Top Chef’s opening credits have become a total nightmare — a grim reminder of how many contestants are still left. How is it humanly possible there are still 2/3rds of the original 15 remaining? As it is, I feel like this season has been going on since the start of the Bush administration — the first, less cataclysmic one, that is.

Still, how nice is it to have something as novel as an actual new episode. You’d better enjoy it, because I’m sure it’s only a matter of a week or two before Bravo airs a special reuniting, I don’t know, Top Chef’s best-loved grips and boom operators.

Anyway, I’m especially psyched for this episode because the promos have been promising major meltdowns. Enough with professional respect and making new friends and all that crap. I want hair pulling and wedgies and bitch slaps, oh my!

The opening images hint at stormy things to come. To give you the right sense of atmosphere they try for here, you need to picture yourself as having just moved from the big city to some small New England hamlet, and this old sea salt sitting on the porch looks at the darkening sky and says, “Stohm’s a-comin, ayeh.”

It’s truly that cheesily foreboding -- all dark clouds and gusts blowing through palm trees and Acid Raindrops of Doom.

Next we get a little lesson in how accessories affects hotness in dramatically different ways. Brian is interviewed lying in bed, which would normally be all it takes to get my perverted imagination humming, except he’s wearing a wool hat. I don’t know which is more bizarre, that he’s wearing a wool hat in Florida in spring, or that he’s wearing it in bed! It’s the kind of awkward image you’d expect when you drop in on a relative in a nursing home.

Then, we see Dale wearing this magical tank top that miraculously gives him major biceps and draws attention to his pec cleavage. I think it’s safe to say he has never, ever looked this hot. It’s almost enough for me to get past the hair. Almost. They’re all talking about how much more competitive it is now that a whopping five people have been eliminated.

Joey says he’s ready to do whatever he needs to do, even if it means “throwing someone over a bus.” That sounds more like some kind of butch Olympic event than a real threat. Plus, it’s not so scary given that in the interview, he’s wearing this fluorescent lime green polo shirt buttoned right up to his neck, which makes him about as scary as an anemic kindergartener dressed by his smothering mommy.