'Top Chef: Las Vegas' - Padma and Natalie Portman Get Nasty

For a girl who doesn't eat meat, guest judge Natalie Portman sure did enjoy talking about it a lot in this week's episode of Top Chef: Las Vegas. Honestly, dick jokes at dinner? On national television?

Before we get to that though, we have to stop for a few giggles over this week's Quickfire Challenge. The competing chefs were tasked by guest judge and master Italian chef Paul Bartolotta to create modernized TV dinners inspired by classic television shows. Insert TV Guide product placement here as the whole silly challenge was apparently their idea.

Overall, the Quickfire was rather boring this week, with two notable exceptions. First, Mike Isabella actually admitted he had never seen an episode of Seinfeld. What the hell rock has he been living under? I'm beginning to suspect Mike is actually an alien from the planet Rude & Obnoxious.

It was Jen, however, who provided the most entertaining bit in the Quickfire. Jen waxes poetic about how she relates most to the character of Pebbles in The Flintstones because "Pebbles has a really cute little boyfriend Bamm-Bamm who's nice and strong. I don't know that I like he carries a club around and pulls her by the hair... but could be fun sometimes." Jen's saucy smirk as she fantasizes about having her hair yanked about by a muscle boy is only a foreshadowing of things to come...

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Dark horse to watch Kevin emerged victorious in the Quickfire with his Sopranos-themed meatballs with polenta. As a prize, Kevin was given the dubious honor of having his dish featured in Swanson's line of frozen TV dinners. Jen, meanwhile, fails to thrill with her Flintstones chicken roulade, despite her apparently erotic inspiration. Robin, unsurprisingly, also ended up on the bottom with her lame Sesame Street egg burger and kale.

For the Elimination Challenge, the chefs are told they'll be taking over Tom Colicchio's Las Vegas steakhouse restaurant for one night. On arriving at the restaurant the next day, the contestants immediately crowd into the pantry and started slinging meat around like crazed cavemen. Seriously, they are like kids in a candy store. It's a little disturbing.

That's when Tom pulls them out to meet their guest judge for the evening, none other than Star Wars hottie Natalie Portman. Who is, Tom announces dryly, a vegetarian. Cue pained looks and rolled eyes from nearly all the chefs, who had until that moment been dreaming fondly of hunks of animal meat sizzling on the grill. Letting loose a bunch of chefs in a steakhouse and then telling them they can only cook vegetables is just rude. Funny, but rude.

Speaking of meat, during dinner, the word suddenly takes on a whole new meaning when Padma inadvertently launches a round of discussion resembling dialogue from a porn film. After Padma rather innocently says Bryan's Artichoke Barigoule was like "a little prick on the tip of my tongue," which prompts Portman to launch into giggles. That's when the conversation rapidly devolves into a round of oral sex jokes, topped off by Tom Colicchio saying: "It went from a little prick to big in your mouth" and one of Portman's friends replying, "That's what usually happens." Insert load groan here.

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During judging, Kevin, Michael V. and Eli land on top. Eli is so disbelieving that he actually asks sarcastically: "Did you guys call my name by accident?" Natalie Portman tells Michael V. she enjoyed the "humor" in his dish so much that she jokingly wondered "Who is his dealer and does he want new clients?" Which just leads me to wondering if the judges and guests might have been hitting a bong backstage before dinner, because they were certainly acting like it. In the end, it's Kevin who lands another win and takes home a suite of GE kitchen appliances.

Poor Jen, who has for some reason just lost it the last few episodes, lands in the bottom of the pack along with Robin and Mike Isabella. Jen seriously looks like she's been beaten into exhaustion and her loss of confidence is just sad. The good news is the judges decide to give her another chance and send perennial jerk Mike Isabella home instead. The bad news, Robin slides through AGAIN.

Even with the tasteless dick jokes, this week's episode of Top Chef was a fun ride, courtesy of guest judge Natalie Portman. I don't think there has ever been so much laughter in any prior episode of Top Chef and it was a treat to see the judges shake off their sometimes too-serious composure and let loose a bit.

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