The first sign of trouble this season: One of these things is not like the other. San Francisco. Los Angeles. Chicago. Miami. New York City. Las Vegas. Washington D.C. Texas.

Did you spot it? Let me give you a hint, it’s the one that’s NOT A CITY. It’s that massive 2nd tier state with a soon to be failing economy that leaps out at you. Did you think we wouldn’t notice that  names like “Dallas” or “Houston” or “San Antonio” seem to be conspicuously missing?

Do you know why they’re missing?  Because nobody associates any part of Texas with food. The state dish is admittedly delicious BBQ, but it’s best served behind a gas station on a plastic tray, with half a loaf of Wonder Bread as a chaser. The unofficial motto is “everything’s bigger in Texas.” Note carefully that it’s not “everything’s BETTER in Texas”, just bigger. When it comes to culture, Texas makes Donald Trump look classy. Nobody moves to Texas looking for any kind of cutting-edge cultural experience unless you’re in Austin, the city who’s mantra is “Please ignore the map because we’re really not a part of Texas.” On the national stage, Texas is mostly known for choking – whether it’s Tony Romo under pressure or George W. Bush eating a pretzel. This is the food culture you want to tap into?

OK, I get it. You’re looking to spread your wings and explore, but let’s be serious. Top Chef should be like the Super Bowl. All you have to do is rotate through the same three or four base cities (NY, LA, SF, and because they have Grant Achatz, Chicago) and call it a day. If you want to put Padma in chaps, then import a cowboy. If you want a change-up, try New Orleans. You can’t justify San Antonio as a point of culinary interest any more than you could justify Denver, Detroit, or Dallas.

Second: The two opening “audition” episodes might be the lowest point in series history. It’s clear that the 150 chefs you’ve featured to date have pretty much exhausted the talent pool of undiscovered A-list, TV friendly chefs. You don’t need to advertise that by exposing us to 100 more C-list chefs who don’t stand a chance of making the casting cut. Your job – your very raison d’etre as producers – is to find, recruit, and choose 15 interesting chefs and test their endurance for my amusement. Staging a repetitive, American Idol style auditioning cook-off is the antithesis of what makes your show interesting.

Beyond that, the judging panel methodology of American Idol does not work for you. On Idol, for better or worse, I can hear what is reasonably close to what the judges are hearing. It’s a little interesting because I’m working with the same information that they have. On Top Chef, I have nothing to work with. I can’t smell or taste the plates, I’m experiencing it vicariously through your judges. This is not a show that invites “play along at home”. This is a show about pressure, personality and imagination. Forcing Tom, Padma, and some random schmuck to play Simon, Paula, and some random schmuck is embarrassing and dramatically uninteresting.

Either a chef is good enough for Top Chef, or they’re not. If you want to show me some cocky young buck or tear-jerking sob story, then cast them. I know that if you’re focusing on some interesting story in those opening episodes that they’re just going to get cut. If they’re interesting and make it, you’ll save their story for when the bullets go live. If they’re interesting but don’t make it, you’re going to squeeze that out while you can. (And if they’re uninteresting, as many of them are, why are you showing me at all?)

Just do your job, Top Chef. Cast the best you can, put them under pressure in the kitchen somewhere and see who rises to the challenge.

Production values are slipping, too. The green screen for the interviews have hit a nadir at many points so far this season. For the uninitiated, those beautifully composed interview shots that comprise the bulk of the show are usually shot in a cramped room behind the set with the chef sitting in front of a green sheet like they’re posing for a portrait at Sears. Post-production magic swaps out the green screen and replaces it with a gorgeous wall ripped from the pages of Architectural Digest. There’s no smooth way to say this, but this is Hollywood 101 at this point, and Top Chef has done a technically poor job of it. The process is called “keying”, and if you look at the Heavy Girl With Disheveled Hair, you can see that all the detail has been keyed out of that lesbian rat’s nest on her head. That’s kind of forgivable because fine threads of hair are tough to key out, but pulling a bad key on Old Bald And Bitter Chef is inexcusable on a technical level.

And tell the people who shoot the food inserts to lay off the rack focus. Yes, the crew must be very excited by the new tilt-shift lens, but the same rack focus on 16 consecutive plates of food is tiresome. While you’re at it, smack the editor who cut those in, too. There must be something on a slider you could alternate with.

You know how I can tell this season is off? Tom Colicchio can’t be bothered to hide it. He’s never suffered bad chefs lightly, but making him send one contestant home in the middle of the first challenge was embarrassing – both to him, the show, and the chef. Watching the quinceanera episode, until the eating started he couldn’t be bothered to wipe that condescending look off his face.  There were at least five shots of him in the episode last night where he was clearly thinking: ”Who thought this was a good idea? What the hell is this idiotic party I’m stuck at? Where the hell is the nearest decent restaurant? When can I go back to see my kids? Why the fuck am I here?”

That’s the only real saving grace so far this season – Tom’s expertise and intolerance of poor cooking gives Top Chef enough gravity to hold together when the show threatens to go Real Housewives. His judgments are the reason to keep watching, and when he looks like he’s checked out, the show is in deep trouble.

Look, Top Chef, it’s first-world problems to keep a successful and beloved show running. But learn from those who have failed before you, and accept your place in the world. Nobody wants to see a 100 yard dash determine who runs The Amazing Race. Stick to what you do best – finding interesting chefs, put them under extreme pressure, and let us watch them rise or fall.

Jack Bauer, at the start of season 1

Consider this – Jack Bauer has served CTU under five different presidents: the guy before David Palmer, David Palmer, Wayne Palmer, Charles Logan, and Alison Taylor.  He’s faked his own death, gotten hooked on heroin, and served time in a Chinese prison.

From ESPN’s loquacious Gregg Easterbrook, one of his loyal readers has pulled together this Bauer timeline:

I noted that on “24,” Jack Bauer saves critical minutes by traveling during commercials. Kevin Woods of Santa Rosa, Calif., provides further details on time dilation in the series: “In the first season, in 2001, Jack was a highly successful federal agent with a 15-year-old daughter. Although Jack’ age was never stated, he had to be at least 40. He was a college graduate who had received his master’s in criminology, then joined the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of captain in the prestigious Delta Squad. After the Army, he worked for Los Angeles SWAT team, then joined the CIA in its clandestine wing. After this, he was recruited to the CTU, the mysterious agency where Jack toils when the series begins. Jack had to be 40 when the series began.

“Let’s assume 43. Here is where the time line gets tough. Season 2 was 18 months after season 1, making Jack 44-45. Season 3 was three years after season 2, making Jack about 47-48. Season 4 was 18 months after season 3, making Jack about 50. Season 5 was 18 months after season 4, making Jack about 52. Season 6 was 20 months after season 5, making Jack about 54. 24-Redemption, a two-hour movie that supposedly tied things together, was four years after season 6, making Jack about 58. Season 7, happening shortly after Redemption, still has Jack at around 58. Season 8, looks to be two-three years after season 8, because Jack's grand-daughter is seen having conversations with him, making Jack around 60 years [old]. He's quite spry for 60! Also, add up the years and it is now 2014 in the series. Maybe that explains all the CTU super-technology that does not seem to exist in our reality.”

That's after 20 years of living right.

Now Mr. Woods of Santa Rosa is playing a little loose with the rounding up, and not knowing Jack Bauer’s birthday it’s tough to be precise. However, even with tightening up the estimates, Jack Bauer is 58 years old. May we all be so healthy on the edge of 60.

via Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings were brought down by Favre’s fatal flaw – ESPN.

Just look at the parking lot, Larry. Just look at that parking lot.

We Got That B-Roll

Disorientation.

Manohla Dargis offers up one of the best critical arguments for The Hurt Locker yet:

The Oscars – ‘Hurt Locker’ Offers the Work of War at a Fever Pitch – NYTimes.com.

Her critical assessment is top notch – far better than my own breakdown of the film.

Put another way, like Peckinpah, Ms. Bigelow is brilliant at both delivering and dissecting male violence, which is why “The Hurt Locker” is at once so pleasurable and disturbing.

I suppose my own, more coarse assessment that Ms. Bigelow has a very large member and she’s unafraid to use it gets the similar point across, but with far less eloquence. After a second viewing, I left The Hurt Locker in awe of its lean and muscular construction. Working on a relative shoestring on the edge of a war zone, I didn’t see another movie this year that worked more effectively. Even the false notes and missteps in The Hurt Locker are built with an intensity and a precision that few other films of 2009 can match.

I realize that anything in the New York Times’ Sunday Styles section is like shooting fish in a barrel. But sometimes you need to test fire the guns. And on a closer read, it would appear that the New York Times ran this solely to agititate the masses, that’s how dumb an idea this is.

The New Cavemen Lifestyle Has Found a Home in the City – NYTimes.com.

The writer has dug up a small clique of imbeciles who believe they should be eating like our Paleolithic ancestors – gorging on raw meat every 36 hours and eschewing anything involving acutal preparation.

Here’s why this really irks me. They’re just dumb hipsters in their 20′s, so it goes without saying that they’re dumb. And everyone’s allowed to be dumb somewhere. It’s human, and it happens. But the worship of ignorance is something else entirely.

As soon as someone puts a stupid idea on a pedestal and organizes their life around stupidity, it’s time to step in. Take the topic sentence that summarizes the caveman ‘lifestyle’:

Mr. Durant, 26, who works in online advertising, is part of a small New York subculture whose members seek good health through a selective return to the habits of their Paleolithic ancestors.

This isn’t a diet involving the basic principles of science, or with any concept of organic chemistry. This is a glib ethos, lifted from Fight Club with some fifth grade social studies theory as justification. Just like people who believe Obama isn’t a citizen or that vaccines cause autism, this is pseudo-science for suckers.

Perhaps my favorite quote of the piece comes early on:

“I didn’t want to do some faddish diet that my sister would do,” Mr. Durant said.

No, obviously not. You want a faddish diet that’s entirely your own.

I understand the need to find something that’s uniquely your own. It’s basic human need to want to be unique somehow. But these people aren’t worshipping the past, they’re worshipping their mental image of the past. Like fundamentalist Christians who pick and choose which sections of the Bible to follow with literal devotion, these ‘cavemen’ are chasing after a romanticized version of early man.

Mr. Le Corre, 38, who once made soap for a living, promotes what he calls “mouvement naturel” at exercise retreats in West Virginia and elsewhere. His workouts include scooting around the underbrush on all fours, leaping between boulders, playing catch with stones, and other activities at which he believes early man excelled. These are the “primal, essential skills that I believe everyone should have,” he said in an interview.

A guy who once made soap for a living? My bullshit sensors hit a red alert with that. This Tyler Durden wannabe sounds like a fictitious loon, and I really hope someone at Men’s Health magazine or the NYT Styles section fact-checked this nitwit. Everything attributed to Mr. Le Corre sounds like something cut out of the shooting draft of Fight Club.

The rest of the article outlines the standard ‘I’m more extreme than you’ ego competitions that is the organizing principle of any fringe group. Hardships force people together, and voluntary hardships bind them tighter. Rational thinking is the first thing to go in any cult-like mentality. Once irrationality becomes the norm, the vast imaginative powers of the human brain can find connections to complete almost any pattern. The devil was the first person to reason by analogy, and all the caveman comparisons in the world come right out of that playbook.

It also plays into the queasy subtext of Avatar – that technology is distrustful, that only the primal experience of living without it has validity. The fear of science and modernity is troubling on almost every level. As the great quote from Inherit The Wind says “fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!” Freedom of thought is terrific, but the worship of ignorance is a cancer that needs to be fought wherever it tries to take root.

This caveman diet is a great soundbite. It’s a blurb for the evening news, and a book cover in search of 150 pages of convincing noise to help it stand upright on the shelves. It’s also like Ed Hardy t-shirts – a great way to instantly identify nimrods for easy mockery.