Last week in TV land: a post-vacation recap!

Some highlights from my week off, in which I did not blog even when tempted:

• ‘Top Chef: The Tour’ finally opened St. Louis reservations (sometime over the weekend?) and immediately sold out. However, the website says walk-ins are accepted for all sold-out times. The day is July 16 and the location is the new Whole Foods superstore in Town and Country (which is a show sponsor and thus beat out Soulard Market). St. Louis’ “chef’testants” are Dale and Josie; for more, here’s the site link. And be sure to let me know if you managed to get a reservation.
• Farmer Matt found a wife — or did he? My colleague Susan Weich, a columnist in our St. Charles bureau,  interviewed him for a story that ran in the Saturday paper, but he was vague about what his specific future with Brooke might be. Here’s a long blurb from his MySpace page in which he talks more about it.  But I get the impression we might see Brooke on TV before we see her in Portage des Sioux.
• Christina, as expected, made the final two on “Hell’s Kitchen,” competing against (not expected) Petrozza. I got an Evite to a finale party she’s throwing here ($50 per person complete with a re-creating of her finale menu) but I can’t make it because July 8 is the day I’m heading for LA for summer press tour. I’ll make every effort to blog the finale that night, though, and somebody here will catch up with Christina afterward.
• In one of the most bizarre scenes ever in “The Bachelor” or “Bachelorette,” DeAnna tearfully eliminated Graham after saying HE was the one she’d been falling in love with and now she didn’t know if she’d find true love. A friend of mine thinks he really wanted to tell her “I’m just not that into you.” I think maybe his emotional unavailability was why she thought she loved him. In any case — what if rule-breaker DeAnna asked ABC to bring him back and give her another chance? That would be interesting, although I still think she’d be way better off with Jason or Jeremy.
• What am I leaving out? Oh, self-taught dog groomer Artist won Animal Planet’s “Groomer Has It,” a show I was probably the only one watching, although I enjoyed it a lot. In a touching finale, Artist — who desperately needed the prize money and fancy mobile grooming van — dropped to one knee after he won, crying. His dog ran up and licked his face.