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The Minnesota Timberwolves entered Sunday with a chance to leap into the 7-8 play-in game in the West with a win over the New Orleans Pelicans, who held a one-game lead on them coming into the day, and some help elsewhere.

However, after falling behind early things began unraveling for the Wolves, as an altercation on the bench saw Rudy Gobert swing on Kyle Anderson, leading to Taurean Prince leaping up to shove Gobert and the star center being escorted to the locker room and ultimately sent home for the remainder of the game. While everyone was talking about Gobert’s punch on a teammate, there was another key Timberwolves player who had his day ended for punch-related reasons, as Jaden McDaniels punched a wall so hard on his way into the tunnel that he injured his right hand and was not able to return to the game.

I feel like the Wolves might need to have some conversations with their guys about controlling their emotions because losing two players in a pivotal game because they couldn’t stop themselves from punching a teammate/inanimate object seems bad. What is maybe more amazing is, in spite of two of their best defenders being absent, Minnesota still managed to reel in the Pelicans and make it a one possession game late in the third quarter, thanks to some heroics from Anthony Edwards, and their hopes of improving their seeding stayed alive even with the best efforts of Gobert and McDaniels to derail things.

Donald Trump may be at war with his chief 2024 rival Ron DeSantis, but the Florida governor is already busy being at war with another cultural behemoth: The Walt Disney Company. DeSantis has had out for the company ever since they torched his so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, even adding a hilarious clause that would thwart him into the far-flung future. But last week he was made a fool of when the company cleverly circumvented his attempt to rob them of jurisdiction over their land. It was a neat trick and SNL found a way to rub it in even further.

On the most recent Weekend Update, Bowen Yang swung by as Jafar, the nefarious, oddly facial haired baddie from one of Disney’s biggest animated hits, Aladdin. Jafar was unimpressed with DeSantis’ attempts to be evil, calling him an easily one-upped “amateur.”

“He has no rizz, no spark, no drip ― the look is giving baby mayor,” Yang’s Jafar declared. He then brought up one of his more humiliating moments: “He did wear those white cowboy boots, but let’s be honest: They wore him.”

He then took aim on his attempts to purge Florida of anything LGBTQIA+. “There’s already a Disney World where nothing gay happens: It’s called Six Flags,” he cracked before directly addressing the “sewer rat” as the lighting turned to crimson.

“Bravo for attempting to sieze our precious land only to be twarted once again by the House of Mouse,” Yang’s Jafar told the governor. “Don’t say gay? Well if there is no gay, there is no Disney. And everyone loves Disney including you ’cause your dumbass got married there.”

It’s true: Tough guy Ron DeSantis got married at Disney World.

You can watch the segment in the video above.

Former President Donald Trump may not have the stamp of approval from Tupac’s family, but he did earn one from Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee. During an interview on the Bootleg Kev Podcast about Slim Jxmmi’s move to Miami, Florida, the conversation took a turn into the political.

Lee said the main reason he moved to Miami and eventually convinced Jxmmi to follow him was the tax benefits. “It’s tax-free, so, you’re making a lot of money, but you’re giving half of your money to Uncle Sam,” said Lee before diving into his disdain for Biden’s allocation of American tax dollars.

“You’re giving half of your money away to Joe Biden for him to send that sh*t over to another country,” declared Lee, referring to American financial aid to Ukraine. “He got [Ukraine straight before he got his own country straight. I don’t really agree with that.”

When the host asks if he would vote for Trump in 2024, Lee answered, “If I had to choose between the A and the B, I’d definitely go with Trump over Biden for sure.”

As the camera panned to Slim Jxmmi to document his answer, he said, “I choose not to speak on politics.”

To which the host responds, “You’re a smart man.”

Lee went on to add that taxes weren’t the only thing that played a part in his decision. “He freed Kodak [Black]. He freed Wayne. He tapped in.” Lee’s comments referred to Trump’s providing rappers Kodak Black and Lil Wayne with presidential pardons near the end of his term.

Black took to Twitter to after his release, writing, “I want to thank President Donald Trump for his commitment to justice reform and shortening my sentence.”

Watch the full clip above.

Kodak Black is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Minnesota Timberwolves entered Sunday’s game with the Pelicans guaranteed a play-in spot, but trailing New Orleans and the Lakers by just a game, it was possible to move into the 7-8 game that gives you two cracks at a playoff spot.

As such, it was a big game and, if nothing else, a tune-up for the play-in tournament this week against a potential foe, and tensions were high in Minnesota, as evidenced by a second quarter altercation on the Minnesota bench. Kyle Anderson and Rudy Gobert were going at each other with the Wolves trailing, with both yelling and gesturing at each other but things escalated when Gobert stepped forward and tossed a punch at Anderson’s chest, leading to some chaos as the rest of the team tried to separate the two, with Gobert being escorted back to the locker room.

We won’t know the details of what they were arguing about until after the game, but there’s not really anything that could justify Gobert being so mad that he punches a teammate during a game. While it’s not the first teammate punch of the year — nor the worst, as Draymond Green lays claim to that in his preseason altercation with Jordan Poole — it’s about as shocking because it happened during the last game of the regular season on the bench for a playoff contender.

UPDATE: Not long after, Gobert was sent home by the team and would not return to the pivotal game for play-in seeding.

It is truly stunning given the circumstances that Gobert would lose his cool in that manner, and now the Wolves will have to navigate a deficit without their star big man if they want a shot at the 7-8 game.

SZA might want to put a hit out on her ex, but there’s one relationship the singer still cherishes: the one with her fans. After five long years since the release of her debut studio album, the singer poured her all into her follow-up, SOS. The “Ghost In The Machine” singer’s creative efforts paid off handsomely both on the charts and via ticket sales.

According to Billboard, SZA’s 18-date SOS North American tour grossed $34.5 million, which equated to approximately 238,000 tickets sold. The tour — which featured a special guest, “3 Boys” singer Omar Apollo — kicked off in February and ran until late March. The tour also featured surprise appearances by Cardi B, Summer Walker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lizzo.

The report outlines the tour brought out in around $1.9 million and 12,812 tickets each show. As for the specifics on each arena, Billboard revealed that despite having the second-highest ticket price at $174.69, the SoCal arena sold 8,700 tickets. For contrast, SZA’s shows in New York at Madison Square Garden and Inglewood, California’s Kia Forum were the two highest grossing as well as highest attended.

The tour’s two shows at MSG on March 4 and 5 grossed $4.7 million, with 27,000 tickets sold. Meanwhile, SZA’s March 22 and 23 shows at the Kia Forum, racked in $3.9 million for 25,000 tickets sold.

As for the the other high-attendance shows, Atlanta came in at about 11,069 tickets sold and Toronto came in around 14,383 tickets sold.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Detroit Pistons wrapped up a 17-65 season on Sunday with a 103-81 loss to Chicago, as they finally get to officially turn the page to the 2023-24 season where optimism will, hopefully, abound. After finishing with the league’s worst record, the Pistons will take a different shape next year both in terms of roster makeup, as they hope to have lottery luck to reshape their lineup, and on the bench, as Dwane Casey announced after the game that he’d be stepping down as head coach to move into a front office role in Detroit.

Casey reiterated it was his decision to make the move from the bench to the front office, but it’s not a surprise as the young Pistons look to move into a new phase of their rebuild. The Pistons will, of course, hope they end up with the top spot in the 2023 NBA Draft and can add Victor Wembanyama to their young backcourt of Cade Cunningham (as he returns from injury) and Jaden Ivey to create a formidable young core group. The timing of when they make a hire, along with the Houston Rockets, will be fascinating to watch as it would make sense for top candidates to potentially look to wait out the Draft Lottery and see if one of those two lands the top pick — or if one falls out of the top-3 completely.

As for candidates, Detroit’s list will likely look like that of a number of other teams looking for a new coach this year, with Ime Udoka, Charles Lee, and Adrian Griffin headlining their wishlist, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Three years ago, Stephen Silas left his position as an assistant with the Dallas Mavericks to take over the Houston Rockets head coaching job after Mike D’Antoni left the organization after his contract ran up after the bubble.

When he arrived, he expected to be taking over a contender led by James Harden, however, shortly after his arrival, Harden issued a trade request and was eventually dealt to Brooklyn for a package that netted the Rockets a number of draft picks and almost nothing in terms of useful on-court talent, as they opted to bring in Victor Oladipo over the various Nets youngsters, who never was able to regain his pre-injury form.

In the three years since, Silas and the Rockets have floundered in the Western Conference basement, going 59-177 and twice finishing with the worst record in the league. Their young talent has shown flashes but has never taken much in the way of a noticeable leap forward, and that stagnation after three years has led to Silas’ ouster, as reports emerged as the final whistle blew in a season-ending win in Washington that the team would not pick up the fourth-year option on Silas’ contract.

It is not a surprise to see Silas replaced as head coach, but it’s extremely hard to parse what level of responsibility he truly holds for the Rockets’ failures. He was hired to lead a playoff contender and was handed the keys to a tank, asked to develop a group of young talent without much of any veteran leadership on the roster. The lack of improvement and noticeable strides in terms of cohesion and competitiveness was jarring, particularly when considering the steps forward seen by teams in similar situations in Oklahoma City and Orlando. That certainly played a role in Silas being let go, but there was a talent deficit in Houston, particularly in terms of veterans who could help guide the ship on the floor.

The next head coach in Houston will have quite the task on their hands, but depending on how the lottery balls fall in their favor, they could end up stepping into a situation with some intriguing young pieces and a generational talent. The Rockets front office will need to figure out what members of this current team constitute a real core and who should be moved for veteran help in the coming years, as any steps forward will require better roster balance.

Jon Stewart left The Daily Show almost eight years ago, but though he laid low for several years, lately he’s come roaring back. His new show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, finds him telling fewer jokes and being more serious. In turn, he’s garnered lots of attention for mercilessly grilling powerful people on serious issues. His latest viral moment involves him calling out the “corruption” of a bloated defense budget that hasn’t helped cash-strapped soldiers.

On Thursday, Stewart appeared at the War Horse Symposium in Chicago, where he took part in a discussion with Department of Defense (DOD) deputy secretary Kathleen Hicks. During a particular heated part of the chat, Stewart called for an audit of the Pentagon for what he called “waste, fraud, and abuse” in her department, especially considering the DOD has a proposed 2024 budget of nearly $850 million.

Hicks split hairs, saying, “‘Audit’ and ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ are not the same thing.” She claimed that if the Pentagon does not pass an audit, that only means “we don’t have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where.”

“So, in my world, that’s waste,” Stewart replied. “If I give you a billion dollars and you can’t tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful. That means you are not responsible. But if you can’t tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think?”

Stewart elaborated, saying “it’s a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can’t pass an audit and tell you where that money went — like, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud, or abuse because they would wonder why that money isn’t well accounted for.”

He pointed out that there is food insecurity on military bases:

When I see a State Department get a certain amount of money and a military budget be ten times that, and I see a struggle within government to get people like, more basic services, and then that department that got that–I mean, we got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a $50 billion raise. Like, that’s shocking to me.

Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs, and the incredible magic of an audit. But I’m a human being who lives on the Earth and can’t figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. Like, to me, that’s fucking corruption. I’m sorry. And, if like, that blows your mind and you think that’s like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that’s institutional thinking, and that it’s not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people that you call the greatest dighting force in the world.

So, again, I get back to this idea of like, I’m not looking to pick a fight with you. But I am surprised at the reaction to these questions are, “You don’t know what an audit is, bucko.” Like, that’s just weird to me.

Hicks replied by claiming that food insecurity among soldiers is a “major priority” for the administration, adding that “a lot of funds are going toward that.”

You can watch the exchange in the tweet embedded above.

(Via Mediaite)

Drake‘s latest single, “Search & Rescue,” is dominating the streaming charts, especially on Spotify. On the track, which was co-produced by longtime collaborator Noah “40” Shebib and Lil Yachty, the certified lover boys shows that he can still make a splash independently. That impact is showing up on the charts.

According to Pop Crave, “Search & Rescue” has debuted at No. 1 on US Spotify. The song reportedly earned over 2.43 million streams. The platform also revealed that the song also found a home on the streaming giant’s global chart opening up at the No. 4 spot with 4.63 million plays.

The songs rounding out the top five spots are “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen at No. 2, “Kill Bill” by SZA at No. 3, “Boy’s A Liar Pt. 2” by PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice at No. 4, and “Ella Baila Sola” by Eslabon Armado featuring Peso Pluma.

When “Search & Rescue” was released, fans called out the rapper for stepping back into his ‘Sassy Drake’ persona, as the track features samples of his longtime foe Ye’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian. In the clip, Kardashian talks about her and Kanye West’s divorce.

Although Drake’s father insists that “it’s just a song” and not a direct diss to the Yeezy designer, fans find that hard to believe.

Note: This is my third-to-last Top Chef Power Rankings post for Uproxx. Follow me on Twitter and/or Patreon for updates on how to find them after that! I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

Every season of Top Chef has to have a “champions fall” episode, which keeps the competition from just being predictable all the way through. That was this week on Top Chef World All-Stars. The favorites all took a tumble and the audience got to breathe a collective sigh of “maybe things aren’t as they seem!”

How did those evil leprechauns at Magical Elves productions engineer such a thing? With a family non-denominational holiday dinner challenge spectacular! The chefs had to work together with a collective budget (“Just like a family!” noted Padma, politely omitting the fact that Aunt Edna never gets kicked out of Easter for putting raisins in the potato salad, even though she should) to present a family-style meal to the judges on their weekend excursion, sponsored by VRBO. Which they pronounced “verbo,” because V-R-B-O is still trying to make that happen. (Author’s Note: I will never call VRBO “verbo,” VRBO is not my old Australian pal from the footy).

Family, vacations, comfort food, togetherness — I can dig it. But how does that flip the script?

Well, mostly I started this feature as a vehicle for my dumb lil’ jokes, but if I could play earnest analyst for one second: it seems to me that the demands of “blow our minds with something completely different” and “make us long for home with something comforting and familiar” are fundamentally at odds. Usually Top Chef tests the former, and the chefs who were used to doing that struggled a bit with the latter. Mmm, mead reduction caviar thickened with agar-agar atop bludgeoned lamb dust, just like mom used to make!

OR, maybe that’s just a tidy narrative inventing causal relationships between random events to explain unexpected outcomes. Because the other important aspect of the VERRRRBO challenge was that the chefs all had to plan together and prepare their food in the same kitchen, leading to all sorts of drama about who got to make pork belly and which chef was bogarting the fry pot. A lot of the chefs who ended up on the bottom deferred at key points of the prep, forgetting the first rule of reality competitions: You’re not here to make friends! (forever and ever amen).

And so, true to the spirit of a family get together, the whole thing ended in strife and hurt feelings, leading to one of the angriest eliminated competitors I’ve ever seen on this show. Which is good! I get irrationally pissed when I break an egg yolk, I don’t want to see chefs have to share equipment and then get their food dissed in front of the whole world and pretend to be okay with it.

Oh yeah, also there was a mead challenge in the quickfire. Mead? Mead! I feel like mead is up there with sour beers in the category of things I’ve tried to get myself to care about and just can’t do it. Unless I’m at a Ren Faire, I don’t know of many situations that make me think “you know what I could really go for right now? A mead.”

Anyway, onto the rankings! (Which are completely nonsensical this week because virtually every chef did the exact opposite of what they’ve been trending towards all season).

Results:

Quickfire Top: Tom*, Victoire, Charbel.
Quickfire Bottom: Nicole, Amar, Sylwia.

Elimination Top: Amar*, Victoire, Ali.
Elimination Bottom: Buddha, Gabri, Begoña**.

(*Winner. **Eliminated.)

Rankings

11. (-9) ((Eliminated)) Begoña Rodrigo

AKA: Tilde Swintón. Beach Mom. Thtevie Nickth.

Yes, Begoña was the chef eliminated this week. Shocking thtuff! (Is it just me or did Begoña lose her Castilian lisp after the first episode? Way to ruin all my jokes, lady). The offending dish was a cut-up fried chicken-looking thing (are those breasts? oh Begoña no) that she said was inspired by the leftovers meal Begoña traditionally eats the day after holidays when she gets together with “the people I actually want to see.”

Ha! Suck on that, family.

The judges were all over this one, from the too-sweet sauce to the fact that Begoña “used curry as a condiment,” which to Padma and Tom seemed to be tantamount to putting baby in a corner. And so, they sent the witchy woman (in Don Henley parlance) home, which she didn’t even pretend not to be pissed about.

Damn, I haven’t seen someone with a sweatshirt tied around their waist this pissed since the heyday of grunge.

Good for you, Begoña! This woman has been serving you creamy anemones all season and you’re just going to forget that over one sub-par roulade?? For shame!

Begoña didn’t even bring up the fact that Charbel had been bogarting the fry pot they were supposed to share for the entire prep, leading her to have scramble and cut up her chicken smaller than she wanted. She was in a bad position; bringing it up at that point would’ve seemed like petty whining.

And so, Begoña tumbles nine slots in this week’s rankings. Though if I was a betting man, she would still be the odds-on favorite to return to the competition through Last Chance Kitchen.

LAST CHANCE KITCHEN ADDENDUM: Begoña clearly learned her lesson, because in her first Last Chance Kitchen competition, when the chefs were meant to negotiate which dish they’d be doing, Begoña just told the others which one she was doing and didn’t allow for any jibber jabber. And it worked!

We have to wait until next week to find out if she wins part two and returns to the competition, but clearly she learned the “I’m not here to make friends” lesson the hard way. Hopefully she remembers it. Gets it printed on a turquoise-beaded bracelet so she never forgets.

10. (even) Nicole Gomes

AKA: Clawhoser. The Contessa. Kindergarten Cop.

Nicole seemed like one of the few underdogs from previous weeks to remain untouched by this week’s reversal of fortunes. She benefited from Buddha deferring to her on pork belly (serving up the little five-spiced number you see below) but not enough to land her in the top three of the elimination challenge. Sad!

To make matters worse, she beefed her zabaione so badly in the quickfire round that she ended up having to serve a whack-ass trifle, which landed her in the bottom three (…he typed while confidently pretending he knew what a zabaione was). Triflin’!

And yet still she skated through. My gut says Nicole is going to go home soon, but she could also be a born survivor who, cockroach-like, is going to keep doing this for 10 more episodes.

9. (-1) Sylwia Stachyra

AKA: Auntie Claus. Potato Girl. The Bone.

Say what you will about Chef Sylwia, she always makes the kind of food I’d want to eat. She tried to make some Polish dumplings in the quickfire challenge, which was maybe bold to the point of stupidity to attempt in 30 minutes, but as the OG Dumpling Daddy I appreciated it. Sadly her dumps flopped open, disgusting the guest judge and I think you can insert your own Icarus-based dumpling pun here, I’ve been on vacation all week.

In the elimination challenge, she made a bomb-ass looking potato soup with soft boiled eggs that she called “white borscht.” Whatever, I’m pretending is Polish ramen.

“Ist Polish ramen. Potato broth viss chunks potato, potato noodle. Garnish viss potato.”

Everyone seemed to love it, but not enough to put Sylwia into the top three. That feels like bad news for Potato Girl, but she feels so consistently on brand that I have to think she’s a lock for fan favorite. I’m calling her “The Bone” in honor of my friend Cameron, who decided when we were seniors in high school that everyone was going to call him “The Bone” and actually willed it into existence. Sylwia has done the same with Potato Girl and it takes a special person to make a self-ascribed nickname happen.

8. (-3) Gabri Rodriguez

AKA: The Black Pearl. The Mongoose. Wile Y. Coyote.

Oh, Gabri. What the hell do we do with our precious Mongoose? When Gabri decided he was going to make mole this week, it actually elicited a collective groan from the other chefs, who remembered how he broke the bank with his 50-something ingredients the last time he made one and had to borrow from May to cover it. (I believe something similar happened between Mexico and the French, which is why we celebrate Cinco De Mayo).

He promised this would be a simpler mole, and that it would be important because he’d be dedicating to his departed father.

He ended up making this green mole, and when the judges didn’t like it, he blamed it on being in a bad mood from thinking about his father. Hey, man, you’re the one who brought up your father! It’s like he was playing the “why you hitting yourself” game with himself.

Basically Gabri got dinged for the same reasons Begoña did, which is using curry (or in this case mole, which is basically a Mexican curry) as a condiment. At first I thought Tom was being kind of a nitpicky bitch, the only one to call Gabri’s mole “scorched,” which seemed like partly Tom congratulating himself for noticing that Gabri’s mole pot was overboiling during the walkthrough. They should really have to taste these things blind so that the judges’ criticisms can’t just be “I told you so.”

I digress, but even the Mexican guest judge said that Gabri’s fish, his tortilla, and his mole “didn’t speak to each other.”

Just looking at it, that seems right. Simmer your damned meat in your curry/mole should be a new Top Chef commandment up there with not making risotto.

7. (+4) Victoire Gouloubi

AKA: Al Dente. Minute Rice. Steven Seagal. Three’s Company. Pulp Fiction. Backstory.

Hot off her near-death experience from walnut exposure last week, Victoire doubled down on the human interest stories this week, revealing that not only does she speak seven languages, she was also basically homeless when she left Congo for culinary school in Italy. “I have lunch or dinner in the trash at McDonald’s,” Victoire revealed, in probably the soundbite of the season.

And then she seemed to catch fire, landing top three in both the quickfire and the elimination challenge, the latter with a bean stew. Which has to be the all-time high-water mark for a bean stew.

I don’t know if I’m ready to call Victoire a favorite quite yet (the culture barrier does seem like it’s hurting the international chefs) but winning with the musical fruit was more than enough to jump her up a few slots. (Side note: Padma’s bean farts have to be worth a fortune on OnlyFans).

6. (+3) Charbel Hayek

AKA: Davos. Soup Nazi. 25.

Another mostly solid, if unspectacular performance from Charbel, who landed top three in the quickfire and in the middle of the elimination challenge. The former for a butternut squash dish and the latter for something involving a concassé. Which I don’t really know what that is, but does sound great when you say it with a Lebanese accent.

*David Byrne voice* Psycho killer… concassé… fa fuffa fa faffa fuffa fa fa…

Charbel also managed to sideline one of the best chefs in the competition by hogging her fry pot. That’s a veteran move right there.

5. (+2) Amar Santana

AKA: Big Sleazy. Laughtrack. Hibbert. Flava Flav.

Ayyy, check out the big win for Big Sleazy! The most fun dude in the competition finally took home a win this week for his overnight-braised, Moroccan-style lamb shank, which did look like one of the tastiest dishes in this entire competition thus far.

I want to swim in that.

Big Sleazy is basically the anti-Buddha, who never watches game tape or plays the numbers and just goes out there and grips it and rips it. He just seems to roll up like John Daly, taking fireball shots and blowing darts while everyone else is warming up. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he shoots 84, but either way seems like he’s having the best time. (That’s a lil golf analogy for you guys, in case you were wondering whether I’m a dad now).

I’d have Big Sleazy ranked higher except he also duffed a fried chicken in the quickfire challenge that landed him in the bottom three. I can’t tell if he’s trying to win this competition or just auditioning to be Ali’s Flava Flav, who Amar seems to big up at every opportunity. It’s like Amar took one look at the soft-spoken Jordanian and thought “this guy needs a hype man.”

He’s not wrong, but again — not here to make friends.

4. (+2) Tom Goetter

AKA: Meekus. Sprockets. Fuckboi Tom.

I feel like Tom’s “mischievous German” act is starting to get a little old, but maybe that’s just the way with F-boys. Tom made some mead caviar with agar-agar in the quickfire challenge (“agar-agar” in a German accent is almost as disturbing as “concassé” in a Lebanese accent is pleasant), but unlike last week‘s guest judge, who had no time for Tom’s molecular bullshit, this week’s was smitten. Foam me, daddy, I’ve been naughty! Turn my oils into soils!

Tom took home the win and immunity in that challenge and spent the rest of the episode slacking off, which seemed simultaneously very European of him and very un-German.

There was a nice human interest vignette about Tom’s brother, who Tom described as a “very annoying person, actually” on account of supposedly being taller, better looking, and more married than Tom. Thinking that he was not perfect enough to measure up to a sibling despite being a world famous chef restored Tom’s Germanness and then some. Everyone seemed to hate Tom’s “dense” cake but it didn’t matter because he had immunity.

3. (+1) Sara Bradley

AKA: Party Mom. Reebok. Sassparilla.

In true Party Mom fashion, Sara revealed “I’ve been mead drunk before” during the quickfire challenge, making me wish we could get a nice little montage package of Sara listing all the different obscure alcohols she’s been drunk off. Again, seems like a good hang.

She had another doozy of a story for the elimination challenge, explaining that the inspiration for her dish was the time her mom took her dad to meet her grandpa, who accidentally cut her dad’s leg with a chainsaw while sawing through a log — a story that absolutely screams “I’m from Appalachia!”

If you haven’t been maimed by an in-law, are you really from hill country?

Because Sara contains mulitudes, she also revealed that she’s been keeping a running tally of who finishes where in each challenge like the good little former statistics major she is. Only her and Buddha had never been on the bottom before. Since Buddha finished in the bottom three in the ensuing episode, that leaves Sara as the last remaining chef who hasn’t finished in the bottom. That’s a solid track record, though without a win in either challenge this week I couldn’t quite justify putting Sara in the top two either.

2. (+1) Ali Ghzawi

AKA: RRR. Maui Wowie. The Strain. The Ghizza.

The Ghizza nearly took home a victory this week with a bomb-ass mezze platter. Those must’ve been some good dips.

I can’t decide whether Ali truly deserves to be in the top two or if I’ve just been influence by Amar hitting the reggae horn button every time Ali presents some food.

1. (even) Buddha Lo

AKA: Moneyball. Double Down. Big Data. Buddha.

Buddha seemed almost as pissed about his bottom three finish as Begoña was. Buddha almost going home for a comfort food challenge makes a lot of sense though. This man doesn’t make comfort food, he makes space food. He wants to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. He makes art! Family? Buddha is the reverse Vin Diesel. Buddha doesn’t have family, he was born in a flood of gelée and raised by a scallop foam.

Again, that’s the fun, myth-making read on this week’s events. The more pedestrian one is that I knew Buddha was sunk when he deferred to Nicole on making a pork belly and chose instead to do “a room temperature fish salad.”

…Hold up, you want to make a what now? He ended up making a salmon slab with all the fixins and left the judges confused.

Tom said Buddha “got caught between being a chef and being a home cook,” which feels right.

Buddha almost went home this week and I wanted the rankings to reflect that, and yet I had an even harder time finding anyone else to put in his slot than I did justifying Buddha staying. Tom? Tom screwed up his cake. Ali? Didn’t win either challenge. Sara? Ditto. Amar? Took an L on fried chicken.

I’m going to pull a Buddha and play the odds here, and to me the odds are that Buddha is still a favorite.

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