From the kitchen to the...entire house....

I caught the premier of "Top Design" last night, after watching the predictable conclusion to "Top Chef". There was no way they would give it to Marcel, even though I did think his technique was much more interesting than Ilan's. Ilan deserved it though, since he was all-around a more competent chef, and I'm sure his food tasted awesome.

As for "Top Design", a few comments:

I hope they don't use those stupid giant diorama boxes as the site for each of the competitions. How incredibly boring!

I love how these spin-off shows try and maintain a one-to-one correspondence with the originator, from Project Runway, through Top Chef to this new show: celeb host, prominent guest judges, the catchy, topically-related dismissal phrase (You're out! or "Pack your knives and go!). It's this last category that hints at the potential failure of this iteration of the reality creative competition format: the catch phrase fucking sucks! All they say is, "Goodbye!" Is that really the best they could think of???

Oh, and Elle Decor. What a bullshit magazine! I wasn't even aware they had an interior design magazine until the show. I am not surprised that is the best they could get to sponsor, since most real professionals consider these shows a travesty and a joke.

On a more positive note, though, is the potential for conflict between the editor of Elle Decor (Margaret Russell) and the other judges. Rolling her eyes at the winning "conceptual" design suggests she has conservative, mainstream tastes (another indicator that Elle Decor is a bullshit magazine). While on Project Runway, consensus among the judges is fairly consistent, during the Top Design evaluations you could tell from the editing that Russell was not in agreement with the other judges. I'm guessing there will be a lot of eye-rolling, and maybe even some delicious bitchery. Guess we'll see, since even though I am not holding out much hope for this show, I am a loser with nothing better to do to on Wed. night than watch Bravo. Blech!