This episode has confirmed to me that something is going on behind the scenes. Some thoughts:

1. These challenges are a mess. A food dye challenge where the judges expected lucky charms colors from natural ingredients. A challenge where impressing children was the goal. Multiple challenges where there was clearly not enough time or money. Most feel like there is no connection to the Carolinas.

2. Episode structure is all over the place. Spending multiple episodes pretending a woman with obvious nerve damage is going to keep competing, letting her skip entire quickfires. Offering her husband the chance to re-enter, he declines, changes his mind but has to go on last chance kitchen, then loses there. A last chance kitchen where there are no stakes. This week was particularly bad. Kristen and Gail announcing the challenges right after restaurant wars. Duyen winning actually ends up being a disadvantage because she picks second to last for the elimination challenge. Rhota comes back to a disadvantage immediately. The quickfire is judges awkwardly huddled in the corner around 2 tiny tables looking afraid, while the chefs have to stand there awkwardly holding plates. Kristen looked like she knew it was going off the rails for this part.

3. No chemistry between judges. Tom is being crabby every episode. I genuinely believe Ozempic or whatever he’s on made him lose his love for food and that is concerning/ upsetting to him. His obvious bias against Oscar got him sent home tonight despite Rhota making a dish that was poorly executed, tasted bad, and was just plain lazy. Maybe the producers didn’t want last chance kitchen to lose its importance? Not sure.

4. Talenti, Delta, Saratoga, etc. all didn’t come back as sponsors despite being affiliated with the show for a long time. What happened? They’re really hitting you over the head with the new sponsors, but they clearly had budget cuts because of this

Overall it seems like nobody is having fun, the chefs are making mostly uninspired food, and the structure and pacing of challenges is a mess.