He's not going to jail because he fooled the authorities, he's going to jail because he hoaxed the media. All the networks and "news" channels scrambled live coverage of it and pounded each other to get a story that didn't exist, forcing the authorities to chase the balloon instead of searching for the kid locally as they probably would have done first in any other situation.

It infuriated the media, and you can see it in every news reaction to the story. One simply does not treat one's betters in the media that way, and they will be made to pay for it.

The real victims, as always, are the viewers.

I don't think that's a slam on Michele or the Glee cast at all—the show has relied way, way too much on AutoTune. It's a distraction and implies that the performers can't do it on their own, when the songs without it (or the live performances) show that's not true.

Every time I hear autotune snap something to the next pitch in its totally unnatural way, it snaps me right out of the show's world and back to "oh, I'm watching a TV show about this." (That, plus the realization that they've stopped even pretending that there are enough voices/instruments on screen to produce what you're hearing.) I wish they'd fix that.

I thought the audience was pretty cold, and that the lack of laughs in the "football taping" skit kind of set the mood for the rest of the show. I thought Lautner did a pretty good job of looking naturally uncomfortable for the camera in the Oregon uniform, and I was laughing like crazy, but only silence from the TV.

I thought "Surprise" had run its course, thought "Team Edward vs. Team Jacob" should have been more outrageous in some way, and thought Update was hurt by the long long long joke of the "Native American" comedian whose jokes all involve made-up words. "Show Choir" needed to have a lot more than four singers to make it work.

Good job for Lautner, but most of the show was a bunch of "this would have been really funny if" moments.

Well, I was the first commenter last week and said Jen got robbed. That was before I read Tom Collichio's blog where he said that they knew instantly upon tasting that Jen would be eliminated because both her dishes were way too salty, so much that one was virtually inedible. He did not know why that didn't make it into the show, and I don't either, but it was a poor editing choice by Magical Elves.

However, I expected Michael to win based on the shots at the end of last week's episode when Padma says "You are Top Chef," so I was watching with that in mind, and I could see them building to it.

He talked about hiding more flavors to be discovered in each bite, and the judges found that. He had an undercooked prawn and an overcooked cake, but two of Brian's four dishes were "bland" and Kevin's simple preparations didn't wow like they did in Part I. When they said his pork belly wasn't cooked enough, I knew he was in trouble; when Tom said the dessert wasn't enough, I knew that was the end.

In a finale where all three are so accomplished, it once again comes down to who messed up the least. Brian whiffed on the first two courses and home runs on the last two couldn't save him (at least by what Magical Elves chose to SHOW us). Kevin's third course, the "chef's choice" that was supposed to be his show-stopper, didn't stop the show, and his dessert underwhelmed.

Michael got great reviews for everything except the prawn in course 1 and the cake in course 4, and even then they seemed quick to excuse the cake. In terms of who made the fewest mistakes and of the smallest magnitude, it was clearly Michael—the new Top Chef.

First, Rick Bayless won Top Chef Masters. Michael Chiarello came in second.

Second, it was a bogus decision. Michael's eggs were not popular, and Jennifer's duck dish was well-received. He skates for bad food and she's booted for changing her game plan in mid-prep due to a grill problem and coming up with a better dish?

Keeping the brothers together for the final challenge is better TV, as someone else said, but Jennifer got ripped off.

I have to eat a special diet for medical reasons, and at times, that means eating in restaurants with specific instructions on orders (no dressing on this, this has to be the lunch portion and not the dinner portion because I've studied the nutrition info, this side substituted for that side—but usually not more than one of these conditions).

I've found that if it's just a side substitution, everything is usually fine. If it's anything more complicated than that, such as "no seasoning" on something, there's about a 2/3 chance the food comes out wrong if the server didn't write the order down. It's almost always right if it's written down. And since it's a medical thing, I MUST send back improperly prepared food—I literally can't eat it.

I try to tip this off by saying "I have dietary restrictions, so I have to be a little bit fussy" before such an order, and 4 out of 5 times that immediately gets the server to whip out a notepad. I like that a lot. And since I rarely eat out in parties of more than 2 or 3 people, it's not that the table orders are excessively complicated—they seem to have trouble with anything not written down that's not completely standard.

Of course, most of this is probably because I wind up eating at chain restaurants because they're the ones that publish the nutrition information I need. I can't even order a simple roast chicken at a smaller restaurant because even if they promise me it was unsalted (I have sodium restrictions), the kitchen usually has no idea if the bird was "enhanced" with a salt solution before they ever started cooking it, and many of them are. Chain restaurants mean lower-paid servers and more opportunities for mistakes, but even there the orders are remarkably accurate IF they're written down.

The doctor whose identity House assumed was "Dr. Perlmutter," not "Pearlwater." (I had audio problems and had to have the captioning on at times.)

I was disappointed as well, for some reasons listed above and some others.

The opening was awful—barely any pretense for "hey, let's have Will sing a song instead of the kids." The bit about "I'll do it if you won't" reminded me of musical clichés you'd see parodied in a 1940s cartoon, because they were already trite by then.

Emma's rendition of "I Could Have Danced All Night" was nice, but as with so many of the songs on Glee, the use of auto-tune was incredibly obvious to me. I'm starting to wonder if this cast, despite incredible talent, can hit pitches without software assistance.

Finn and Quinn seeking assistance from Emma was out of character, as was Finn quitting the team he'd said in the pilot "couldn't win without him," Rachel making out with Puck for no reason, Puck picking Glee over the team given his well-established preferences, and other stuff.

It's also starting to wear on me that the Glee Club can improvise a complete four-part to six-part vocal arrangement with keyboards, percussion, and brass on any song that anyone brings through the door, or at the very worst, have all that ready in 24 hours. It's really really hard to believe they're practicing for sectionals when it's been nearly two months and they don't even seem to have selected the one or two numbers they'd be performing, much less practicing.

Yes, I know this is all artistic liberty to get more songs into the show, and I can live with that to a degree, but it's like imagining a school orchestra suddenly all improvising a symphony they've heard before. It doesn't happen. On Glee, the equivalent happens almost every day, and it takes me out of the show. Sorry.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but "I'll go broke if I have to make sure the food I sell you isn't fatal" really isn't a compelling argument.

I knew Ash would be going home when he said "I had this idea, but someone else had a really cool idea so I decided to go with that instead." It was Carla all over again.