Will the 'Top Chef' shows get success?

"Top Chef" has its own exit strategy — "Please pack your knives and go," host Padma Lakshmi gently tells the culinary castoffs — but like the small group of reality shows that celebrate artistry more than delight in failure, the cooking series succeeds best when its contestants excel at the task at hand. Tellingly, the single episode from "Top Chef All-Stars" that the show's producers submitted for this year's Emmy Award concluded with an exceptional twist — not a single chef was sent home.

Competitors on "Top Chef" are constantly forced to work outside their comfort zones — the cook who usually serves fish must make a pie, the Southern chef is obliged to work with Asian ingredients and so on. In the Ellis Island excursion, the chefs were asked to do the opposite and fully embrace their own ethnicity in their cuisine.

Of course, as a competition show, there had to be a champion, with the increasingly self-doubting Richard Blais prevailing over Isabella. But like so much of the season, if felt like someone won, rather than someone else losing. "You want to give them every opportunity to do well," Lakshmi said of the chefs. "We don't want them to fail."