So the 9th season of Fox’s cooking competition reality show Hell’s Kitchen started this week with the first two episodes airing on Monday and Tuesday night. It’s been a couple years since The Wife and I have made a point to work the show into our entertainment routine. But given that we caught it just starting we decided to follow it again this season.
The first two episodes were entertaining and suspenseful as the first few in each season usually are. In particular I always enjoy the standard opening challenge in which the 18 chefs are each instructed to make their signature dish for the show’s host, the intimidating, ultra-badass Chef Gordon Ramsay. It’s great entertainment to see hot-shot cooks horrified as Ramsay spits their food from his mouth only to end up praising the great work of other more humble chefs. Ramsay may have a reputation for being overly mean and sometimes even abusive (though we have to remember it’s played up for the camera) but no one ever seems to point out his harshness for failure only increases the significance when he finds a contestant who’s created a delicious dish. Because we know of Ramsay’s high standards we know that when he puts a piece of food on a pedestal then the chef has really done something significant.
There’s also genuine tension in the competitions. In the second episode the first team challenge was to see which team could cook meat to the proper temperatures. Contestants were put into pairs and each duo had to cook four cuts: one medium-rare, one medium, one medium-well, and one well-done. If they didn’t hit the meat at the right level then they wouldn’t get the point. For the whole competition it was anyone’s game right up to the moment Chef Ramsay sliced open the last well-done hamburger. (Because the show is so entertaining I’ll suspend my disbelief that any chef good enough to rise to the level they’re already at could be so incompetent at such a basic cooking skill.)
I’ll watch Hell’s Kitchen and enjoy it but throughout the show the reason why it never secured a permanent spot in April and my entertainment routine is pretty clear: for the most part the contestants on these shows just are not very likable. Most of them are petty, vindictive, and childish. Thus it’s not always easy to spend time with them when they’re not in a competition setting. It’s difficult to find someone to actually root for consistently — aside from Ramsay himself. And drama can only function so well when there isn’t an underdog who earns our empathy.
Another, better reality show that doesn’t have this problem is ABC’s Shark Tank, the American version of the addictive British show Dragons’ Den. For Shark Tank there’s rarely any ambiguity about who should earn the viewer’s sympathy. Each episode features five segments of entrepreneurs or inventors pitching their businesses to a panel of five multi-millionaire venture capitalists. In each pitch the viewer has no difficulty figuring out who deserves their sympathy. We know within minutes of each pitch whether we’re going to live vicariously through the entrepreneur or the dragon.
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I am in agreement with you about Hell’s Kitchen. However, I still continue to watch each week despite the horrible people and sometimes glaring lack of talent. I’ve always found Shark Tank/Dragon’s Den incredibly boring. I’m not interested in whether anyone invests in their business. Also, I dont think I need to have sympathy for the contestants. If they’re talented and not whiny jerks that’s good enough. See: Top Shot
When I was able I used to watch Big Brother. I know the show is a showcase of liberal and vain foolishness within the culture minus the politics, but there actually is something to be gleaned from it. There is a lot of psychology in play (more so than other shows because the people literally can’t escape each other), even despite the fact that people are hamming it up and playing to the standard deviances that bring ratings. There is something appreciable to see about how people decide to network themselves, and how they deal with failure and success. I found it very interesting, although when it got down to the last three or four contestants it usually lost this appeal. I think that reality shows popularity is probably largely due to the intensified psychology/character assessing factor at play, and not necessarily the themes.
I saw the zombie version of that show, which was actually rather good. All the contestants were either eaten or turned into zombies.
There’s no such thing as good, much less great, reality TV. The idea that a cooking show, which belongs on public television for people who want to learn to cook like foreigners, is in primetime is pathetic. As for a show about entrepreneurs: not interested; I’m only interested in their products or services when those reach the market.
We make spectacles about everything, when what we really need is results without having to be spectators to the process. We’ve become a nation of Chauncey Gardiners.
I don’t watch much TV any more, I’m just too busy to spend time with most of it. One of the big problems cable TV has now is that it’s a terrible filter for interest – there are all these cable channels that are theoretically branded for their audience, but they all eventually degenerate into similar garbage, and the Reality crazy has just accelerated this.
Cooking shows are a great example. Food TV used to have a lineup full of interesting cooking shows (and Don Rodrigo can go eat his boiled beef and cabbage if he wants), but now those shows take a backseat to competition shows like Hell’s Kitchen (though it’s on a different network) which, while involving cooking, are just another variation on the Survivor template. The History Channel primetime lineup tonight is pawn shops, auto restoration and a show about rice – they don’t even live up to their “Hitler Channel” moniker any more with endless WWII documentaries. Home and Garden TV used to be full of shows about doing home and garden work – tonight it’s wall-to-wall real estate reality. It’s like eight thousand flavors of ice cream when I’d rather have a hamburger.
So the channel execs aren’t doing a good editorial job – they aren’t differentiating their programming so that I can tune into a “brand” an know it’ll offer something I can depend on. I have to do my own filtering. TiVo, despite destroying their advertising revenue stream, is the only thing that makes broadcast/cable/satellite TV functional, since it gives some better search/filter tools to the audience.
But the Internet is even better. Couple search with viral marketing channels and I find stuff I like.
“Boiled beef and cabbage?” Funny.
I cook, and I love to eat. I’m fine with PBS and cable cooking shows, and yes, they do teach you to cook like foreigners.
Somehow, I don’t see cooking as that much of a competitive sport. Playing up all of the drama gets in the way of learning the techniques.
But then, I never had any use for reality TV to begin with. To me, watching it is a lot like being a peeping Tom, and I’m not one of those either.
Actually, to be picky, Shark Tank is the American version of the Canadian Dragons’ Den which is based on the UK version. Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjavec are on the Canadian show as well. Here in Detroit we get CBC and it’s interesting when the products have a particular Canadian appeal.
Thanks for your post. I also believe that laptop computers have become more and more popular nowadays, and now will often be the only sort of computer used in a household. Simply because at the same time that they’re becoming more and more inexpensive, their working power is growing to the point where they’re as strong as desktop from just a few in years past.