The culinary coronation is at finally hand: Which arrogant jerk chef will be crowned the master of all arrogant jerk chefs on the finale of Top Chef Masters? Join our commenter live blog and share the suspense with us!

Will it be the Cranky Fish Guy? Or the Vain Food Ninja? Maybe the Smug Scandi-opian? The live-blog of tonight's season finale takes place in the comments section below this post, where any and all are invited to join. Just turn on your TV, tune in the show (which starts at 10 pm Eastern on Bravo) and start posting comments as you watch. It's easy!

And even though this season of Top Chef Masters will be over after tonight's episode, there will be no need for anyone to suffer from post-live blog depression: The new season of Top Chef: Original Recipe premieres next Wednesday, so our little live-blogging party can pick up right where it left off. But please note: Starting next week, Bravo has changed the show's start time from 10 pm Eastern—the time it's always aired throughout its entire history—to 9 pm Eastern instead. This appears to be a clever attempt by Bravo's programming geniuses to get as many Top Chef fans as possible to miss the premiere episode by tuning in an hour too late (an instead catching that crazy Sarah Jessica America's Next Top Artist show instead). So don't let them fool you—remember to show up an hour earlier than usual next week!

Got that? OK then! Let's move on to that "highlights from last week's live blog" thing we do each week:

  • Commenter Lisa Cafero opined that judge James Oseland looks like Mr. Garrison from South Park — but I think she actually meant Mr. Mackey (mmkay?). In fact, that resemblance is so strong, I'm surprised that none of us noticed it before. Judge for yourself.
  • Commenter PikaDar Brisetout called me as "sanctimonious doghearted fustilarian," and referred to everyone else as "dankish beef-witted bladders." But I think it was meant as a compliment.
  • We said goodbye to Jonathan "Mr. Excitable" Waxman, who reacted to his ouster like a man who'd just been dismissed from jury duty. Quoth commenter Butterscotch: "The Waxman goeth."

And, as usual, last week's live blog was chock full o' witty quips from commenters. Here are a few of my favorites.

As for tonight, it's time to start drinking and pretending we actually care which of the three vain kitchen-hams left standing will triumph tonight. We know it will probably be Susur, but let's act surprised when he wins, OK? And let's also keep an eye out for these events to occur on tonight's episode:

  • Susur will say: "Coming from an Asian background, the word ‘master' is important to me." Hey, did you know that Susur comes from an Asian background? I can't recall whether he's ever mentioned that before.
  • Marcus will say he wants to win because "in the World Cup, nobody remembers who won the quarterfinal." Actually, since this is an American show, most of us don't know (or care) who won the World Cup final, either. But Marcus is a Swedish chef, after all, so I guess he can be forgiven for bork-bork-borking about soccer every now and then.
  • When told that there will be a surprise twist in the final challenge, Susur will declare that he's "very piss off." But when he learns that the twist is that his own sous-chef will be helping him, he'll decide that he's not so very piss off after all.

The live-blogging show is about to start! See you down in the comments, all you beef-witted fustilarians! And I mean that as a compliment.

[Image by Joan Marcus/Disney Theatrical]