Like staring at the sun

Dallas bad boy John Tesar steals the show on Top Chef Seattle

Who's first to get quoted? Tesar. Who scores immunity? Tesar. Who knowsinstantly that the geoduck needs a little more salt? Tesar.
Photo courtesy of Bravo
Dallas cheftestants Danyele McPherson of The Grape, John Tesar of Spoon andJoshua Valentine of FT33.

In episode 2 of Top Chef: Seattle, Dallas chef John Tesar casts a voodoo spell, his pent-up enthusiasm and scary-intuitive knowingness so intense, it's like seeing molten lava right before the volcano erupts. It's like staring at the sun.

Forget Padma, forget Tom, forget the other contestants. Tesar is a ready-made reality star, a vortex who can't help but slurp up all the attention in the room.

He's the first contestant to get quoted. He can tell instantly that the geoduck needs more salt. He spots a pot of chili oil about to burn up.

What must it be like to be a viewer from Michigan or Montana and not be clued in to his inexorable gravity pull? Watching the show as a Dallasite is like being in on a secret. We're inoculated with Tesar powder. Wise to his combination of chef chops and high drama, we know it's a waste of our time learning the name of the beige girl with vertigo or the swarthy guy with the stretched-out earlobes.

Watching the show as a Dallasite is like being in on a secret. We're inoculated with Tesar powder.

The producers throw in a few plot twists, like their dumb idea of bringing back three contestants from earlier seasons to re-compete for the Top Chef title. One of them has even stahhged at Noma. But Tesar silently rules, his glasses propped on his forehead, perched at an awkward angle between his eyes and his hairline.

The only other cheftestants who make a dent on this episode are the female with the accent who talks nonstop and FT33 chef Josh Valentine, also from Dallas, who scowls at the news of the three returning contestants.

"That sucks. I'm gonna get in fights, I'm sure, now," Valentine says. "It's our turn. None of them were able to seal the deal. I hate them all."

He starts to lose it when he misplaces an ingredient for his dish.

"Hey hey, where's my fucking mushrooms?" he asks. "I think a lot of people think I'm just this little guy from Oklahoma, and that'd be their mistake."

Good effort, Josh!

The episode is all about Seattle, beginning with the opening quickfire challenge to use local seafood. Tesar teams up with Sheldon from Hawaii and English-as-a-second-language Kuniko.

"I know she's Japanese, I'm thinking to myself, maybe she has incredible knife skills," Tesar says. "I've watched every episode of Top Chef and I think the decisions you make are just as important as the dishes you make."

"Winning the first quickfire on Top Chef is gonna be up there in the top five things of all time in my life, not only in my career," Tesar says.

There are clams, crabs and other things pulled from the Seattle sea, still live and twitching. The camera catches Tesar, up to his wrists in a vat of mud to pull out a live geoduck, while two girl chefs stand nearby, wringing their hands. As he and his teammates finalize their plan and start chopping, he says aloud to no one, "Who says the most hated chef in Dallas can't get along with people?"

Quickfire happens, Team Tesar wins. Only one in the three-member team will get immunity, so they draw knives to see who. Who else? Why even bother drawing knives?

"I've been a chef for a long time, and I've accomplished a lot of things," Tesar says earnestly. "But I have to tell you, winning the first quickfire on Top Chef is gonna be up there in the top five things of all time in my life, not only in my career."

The elimination challenge takes place inside the Space Needle, the quintessential Seattle building where the chefs must make the quintessential Seattle dish. They have 47 minutes because that's how long it takes for the needle to rotate – hey, just like Reunion Tower. We can conclude from this challenge that Seattle loves the heck out of rectangles of fish plopped atop fava beans, because that's what all of them turn out.

"They all did very similar dishes, so in a way it is easy to compare them," says judge Gail, glass half full.

The dishes may be all very similar, but only one has been touched by Tesar: the chili-oil-poached cod with daishi. His team takes it and Kuniko wins for her clever idea of poaching fish in a pot of chili oil. It's hugs all around, with Tesar graciously not mentioning the part where he saved the chili oil from burning.

Letting her have the spotlight makes him look big. He wins again.

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Movie Review

Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney go off in trashy film The Housemaid

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid.

Both Amanda Seyfried (the upcoming The Testament of Ann Lee) and Sydney Sweeney (Christy) are starring in movies with Oscar ambitions this year. By sheer coincidence, the two actors are also co-starring in The Housemaid, a thriller coming out within weeks of their more ambitious works, one that is likely to be seen by many more people than those prestige plays.

Sweeney is given top billing as Millie, a down-on-her-luck ex-convict looking to land any type of job so as not to break her parole. She finds a too-good-to-be-true lifeboat with Nina (Seyfried), who hires her to be a housemaid for her large house on Long Island, where she lives with her husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and daughter, Cecilia (Indiana Elle).

After a warm interview, Nina almost immediately becomes highly erratic, whipping back-and-forth between happy-go-lucky and rageful. It seems clear that Nina is suffering from mental health issues, as she’ll often accuse Millie of misplacing or stealing items that she didn’t take. Andrew, apparently used to Nina’s tirades, tries to protect Millie from the worst, something that grows increasingly difficult as Nina ups the ante.

Directed by Paul Feig (A Simple Favor) and adapted by Rebecca Sonnenshine from the bestselling book by Freida McFadden, the film is likely the trashiest mainstream movie to come out in 2025. The first half of the movie relies not on story but on moments as Nina embodies the word “hysterical” to an unbelievable extent. The resigned acceptance of the abuse by Millie, as well as the saintly patience of Andrew, make almost every scene laughable, as nobody seems to be acting anywhere close to how a person would normally react to such extreme situations.

The scenes and the performance of Seyfried are so over-the-top, in fact, that it’s clear that the filmmakers are in on the joke. It’s next to impossible not to have a little bit of fun while watching the actors react to outrageous incidents as if nothing is out of the ordinary. The worse Nina acts, the more Millie and Andrew retreat into their chosen roles, and the funnier the film becomes.

Fans of the book will know that the story changes course, eventually turning into a more stereotypical thriller that also has some relatively gnarly visuals to offer. But the trashiness continues, with Sweeney’s, um, assets repeatedly on display in both clothed and unclothed ways. The sex appeal of the R-rated movie makes it an outlier, as recent studio films have shied away from asking their big stars to disrobe completely.

Both Seyfried and Sweeney are far from their Oscar hopeful roles here. Seyfried is given free rein to act as brazenly as she pleases, and she takes full advantage of that ability. Sweeney seems to have been told to be much more reserved, and unfortunately that results in too many wooden line readings. Sklenar continues his breakout streak (It Ends with Us, Drop) with a role that allows him to show more range than either Seyfried or Sweeney.

The Housemaid is an unusual type of movie to be released at a time of year when most films are either those aiming for awards or more family-friendly fare. Despite its many flaws, it’s still an enjoyable watch that features a variety of crazy scenarios not typically seen in movies nowadays.

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The Housemaid is now playing in theaters.

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