I particularly enjoy reality shows on the Food channels. Is anybody watching The Next Iron Chef? This happened last night:
(I am almost certainly going to spell some names wrong.)
Chef Anne Burrell has won the previous challenge, and her reward is that she will pick one of the “bottom two” chefs who will have to compete to stay on the program. She picks Chef Zakarian.
The other chef in the bottom two, judged by the quality of the dishes that they made, is….Chef Anne Burrell. Oops.
So they have a cook-off, and Anne Burrell loses and is kicked off the show. She had the advantage, and it bit her. In summing up, one of the other chefs, Chef Alex Guarnascelli(??), says “It was downright Shakespearean. Chef Burrell drew her sword, and then she fell on it.”
What?
That analogy may have worked better (though still been broken) if she’d at least said “…and then she tripped over it.”
She quibbled about the temperature of the meat (not to her particular liking) of Zakarian's dish when there were, in my opinion, more obvious actual flaws in the dishes of others. The judges LOVED his dish (his would have been second best liked of all) and the only reason he was in the cook-off was because of her.
It could be said that she zeroed in on her most feared aspirant to the throne(Chef Zakarian) much like Brutus drew his sword against Caesar, warranted or not. He was then forced to fall on his own sword in the end; a result of his own devices.
A rather protracted explanation perhaps but,these are chefs not Shakespearean
scholars. I got the sense of what she was saying, though it might have been off kilter a bit.
Perhaps "hoisted on her own petard" might have been simpler and more accurate.