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In yet another great twist (the producers have really out-done themselves this season), our three finalists will have the help of past finalists from previous seasons. Richard from Season 4, Casey from Season 3 and Marcel from Season 2 all made it to their respective finales but fell short of taking the title. Now they'll be fighting to help someone else take the title.

Carla, as the winner of last week's challenge, gets to draw the first knife to see in what order she'll choose her sous-chef. She draws knife #3, meaning she goes last. DAMMIT. Hosea draws #1 and Stefan of course goes in the middle.

Smartly, I think, Hosea chooses Richard, who is not only a great chef in his own right but also has a much more mellow demeanor than Marcel, who's brash, arrogant, stubborn and flat out rude. So of course, Stefan chooses him. Talk about a match made in heaven. This leaves Casey for our third finalist but Carla is thrilled, proclaiming that she'd wanted Casey on her team anyways.

Of these three sous-chefs, I think it's obvious that Casey is the worst of the bunch. Marcel was an endlessly inventive chef and Richard was among the very best at marrying his talents with the restraints of each challenge. Casey managed, almost by accident, to win her way to the finale - but she's the last of the three that I would trust in my kitchen.

The main question, however, is how these three runner-ups will fare when fighting for someone else. I think there is a real danger that they will fall into the role of stage-mother, hovering over their finalist, wielding far too much influence and living vicariously through their chef. I would imagine that Marcel is the biggest candidate for falling into this trap.

The chefs get to the Audubon Tea Room to start prep and immediately a fight breaks out between Stefan and Hosea. Apparently, while Stefan was in the walk-in, mulling over his choices of ingredients, Hosea entered and decisively chose his proteins - which just happened to be the same ones as Stefan wanted.

"Gimme back my foie gras!" whines Stefan.

"Make me!" exclaims Hosea.

"You took three cartons of caviar. You don't need all that. Gimme some!" shouts Stefan, stamping his five-year-old foot impatiently.

"It's MINE! It's MINE!" yells Hosea, throwing a temper tantrum.

So okay, it wasn't exactly like that but you get my point. Apparently you can take the chef out of the boy but you can't take the boy out of the chef. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, Carla is focusing on her own food, deciding to take a French spin on her dishes. Of course, Casey has her own thoughts on it.

"Carla has this idea of doing meat and potatoes," Casey explains to the camera, "but with something simple, you have to really do something to make it better." Oh lord, someone stop her. "My idea that I lent to the plate was ‘Let's sous-vide the sirlon.'" Oh Casey, Casey. Nevermind that Carla has no experience with sous-viding proteins. Nevermind that it's her challenge not yours. Let's stick your nose into her business and change up her dish.

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