Before we move on to the recap of the final episode in Vegas, because there are so few things in life I’m actually not-terrible at, let me take a quick moment to pat my own back til it’s bloody.

Here were my Power Rankings during the second week of this Top Chef season:

1) Kevin

2) Michael V.

3) Jen

4) Bryan V.

5) Eli

Yyyyyyep…If you need me, I’ll be leaning back in my chair the rest of the day simultaneously dusting off my hands and cracking my knuckles. Let’s just say I frickin’ EARN those Tasti D-Lite coupons that VH1 pays me in lieu of a salary.

My thoughts on last night’s Chefpisode:

– The Quickfire: Cook a thing inside a thing inside a thing, in honor of Vegas’ legal prostitution.

– “Welcome back” says Padma to Jen after tasting her weird seafood Russian nesting doll. Nice to see Jen back on the wagon (the cooking one) after a couple super-shaky weeks; her chances to win are probably shot, but she’ll at least go out on a high note. Unless she gets nervous next week and slips on a banana peel and flings a pot of soup up in the air and it lands on the Queen of England’s head and she’s like “Well I never!” Otherwise she’s fine.

– I get the impression some PA at Bravo was told to go through Michael’s 500 minutes of testimonial footage and pull out two lines that almost came close to being sliiiiiightly inflammatory towards Kevin. He doesn’t appear to dislike Kevin, but Bravo’s grasping reaaally hard to portray him as the Stefan “talented but too arrogant” villain who’s gonna lose the Final, when in reality he is a robot. Not sure how many more times we have to go over this fact.

– Kevin spent the entire episode being super-defensive about his simple style of cooking, even declaring that his decision to keep things really simple was, in itself, a very ballsy move. Kevin — don’t get intimidated by Michael’s two pseudo-insults about your simplicity. He’s just saying the words that the microchip the Bravo producers installed into his robo-brain forces him to say to create conflict down the home stretch. Your cooking is fine.

…Or WAS IT fine? Elimination Challenge and Final Four after the jump:

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