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Top Chef: Masters Season 2 is starting to get good. I feel like I’m getting to know the chefs a little bit better, and as a result, I’m beginning to pick out Masters that I’m rooting for and rooting against. In the first camp: Susan (the lovable, kooky grandma) and Jody (GILF). In the second: Marcus (Mr. Egotistical-I-Don’t-Help-Anyone-Else). I’m really looking forward to the day when he goes home.

Also in contention in this competition are Susur (eccentric Asian), Jonathan (Obi-Wan), Rick (NY Seafood Guy) and Tony (Italian but doesn’t say much).

The Quickfire for this week is one of the more entertaining ones. The Masters will be cooking for three of the people who bring The Simpsons to life every week: creator Matt Groening, voice actor Hank Azaria (genius), and writer Matt Selman. The Masters are each assigned a character (through the drawing of knives) for whom they’ll need to cook a gourmet dish.

Some of the Masters get easy-as-hell characters to cook for. Apu will get Indian food, Homer will get deliciously unhealthy food, Chief Wiggum will get a donut - but other Masters get much bigger challenges. I mean, I consider myself to be a huge Simpsons fan but I have no idea what I would cook for Marge or Bart.

The Masters get started, with Susur lamenting the fact that he incredibly unfamiliar with the Simpsons (when he drew the knife with Marge’s name on it, he initially read it as, “Margo”). He knows Marge as the woman with big blue hair and is told by another chef that she likes pork chops (Homer is the one who likes pork chops, I think to myself) so he’s recreating her hair with blue potatoes and doing pork chops.

One point of contention comes when Susur accidentally uses Tony’s skillet of reserved bacon fat as a garbage collector. The bacon fat is ruined and Tony is pissed.

In the end, though, we are treated to a bevy of BEAUTIFUL looking dishes. Like last year, I am once again struck by how much better the cooking is on Top Chef: Masters than on Top Chef. The difference in skill and creativity is obvious.

Susan goes first with her ode to Moe, the Simpson’s most perennially miserable character. She imagines him to be someone who doesn’t eat well, with a lot of junk food on his plate, so she made a crispy treat with millet and peanut butter chips, plus a Mexican hot chocolate. “She dinks dat Moe has a sweet tooth,” remarks Azaria in Moe’s voice. I love it. He proclaims that Moe would love this dish, that he wouldn’t have had better in his whole life.

Tony is next with Chief Wiggum. He goes with a fried, bacon, honey doughnut with boozy coffee. High end donuts and joe, it’s great. Groening says that he could easily picture Wiggum drinking spiked coffee, though he wishes that he could taste more bacon in the doughnut. Susur, responsible for the lack of bacon, cringes backstage.

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