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There are no surprises with the top group this week. Dale, Richard and Antonia are invited back to Judges Table for a victory lap. Of course, just being in the top three isn’t good enough with $25,000 on the line. All of these folks want to win. $5,000 Quickfires are weekend in Vegas money; $25,000 is not...unless you have a serious gambling problem. That’s down payment on a home money. So, the mood is not quite as loose as usual. Maybe if they’d had the Muppets instead of Ming Tsai. In the end, Dale’s daring wins him the day, meaning that he earns another $25,000 in this episode. In 24 hours, Dale has won a grand total of $30,000. In terms of single day income, this places him in the financial stratosphere of drug dealers, celebrities, and star athletes. That’s an $11 million annual salary if he makes that much every day. We marveled over Tiffany Derry’s wins in Season 7 that paid for her wedding. Dale has matched all of those in a single day. Amazing.

The bottom trio is comprised of Carla, Tiffany and Angelo. Switch out Carla for Mike Isabella, something that wasn’t far away from happening, and this would line up with my power rankings prior to the episode. So, this feels like a microcosm of the players to date save for Carla, whose elimination would be the most disastrous result on the show since Jen Carroll’s demise. Fortunately, that probably won’t happen. Tiffany and Angelo’s behavior clearly identifies them as the likely victims. Tiffany breaks down in tears and is certain this is her time to go home. She basically delivers a farewell speech. Angelo offers a respectable defense that his palate may have been exhausted after a brutal workload that day.

Padma announces the dreaded word, however, when she describes Angelo’s dish as inedible. Nobody ever survives that, and a very humble Angelo is eliminated from the competition. To his credit, he handles this news with grace and aplomb, exemplifying how much he’s grown as a person over the course of the two competitions. By the end of his run this year, he had made friends and found a comfort level on the show that served him well. He even out-cooked Tiffany overall, a reversal from season seven, but she lives on to cook another day in the competition while he is packing his knives.

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