When last we left, my predictions were as follows:

Mendelsohn
Estes
Appleman
Greenspan
Love
Freitag
Vigneron
Guarnichelli
Mehta
Falkner

Love went out in Week 1, Estes in Week 2, and it's time, before I watch Week 3 on the DVR, and without looking, I promise, my revised rankings:

Vigneron
Mendelsohn
Greenspan
Freitag
Appleman
Guarnichelli
Mehta
Falkner

Appleman moves up a few spots because I always hope he'll go out early. Vigneron drops way down because he's proving hella more mediocre than I remember.

And it's that time again. A seemingly short while after the Unholy Ascent of Zakarian and the point at which I stopped watching Iron Chef America almost by accident, we have a new season of The Next Iron Chef, and it's a Loser's Ball! AKA All-Star Challenge, AKA Iron Chef: Redemption. Which means, with a few hours left before airtime, it's time for a new set of predictions. Here's the cast.

Yeah, I've been watching this too.

We're, what, four weeks in? Five? I think four. It's the early days of a Top Chef season, nobody really gives a shit. You spend the first month just trying to figure out who you like and dislike, the second month waiting for the mediocre people to leave, and the third month paying attention.

And it's down to four. Falkner, Chiarello, Zakarian, Guarnaschelli. Which means my final four predictions are one for four. Feh.

Since we last talked, there have been two episodes. The stupid fucking storytelling challenge, which saw Samuellson finally put out of our collective misery, and the awesome fucking food auction challenge, which unfortunately sent Anne Burrell home.

So, we're four eliminations in, and my predictions are doing... OK.

As you recall, my original call was:

Falkner
Irvine
McMillan
Spike
Zakarian
Guarnachelli
Hughes
Chiarello
Burrell
Samuelsson

Week One saw Spike leave. Week Two saw Irvine get the boot. Week Three, poor Chuck Hughes got cut, which makes me sad inside. And last week, McMillan left. Which means, in the first four weeks, three of my bottom four got cut, plus the guy I deliberately ranked higher because I liked him. That's not fucking bad at all.

Well. That does interesting things to my predictions.

First things first. This year's format is completely fucking awesome. The first 40 minutes is devoted to a challenge on a level with a Top Chef elimination challenge. Sure, the first week - wilderness, wood fire, whole pig - was about as unoriginal a "twist challenge" as you can get, but it was at least appropriate in terms of challenge and scale.

The first season of The Next Iron Chef was awesome. It seemed to fit within the faux-mythology of the show, the contestants were interesting, the winner (Michael Symon) has gone on to be a far better Iron Chef than Bobby Flay ever was, and adding someone to the ranks seemed like a big deal.

Well, that didn't take long.

Two months ago, upon the airing of the season finale of America's Next Great Restaurant, three branches of fast-casual soul food joint Soul Daddy opened up. Six weeks later, two of them closed, leaving only the Mall of America joint standing.

Now Soul Daddy is Soul Deady.

I'm not going to say anything about the restaurant or the restauranteur/contestant. I didn't go, I didn't eat the food, because there's no way I'm taking a special trip to the Megamall just to eat at a place that won a TV show.

So apparently, the embarassingly-named but awesomely-concepted Blais Off produced two episodes as a sort of extended pilot. They've aired, and I've watched them, and I want them to make more.

So, we're two episodes into Top CHef 8, which follows the dull and tedious Season 7 and the pointless and boring Top Chef: Just Desserts. The idea is a solid one - there are plenty of chefs from the earlier seasons who proved that they were entertaining to watch and cooked interesting food, so it's all down to the execution.

They got Anthony Bourdain. Good. They didn't get him for every episode. Less good, but tolerable.

There's no house they all live in together. Or at least there's no footage of it. THANK THE GODS. This cuts down on the drama.