First, a disclaimer: I watched last night’s episode of Top Chef Just Desserts after going to see Die Antwoord/Rye Rye at 930 club (which involved drinking), then stopping by the Moombahton partytime @ U Street Music Hall (which involved drinking) and after a full day of rain, pain and meetings, so how exactly clear my head was when, at 1am,  I sat down in front of my DVR with a half-frozen snickers almond bar to see what goes down in the FIRST EVER DESSERT SHOP WARS, is, well, unclear. But I’ll try.

The show is down to 6 people, 3 of which are part of the self-proclaimed “TEAM GO DIVA”, and the other 3 are, well, not. So, before anything even happened, you KNEW that these two groups will be pitted against each other or BRAVO would not be BRAVO.

And-you were right.

The quickfire challenge was the mis-en-place thing where one person in each team had to:

1. make a tart base
2. do these little frosting roses
3. whisk egg whites into submission
4. then collectively stretch the strudel dough and roll a strudel (apparently, this is very, very, very hard)

Danielle somehow kicked Yigit’s ass in the tart basing, Erik lost their lead due to Heather being a little frosting rose machine, then Morgan casually outmuscled Zac with the egg whites but TEAM GO DIVA did make a better, more precisely stretched strudel and therefore they won. Which, frankly, was sort of expected but also sort of annoying.

Then Gail announced that the elimination challenge would be THE FIRST EVER DESSERT SHOP WARS (the element of surprise being taken away by the previews we’ve all been watching all week). Each chef is to be in charge of 3 desserts, and one of each team’s sweets HAS TO BE a bread and another has to be “made to order”. Plus, there’s concepts and decorations and feelings to be taken into account, and the winning team will split 30 grand which, well, is incentive enough for anyone to try just  a little harder.

ANYWAYS-Heather looks into the camera and says: “There is team GO DIVA and….well, TEAM LOSER” and then, at that specific point in time, without a doubt, because you’ve seen BRAVO shows before, you just know-TEAM GO DIVA IS ABOUT TO BECOME TEAM LOSER.

Scrappy underdog trio (of Morgan, Erik and Danielle, who is probably thanking sweetlorjeebus every night for still being in this competition) comes up with a comfort food concept and calls their store “Whisk me away”

Team GO DIVA goes with a adult pastry shop idea, names themselves “Pastry playground” and goes confidently into the challenge (muahahhaha)

The cooking goes without any major drama but here are some telling signs:

• Heather is in charge of all the pastry for TEAM GO DIVA. “It is a big responsibility”, we learn from Yigit and instantly know that Heather is somehow going to eff up the dough, even if she’s never effed anything up before in her life
• Team GO DIVA “steals” all the lemons. And we know what happens to people who “steal” all of anything? (remember Heather C and peanut butter? BAD OMEN)
• Morgan is having a bad day (that, in BRAVO talk, is a good thing)
• Erik is baking a cookie (I think this is sort of there to throw us off the scent of victory wafting through the WHISK ME AWAY corridors)
• The Pastry Playground display case is kind of empty
• Whisk me Away relegates Morgan to the kitchen and Danielle to the front because Morgan can sometimes be rude (and Danielle can’t stand straight and does weird shit with her face all the time but I guess that’s better for front of the house than the possibility of rudeness)
• Yigit is front of the housing for Pastry Playground and of course, killin’ it.

In exciting judging news Hubert Keller is back and we learn that: the TEAM GO DIVA dough does suck, that Danielle’s coffee cake is not coffee tasting enough, that you can see Heather’s fingertips on her frozen key lime bar, that while the cookie is simple, it is deeeee-licious, that Zac’s bacon/caramel popcorn is sort of uneven, that Yigit’s strawberry fraisier is good but just not that awesome and that Morgan’s chocolate/creme brulee is a favorite.

And the best part of the episode comes with Erik’s face when he finds out his “underdog” team won. “SHUT UP!”. Team GO DIVA looks crestfallen (“They’re going down”- Morgan announces in the stew room, his square jaw gutting forward) and due to sucking at both crust making and life, Heather H’s sour face is sent home.

I seriously thought she was going to win this whole show, so it was a bit of a shock for me but I am not sad to see her mean girl/fag hag persona go. She was never really a GO DIVA anyway, this will just let the Yigit/Zac duet a chance to shine a little more.

HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?