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Of all the pleasures of this season of Top Chef Masters, there's one we've taken for granted: The tension. When the show debuted last year, it had about as much devious, cutthroat competitive spirit as a church bake sale. It was all about some of the food world's most established stars sharing tips, learning techniques and helping each other out -- you know, all those things you don't tune in to the catty, petty, normal-grade Top Chef to see. Where was the risk? What was at stake?

This year, the Bravo gods answered our prayers. First there was the labyrinthine early elimination rounds -- so fast, so confusing, no one got a chance to, you know, bond. (True bonding is the enemy of reality TV!) And then there were the personalities of the finalists: Susur Lee's cocky perfectionism. Marcus Samuelsson's hubris and ego. Rick Moonen's unchecked mania.

Sure, some of the antagonism has been very nudge-nudge, wink-wink. But underneath it all, you get the feeling that these chefs really, really want a victory.

Of all the things we could say about this week's nail-biting, head-scratching, mouth-watering episode of Top Chef Masters, let's get one minor, blink-and-you'd-miss-it moment out of the way right now: Once, years ago, in a faraway time and place we'd rather be living in, Susan Feniger was a cheerleader.

You see, this week was all about each chef finding his or her inner jock: first by cooking a quickfire dish for Olympic gold medalist Jason Lezak, and then by serving up a tailgate feast at a USC Trojans football game.

We may have been down to a mere six cheftestants, with 5/6ths of the group in possession of a grunting, egotistical, macho Y-chomosome. We may have been in a parking lot full of jersey-clad, beer-swigging, barely comprehensible troglodytes. But who was the sportiest of them all? None other than our favorite irrepressible spitfire, Susan.

"If you knew what I was cooking, you'd be puking." Leave it to Susan Feniger to mince no words with the Whole Foods cashier as she tried to gather up ingredients for this week's Top Chef Masters challenge.

Yes, even the woman who travels the globe in search of new street food was put off by the proteins given her this week -- and we can't say we blame her.

TCM's first season subjected the nation's best chefs to guts, feet and other offal on an episode. This week, the producers decided to dredge up a "favorite" form of punishment from Top Chef's early days: The exotic surf and turf challenge. This meant rolling out a display cart that looked like a cross between a taxidermist's rec room and a David Cronenberg movie: Sea Cucumber. Geoduck. Giant squid. Kangaroo. Duck tongue.

One question: Who decides which lucky newlyweds get to be a part of Top Chef's perennial "Wedding Wars" episode? And do they take bribes?

Frankly, we weren't planning nuptials anytime soon. But based on the spread served up by eight of the nation's best chefs on this week's Top Chef Masters, we'd like to know the shooting schedule for next season now, so we can get to the top of the list. Forget the registry -- we'd be marrying for the food.

"Wedding Wars" team challenges, of course, are a staple of the Top Chef franchise, along with piercings in strange parts of the body and the creative use of the f-word. But never has the challenge been done like this: Jonathan Waxman can make tarragon roast chicken for us anytime. Even the "boring" wedding food -- potatoes au gratin by Tony Montuano, crab cakes by Carmen Gonzalez -- looked mouthwatering, perfectly crusted and crunchy. And then there was the literal icing on the cake: Five -- five! -- separate desserts by Susur Lee.

Ludo, Ludo, Ludo. As long as the programming savants at Bravo are going to spin off every one of their reality franchises into at least 31 flavors, can we have a Top Chef Ludo, already?

Not that we love the guy, exactly, mind you -- we love hating him, and hate it when we end up loving him. In his second appearance in the inner sanctum of Top Chef Masters -- the first was last year, when he made some offal tacos for tourists -- Ludovic Lefebvre, the Paris-by-way-of-SoCal enfant terrible, managed to astound, confound, infuriate and otherwise entertain anyone unfortunate enough to be in his blazing path of culinary genius.

To judge by Ludo's opinion of himself, "culinary genius" is an understatement. Granted, the man has worked wonders with his LudoBites, his roving, temporary restaurant concept that has delivered chilled liquid-chorizo and other inventions to L.A. denizens for a couple of years now, so any amount of bluster is at least a little justified.

More from last night's episode after the jump.