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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: December 1, 2010
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Top Chef, “History Never Repeats” (season 8, episode 1). [Stream on Hulu.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Reality-show all-star seasons are funny things. Especially all-star seasons for competitive reality shows. Casting demands for these shows demand a mix of excellence within the field and also magnetic TV personalities. That usually means that “all-star” seasons end up getting cast with a mix of people who are there because they deserve it and people who are there because they’ll make good TV. Sometimes that works out. I don’t think anybody would’ve said that Amber Birkich deserved to be a Survivor all-star, but she played a great game in her second time around, and she won the damn thing. These days, reality shows get around the problems of “all-star” designation by creating specific themes for their returnee seasons. But Top Chef accepted this challenge head-on and managed to cast what remains a perfect all-star season of reality: 18 chefs who managed to be great TV and the best runner-up chefs the show ever produced.
Watching the premiere episode of Top Chef All-Stars, so many storylines produced themselves. Former villains like Tiffani Faison set out to redeem themselves; former villains like Marcel Vigneron decided to steer into their own villainy; a parade of bruised egos set out to avenge the great existential wrong that they didn’t win their original seasons (Richard Blais, we’re playing your song). And even when you thought that Top Chef had brought back a head-scratcher, chefs like Mike Isabella and especially Antonia Lofaso really stepped up their game. A chef like Antonia is exactly why an all-star season can be great; she was a great chef whose storyline got lost in the shuffle as big personalities in season 4 squabbled and fought. In All-Stars, Antonia’s rise to the top was a major storyline.
The only problem with Top Chef: All-Stars was that a cast this rich in possibility ended up with exactly the winner you expected (Blais) and an underdog who made himself massively unlikeable (Isabella) in the top 3. The inevitability of Blais’ triumph was matched only by the inflation of his ego as the season went along. But even knowing how the season ends, the first episode is as addictive as any hour that Top Chef ever produced. A superb mix of personalities and talents.
[You can stream Top Chef‘s “History Never Repeats” on Hulu.]
