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Tonight’s episode begins with a demonstration of Richard Blais’ preparation. He has filled two sketchbooks with ideas for new recipes. Blais is not there to compete when the challenges begin. He is spending a Brobdingnagian percentage of his downtime thinking up new and original ideas to impress the judges. In the modern NFL, there is a thought process that the best quarterbacks in the league are the ones who show up first and go home last with the philosophy being that preparation prior to taking the field on gameday is the underlying explanation for excellence during the games themselves. Blais’s behavior reveals that he is a kindred spirit to Peyton Manning in this regard. Manning never stops thinking about football; Blais never stops thinking about food. Years from now when he is the most famous of the Top Chef contestants, this will be the reason why.

The Quickfire Challenge sees the chefs blessed with the presence of southern cooking (or at least marketing) icon Paula Deen. “Down south, that’s how we show our love for each other.” This is her description of the way food unites people in the South. As a lifetime resident of Tennessee, I can confirm that she speaks the truth. Whenever a loved one suffers a personal loss of some sort, their kitchen is invariably bombarded with dishes from friends and family. Food is how we commiserate as a people. And we do have a special love of fried foods, which explains our *ahem* robust physiques. Paula Deen asks the chefs to prepare the best deep fried dish they can manage. For Tiffany and Carla, experts in southern cuisine, this is music to their ears. Both have been raised and trained with these flavors.

Top Chef All-Stars has been comprised of several shocking moments, starting with the elimination of Jennifer Carroll in the second episode. For this reason, I should not be surprised by the turn of events in the Quickfire Challenge yet I still am. What is intended to be a genteel celebration of southern hospitality goes to a dark place due to the misguided decision making of a single chef. Mike Isabella, who had been the one perusing Richard Blais’s sketchbook at the start of the episode, steals one of Richard’s ideas. There is no other way to describe this.

A picture of Chicken Oysters in the book gives Isabella the inspiration (if that’s the right word for stolen intellectual property) for his dish. When Blais realizes what Isabella has done, he is shocked. The worst part is that the dish Isabella takes from Blais beats the dish Blais himself cooks. For the second time this season, Mike Isabella wins a Quickfire Challenge, which means that he has won as many times by stealing someone else’s dish than he has through his own talents. As Blais points out, Isabella won’t even make eye contact with him during the judging portion. The worst part is how shameless Isabella is about his behavior.

In fact, he forcibly reminds me of another, similar situation. Marcel, the whiniest bitch in Top Chef history (not counting the awful Desserts show), posted a recipe in Wired Magazine that was eerily similar to a dish he is known to order at Wylie Dufresne’s wd~50 restaurant. The employees there displayed total disbelief that he would so brazenly steal one of their dishes to claim as his own in a national publication. Isabella has just done something even worse by being filmed looking at the dish, cooking the dish, and taking credit for the dish. People get kicked out high schools and universities for this sort of behavior. Isabella is rewarded with $5,000. That’ll learn him.

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