By Kathleen Clonts

You were probably ready for a WWE-style smackdown on "Top Chef Masters'' based on Bravo's over-the-top previews. Alas, it was more smack talk than smackdown.

What better way to ramp up the tension in a kitchen already overflowing with ego than throw in a French chef with an accent that makes Pepe Le Pew sound like a native English speaker. Chef Ludo Lefebvre rankles the other chefs with his frenetic ways around the stove, throwing a "merde'' here and F-bombs there (he does speak some English). Then he starts slinging the slurs.

The main challenge was to update English pub classics. Chef Rick Moonen particularly wants to triumph over Lefebvre because of his "bitching, moaning and complaining,'' which Moonen dismisses with a "get over it." Moonen made flavorful fish and chips that wowed the judges. Lefebvre made Irish stew -- with lemongrass. Let me repeat: Irish stew -- with lemongrass.

As the chefs await the judging on their final dishes, Lefebvre goes on the defense, declaring English cuisine "disgusting.'' Then: "English people have no taste." The verbal diarrhea continues: "French people have culture. English have nothing.''

But let's get to the scene in the preview: the "in-your-face'' between Lefebvre and Moonen arguing over the stupidity of the Irish stew-gone-international, with Moonen nosing into Frenchie's face and pounding on the table with a "Listen to me! I am talking here!" It was so tightly edited, it was impossible to know whether it was genuine.

The cutaways to other chefs made it look like it was a serious showdown, but this is "reality TV'' were talking about here, people. At the end, Lefebvre seemed surprised when the judges didn't embrace his jump off a culinary cliff. "But I do not regret, because it was Ludo," he declares after he's booted, with a third-person flourish.

Can you really blame someone for wanting to throttle him?