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With little other fanfare, we skip to the Quickfire Challenge, as Padma starts speaking in nursery school rhymes. As the players gaze at her in confusion, she reveals that this week’s judges are puppets. Muppets, to be exact. Elmo, Telly and the Cookie Monster appear from behind a table and immediately start cracking wise. To a player, the chefs act as if they have been handed a jar of rainbows and joy. The parents in particular, especially Antonia and Richard, are rapturous over being in the presences of these icons of children’s television. Richard goes so far as to say that to his daughter, Elmo might as well be Elvis.

What follows next is that the challenge is revealed. As you might imagine, the presence of the Cookie Monster means that the chefs will be making cookies. While this is bad news for Mike and Angelo, who haven’t made cookies for a period of time between 25 years and Never, everyone else is gleeful. This entire segment is magic. No words I could use to describe it would encapsulate its glory. The people who provide the voices of the three Muppets are on fire with their jokes and their innate sense of comic timing in this segment would match George Carlin at the height of his career. And I say that as a George Carlin fan. This is in my opinion the greatest moment in the history of Top Chef.

The interaction between the Muppets and the contestants as they prepare their cookies is hysterical. As Padma attempts to state the terms of the challenge, the Cookie Monster constantly repeats his favorite word in the lexicon, COOKIE! Of course, when Padma asks him to define the key ingredient of the challenge, he spaces on what that is. David Rudman, the man who provides the voice for the Cookie Monster, turns a relatively ordinary gag and makes it something spectacular. When Richard Blais breaks out the liquid nitrogen and temporarily vanishes in a cloud of smoke, Elmo yells, “Be careful, Richard!” I laughed at this until I was gasping for air. Yes, I realize I am gushing but it’s rare for me to mark out for a television program like I did during this segment. Padma and Angelo agree with me on the point, and it’s not like they’re known for their sense of humor.

There is a competition going on and I guess that merits a mention. Despite the fact that Mike has never “made a cookie from scratch in (his) life”, he doesn’t wind up on the bottom. Those slots are reserved for Angelo, whose dish goes very, very wrong, and Richard, whose dish is not a cookie. Richard indicates that he cannot even argue the point, because the Cookie Monster is the ultimate arbiter of accurate cookie definition. I’m honestly not sure Richard enjoyed his wedding day this much.

The top half of the draw is Antonia and Dale, but not Carla, the chef who makes cookies as part of her daily job. Antonia’s dish gets the less than ringing endorsement that Elmo thinks it looks like a cow chip. Like Richard, she laughs off this criticism, which makes me think that office politics could be handled so much better if warnings from bosses or Human Resources representatives were performed by puppets instead. I think a puppet could tell you to get Butt Plague and die and you would find it adorable. Since we know that Antonia’s food looks…less than appetizing, Dale is obviously the winner this week. This earns him $5,000 and his fifth overall win this season. Dale is the ruiner of worlds.

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