Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Spring brings with it its own peculiar traditions. This is the time of year when we clean out our closets, plant our gardens — and in my case — binge-watch the ever-loving fuck out of Top Chef.
Bravo’s juggernaut reality competition series makes for great binge-watching any time of the year, but I would argue that it’s tailor-made for this season. At the very least, it’s perfect for my mood this time of year. In the Northeast, spring occupies a strange no man’s land between the dire cold of winter and the oppressive heat of summer. The temperature teases us relentlessly. One day will be a sunny 75 degrees and the next will start with a chilling frost. The saying “April showers bring May flowers” is as much a coarse weather report as it is an emblem of spring’s two-faced persona.
So spring is always bittersweet for me. As much as I’m filled with hope for change and renewal, I’m also running on empty. The New York winters can grind you down and I always make the mistake of forgetting to book a timely spring getaway. Needless to say, all I want to do with my evenings is escape. I choose to escape to the drama, comedy, and competition of Top Chef.
Top Chef might celebrate the best in culinary creations, it might implore you to see food as something to be craved, savored, and discussed, but Top Chef the show is designed to be dumped into your body like a jumbo bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos. Oh, it feels so good when you realize it feels so bad. I’ve spent my best and worst nights this month parked in front of the TV in cat hair-covered yoga pants, letting Top Chef wash over me. At my side is my wine. Oh, Top Chef pairs gloriously with rosé season! At my other side is nothingness, because after binge-watching a season of Top Chef in a week, you’ll experience nothing but numbness. Sweet numbness!
It’s wonderful.
The best thing about Top Chef is that there’s always more Top Chef. Right now there are 188 episodes available to stream on Hulu. ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY EIGHT! If that’s not enough for you, there are fifty episodes of Top Chef Masters. That means that if you choose to embark on this celebration of braising and bitchery, you can do it indefinitely. That’s because the only thing better than binge-watching Top Chef is revisiting seasons you’ve already watched.
The only thing keeping me from being stuck in a time space continuum where all I do is watch Top Chef is the summertime. As the muggy heat of June, July, and August blankets Manhattan, it becomes too uncomfortable to sit in my living room for too long. I shy away from television and go outside (and then I go inside into air conditioned dive bars where I hook myself up to a gin and tonic IV drip). Then summer becomes fall and it’s time to watch whatever new Marvel show’s on Netflix. Then it’s winter again. My desire to see adults make a meal without the use of knives wanes as the light of the sun dies. It’s only when spring nips at my nose, and I’m tired of winter, tired of working, tired of thinking, that Top Chef pops back on my radar.
So, yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of Top Chef lately. How about you?
[Photos: Everett Collection]
