Hyphen TV: 14 Guys All Playing Guitar Solos

August 19, 2013

Everyone is fixated on the game except that one guy in the back

Marko back on So You Think You Can Dance
as an all-star performing with Jasmine? Yes, please! The pair was
totally adorable in their matching suits, and though the judges found
Jasmine outshining Marko on the performance, we know that that speaks
way more to her incredible skills than any lacking on Marko's part.
Check out their dance here. I'm hoping we'll see Alex again down the
line as well...?


Adorable.

On Top Chef Masters, the masters had to
create a curry to pair with a beer (love those meaningless sponsor
tie-ins!). Concerned about time as usual, Sang explained the futility of
making a good curry in just a few minutes: "You want curry to taste
like an Arcade Fire song: lots of layers, orchestral. Unfortunately,
it's gonna sound like 14 guys all playing guitar solos." Well, those
solos must've been pretty good, since Sang's Chang Mai (northern
Thailand) style curry's bold, spicy flavors earned him another quickfire
win and another $5K for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, bringing his
earned dollars to $20,000 all together.

The elimination had
the chefs once again working in teams of three, and Sang's team was
made of the three chefs whose sous came in last in their sous chef
challenge. Ted, you're killing our guy, here. The hurdle they had to
overcome this time was only 15 minutes to shop for ingredients, and
though it looked like a stressful Whole Foods session, they didn't seem
that hurt by the handicap.


Smiling despite being let down by their sous

For the meal, the chefs had to
cater a surprise engagement party for host Curtis and his fiancee
Lindsay Price, who mentioned that she introduced Curtis to Korean
cooking when he had her mom's amazing Korean food. Sang decided to try
to appeal to Lindsay with a raw deconstructed Korean barbeque dish with
ssamjang vinaigrette, scallions, and black sesame. The judges were a bit
mixed, saying on one hand that it was "a great take on classic Korean
beef tartar" and showing preference for cooked barbeque on the other.
Lindsay found the dish "quite delicious," which was enough to keep Sang
and his team out of danger, but also not in the very top. Let's hope Ted
comes through for you next week, Sang!

Lindsay to Curtis: "Free party catering!"

Not a whole lot to
say about this week's Sullivan and Son, though the guys did start
playing pranks on one another that escalated to Egyptian American Ahmed towing what ended up being the president's limo and getting
detained. "Homeland Security thought I was a terrorist," he explained,
walking into the bar wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. This obviously
prompted old racist Hank to comment, "If it walks like a duck and it
talks like a duck..."

Getting back to Ahmed's story: "They
threw me in a room. They interrogated me for hours. They strip searched
me...I was anally probed." That was the entire joke; Arab guy in prison
gear getting anally raped. Pretty hilarious, right? Kind of
surprisingly, this was followed by "You guys have no idea what it's like
to be Arab American. People take one look at you and they just think
you're carrying a bomb." Oddly, this statement was not followed by a
joke. I guess they were going for a (low) level of actual awareness that
this sort of thing really does happen all the time?

I'm going
to go ahead and dust off a concept that's pretty old on this column, the
simple truth that jokes aren't offensive simply because they play into
stereotypes and racism (or sexism or homophobia or...). They're
"offensive" when they retread tired old broad statements and assumptions
that have been repeated by men in bars and grandparents at the dinner
table since bars and tables have existed. I honestly don't know what
they were going for here outside of "Arab guy = terrorist!" and "men
getting raped in the butt is funny!" I don't think there was anything
else to this. And isn't that kind of laziness the most offensive thing
of all?

Ahmed has dignity in a prison jumpsuit

One Ok Cha line from this episode, just because we can't not:
"Everybody plays baseball in South Korea. But nobody hits a home run
because it goes into North Korea and you never get the ball back."
Because North Korea's basically just a crazy old neighbor, get it?!

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Dianne Choie

columnist

Dianne Choie's TV is in Brooklyn, NY. She has a cat, several reusable shopping bags, and other mildly annoying stereotypes of youngish people who live in Brooklyn.

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