If the rumblings of 'Top Chef' fans are to be believed, the group that has been cooking their way through Washington, D.C. this season is the worst collection of chef'testants that the show has ever gathered.

I'm not sure about that. While this group isn't as good as last season's stellar bunch -- who will forget the Voltaggio brothers' showdown in the finale? -- I don't see them as being appreciably worse than some of the previous sets of contestants, certainly not the fumbling casts the show had in its early seasons.

The low opinion of this year's cast is likely due to viewers' high expectations, and those high expectations are being fed by the show's utter predictability.

We're down to the final five chef'testants, and there hasn't seemed to be one major surprise elimination among the bunch (the only elimination that can be considered a mild surprise really wasn't, for reasons I'll explain in a moment). Even Wednesday night's elimination seemed to be inevitable from the show's first seconds.

The quality of the show isn't going downhill by any means; the program is still entertaining, the food is still presented well, and the storylines are still well fleshed-out. But there are a few reasons why 'Top Chef's' success may be leading to it becoming stale: (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

1. The judges have trained the fans on what's good and what's bad. Let's be honest here: Most of us have not tasted the vast majority of the dishes that have been created during the run of the series. It's just too many chefs in too many restaurants in too many cities for us to get to them all. So all we have to go on is the judges' opinions on each dish. By season seven the viewers seem to have a pretty good idea of what the judges like and what they don't like.

If something is overcooked, undercooked or both, that's bad. If the flavors don't mesh or are imbalanced, that's also bad. And if the presentation is considered amateurish, then the judges will likely throw the chef to the bottom of the heap. You can just tell by the judges' reactions as they eat the dish how things will go. For instance, Eric Ripert's repulsed reaction at Amanda's grey tuna tartare pretty much doomed her right there and then.

2. Previous seasons have given the chefs clues on how to get by. Chefs have big egos, but the nature of the job requires chefs to always be learning and cribbing from their peers. With six seasons of chef fumbles, mishaps, and mistakes to look back on -- and at this point, most of the people who go on the show are fans -- the chef'testants know where not to take risks and what kind of mistakes will sink their chances.

That's why you don't see many desserts anymore, or see people go too far out of their comfort zones to make dishes. Alex got bounced last week because a combination of his underdeveloped culinary skills and uninformed risk taking led him to make those disastrous veal parm tortellini that Tom Colicchio thought were so bad that he said he had better tortellini out of a box.



3. The marginal chefs are eventually exposed. The way the game is played, with the constant pressure and short amount of time, the chefs that either don't have the cooking skills or don't have the coping skills are eventually weeded out.

Kenny, for instance, positioned himself as the alpha dog of this season and positioned himself against Angelo, who came out of the gate doing the same. But, anyone who watched the two episodes leading up to his elimination should have known that he was slipping; even Colicchio stated on his blog that "so many people seem to have bought into Kenny's one-man PR campaign, and yes, Kenny broke strong out of the starting gate, but he didn't keep it up." Even though he ran a tight ship during Restaurant Wars, his team still lost and he made not one, but two terrible dishes. So it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone that he was told to pack his knives and go after that.

Unless a chef starts to find a groove late, like Carla did two seasons ago, they won't be able to skate by for too long, as the field narrows down to the best of the best. Alex and Amanda found that out over the last two weeks, and Angelo and Kevin are probably realizing that Kelly, Ed and Tiffany are starting to pull away from them at this point.

4. The producers are projecting the results in the editing. Maybe we've been watching too much reality TV in general. Or the formula that the Magic Elves set up first with 'Project Runway' and now with the various versions of 'Top Chef' is becoming too familiar. But there are times when you can predict who is going to win or lose a challenge just from the episode's editing.

For instance, during the Restaurant Wars episode, when Kevin and Kenny constantly griped about how organized their blue team was and how chaotic things were for the red team, right away I thought to myself, "... and that's why they're going to lose." Last night's episode was heavy on Amanda side interviews, and when Angelo called her the "dark horse," I knew she was toast.

Do you think 'Top Chef' is becoming too predictable? How can they shake up the formula?