Does Alex love his pork butt a little too much? Photo from Bravo.

For this season’s Top Chef DCist will be bringing you our “woulda, coulda, shoulda” take on how the cheftestants are faring. Every week we will highlight one individual who was doin’ it wrong.

This week’s episode was packed with so much promise for wrong-doing by the cheftestants: desserts, an outdoor challenge, charcoal grills, and interns. With last week having sown the seeds for lots of controversy and in-fighting, the potential for fireworks was high. Maybe Angelo would continue his Rove-ian strategy of throwing fellow contestants under the bus. Maybe Amanda would make more overly-dramatic shocked faces (happened). Maybe Arnold and Kelly would get into a slap-fight (almost happened).

We were also waiting with bated breath for the producers to throw some terrible D.C. cliché into this week’s Quickfire. Would they have the cheftestants make a dish inspired by a favorite political scandal — “Watermelongate Gazpacho,” anyone? Perhaps there would be more puns. Thankfully, the producers decided to lay off our city for the Quickfire, choosing instead to torture the contestants.

As we’ve been telling you for the last two weeks, Top Chef contestants and desserts rarely mix. So when they announced the Quickfire was a pie challenge, we were nervous. Pie is notoriously difficult under such time constraints. The crust is easy to overwork and is also very fragile. It’s a dish that relies on both precision and intuition. You have to get the ratio correct: butter, flour, and just enough liquid to bind. You also have to be strangely clairvoyant and account for unforeseen issues, like how much liquid the filling will release. Needless to say, this one was going to be tricky. (Spoilers after the jump.)