I am a huge "Top Chef" fan, and I don't miss an episode if I can help it.
And with the number of times Bravo airs the show, it's very easy to watch the same episode over and over.
Which I have done. Many times.
I can sit there, glued to my TV, watching "Top Chef" marathons for hours.
It doesn't matter that I know who is going to win every episode and who is going to lose.
Or that I can sometimes recite from memory the snarky comments the contestants make about each other.
And, of course, it doesn't matter that I should be doing other things: reading a book, cleaning the kitchen floor, walking my dog, vacuuming.
But who has time when reality show marathons are on?
Pathetic?
Absolutely.
But I'm a sucker for marathons in general. I think they hypnotize me into a heightened state of lethargy, which becomes paralysis.
I've wasted years of my life watching "Law & Order" marathons.
And once I spent the entire day watching 10 episodes of "Murder, She Wrote" back-to-back.
I don't even like "Murder, She Wrote," but I kept watching.
As one episode ended, another would come on, and there I was, wondering what Jessica Fletcher was up to this time. I could not turn the TV off!
That experience actually scared me a little. I mean, 10 hours of your life watching "Murder, She Wrote?" It was like crack cocaine.
"Top Chef" is more like the best kind of comfort food. It's a big plate of mashed potatoes and meat loaf right there for the taking.
If I'm stressed out, a "Top Chef" marathon is just the thing to wash it away.
I don't know why exactly, because the show is filled with stressed-out people trying to accomplish next-to-impossible challenges.
But somehow, it's very calming to watch them scrambling around, desperately trying to put all the ingredients on the plate, swearing up a storm, dissing each other and making excuses for their bad dishes.
The show is hosted by Tom Colicchio, a well-known and well-respected chef who is always uber cool, and the gorgeous Padma Laksmi, who apparently writes cookbooks and was once married to Salman Rushdie.
First comes the Quickfire challenge, in which the contestants have just a short time (usually less than an hour) to either accomplish something or come up with some intriguing dish that follows a certain set of rules.
It can be anything from using food from a vending machine to identifying ingredients in a sauce to creating an Ethiopian-inspired dish.
The winner of the Quickfire gets immunity from the elimination challenge.
Those challenges can range from having to put a new spin on a traditional comfort food dish to cooking a wedding dinner (including cake) for 200 people.
Each year, the show is filmed in a different city.
This season, it's Washington, D.C., and the elimination challenges have all had something to do with the nation's capital and politics.
In one, they cooked for CIA employees, including director Leon Panetta (who had to leave when he got a mysterious message). The challenge was to take a classic dish and disguise it.
In another, the chefs had to take over a concession stand at Nationals Park. And just this past week, they had to create a dish suitable to take up in space for NASA.
The weird thing about "Top Chef" is that we have no idea if the people who win deserve to win because we can't taste the food ourselves.
But I'm happy just looking at it for hours on end.