• LA Times, Thursday, November 10, 2011 4:26 PM

Interesting news for "Top Chef" viewers, and those looking for ideas to freshen up an aging franchise, as well as move eyeballs from TV to computer screens: Season nine of the show features a weekly Web-only component, the "Last Chance Kitchen," that allows the loser of each episode to compete again in hopes of eventually getting back in the game for the always-exciting finale.

However, John Horn thinks this contest, which has each episode loser competing against the winner of the previous "Last Chance" round (follow?), is actually mathematically unfair to the chefs -- and unfair to viewers who must, gasp, watch all of the commercials on the Web. 

But if you've become a bit weary of the whole TC genre (like us),  you may find this tweak spices up the game -- as did the extra urgency of the contests in the first two episodes, which eliminated about half of the 29 initial competitors.

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