Top Chef spoilers herein

I enjoy certain reality shows like Project Runway and Top Chef not only because I respect the on-the-fly creativity and the impressive abilities of the contestants, but also because I grew up addicted to daytime game shows, and the modern reality show has its roots firmly planted in that tradition.

But while Top Chef is really just a next-generation game show, there is a key difference: The producers of Top Chef either don’t know or don’t care that they’re running a game show, and so they feel free to dump their own rules overboard when it pleases them to do so. If Jeopardy! decided to keep its second-place finisher for the next show because she was more likeable than the true winner, people would point and laugh. Top Chef does this sort of thing all the time, and never more gratuitously than in the most recent episode.

The new season of Top Chef is barely underway: Wednesday’s episode was the second of the season. As such, I’m not yet sure of anybody’s name, with a few exceptions. Angelo is clearly the man to beat, winning three of the four challenges so far. Kenny gives every indication that he, too, will be a major player.

In the last episode, the sixteen remaining contestants were divided into four teams of four. Angelo and one other contestant were blessed with immunity; they could not be eliminated. Joining the two of them on their team were Kenny and a contestant named Ed. Angelo chose these two specifically to join him. It was almost certainly a strategic ploy. But strategy only works when a game has consistent rules, as we shall see.

The way team challenges work on Top Chef — the way they usually work — is that one team is deemed the best and another team is deemed the worst. From the best team, an individual winner is chosen. (That was indeed the case in this episode.) From the worst team, a loser is determined, and that person is sent home.

Incredibly, in this episode where they upend their own sense of rules and fair play, the show includes a scene where they confirm how team challenges work. We see head judge Tom Colicchio inform Kenny that since half his team has immunity, if his team winds up on the bottom, there is a “50 percent chance that you’ll be going home.” Kenny soberly tells Colicchio, and the home audience, that he is aware of this.

And indeed, Angelo and Kenny’s team fail the challenge. (There is some discussion as to whether Angelo threw the challenge in order that this team should be on the bottom; I don’t see much evidence that this is the case.) The judges are clear: Angelo and Kenny’s team is the worst of the four teams competing. I believe the term “by far” is used.

At this point, the judges should have had to make a very difficult decision: Send home Kenny, or send home Ed, Kenny’s only non-immune teammate. The edit makes it clear that of the two of them, Kenny’s errors make him more worthy of elimination.

Instead, the judges decide to do away with the entire team model. They call back four poor performers across the two least-successful teams, and eliminate a woman named Jacqueline, who made a miserable banana pudding from underripe bananas.

From a culinary standpoint, this could well have been the right decision: I think it’s clear that Kenny is a more talented chef than Jacqueline. (It’s too early to know this for an absolute fact, but that’s my sense.) But this is not just a cooking competition — it is a game. If the players cannot ignore the rules when it suits them, neither should the judges and producers. Kenny was outplayed and his cooking could not save him; the judges threw him a life preserver. If the judges can do that, why have rules in the first place?