Bullies never win

Spoiler Alert! Don’t read if you haven’t watched the finale!

I didn’t set the DVR for Top Chef: Just Desserts, as I thought the show might be a little much to take. But, after hearing about some of the contestants and the epic, sugar-fueled meltdowns, I set the DVR to catch the goodness.

Boy, am I ever glad. The premise is the same as Top Chef, but in this version, they focus on, well, Just Desserts. Boring you ask? Hell no. From the get-go, many of the contestants (I refuse to use the word Cheftestant btw) came out as openly Gay. The kitchen culture on the regular Top Chef follows that of the restaurant world, it’s okay to be LBGT, just don’t flaunt it. To this date, no openly Gay person has won Top Chef. I remember my time in the kitchen in Toledo at both the Westgate Dinner Theater and at Lightening Louie’s at Portside. It was like a locker room in the kitchen, and you best not be Gay. Oh sure there were some of us who were, but we just didn’t say anything and kept it quiet in the kitchen when we picked up our food. There is a definite hierarchy in a food establishment, with the chefs/cooks at the top of the pyramid of power.

So when Team Diva formed on Just Desserts, the Gay Factor when up to 11. Morgan, the token hetero on the show never hid his disgust with the team and would openly bitch about them on the confession cams. Yes, the team members were Gay, and Zac, god love him, took every opportunity to flaunt his sexuality. Morgan steamed each time Zac said something remotely Gay and often would roll his eyes or worse yet, threatening to do bodily harm. Zac called Morgan out at the Judge’s Table one episode, and Morgan didn’t react well, calling Zac a variety of disrespectful names, including the ever so classy “annoying little fairy.” Really Morgan? That’s soooo junior high. And as annoying as Zac may have been, he never threatened you with bodily harm or called you a name or used a slur against you. And, I can’t wait for “Disco Dust” to be added to our collective lexicon this year.

In the end, it appeared that Morgan may indeed win, as Yigit and Danielle, the other two finalists had their own Waterloos leading up to the finale. After the loathsome Gretchen’s win on Project Runway over the hyper-talented Mondo, I feared that this may be a win for Morgan and would break my heart once again. But Yigit, the skinniest pastry chef I have ever seen, pulled it together and using dating as a metaphor for his courses won the contest.

So, what have we learned from this? Bullies don’t win, they never do.

Congrats to Yigit and the rest of Team Diva, Morgan, you can suck it.