So happy Kristen made it back from LCK! She was the only one who I think was unfairly eliminated. I think LCK taking them straight to the finale is a bit too much, and I wish it would end sooner, but oh well. Those are the rules and she did earn it, just in a different way than Brooke and Sheldon earned it.
I liked seeing Sheldon and Brooke at home with their families, although it felt like a lot of filler. I almost would have preferred for them to show the LCK competition instead, or extend the show by 15 minutes. I have a lot of programming complaints today, apparently.
Sheldon was cracking me up a lot last night, especially gangsta pouring one out for his homies. I think he's great and didn't want to see him eliminated, although I didn't want to see Brooke or Kristen eliminated, either. I agree with you that the judges can be confusing with their critiques. They are always pushing people to do something out of their comfort zone, then complain that it's not what they were expecting. I'd love to see a "blind" judging episode some time, maybe for a quickfire at least.
It was interesting to see Tom in the kitchen and how that added extra stress for the chefs. That's got to be scary.
I don't know if I can pick a favorite between Brooke and Kristen. Kristen was my favorite early on but Brooke really grew on me. I'm just happy they both made it to the final! Very interested to see how the "live" thing goes next week.
I also wish they'd make it more clear why there's a six-month lag between the taping of the regular show and the finalist episodes. I'm sure they're busy editing and marketing and whatnot in that time frame, I just wish they'd be clearer about it. And I wonder how long ago the finale was taped? It must stink to wait so long to find out who wins!
For this year, I think they weren't able to film that final LCK until last week, because they had that fan favorite twitter vote to save a chef, which had to be done while the show was airing. Unless of course it wasn't legit and they just picked one but I am trusting they didn't do that. And then they needed to know who would win LCK before they could film tonight's episode. I'm not sure what the reasoning was for the delay in past seasons.