The conceit for this special episode is that Fabio is hosting a dinner party for a bunch of cheftestants. They are:
Season 1: Tiffani and Harold making the second course
Season 2: Marcel and Ilan making the third course
Season 3: Casey, Dale and Hung making the first course
Season 4: Lisa and Richard Blais
Season 5: Carla and Stefan making the fifth course
Fabio introduces a challenge, where the chefs from each season will work together to do one course of a meal. They draw knives to determine which course each team will make. They go shopping with $500 and Marcel and Ilan still manage to go over budget. While they cook, Fabio goes around the kitchen and asks each cheftestant about his or her favorite challenge, and we get to see clips from all five past seasons. And in case you were wondering, Marcel is still a bitchy little dillweed.
Rather than being judged, the cheftestants all share the dishes and offer up opinions.
First Course: trio of seafood. Casey made Fanny Bay oysters puree, puffed rice, watermelon, and red onion. Dale made a crab pierogi with mushroom and asparagus ragout. Hung made sardines with black pepper broth and scallions.
Second Course: Tiffani and Harold made seared scallop with scallop sashimi noodles and tom yum broth and also provided a good wine to go with their dish.
Third Course: Marcel and Ilan made salt-encrusted Thai snapper with ratatouille
Fourth Course: Corn-fed beef, duck paté with savory root beer caramel. And somehow they used Cap’n Crunch in there.
Fifth Course: Raspberry panna cotta with rhubarb sauce, chocolate mouse with almond crisp
As they are eating, Fabio tries to start a discussion about various conflicts that happened and it gets out of hand with everyone talking at once and people just bitching and moaning about how tough it is to be on a reality show. Finally, Fabio has to stand up and remind everyone that they need to finish the show or they don’t get to go home. Everyone laughs and it lightens the mood a bit. Overall, it was an interesting experiment but also really awkward at times. I kind of wish they had invited some less asshole-ish people (ahem, Marcel) and maybe spent more time talking about the food and their current jobs.
You know it's going to be a very special episode when Fabio walks down the stairs in his (?) house and introduces himself. Like we were all sitting in the foyer of his palatial home, while he was upstairs fixing his hair and deciding whether to wear the tan blazer or the gray one. And why does he introduce himself when we were in his house to begin with? Would we be there if we didn't know? And also, as the clip reminds us, he was the Fan Favorite, so if you're watching this, you probably already know. So Fabio reads rather woodenly off the prompter to tell us that Bravo has invited various cheftestants from seasons back for a dinner party, and the preview clips promise us juicy gossip and fights, the staple of any reality reunion. And typing the word "reunion" just made me grateful that this isn't hosted by Andy Cohen.
The various cheftestants arrive at the airport while Richard Blais tells us that he jumped at the chance to meet people from other seasons. Harold from Season One reminds us that he had no idea what he was getting into when he signed up for the show. I feel the same way about the people from Real World seasons one and two (NY and LA the first time around) -- no one else has any excuse for complaining about how they were "edited" or any such bullshit. Dale from Season Three says he was going to retire from being a chef before signing up for the show, but it reinvigorated him. Tiffani from Season One says that she has traveled and consulted since doing the show, and ultimately wants to open her own restaurant.
The various cheftestants arrive at Social, the restaurant where they will be gathering today. In addition to the cheftestants already mentioned, we see Ilan from Season Two (blech), who's still wearing the stupid hipster glasses. The music changes and Marcel approaches outside on the sidewalk. Because he loves attention (but will deny it until the day he dies), he has to do a big jump in the air before entering the restaurant. He still has the wolfman hair, too. Look at me! I'm Marcel! But don't talk shit about me, because my art is pure. Man, I hate that dude. Every time I start to feel a little bit bad for him, he goes and does something stupid and I hate him all over again. Anyway, he's running a restaurant in Vegas these days. He reflects back on his season (like when Frank threatened him with bodily harm) and decides that the others were just jealous, and that's why they treated him so badly. And look, they did treat him badly. They were immature little shits. But Marcel is a dick. And he needs to take some responsibility for being a dick, which is what got the group sort of rallied around treating him badly. I'm not trying to blame the victim here, but it's ridiculous if he thinks that the reason the others on his season didn't like him was because he's so talented. Flashback to when Ilan told Marcel to keep making his foams and go cry in a corner, and then cut to Fabio asking the two of them if they've hung out since their season ended. They have, and Marcel claims that they are "culinary brothers of other mothers" (what does that even mean?).
Casey and Dale show up from Season Three and Casey says that this is like a family reunion. Dale likens it more to group therapy. Dale says that he's in the process of opening a restaurant in Chicago and rooming with his best friend from the season, Sara. And then Hung shows up, so Season Three represent! He says that he's been busy since his season ended doing various things, and they flash back to how fast Hung was at cooking, and how he would just sprint around the kitchen. Hung interviews that he's calmed down a lot after seeing himself on the show. Harold interviews that he hopes Hung has calmed down a bit.
Time for Season Four. Richard Blais interviews that he and his wife had a baby, and he opened a high end burger restaurant. Fabio totally rips on him and asks if Richard copied his haircut from Jen on his season. Richard tries to get out of it but realizes he's been burned. And then Lisa walks in and she's smiling! She interviews that she's still with the same girlfriend she had during her season and she's working as a sous chef.
Lisa's boring, so let's move on to Season Five. Fabio's already there, obviously, but then Carla walks in! Yay, Carla! Her hair is straight now, and I liked it better curly. Now it makes sense why Casey was invited though -- to bring up the conflict where the show made it out like Casey's decision to use the sous vide technique when she worked with Carla led to Carla losing the whole thing. So you know that will come up.
And it's Stefan, who walks in like he owns the place, and demands a glass of wine immediately. So various groups of cheftestants stand around and chat. Ilan admits that he was thinking about opening a taco truck and Marcel is full of opinions on that one (mainly that it's a bad idea, though it would be profitable). Ilan tries to explain that he just wanted to do it for fun. He seems like the type that would enjoy telling people that he went to culinary school and now runs a taco truck. He's kitschy! And Marcel takes himself so seriously that he could never do something that would be such a waste of his prodigious (in his own mind) talent.
Fabio tells Lisa that she has a beautiful smile, but she never smiled on her season. Lisa laughs and says that she had the same scowl in every episode, and to prove her right, the editors patch together a bunch of footage of Lisa scowling and talking about what a bitch she is. And anyone who watched her season already knows that, so moving on.
Blais tells Ilan and Dale that he wishes they could cook something right now, because he misses the competition. Are we really supposed to believe that Blais doesn't know that (spoiler alert) they will be cooking something very shortly? Also, there is a whole lot of jeans with white sneakers going on in that shot. Did I wander onto an episode of Seinfeld all of a sudden?
In a totally unprompted by producers question, Fabio gathers up Marcel, Tiffani, and Hung, and says that they all had strong personalities on their seasons, and he wonders if they've gotten shit for it from the public. Tiffani basically says that people will talk shit anonymously (i.e. on the INTERNET!) but when they meet her in person, they're cool. Tiffani interviews that she got to see herself on television, and a lot of her attitude came from her own insecurities. WE get a clip package where she is bitchy, and then talks about owning the term bitch, and trots out the old saw about how when a man acts that way, he's a hardass and when a woman does it, she's a bitch. And look, that is one hundred percent true, and it's unfair and sexist. But maybe it's time that we start calling out both men and women for rude behavior, without the name-calling, because you can be a leader without being a jerk. This isn't Glengarry Glen Ross, for Christ's sake. Anyway, Tiffani seems a lot more mellow and mature. Tiffani tells Fabio that editing can only do so much and you have to take responsibility for your own actions and words. THANK YOU! Now please pass that message on to your fellow reality show participants.
Fabio asks Marcel to talk about the incident after his season ended, where he got hit with a bottle by some lunatic. Which, as you'll note, Marcel talked about with the media at the time, and it doesn't seem to be the result of a police report or anything, so he volunteered the information. Marcel acts all offended like, "Fabio, you're hosting me and you want to talk about this? What if I don't want to talk about it?" Okay, how about just saying it was a long time ago and
you don't want to talk about it? Don't pretend like you don't know how television works, dick. And that the producers made Fabio ask the question. Fabio, to his credit, basically says he's happy to drop it if Marcel doesn't want to discuss it. And then Marcel has to provoke the situation further by bringing up the time they pinned him down and shaved his head (or tried to, anyway). Fabio gets his Irish (or Italian) up and says that he's just trying to hold a conversation and Marcel retorts that he would love to talk about Fabio's season, but he didn't watch it.Okay. There's a part of me that doesn't want to give this dick any more attention, but he's on the show and I have to recap it and he just pisses me off. He was asked to attend this reunion show. He had to have some idea what it was going to be about. If it was somehow misrepresented to him by producers, he has a few choices: he could leave, or he could clam up and just get through it, or he could antagonize the others. And he has chosen the third option. Now, if he wanted to be a dick to Ilan, I wouldn't really care. Ilan deserves it. But what did poor Fabio ever do to him? So Stefan tries to smooth things over and says that he always defended Marcel's cooking abilities on the blogs, and Marcel (who remember, doesn't care what anyone thinks about him, and yet has obviously Googled himself) says that Stefan also called him a twat. He does at least chuckle when he says this. Stefan defends himself and says he actually said that Marcel is a bit of a twat, but who's not? Because Stefan is funny, and self-deprecating, even when he's being an arrogant jerk. It's a lesson Marcel needs to learn if he wants to be a human being that functions in society. Stefan interviews that Marcel has grown up a bit. Really? Has he?
Fabio calls everyone together and says he has a surprise for everyone and pulls out the knife block. Harold laughs that the things needs to be napalmed. Blais interviews that he's always the suspicious one, questioning everything that happens and trying to figure out what's going to happen because he misses the competition.
Fabio has the cheftestants get into groups according to season, and then one person from each group pulls a knife with a number on it. Once all are pulled, Fabio explains that they will be cooking a five-course meal, with each season going in the order of the knife pulled.
Stefan and Carla have the fifth and final course, and they are trying to figure out if they want to do a dessert. Fabio talks them into it, since they are both good at dessert, even if it did get them into trouble from time to time. Stefan jokes that he made a great dessert in the finale and Fabio threw him under the bus.
Everyone heads to Whole Foods for some shopping and general horseplay. Since it's not really a competition, everyone is a lot looser. Casey interviews that it's hard to say who the best chef there is, because they all have such different culinary personalities. Richard and Lisa check out the dry-aged meat and reminisce about the time they had to cut down a side of beef into tomahawk chops. Dale says that the most difficult challenge in his season was the one where they could only shop from one aisle in the super market and he made ramen noodles with an egg on top. We also see a clip of Harold wondering why anyone would cater a wedding with food from the supermarket. Oh, the days before Whole Foods was a show sponsor. Now the cheftestants get to hop behind the counter and butcher their own meat.
Marcel and Ilan discuss whether or not to get wine, and Ilan remembers what a jerk he was to Marcel, and how Marcel kind of deserved it. As they check out, Marcel and Ilan realize that they've gone over the already inflated budget. And not even by a little. The budget is $500 and their total was $588.91, so they have to put some stuff back.
Everyone returns to the kitchen and starts cooking. Ilan remembers how Marcel wanted to show off his knives upon their first meeting. I wish this episode were not so Marcel-centric. Tiffani notes that they're all professional adults now, whereas on her season, they were all kids. Harold says that the kitchen is pretty relaxed and chill, and Hung was even mellow, but to Harold's amusement, Hung started running around before too long.
Dale explains that his team has the first course, and they're doing with a seafood theme. Casey is using oysters, Hung is using sardines, and Dale is making crab pierogis, although Tiffani tells him that his filling is too salty. Also, the wine he used is, in his words, "nasty," so he's trying to recover. I'm not sure how.
Fabio shows up to play the Colicchio role and ask each group about their food. Casey explains that their group is making a trio of food, and each basically working on their own dish. Fabio kind of awkwardly segues into a question about the craziest dishes ever to appear on the show and Casey brings up Hung's cereal village. Hung admits that he kind of lost it that day, but people loved it.
Harold and Tiffani have the second course, and they are making scallops. Fabio misses an opportunity to say something about Top Scallop, and instead asks them about their favorite challenge from their season. Tiffani liked the street food challenge, but Harold didn't, since his team forgot the jicama salad and his partner ended up being eliminated.
Fabio moves on to discuss the third course with Marcel and Ilan, who are salt-curing some snapper. Their favorite challenge was the Vending Machine Challenge, where Michael made a phallic Cheeto-looking thing. Oh, they did have a time.
Richard and Lisa have the fourth course, and they're doing a play on corn-fed beef. He asks them what the most difficult challenge was from their season, and Lisa immediately says that it was Wedding Wars. Richard thought it was also the most realistic, because that's what chefs do.
And finally, Fabio gets to talk to his castmates, Carla and Stefan, about the fifth course. Fabio says that he knows that they're making dessert, so he asks Carla how stressful it was to cook on the show. What a dumb question. Of course she's going to say that it was stressful. Carla interviews that her favorite challenge was the Le Bernardin challenge, because she admires Eric Ripert so much. Fabio brings up the time she cooked green eggs and ham. Carla admits that people stop her and ask about that dish all the time. Stefan teases Fabio about his accent and we're out.
Stefan tries to flirt with Tiffani and she jokingly accuses him of being a "lesbian opportunivore" and Lisa asks what that even means. Tiffani asks him about his "girlfriend" Jamie (as we see clips of their relationship) and Lisa interviews that she admires Stefan's cooking skills and food knowledge, but also his energy.
The cheftestants continue cooking and tasting and start plating. Finally, it's time to eat. They all head out to the dining table with their food. Once they're all seated, Fabio offers up a toast to the cream of the crop and explains how honored he is to be there, and how much he wishes he could have cooked with them.
Weird Interstitial. When Marcel, Casey, and Richard came back last season to be sous chefs in the finale, they were called before the judges. Richard was trying to talk about Hosea, and Marcel would not stop interrupting him to sing Stefan's praises. Finally, Toby Young told Marcel to shut up, and Marcel got all offended by it. Toby tries to reset things and ask a question and Marcel gets all bitchy about it: "If you were LISTENING to what I SAID..." Gail has to step in and remind Marcel that he's not being judged and they're just asking about the cooking, and Marcel gets sniffy and walks out in a snit. I think he might be on drugs. That's the only thing I can think of to explain his behavior. Because I just can't believe that one human being could be that much of an asshole. And also, the producers of this show hate him, because they have gone out of their way to show what a little prick he was.
Finally, it's time to eat. Dale explains their first course: trio of seafood. Casey made Fanny Bay oysters puree, puffed rice, cilantro, watermelon, green beans, and red onion. Dale made a crab pierogi with mushroom and asparagus ragout and a curry Hollandaise with bacon. Hung made sardines with caramelized sugar pork broth and scallions. Marcel says that he couldn't even taste the fish broth in Hung's dish. Was that supposed to be a compliment?
As they eat, Fabio asks the table at large if they felt the judges' criticism was fair during their season. Dale feels that everyone was unfairly criticized at one time or another. Cue the montage of mean things that the judges said, and the retorts that some of the cheftestants had. Tiffani points out that sometimes viewers don't see the resources and time that are allotted for each challenge, like when they used a cake from a box for the wedding challe 1 2 3 4
Tiffani and Harold introduce the second course: seared scallop with scallop sashimi noodles and tom yum broth. They made a simple dish and blew their budget on a good wine to go with their dish. This introduces a montage of people from various seasons drinking, including the time that Jamie and Leah got wasted for Judges' Table.
Marcel and Ilan made the third course: salt-encrusted Thai snapper with ratatouille. Carla is really impressed with the presentation. Hung interviews that he enjoyed the technique they used, and was impressed with the timing. Someone says that the ratatouille is great.
Fabio asks Marcel why it seems like he wants to fight everybody. Marcel gets all defensive as usual and says Fabio doesn't know him at all. A few people (Casey, Dale) try to come to Fabio's rescue and talk about how both Tiffani and Marcel seemingly took a lot of shit due to editing. Tiffani accepts responsibility for who she was on the show; Marcel is silent. But this leads them all to start listing off every complaint you've ever heard from reality show participants. Look, people. I started recapping The Real World ten years ago, and these complaints were old THEN. Anyone who goes on a reality show at this point has to realize that they're going to be portrayed a certain way, which may or may not be a nuanced representation of your actual personality, but will instead be manipulated for maximum drama. If you can't deal with that, don't go on the show. All of the bitching does come off a little bit like a group of people whose diamond shoes are too tight.
Fabio brings up the thing with Casey and Carla and how Casey got blamed for Carla losing. Both women agree that it was not at all how either of them saw it. Carla takes responsibility for making the decision to try something new, and she points out that if it had worked out, Carla would have gotten all the credit for it. So then Marcel has to pipe up again because no one is paying attention to him, and Harold is like, "Do we really have to talk about this still?" Fabio goes meta and says that they all know he has to ask these questions and they have to at least try to answer them and everyone starts talking at once about how all the bickering makes them look like prima donnas (that's Hung). Fabio asks them to cut the cameras as he stands up and says that if they all want to get through this and go home, they need to remember that no one is forcing them to be there, and they knew what they signed up for. He adds that he feels like they're making him look like the dick, and if they don't like it, shut their traps and say no the time they are asked to come. He doesn't add (but should): MARCEL! Everyone starts laughing because Fabio is a mascot and the mood lightens somewhat.
Fabio then asks Marcel to walk him through "the head-shaving deal." Marcel says he fell asleep on the couch while everyone else was drinking. And then Sam woke him up and held him down. Ilan filmed the whole thing but no one would actually shave Marcel's head, so it fizzled. But it was awful, and even someone who hates Marcel as much as I do can admit that it was terrible and undeserved, and there should have been greater consequences. Tiffani thinks it started off as an innocent prank, but turned ugly. Stefan claims that he would have wanted Cliff to stay and then beat him with cooking instead. Ilan and Marcel quickly say that they had no say in the matter. Fabio asks Marcel if he felt like a victim and Marcel is basically like, "Uh, duh. Yeah." Which was deserved. MOVING ON.
Richard and Lisa introduce the fourth course: Corn-fed beef, duck pate with savory root beer caramel. Lisa added a spicy pickled radish salad. And somehow they used Cap'n Crunch in there.
Fabio asks about the craziest fights and Casey brings up the Howie and Joey showdown. I forgot Joey ever existed. Casey thought there was going to be a physical fight. Richard thinks they had one of the worst physical altercations, when basically everyone got into a fight that ended with Jen kicking over a folding chair.
Stefan introduces the fifth and final course: raspberry panna cotta with rhubarb sauce, chocolate mouse with almond crisp. As they eat, Harold asks if they can talk about something positive, so they talk about all the hijinks they got up to in the Stew Room. CJ used to sing made-up songs about judging. The rest of the cheftestants were impressed by Season Five's volleyball court as well as the beds they made out of Glad containers. Now that the food has been eaten and the clips have been shown, Fabio offers up a toast to everyone, and now we can get back to the competition week. Good times!
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