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Kristen has been on a hot streak ever since her brutal, unfair elimination during Restaurant Wars. She has won four straight challenges. If she manages to defeat Lizzie and Josh, she returns for the finale of the show. The only difference for the players in the winner’s bracket, Sheldon and Brooke, is that they will have to defeat two chefs rather than one in the finale. I am of the opinion that the chef who earns their way back into the competition must significantly out-perform their peers in order to win Top Chef. This is something that will be addressed in the finale.

Today’s Last Chance Kitchen is all about determining who will reach the ending. And in typically aggravating Bravo TV style, we have a cliffhanger result. Josh’s dish is once again not quite up to snuff, so he will not be winning Top Chef this season. I do, however, want to congratulate him for losing so much weight in the time between Alaska and now. He is in much better shape in Last Chance Kitchen. That sort of weight loss is brutal at any point, much less for the father of a newborn child. Once again, I offer my congratulations to Josh, a really nice guy and a fine chef.

The debate becomes who wins between Lizzie and Kristen. For whatever irritating reason, these results are not revealed. Instead, we must wait until the start of the next episode to receive the revelation about the ultimate winner of Last Chance Kitchen. From the way Tom Colicchio talks, I am inclined to think that Lizzie has achieved an upset, but some Top Chef obsessives claim that they have seen Kristen’s tattoo in a single frame of the preview for next week.

If Kristen’s return occurs, I think we all agree that Sheldon has his work cut out for him if he is to become Top Chef. I said very early in the seasonal power rankings that Lizzie and Kristen were head and shoulders above everyone else. Nothing has changed. If it is Lizzie appearing in the finale, I very much like her but since she hasn’t won anything yet this season, I don’t like her candidacy. In such a scenario, Sheldon has a much better chance of winning. He can defeat both Brooke and Lizzie much easier than Brooke and Kristen. Ultimately, this has been Brooke’s season and she deserves to win, though.

Rather than do an individual column of Power Rankings, I will simply add them here based upon the comments above.

1) Brooke: Brooke has not only been the best player this season, but she also happens to be streaking at exactly the right moment. Since the herd has thinned, she has absolutely dominated, winning four out of the last five individual challenges. Overall, Brooke has won eight times this year, almost as much as the second and third highest totals combined. She has been that dominant.

Since there is a scheduling gap between what happened in Alaska and the finale, there exists the possibility that Brooke will have cooled off since then. I am of the opinion that the cream rises to the top, though. Brooke has won the most challenges this season, and she has been undeniably the best player ever since Kristen’s elimination. Brooke deserves the title of Top Chef.

2) Sheldon: Since I debuted the power rankings for this season, Sheldon has been listed somewhere between second and fourth place. After Kristen was eliminated, I moved Sheldon into second place and he has held that spot for five consecutive episodes now. This is exactly how I view Sheldon. He is the penultimate contestant in Season 10. He isn’t quite as good as Brooke, but he is better than anyone else. I am glad that Top Chef: Seattle is ending with the best two players in the finale. We have been robbed of such a conclusion most of the time. Seasons four and six are the noteworthy exceptions in this regard. Hopefully, this finale will be every bit as satisfying as each of those were.

3) Kristen: Given the fiasco that transpired at Restaurant Wars and Kristen’s dominance in Last Chance Kitchen, she deserves a spot in the finale. After Brooke, she is the most talented chef this year. This is why she was never ranked lower than second during any power rankings I wrote this season. Still, I mean what I said above. Kristen was eliminated from Top Chef. No matter how big a mistake that was on the part of the judges, she still should be required to do much better than her peers in the finale in order to win. And there exists the possibility that she is already out of the competition. That stupid Last Chance Kitchen cliffhanger creates a lot of confusion in this regard.

4) Lizzie: I believe that Fan Favorite will be won by a woman this year. Lizzie, Brooke and Kristen are the strongest candidates although Sheldon’s smile and Josh’s story keep both of them in the conversation. At a minimum, Lizzie has already defeated a popular chef, CJ, in the Save a Chef challenge. She has also effectively matched Kristen in Last Chance Kitchen, which sounds impressive until we remember that Kristen had just beaten her the previous week. As such, I struggle to consider Lizzie worthy of the title of Top Chef this year, even though I really like her. If she does earn a spot in the finale, I believe that she should have to do even more than Kristen to survive. In addition, the situation would also be aggravating in that Lizzie and Kristen would have one win each in Last Chance Kitchen. This is a different variation of the Beverly/Ed situation last year. My personal feelings toward Lizzie aside, the Top Chef finale is more valid if Kristen qualifies instead.

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