook in such
horrible conditions.

Tom take your knives and go

You have lost our respect Next....

I hope that next season we will get a warm, intelligent, lovely, humorous host. You have only beauty. You are as cold and humorless as one can be. I can hardly watch you, in fact I fast forward when you are on.

Bad season all around. We should just call it Season Mean Girl.
Though I'm not sure how much editing was involved to to highlight the nastiness of Sarah, Lindsey, and Heather, I do have to agree that they came off as complete bitches. SUPER ANNOYING. Nope, cooking is not about the personality, it's about the food. Let's keep it that way.

Granted, i can't taste any of their food, but it just doesn't seem like it was all that great this season, with the exception of the Charleze Theron challenge. There was little focus on the food for a lot of this, as others have noted.

Also, I don't know how many times i rolled my eyes at the product placement. It's always been a part of the show, but never to this extent. Seriously, isn't that what commercials are for? ENOUGH. God, it sounded so fake every time they talked about that damn car.

go back to what you were- if we want drama we can watch absolutely any other show on Bravo. Keep Top Chef about the actual food. An occasional physical challenge can be cool, but only one per season please (i enjoyed the fishing one from a few seasons ago...). this one was just totally out of hand.

I do want to say though, the crappiness of the season could have been amplified be because we just came from All Stars, where people had a connection with the chefs already established. that being said, it was hard to get attached to these guys as they were too busy biking and shooting stuff (and coming off as bitches, and talking about a chosen sponser).

I think Bravo will have to do a little better character casting, I know the premiss is the food, but with contestants like Sarah I cannot focus on any of the success of her food with such a willingly disrespectful persona. I hope the contests are held accountable if there is a reunion.

what happened to the top chef from seasons 1 -3 ????? now all i see is bullying and challenges like skiing and shooting guns?!?!? like this isn't a ski competition its cooking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i feel like this season promotes bullying? does bravo not realize that people are losing their lives in or country and you guys are actually showing this on TV????

team beverly all the way. i hope sarah loses big time in the finale and i refuse to even watch it. and if sarah does win i hope her restaurant fails miserably for the way she treated beverly.

Rarely read these comments or the blogs, but glad I did. It seems everyone is in agreement as am I about this year's "competition". Mean girls, bullying, ridiculous "cooking" segments...awful. What happened to this show? I think it's fixed too. What are the producers thinking? I guess bravo is ratcheting up the drama just like the Real Housewifes which set back womankind to the dark ages. Guess it's time to take bravotv off my favorite list of channels to watch.

Padma, I'd like to see you cook in a gondola. What culinary training do you have?

-Liz, Bay Area

I sincerely hope the the finale will only be about COOKING! I do NOT want to see either Paul or Sarah luge while having to peel a carrot, play ice hockey with melons, push each other in a bob sled while boiling water or for no reason at all spend 5 minutes of air time being told they have to get into some Toyota vehicle and drive to Ontario and then show them driving while commenting on the spaciousness of the back seat.

This show has totally jumped the shark with all of these "challenges" that have nothing to do with cooking.

Did I see the tail end of you finishing spitting the food out into a napkin??? Like the Bravo editing team didnt totally catch that last half second.

So do you ever digest the food you taste on this show, or do you always spit it all out into a top chef napkin? Are you afraid of fat/calories???

This show hasn't been about the food for a long time now. It's more about how can we create some crazy stunt. WE DON'T WANT STUNTS...we want to see the chefs cook. Putting them on a gondola to cook is crazy....they will never have to cook in that situation...ever. Please, please get back to cooking.

I assume in the finale, the two finalists will mud wrestle for ingredients or maybe dress up as seals and bounce bowls of eggs on their noses or how about getting the suits who come up with this junk, including Andy Cohen, to be disemboweled, battered and fried. This show used to be about food and cooking...now it's just sad and an insult to viewers.

Padma. I hope you read this - I have no idea what has been in your blogs. I am one of the 36 million Americans who are hard of hearing. I rely on captioning to understand what is being said. Other blogs are written , when you click "read blog" that is what you get. "Read blog" for Padma takes you to a video that is incomprehensible to those of us who need captioning.
Until the FCC requires videos on the internet to be captioned your comments should be transcribed.
There have been many requests from people like myself for blogs that we can read. After a while we just give up. When I saw "read blog" this time that took me to another video, I got mad. There is no excuse for this.

I am a huge Top Chef fan and this is my least favorite season. There is too much gimmick and that overshines the substance. Perhaps because it was Texas they felt they had to go over the top? Not sure but to add to that I was very disappointed in the character of some of the chefs. Sarah and Heather and to some extent Lindsay were very mean spirited and disrespectful to Beverly and turned me off. Any success Sarah has now is tarnished by her cruel and low class behavior. Even if she wins I will feel she is not a champion. It is one thing to be competitive and another thing to be classless.

Beverly is not perfect but she did not deserve that treatment. I can't wait for this season to be over with because it was such a disappointment, for the first time. Oh well maybe next year will pick up where last year left off.

I have to agree with all the comments above. What happened to the classy show where they are just being judged about their food. Even Tom said what it comes down to is the food - not the personalities. This circus stuff is a joke. How can you sleep at nights when such talented people's future are being judged by if they can ski, shoot, etc. Very disappointing.

DISGUSTED!!!
I finally got caught up with the latest episodes this morning. I am in shock!
What were you all thinking? Beverly's dish won hands down compared to Sarah
and yet, you picked Sarah to go on, sending Beverly packing. I agree with many of the comments I read. Beverly had far more class than Sarah and Lindsay. Karma will follow them. Their negative hateful comments suggest they are not secure in their own ability. This season's Top Chef-texas has become a sham. Get back to cooking period and stop the hysterics, drama and stupid "pet" tricks! It is all disrespectful to all chefs participating.

CAN WE PLEASE SEE THE CHEFS COOK? STOP THE STUPID, RIDICULOUS, OVER THE TOP, NOTHING-TO-DO-WITH-FOOD STUNTS!!!! BEGGING FOR A KITCHEN TO COOK IN? PEE WEE BIKE RACES? USING AN ICE PICK TO GET INGREDIENTS? GUNS????!!!! STOP IT!!!!

I fell in love with this show because it was "about the food". It has ceased to be.

This season has felt more like "The Great Race" or some crap like that and I don't even care who wins. If it doesn't go back to it's roots at the beginning of the next season, I will never watch again.

I have watched Top Chef from the very beginning and you are very close to losing so many fans including me. You have gone from a show with integrity to just another gimmicky reality show and that is a shame. That fact that Bev was sent home in itself infuriated everyone I know who watches the show. Tony must have paid big bucks to make sure his girl Sarah was kept on the show. I want to know who Sarah thinks she is by degrading and humiliating Bev on national TV. I live in the Chicagoland area and wouldn't eat at a restaurant that Sarah cooked at if all my meals were free.

Why not just have the chefs water ski in leather jackets as they jump over a shark? Between the unprofessional, immature Mean Girls who are rewarded with a chance to compete for the title, the intrusive, obnoxious product placement, and now this ridiculous Olympic challenge, this show has Jumped the Shark. If your goal was to demean this profession - way to go, you did it.

I agree with the poster who said that blind food judging should have happened! Why dont you do that on the show???

that's what I am. (I'm also not from the U.K., I just like that word.) What's next?
Having the chefs choose their items, season and bundle them in aluminum foil, and cook them on their individual (choose a sponsor) vehicles, on the exhaust manifolds on the way to yet another ridiculous challenge?? Has to be the least cooking-centric/most gimmicky season of Top Chef in history. Please reverse course, ASAP.

Top Chef is an embarrassment. Enough with the wacky stunts, which have nothing to do with cooking. Go back and watch the season with the Voltaggio brothers. That's what a cooking competition is all about. Or the Top Chef Masters pitting Hubert Keller, Rick Bayless and Michael Chiarello against each other. Now that was exciting cooking.

the producers have come to an all time low.. this was the absolute worst episode ever in TC history...the Pee-Wee edisode was bad, but come on...this is a cooking show!!! I don't want to see the Amazing Race and the House Wifes of .....
I want to watch a class act show with chefs showing us their talents..
I want Paul to win... He has class.. the other two chefs are catty and mean-spirited.
Tom, where are your blogs???

I don't know how anyone can say that Sarah and Lindsay aren't as good as Ed and Paul? You haven't tasted their food and the judges have. I really also don't get all the Beverly love. In the last episode she used Sarah's outlet instead of her own and was in Sarah's way. This has been her MO the whole season. She has no consideration for anyone.

As much as I dislike Sarah (and I REALLY dislike Sarah), the ice block competition simply was unfair and heavily favored the man in the group. He was obviously stronger and had more stamina, so was able to put more of his mental capacity into his dish. The two girls (and again, I REALLY REALLY dislike Sarah), had to be so freaking exhausted by they time they labored through all that ice (something which has NOTHING do do with being a chef), they were at a very obvious disadvantage. And then the biathalon was just a farce. Target shooting when you are already exhausted from two previous challenges and a round of cross country skiing? Ridiculous. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if the judges were biased in choosing Lindsay and Paul, just for the drama of having Sarah and Beverly go head to head. Poor Beverly, she worked SO hard in this last competition. Physically there is not much to that girl; you exhausted her and only the physically strongest chefs won out, not necessarily the most culinary astute. Beverly is this year's Top Chef in my mind. No need and no desire to watch the finale. Just hoping that Sarah and Lindsay both totally fall on their asses. Next year, how about making Top Chef a cooking competition, sort of like seasons 1-3.

And yeah, agree with whoever said, "What's with the video blog?" I prefer written word.

This has not been my favorite season either but I do love the show. I think the judges should not know who the food is from until after, then personalities would not play at part in it.

This is suppose to be Top Chef, not Top Stunt Cook. What a ridicoulous set of challenges. It would serve the producers right if the chefs got together and said, enough, this is stupid an

d dangerous. You may have had a bunch of truly talented chefs, but we'll never know. Andy Cohen, keep your forced drama out of OUR TC kitchens, and on your Housewives shows. TC got Emmys, but not for this kind of meaningless tripe.

Big fan of the show. But the gondola, skiing, shooting stuff really turned me off. I was kind of embarrassed to watch. It's about cooking talent. Who produced that show should be demoted. I won't watch if it continues.

Big fan of Top Chef. But last nights episode turned me OFF.
Gondola, cross country skiing, shooting...really? It was kind of dumb and I was embarrassed to watch.

There was another show on last year called xtreme chef, where physical competition was part of it the challenges. I guess Top Chef has devolved to that.

@keller: exactly. So you'd be eliminated as a chef for not being able to shoot? Next year maybe they can have someone with a prosthetic leg run a 5K before prepping their food...awesome entertainment. Gah. I guess they felt we were all getting bored with format that made us fans in the past? And the meanness this season was intolerable. It devolved from bitchy sniping to downright bullying. I wanted Bev to punch one of them in the mouth at some point, but Bev was not only humble and sweet but the personification of 'fall down seven times, get up eight'. And of course, she is sent home twice. The spoiled bitchy girls should have had to bow down to Bev's quiet, steely nerve in the end. I have always loved this show because it rewarded excellence, not bullying behavior. TC has lost its way.

I'm done for this season, I can't stand Sarah or Lindsay, they bullied Bev all season. Did they think this was jr hi all over, Bev showed incredible class all season, stop picking people for the drama and get great cooks again. I think blind tasting is the only way to get viewers believing in the show again.

Top Chef Texas really missed the boat. There is soooo much you could have done using Texas as a backdrop and incorporating the Texan culture. Going to Canada while filming Top Chef TEXAS was bad enough, but the silliness of the competitions were ridiculous. Texas is such an awesome state, so HUGE, so varied, you can find so many different type of people, landscapes, cultures, and FOOD. You should have capitalized on those. I too, hope Paul wins, and the mean girls watch these episodes and are truly embarassed. GO PAUL, GO TEXAS!

What happened to letting us see great cooking on a cooking competition show?

The cooking-for-your-mentors show was awesome.

The cooking-in-a-gondola, hacking-food-out-of-ice, skiing-and-shooting show was horrible. Please. Really. It was horrible.

Bev, if you're reading this, you made so many fans this season. Good luck to you. You seem to be making a good place in the world for yourself.

Mean girls Sarah and Lindsay, if you or your friends are reading this, I speak for many viewers who hope all that nasty karma comes back to you in spades.

Go Paul.

I have watched this show since the beginning and I have to say that this season was the worst one yet. The finale was the most absurd thing I have ever witnessed. This is a cooking show, people, not an Olympic event. The ability to ski or shoot or cook in a stupid gondola has nothing to do with being a top chef. I also felt strongly that no matter what she produced Beverly was not going to win this competition. I am so turned off by the entire thing, Pee Wee Herman also being on my list that I think I am done with watching this pseudo cooking competition which seems to have gone the same way every other Bravo sho9w I have watched has gone, in the reality TV toilet.

What does chipping food out of an ice block or cross-country skiing & shooting a gun have to do with cooking? How disappointing Top Chef has lost its focus. If you feel compelled to add new twists to keep the show fresh, make them related to cooking skills. You've lost me as a once loyal viewer if next season doesn't return to demonstrations of CULINARY arts. Maybe this season's producers need to be frozen in an ice block.

Tom - Where is your blog?

I fear Top Chef has "jumped the shark". It's bad enough you took Top Chef Texas to the snowy wilds of Vancouver, but when you forced your contestants to chip through blocks of ice to retrieve ingredients and compete in a biathlon, I wished the idiots who thought up that insane and insulting challenge had been the targets on the range where the women had to shoot. IT'S A COOKING SHOW, YOU JERKS! SHAME ON YOU.

Bev did quite well, I was impressed! She proved worthy to be in the final four. Still, though, Paul and Lindsay will be tough to beat next round. In particular, I thought that Bev's dish in the final round was beautiful.

Aren't you embarrassed to be involved in a competition show in which the challenges are so ridiculous? After the moving mentor challenge, and the imaginative Theron challenge, how can later rounds, when so much is at stake, feature unfair and random contests? Please return this to a cooking show. I know you don't set up these competitions, but you can let the producers know how betrayed loyal viewers feel.

I agree, the contestants show one side to the judges and then a whole other person is shown on the cameras. The judges should look at the footage before making a decision to keep someone or not. I was a Beverly and Grayson fan and Ed third. Now I like Paul who cooked good dishes and had kitchen etiquette. But these other two in the finale should be ashamed and how the judges or Bravo could reward them is beyond me even considering watching this show again. Im done with the cooking shows on to Jeff Lewis.

Cooking food on the gondola was not a real judge of how they can really cook. How can judges taste food from the gondolas that must have been cold, especially lamb. Having to chip through ice and possibly get hurt was ridiculous. Then the final skiing and shooting - what on earth does that have to do with being a good cook. This show seems to be taking a turn in the wrong direction. Let's have them cook and not compete in weird activities. Sorry to see Beverly go - blind judging of food would be the way to go.

Well after being a faithful fan of all of the Top Chef seasons I'm calling it quits. Peewee Herman was bad enough but cooking on a gondola? Getting ingredients out of blocks of ice? BIATHALON?????????? Forget this. I come to watch talented chefs cook, not some outrageous stunts that have nothing to do with culinary expertise.

Good luck to the remaining chefs, but I won't be watching because it doesn't mean anything to me now. Go Paul!! Those two stuck up, mean spirited biatches who are left can kiss my butt.

And if Padma, Tom, Gail, Dana Corwin etc. have any self respect and dignity left in their culinary lives they will distance themselves from this crap quickly. Shame on you producers of a once great show.

I'm out....

This has to be the worst sedason in T.C. history. The only good chef's are Paul and Ed. Sarah, and Lindsey are horrible cooks. The show has turned into a reality farse. The producers are killing the show. This should be the last season, unless the producers get wise. The real T.C. fans want it to be about the food. Not stupid Gondala, and skishooting antics. How can they pull this in a final four. Paul is the only real chef. UGGH.

It was shameful to make Beverly and Sara compete in sports events. This is a COOKING SHOW. I was embarrassed for Top Chef.