Misanthropaea

Non-Flavourful Application

Either one or perhaps both long-time readers will no doubt recall I’ve had a deep, long-standing crush on Amy Finley from her very first appearance on series three of The Next Food Network Star back in June of 2007. Sagittarians, I think, have an uncanny knack  of recognising each other. And the fact that we share a reasonably similar birth date is even better. The tumultuous third series has, at least for me, been the hallmark against which all subsequent versions of The Next Food Network Star have been measured, and Amy’s victory over the pretender Jag still strikes me as one of my favourite moments in the increasingly bleak and spreading world of reality television. As such, I was completely gutted when Amy’s programme, The Gourmet Next Door, was relegated to the darkest corners of Sunday morning broadcasts, given almost no support or backing by Food Network, and disappeared without a trace in the final days of 2007.

So one can well imagine that, like seeing an old love again after many years apart, my small and icy heart grew nearly three sizes after I’d grudgingly switched on the DVR to finally subject myself to Sunday night’s Chopped: All Ratings Grab Edition only to find Amy on it. Despite my elation at seeing her again, I was sad in some way that she had consented to do this particular episode. Not because she didn’t win, which, of course, she didn’t, but because I had to wonder what sort of offer was made by Food Network to entice her into performing – after a nearly five-year absence – in such an obvious plot to hype the pandering and joyless finale of Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star for which this was a lead-in? Surely they couldn’t have sold it to her that way. She – as I think anyone smart enough would do – would’ve seen through that ploy in a moment.

My instinct, and my years of studying media and its manipulation, tells me that Food Network likely presented the idea as the opportunity to win money for charity which, in Amy’s case was the Lois Merrill Foundation. Except that in all previous Chopped charity-related events, the prize has always been $50,000 and is generally awarded after a special five-episode series – just exactly like the special five-episode series called Chopped: Grill Masters which broadcast its first episode only an hour later. And not that $10,000 is nothing, but where’s the great allure if it’s just the very same $10,000 any winner of Chopped gets for being on any other episode? What was the selling point for being on this episode at this time?

Certainly it wasn’t just for the excitement of being trotted out as a curio to compete against other previous Next Food Network Star winners in a so-called ‘extraordinary Chopped event’, in this case Melissa d’Arabian, Jeff Mauro, The Sammich Thing, and Aarti Sequeira – who appeared again, for her second time in 4 months, after having only just lost her shot at $50,000 in April’s special five-episode All Star Snoredown. Nor could it have been the for the sentimentality of facing the ‘special panel of judges,’ Dark Lord of The Sith, Bobby Flay, Darth Giada, and Sith Master Alton Brown, because neither of them seemed particularly fond of seeing her again and tended to appear rather detached and almost hostile towards her at a few points.

Food Network, I think, don’t appear to understand the term ‘over-saturation,’ and by conveniently having this particular set of ‘judges’ at this particular time was a sad and laughable attempt at hoping viewers would somehow believe that this year’s New & Improved Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star wasn’t just a festering pile of poo gracelessly smeared over a series of flagrant product endorsements for Discover card. So in many ways I wish Amy hadn’t have been on this episode. Though I adore her enormously, I also quite adore fair, thoughtful, impartial, and perhaps even more importantly, consistent judging – which I saw very little of.

The Sammich Thing, Jeff Mauro, despite being so tightly bound to his culinary niche, had rather unexpectedly produced a sandwich for the starter round and was the first for the chop because he’d left completely inedible bones in his treatment of the given ingredient of smoked kipper. In the second round, the mains, though Amy produced a Malaysian black chicken ‘noodle bowl’ which may have lacked the full flavour it could have developed if there had been more than 30 minutes, she was chopped in favour of bland, muddled, underdone chicken cooked for almost 11 minutes from Aarti – who shackled herself unwaveringly to her Indian cuisine – and Melissa’s attempted coq au vin which was sloppy and riddled with the completely inedible seeds of guava, called ‘none too good to eat’ by Sith Master Alton.

There seemed little sense in any of it, and after the ‘powerhouse panel’ had absolutely pointlessly eliminated Amy after praising her dish for both its aromatics and ‘visual sophistication,’ I switched the whole thing off. It reminded me quite a lot of the very equally and absolutely pointless elimination of Emily Ellyn.

There also seemed little sense to me in the big finale of Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star – which I’d apparently recorded between episodes of Chopped – when, just ten minutes in, Martie With The Party was abruptly, if not slightly viciously, given the axe from the competition. Bob T and Susie Fogelson announced quite giddily and effervescently that she didn’t get enough votes to win, which conveniently and a bit suspiciously left one Sith Apprentice remaining for each of the Sith Mentors. Almost as if it had been planned that way. It seemed very harsh to me, though. And I noticed whilst I fast-forwarded through to the end, that no other Sith Apprentice got the early boot. Just Martie. Of course it was clear from her fairly dull ‘pilot,’ produced by Sith Master Alton, that her Mentor’s heart wasn’t in it. He was far more invested in Justin, whom, by the way, was the winner. If you care.

I don’t.  

But at least on the much brighter side of what was otherwise a particularly dire week of lame reality programming, the amazing Avery Pursell won Around the World in 80 Plates last Wednesday, so I can be perfectly content with that until Amy and Emily both resurface somehow, somewhere, on something that isn’t Food Network…

Trial Before Pilot

Less than 30 seconds into very nearly the last instalment of Not Necessarily the Next Food Network Star, which I’d left droning on in the background whilst I recorded the Discovery Channel’s attempt at their own The Blair Witch Project in the form a little pseudo-documentary called Mermaids: The Body Found, the opening teaser managed to give up – with almost unabashed shamelessness – that Justin, Martie, Michele, and Yvan would have pilots made and the other Sith Apprentices would get the axe.

This fortuitous and abrupt reveal saved me suffering through the next 59 minutes in breathless anticipation and freed me to leave the room at random intervals to sift hard blobs of cat urine out of the litter pan and to water the garden.

I thought it interesting, however, just how convenient it was that each Sith Mentor had two Apprentices (from their original groups of five each) who’d survived to face off in the final cut. Funny that. You’d almost think it was planned. Also seen in this joyously brief yet revelatory pre-opening teaser, Sith Master Alton Brown explained to the six remaining Sith Apprentices that ‘The Network’ were only willing to front the necessary funds so that just three of them would be able to create a pilot and that, by a shrewd sleight of arithmetical hand, the other three would, in fact, not.

And then this statement was immediately invalidated by the shots of Justin, Martie, Yvan, and Michele enduring the agony of watching themselves on video.

Because the vital information regarding the exact number of pilots was presumably to be used as a bit of masterful manipulation to entice viewers to stay tuned and hang on every last critical second of programming, at about the 2-minute mark in the episode proper – just after Sith Master Alton explained to the gathered Sith Apprentices that they would each have to shoot a 30-second ‘promo’ (or ‘promotional video’) for their theoretical show – it was re-enforced that ‘The Network’ were only willing to front the necessary funds so that just three of them would be able to create a pilot and that, by a shrewd sleight of arithmetical hand, the other three would, in fact, not. Clearly the desire was for the audience to have forgotten that only one and a half minutes before we had seen that Justin, Martie, Yvan, and Michele would be making pilots and thus negating the ‘Only Three’ mandate.

Dark Lord Flay informed them that their promotional videos would be ‘screened’  (industry-speak for ‘watched’) not only by ‘The Network’ but also by what he lifelessly described as ‘a very special panel of Food Network All-Stars.’ These ‘All-Stars’ were Anne Burrell, Robert Irvine (who’d apparently borrowed an ugly Western shirt off  Guy Fieri), and Aarón Sanchez. Also included for reasons which presently elude me were Sunny Anderson, Winner of Series Five of The Next Food Network Star Before It Became an Odious Turd, Melissa d’Arabian, and Jeff Mauro, The Sandwich Thing.

Some other things happened for a while and then, about 27 minutes later, the taller half of ‘The Network,’ Susie Fogelson, was, thankfully, seen standing at the ready to explain to the Sith Apprentices that only three of them would go on to make a pilot since it had only been 25 minutes since someone had taken an opportunity to explain that to them in case they’d forgotten amidst the rush of doing other things.

And then, in a shocking and unexpected twist, Ippy and Nikki were told their services were no longer required, leaving Michele and Yvan to make their full-scale, almost two and a half minute long pilots. And, after an advertising break to help create what I would imagine was supposed to have been almost unbearable tension before learning  whether Justin or Martie would be the third choice, it was revealed that Justin and Martie would be the third and fourth Sith Apprentices to make official pilots just as we had been shown in the first 30 seconds of the teaser which negated the ‘Only Three’ mandate.

Sith Master Alton cried.

I cried as well. I’d yawned so hard I actually got a bastard of a cramp in that muscle right under my chin. What’s that? The mylohyoid? The digastric? Motherfucker hurt like you would not believe… 

Finaler Answer

Last week I mentioned I was done with Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star. And true to my word I could not be bothered with it this week. I did, however, switch over to Food Network to get a peek at Anne Burrell’s new programme to see just how awful it is – because the adverts make it look incredibly lame.

Sadly, the clock near the television is fast by approximately one minute and I found myself seeing Malcolm finally get the boot he so richly deserved several weeks ago. I was also subjected to a portion of the ‘Next Week On…’ segment wherein a vibrantly bottle-tanned Bob T was admonishing one of the Sith Apprentices because, he said, ‘I felt the audience disappear from you.’

Along with some 1100 other viewers (at last count) on Aarti’s After Party, I’d voiced both my outrage and dissenting opinion of Food Network and their colossal ignorance and inexcusable lapse of judgement for stupidly and illogically eliminating Emily last week. As such, I felt Bob’s choice of words to the unknown Sith Apprentice was quite interesting and I’d be very curious to find out what sort of change in viewership – if any – has taken place since that ill-fated decision.

Nice to know I wasn’t alone in my indignation. 

And Chef Wanted was, as expected, poorly derivative of Chopped, so…

Final Answer

In a Coming Up Next segment of last week’s Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star, we got to see a snippet which did not, in fact, get included anywhere in the actual transmission of the programme itself: two women attending the makeshift ‘food court’ and remarking that whatever it was they were eating seemed rather stale.

That comment, as many before it had done, perfectly summarised this so-called New & Improved format which, in the end, really hasn’t been all that New & Improved. It’s clear that Food Network have learnt absolutely nothing from the glaring mistakes of the last two years and have succeeded only in producing a ponderous, unwatchable, and contradictory turd wrapped round a series of irritating and insultingly obvious  product endorsements.

And after the ridiculous charade of Sunday’s seventh episode, I’m finished with Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star, likely for good.   

In the opening recap of everything we’ve seen so far, there was a heavy focus on the continuing less-than-stellar abilities of Martita, and throughout much of the episode there were clear indications that she would face The Stark Fist of Removal which, after last week, would have been a welcome end to her undistinguished and commonplace performance. There was also some focus on Nikki (yet again) who, after being told by ‘The Network’ (this week sporting hideous bottle tans in preparation for their grand appearance at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival) not to be so abrasive, opted for a slightly softer approach which then seemed to confuse ‘The Network’ because they couldn’t sort out why she wasn’t being such a bitch.

In the requisite Congratulating of The Sith Apprentices For Making It To Week [insert number], they were told that, from this point on, everyone would be judged strictly on an individual basis rather than hiding behind the protective cover of their teams. This abrupt alteration of the rules struck me as surprising, as it was not only at wild variance to what had gone before but because it seemed completely unfair to the six previously-eliminated competitors.

With no Mentors to guide them through the challenges this week, the nine remaining Sith Apprentices were tasked with creating ‘a single bite’ (snore) which reflected their personalities and Culinary Point of View. They were also required to do a 90-second ‘to the camera’ presentation called an EPK – Electronic Press Kit – because they’d be facing a small panel of media ‘elite’ for some sort of ‘Q & A’ which was really just as dull as it sounds because it didn’t have Louie Anderson in it.

‘For some reason,’ Michele said at one point, ‘none of the camera challenges have been easy for me.’ This, of course, begged the questions, When did she do one? and Why didn’t we see it? As I noted in regard to last week’s episode, Michele was one of the few Sith Apprentices who had managed to remain safely and unimpressively in the middle and had not faced a Producer Challenge – the only place, or so Food Network would have us believe, where ‘to the camera’ challenges take place. So just when was it, exactly, that Michele had hers?

Martita took a cue from the Lisa Garza School of Time Management and, in her camera challenge, stopped chattering at the 60 second mark, allowing the final 30 seconds to tick away in agony whilst she simply stood there and smiled uncomfortably. This then prompted one of the media elite to mention that if she’d left 30 seconds of dead air in a programme she’d have been fired. And Martita’s ‘Q & A’ was essentially reduced to a brief  ‘you suck,’ to which she remained reasonably indifferent – a fact which made ‘The Network’ bristle with some embarrassment.

Emily was afraid to share personal stories of her past, why she embraces the 1950s ideal so strongly, and her avoidance of the subject – clearly something emotional – resulted in really one of the first bad stumbles she’d taken in the competition. And as mentioned, Nikki’s softer and sweeter approach frightened ‘The Network’ to such an extent that she, Martita and Emily were all banished to the Producer Challenge.

They were asked to create ‘the perfect burger’ to represent their Culinary Point of View – because apparently the ‘one bite’ they’d been asked to create earlier wasn’t representative enough – but the final ten minutes of the episode were so rushed and choppy and riddled with overlong advertising breaks that there was a sense that it had all just been cobbled together at the last minute.

The final straw for me, however, was that Emily – consistently a solid performer with a unique take on food – was eliminated in favour of the unremarkable Martita and her humdrum Mexican fare. My crush on the nerdy goofiness of Emily notwithstanding, if you take everything cumulatively, she had far outshone Martita – and Nikki – at very nearly every turn. ‘The Network’ praised her burger as being one of the best they’d tried, unlike the veal-based thing they’d got from Martita, so the decision to eliminate her was completely out of nowhere. Or if it had been based on something tangible, it wasn’t anything the viewers ever got to see.

So I’m out. I’m throwing in the towel. I don’t care who wins at this point. When Kara was eliminated for following the instructions to the letter and giving ‘The Network’ just exactly what they asked for so that Whinging Twat Judson could continue being a talentless corporate robot who offered them nothing, I was outraged. With Emily’s senseless elimination I am simply incandescent. Her culinary skills and her obvious readiness to go before the camera as a host (with only just a touch more preparation) vastly dwarfed Martita’s lacklustre mediocrity. It was as incomprehensible to me as was Alex Guarnaschelli’s lofty praise for Lisa Garza’s supposed ‘out of the box’ ideas on cooking when on Chopped All-Stars she served the judges half a boiled egg on an otherwise empty plate.

The logic gaps in the idiotic choices made by ‘The Network,’ the inconsistencies in their absurd arguments over the relative merits of the Sith Apprentices, the elusive and ever-changing criteria for winning, the infantile and heavy-handed editing used to rationalise and reinforce the pre-determined agenda, and the flagrant favouritism are simply too much to suffer through. Double-standards do not sit well with me and I’ve no tolerance for sheer stupidity. And this series, bloated so hugely on the foetid fumes of cadaverine to such a delusional sense of grandeur and self-importance, has become nothing but tripe.

It’s sad, really, that Food Network don’t seem to realise that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still going to be a pig…

More Crunchier Time

Although they’d managed to pull into an early lead, the Black Team somehow entirely missed out buying the parmigiano reggiano and had to go back to the market to get it. This critical omission allowed the once-flagging Red Team to beat them to Pappagallo and meet up with Curtis and Cat at Piazza Maggiore. Nookie was unhappy and tension between the teams was high. As a ploy to ‘keep your enemies closer,’ the Red Team let the Black Team join them during dinner at Pappagallo whilst they attempted to suss out the precise recipe for a classic local Bolognese.

Jenna’s cunning plan for giving her team the advantage, however, was that her ability to communicate with the chef in Italian would preclude the Black Team ever knowing the key ingredients. And although her ploy worked brilliantly, her chafing leadership style made her teammates seriously consider ousting her as soon as possible – like in Thailand where her language skills will mean nothing.

With an hour less cooking time available to them, the Black Team, who’d taken over al Cambia, set to creating their menu. The crucial pasta dish – the tortellini – was given to Avery because, apart from being a chef, she also teaches pasta making. Problem was, it was her first time using rock salt, preferred by the Italians, and her dough – something she’d made thousands of times before – failed to come together properly, resulting in a sticky pasta with not much flavour.

‘Tortellini hell is breaking loose,’ she admitted with some despair.

It’s difficult to determine exactly, but it was felt that Nicole – who’d got immunity in the last round – had  purposely fucked up the main course by butchering the rib eye improperly, making it tough and inedible by removing the important layer of fat just prior to overcooking it, and by making a terrible sauce. By all rights she should have gone home but, instead, Nick  – who’d really made no unforgivably culinary errors – got voted off. Clearly Nicole had hoped her teammates would turn on Avery, but the alliance between Avery and Nookie was strong. And they both – Nookie and Avery – have decided that Nicole, as least valuable chef, will become their primary target after forcing them, by nature of the circumstances, to take the ‘bullshit choice’ of eliminating Nick. 

Also, another sort of hell was busily breaking loose on Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star, though not nearly as interestingly, when something Martie called ‘oal’ wouldn’t get hot enough to fry in.

Although last week was supposedly the half-way point and the rather all-imperative ‘crunch time,’ this week, it seemed, was even more half-way and even crunchier yet, as we had been reliably informed by Nikki in the obligatory Waking Up With The Sith Apprentices segment and just before the also obligatory Congratulating of The Sith Apprentices For Making It To Week [insert number] in the Food Star kitchen.

As the jam-packed hour-long episode hurtled past in what seemed only half the length of Warhol’s Empire, I can really only touch on the highlights.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. Emily

8. The ‘oal’ got hot.

And then some other less interesting things happened:

Dark Lord of The Sith, Bobby Flay, Darth Giada, and Sith Master Alton Brown, fresh off their rousing hopeful ratings-boosting cameo on Cupcake Champions, explained that the tedious Star Challenge would be to ‘take on one of America’s most familiar dining experiences: the food court.’ The Sith Apprentices would have to serve food – to an unimaginably vast group of 150 people! – out  of their own ‘custom-made Food Star kiosk’ (or, rather, set of folding tables in front of a cheap plywood backdrop painted in big, bright, happy colours) at the South Street Seaport, which is apparently famous or something. Never heard of it. Didn’t care.

Newly-christened Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian eventually showed up 10 minutes into the programme to fulfil his destiny as the ‘Star’ part of the Star Challenge and to bring the Sith Apprentices the ‘Secret Ingredient’ of chicken livers. What I failed to sort out in this convoluted gimmicky nonsense was just how the chicken livers were supposed to figure in. Only one person from each team was required to use them – Michele, on Team Flay, Yvan, on Team Giada, and Justin, on Team Alton. Should it not have been a challenge for everyone, not just three of them? Isn’t that the whole point of having a ‘Secret Ingredient’ challenge in a cooking competition? So how was it in any way fair? And did those three Sith Apprentices earn something special for having been the only ones who got to use the ‘Secret Ingredient?’  No. Was there some sort of point in the exercise beyond including an Iron Chef in some sad attempt at a New & Improved twist that was poorly thought out and badly executed? No, not really.

Meanwhile Nikki, who had opted to change the ‘Girl On Grill’ idea to a more compliant and Food Network-friendly ‘Grill Next Door’ theme, would clearly be facing The Stark Fist of Removal (again) as would Linkie, portrayed in this episode as a self-described ‘deer in headlights.’ Any segment involving these two women was carefully edited to showcase ineptitude and incompetence. Linkie was the primary focus and was shown incapable of making a basic churro or Mexican chocolate – mostly because she was raised in South Africa, not East L.A. – and the editors took pains to make it hugely obvious to viewers that Susie Fogelson was bored and confused at all times by Linkie and Nikki and that Bob T cannot create a symmetrical smile.

And in a teaser during an advertising break, there was a shot of Bob T seated at The Eye of Sauron Table saying he didn’t understand her points, so it was evident that at least one of the women would soon be in the Producer Challenge. These are called spoilers and they give away rather important information long before a viewer has had a chance to see the actual events play out and, as such, they tend  to ruin everything – like, for example, showing a teaser for the final episode last year and letting viewers see Vic ‘Vegas’ Moea seated in the stands with the other non-winners well before he was actually eliminated as a competitor, or explaining how this advert is amusing if you haven’t actually seen the classic 1973 film.

Two other Sith Apprentices given cursory glances as future victims of The Stark Fist of Removal were Martita and Malcolm, the latter of whom felt he needed to bring ‘The Total Package’ exactly the same way Whinging Twat Judson had done before he finally got the boot.

‘The fact that you’re still here,’ Lord Flay told his meagre apprentice at one point, ‘is a miracle to me.’ It’s also a miracle that nearly any of these people were chosen to be on this programme at all given the spectacular inabilities they are quite often shown to possess. Even Michele’s fervent admonition to ‘be funny and be loud’ appeared to be interpreted by Malcolm to mean ‘stand in the back looking bored and speak to people as if you are disinterested.’ 

Martita – like Malcolm, Yvan, and Michele – has skated along through six staggeringly pedestrian episodes and really done almost nothing of interest. She’s neither won nor lost, just like the other three, and has firmly achieved complete mediocrity. Although she did have her cleavage readily available for careful scrutiny. As such, her ranking as the second highest ‘Fan Vote leader’ on the Food Network site continues to utterly bewilder me. She ‘had a gift handed to her’ in the form of being able to make Mexican food at the ‘kiosk’ and she essentially ignored it, as Bob T pointed out.

Susie concurred with this assessment and added nastily, ‘We have been tapping our fingers, waiting for her to show up for six weeks. She missed a huge opportunity.’ 

One huge opportunity not missed at all, though, during the obligatory Let’s All Go Shopping With The Sith Apprentices segment, was Linkie having a second go round at deploying the Not At All Obvious Discover Card Endorsement, which she did with the graceful ease of someone holding a credit card at a carefully pre-determined angle for optimal visibility, cautious not to cover any vital information with her thumb, as she thrust it towards a minimum-wage clerk who likely will never earn enough money to ever have a Discover Card of her own.  

Despite her Herculean efforts, Linkie did, indeed, face Nikki in the Producer Challenge as was foretold by prophecy. As this was a more challenging challenge than all prior Producer Challenges – in that it involved elevating ordinary chicken to something even more extraordinary in a New & Improved 30-minute sudden-death-style cook off – the two Sith Apprentices were allowed to have a night of rest, during which neither of them seemed to plan their cooking strategies nor prepare in any tangible way for the required one-minute ‘to the camera’ presentation upon which their very continuance hinged. 

Thus it came as no great surprise that Linkie was tapped by The Stark Fist of Removal and was obligated to make the dramatic and unstaged walk through the dark and quiet Council Chambers and out through the big cartoon door.

What was surprising, however, was Bob T remarking to Susie Fogelson, in reference to Linkie’s abject failure, that ‘She should, by this point, be able to put together a one minute presentation that makes sense.’

Really, Bob? Why? When did she have the opportunity? As a matter of fact, when do any of the young Sith Apprentices have the opportunity to put together a one minute presentation that makes sense? Unlike year’s prior where it was a regular part of the competition, it is only in the Producer Challenge that anyone is given a chance to stand before the camera and speak. So why would any of them be prepared for this in any sort of useable or helpful way when you have failed to allow them to prepare for it? Why don’t you march out Team Snore of Martita, Yvan, Malcolm and Michele – who haven’t yet been to The Eye of Sauron Table because they don’t possess enough skill to even lose in an interesting fashion – and see how they do, since, as you say, they ought to be prepared by now?

This was such an uninformed and utterly ridiculous remark, and perfectly indicative of why this programme needs to be handed off to an entirely new set of hosts and a far better production team or just be lead out into a nice idyllic clearing somewhere to talk about the rabbits.

 

‘The single most-searched ingredient on Food Network dot com is chicken!’

Roadmap To Flavourless

There’s an idea set forth in film production called ‘psychological closure,’ where it is unnecessary to show the audience absolutely everything – all the steps in a process – for them to figure out what’s going on. For example, if someone walks into an elevator in an establishing shot, and in the following shot – perhaps an interior of the elevator  – we see them press a button and the doors close, there usually isn’t any need for us to take the entire elevator ride to whatever floor for us to understand what is going on. We can work out that, when the next shot is the elevator doors opening and the actor walking out into an entirely new area, that they have travelled from one floor to another. We don’t think they’re in a different building; we don’t think it’s magic or time travel or get confused and terrified and wonder how it all happened – our minds fill in the gap and we understand they have ridden an elevator.

So the fact that Food Network are seemingly determined to include a requisite trip to the market in every episode of The New & Improved Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star indicates that they think, a) viewers at home are simply far too thick to comprehend just how it is food has managed to appear in the kitchen for the Sith Apprentices to cook, or b) it is the only sufficient method by which they believe they can place their heavy-handed Where’s Waldo- style spotter’s guide for How To Recognise Blatant Product Endorsement From Quite a Long Way Away.

Either way, it’s getting tiresome. 

‘Last week the judges were hard on me,’ Whinging Twat Judson stated straight away, referring to a segment apparently not in the original broadcast of the previous week’s episode. ‘So this week I’ve really gotta prove to them that I am being me, that I can be genuine, and I belong here.’

So the first target was set for the Stark Fist of Removal.

Breaking the mould of previous years, this episode started with the Sith Apprentices meeting with their mentors for a New & Improved mid-way-through-the-competition chat about their various states of progress which took about ten very long minutes, the result of which was that Nikki sounds too ‘hosty,’ Yvan has no depth, Ippy has no energy, and that Malcolm has no need of a CPOV because he has style. Also, Justin was told to be less cocky and not so much of a ‘jerk face,’ Martita wants to ‘bring it,’ without further specifics as to what ‘it’ exactly is, Emily does indeed have ‘the whole package’ and I want to marry her, and Dark Lord Flay felt that if Michele were to continue on her present path, she would lose, tagging her again as a potential victim of the Stark Fist of Removal along with Martie With The Party for not having an off switch for her constant rambling.

‘Here’s the big mystery…’ stated Sith Master Alton Brown, once again focussing his ire on Whinging Twat Judson: ‘Who are you?’

The short answer was, essentially, that he’d learnt to ‘embrace flavour’ on his weight loss journey but doesn’t like to talk about it because it brings back bad memories of being a fat whinging twat, but – gosh – wouldn’t it be helpful to actually have some sort of Culinary Point of View now that we’re already five episodes along?

Finally gathering in the Food Network kitchen for the Obligatory Congratulations as well as the introduction to the Star Challenge, Dark Lord Flay explained that the Sith Mentors would be searching this week for ‘versatility and your ability to thrive in any situation.’

‘And,’ Darth Giada enthused, ‘we have just the GUY to help us out with this one!’

Wow. Where’s Louie Anderson when you need him?

Michele was shone to blink stony-faced at this pun as Guy Fieri strutted out of the shadows to the heavy crunch of guitars and pounding drums because he’s so rock n’ roll (though not as rock n’ roll as Josh was) in his ugly Western shirt and sunglasses dangling stupidly off the back of his head.  

The nature of this week’s challenge, Guy eventually droned on, was for each team to host a ‘live’ special in front of a studio audience. And by ‘live’ he meant transmitted to nowhere because it wasn’t a real programme, just something they threw together for the challenge. Guy, of course, would be the host and each team would have a theme: Halloween for Team Alton, ‘Big Game Day’ for Team Giada, which sadly hadn’t a thing to do with stalking prey on the Serengeti, and Team Flay got ‘Cooking For Kids’ and they were less than thrilled, especially Nikki. Malcolm was elated, though, because he is a father, but his style precluded him ever mentioning children or interacting with them again.

As they broke into their respective groups to sort out what they were going to do, Team Flay decided on fun and playful food for kids with a healthy twist.

‘Healthy, mindful cooking sometimes tastes like grass,’ Dark Lord Flay warned Nikki whilst she explained to him her idea for a spinach, kale, agave, pineapple and banana smoothie for children.

On Team Alton, Justin wanted to do sardines and fried sardine skeletons which, he said, were ‘the potato chip of the sea’ and much like eating ‘fried lace.’ I thought he’d said ‘fried lice’ at first and had to go back and check. Emily felt, for the Halloween/Fall theme, that applesauce was appropriate (though Justin was compelled to question her choice) and Whinging Twat Judson chose to prepare a vegetarian chilli, which he would eventually make cloyingly sweet.

On Team Giada, Martita earned the ‘tita’ in her name by having her breasts very nearly spilling out of her widely-open blouse.

And then there was the Obligatory Shopping and more advertising placement for Buick and Discover card followed by an hour of cooking the next morning amidst cunning shots of Moen faucets and Lodge cookware.

On the theoretically ‘live’ programme, Team Alton were plagued with difficulties: low energy from Justin, who fumbled and froze before the awesome rock n’ roll power of Guy Fieri and his tacky shirts and backwards sunglasses; Judson suddenly deciding to test drive his newly discovered CPOV to both the chagrin of Emily and the stunned amazement of Bob T and Susie, who had no idea Judson had lost 115 pounds because he never talked about it – ever – because it brought back bad memories and made him cry; and Martie With The Partie, shockingly, talked over her allotted time limit leaving Emily just scant moments to hurriedly explain her contribution.

Bob T gave Emily ‘extra credit’ for maintaining her composure and sense of humour despite the fact Martie couldn’t stop talking, but Susie felt they were four separate presenters who ‘didn’t really rise to the occasion personality wise.’

Team Giada were big, loud, hyperactive and hit all their marks to the point that, at the end, Darth Giada leapt to her tiny feet clapping and screaming ‘Yes! Yes!’ and then was tranquilised. Team Flay got the rather unfair disadvantage of having to deal directly with children who, surprisingly, absolutely hated Nikki’s healthy, grass-like smoothie  – which she felt compelled to blend throughout a majority of Michele’s segment as everyone stood and watched. And watched. It was only Michele’s resemblance to and camaraderie with Guy Fieri which ultimately saved the team.

So it was really no surprise at all to determine that, standing before the big cartoon doors in the Council Chambers to face ‘The Network,’ Teams Giada and Flay were safe. This placed Team Alton against each other in the now Obligatory Producer Challenge  – something of a sudden-death cook-off  in which the bottom team had 30 minutes to prepare a dish and 60 seconds to describe the nature of that dish in what is referred to as a ‘to camera’ – or to the camera – segment.

Bob T explained that they were to be ‘versatile’ and show their ‘brand and POV.’  But first they had to throw a dart at a map of the US and prepare a dish based on where that dart landed. Whinging Twat Judson got Arkansas and felt that a baked catfish dish would be appropriate. Justin got Neraska and chose a carbohydrate overload in the form of ‘Spaghetti Midwestern,’ a comically large steak swimming in pasta and salsa. Emily landed on Arizona and created a Chicken Posole in 20 minutes through the nimble use of a pressure cooker. And Martie got Pennsylvania, the ‘home of nothing,’ she claimed. She decided to make stuffed mushroom caps because Sith Master Alton told her that most mushrooms purchased in a grocery came from Pennsylvania. And so does some cream cheese. And Yuengling beer.

And then there was more Lodge cast iron and Boos butcher block product placement interspersed with cooking. After that, an inordinate amount of time was spent trying to drag some sort of useable performance out of Martie, so much time, in fact, that it needed to be divided over an advertising break to really build up the intensity of her facing the Stark Fist of Removal.

A short time later, at the Eye of Sauron table in The Inner Sanctum, all the stress and focus put on Martie as a form of misdirection was for naught as Justin, with his large steak and enormous plate of spaghetti and salsa, was declared safe along with Emily and Martie.

That, of course, left Whinging Twat Judson to finally have his long overdue meeting with the Stark Fist of Removal and he broke down in great whinging tears once more. ‘The Network,’ it seemed, had been frustrated by the fact that they felt they had to lead him by the nose to a Culinary Point of View, and that he seemed to feel good about finally getting to ‘hoine in’ on something useful just ‘a couple of days ago,’ as he admitted, and at the last minute did little to appease them.

Susie Fogelson did say, ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart’ and offered him a nice big conciliatory hug which allowed him to blubber enormously and incoherently on her shoulder in a dramatically-shadowed shot, so that was nice.

There was another big mystery, however, which was never addressed: why did this episode need to be 90 minutes long?

Fashion Weak

‘I found it to be painful to watch,’ Susie Fogelson once again offered the most precise summation, this time of episode 4, of The New & Improved Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star whilst talking at Bob Tuschman.

She could just as well been referring to the fact that this particular episode managed to creep ponderously along for one of the most eternal hours I’ve pissed away in front of the television since the last hour-long episode of this series aired the previous year, or that it has somehow morphed into an over-long and poorly-crafted advertisement with some utter tripe about winning some contest tacked onto it in effort to fool the viewers.

In the screen capture from episode 4, below, see if you’ve learnt ‘How To Recognise Blatant Product Endorsement From Quite a Long Way Away…’

How did you do?

Did you see the Discover card?

Did you feel like Martie With The Partie ( in the background) and just want to shield your eyes from the absolute awkward embarrassment?

Good!

Realising that they have perhaps taken the New & Improved concept a bit too far a bit too soon and could run the danger of polarising viewers the way Enterprise ruined the Star Trek universe for many people or by leaving far too many unanswered questions dangling in very much the same way Ultraviolet did without a follow-up series ever, Mr Ahearne, Food Network carefully back-stepped to the original formula again and started out with the obligatory Waking of The Sith Apprentices. Michele, in her camo  shorts and hoodie nightclothes, questioned whether she could bring back her former self and regain her confidence in a story thread which was soon dropped in favour of Eric’s self-doubt and so went nowhere.

And then we returned to the Food Star Kitchens for the obligatory Congratulating of The Sith Apprentices for making it to the fourth week like Rock n’ Roll Josh didn’t and Darth Giada’s over-elated announcement that ‘we’re back to competing as teams!’

And then there was the Star Challenge.

Again.

This time, Ted Allen, repeating the Chopped theme from the previous week, arrived to explain to the Sith Apprentices that ‘It is fashion week in New York’ and that ‘the food world has some notoriously ugly dishes’ which are in need of a make-over. They each would be assigned a dish to embellish and transform into ‘something that’s appealing both to the eye and the palate’ and then have to describe that dish as it is taken down the runway by a model at the posh Pamella Roland Fashion Show before a gathering of equally posh fashionistas. The winning team would, obviously, not be eliminated and the one Sith Apprentice with the best food make-over would win ‘a special prize.’ And that special prize would be $10,000.

From Discover card.

This New & Improved spin is nothing at all like the $10,000 given away to challenge winners on Top Chef or Around the World in 80 Plates on Bravo because it’s from Discover card, not Chase Sapphire Preferred. It’s completely new and different and not at all the same thing in any way. Completely original.

In another shocking turn, the Sith Apprentices were given $250 to ‘go shopping’ and make explicit product endorsement seem as natural and unstaged as humanly possible whilst being run hither and thither in the Black Ops SUVs supplied by Buick and seen in exciting action shots with exciting action music played over them. After the gruelling bit of shopping was finished, they would have 90 minutes – the following day – to prepare six individual plates of their $250 made-over dish, because it would be unreasonable to expect them to both shop and cook all in the same day. Not with all that product endorsement they had to do.

Amidst the Boos Butcher Block ad placement segment the next day, Dark Lord of The Sith, Bobby Flay reminded his team that they would need to concentrate on both the presentation of their food and their description of it, in case that was somehow not at all clear when Ted Allen explained the rules earlier and just so they hadn’t forgotten in all the confusion of completely not obvious product endorsement.

The Pamella Roland Fashion Show appeared to be three rows of cheap white folding chairs on either side of a small runway and, in theory, some of the ‘biggest names in fashion’ all gathered to watch and listen politely to ‘The Network’ and Sith mentors have their conversations and eat their made-over food, intent on their every move. No-one appeared to mind that there wasn’t really any sort of actual fashion show going on and were perfectly content to sit quietly.

‘Why is he yelling so loud?’ asked one fashionista in a private ‘whisper’ to a neighbouring spectator during Miss Y-vonne’s unnecessarily loud and probably caffeine-fuelled tirade about his dish – a tirade begun with a shouted introduction of ‘Ladies and gennamen!’ as if he’d just taken a step into the circus Big Top. I think I probably would have enquired as to what exactly a ‘gennamen’ was, but how convenient that the camera just happened to be there to catch this completely unstaged reaction of these two women with such absolute clarity. Once again I had to ask myself just how many camera set-ups where involved in this scenario, as the lighting, coverage of actions and reactions, perfectly captured commentary, and various other activities amongst the audience spoke to a far more labour-intensive production than one might typically expect from just an ordinary bit of reality programming.

Because attention had diverted quickly from Michele to Eric as the next likely victim of The Stark Fist of Removal, Bob T was seen ridiculously expressing dismay that Eric would appear ‘a little uncomfortable’ to be giving an introduction about the subject of fish sticks and tartar sauce to a room full of scantily-clad models and supposedly top fashionistas. Bob did confess to eating defrosted fish sticks for lunch every day as a child, presumably to go along with the paste he once claimed to enjoy. This is also a topic of conversation not in any way uncomfortable to have with a scantily-clad fashion model and is the perfect ice-breaker along the alacritous path to having lots of unbelievably inventive sex with them. Feel free to try that. 

The eternal-feeling fashion segment came down to only a few noteworthy items:

Michele wanted to take them on a culinary journey to Newport Rhode Island and Susie Fogelson was seen to laugh uproariously at this notion because that’s likely where she’d lost her virginity once…

Darth Giada and Lord Flay sparred over the relative sleek sexiness of Nikki’s pork chop as if it mattered…

Martie would appear to offer ‘flannel pyjamas and hot cocoa’ style food rather than high fashion food…

And despite a strong showing earlier on with the precision Discover card placement, Linkie irrevocably fucked up her food description…

The biggest eye-roll of the evening, however, went to Whinging Twat Judson who was once again a corporate robot. Strolling out in a white shirt and pink blazer with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow as if he were readying to guest star on an episode of Miami Vice, he announced mechanically that one of his mantras was ‘Great cuisine plus exquisite fashion equals love.’ Sith Master Alton stared at him in astonishment, as if wondering why he’d never before heard this so-called ‘mantra,’ and Bob T turned to Ted Allen and asked, ‘Has he ever said that before?’ as if Ted would know since he’s only been on just this one episode.

An actual ‘mantra,’ by the way, would only be Great Cuisine Plus Exquisite Fashion Equals Love if you were a complete turd.

I only hope that somewhere in Chicago Kara Sigle was kicking in the television screen as Ted Allen stared into the bowl of Judson’s food and then looked at the Sith Mentors to define the hour by saying, ‘None of this makes any sense.’

‘Too many crunchy things in one bowl,’ Darth Giada scowled.

Bob T soon realised with some irritation that Judson did, in fact, not ever use Great Cuisine Plus Exquisite Fashion Equals Love as a mantra and Susie Fogelson, once so enamoured with Judson’s total package, announced that ‘ His words are hollow and he loses me.’ And somewhere in Chicago, a broken television set tumbled silently to a busy sidewalk and exploded into glistening shards of glass and plastic.

Gathering before the giant cartoon doors a short while later, ‘The Network’ once again had to explain to the Sith Apprentices what they’d just done in the last 45 minutes in case anyone had stepped out of the room for any length of time without pressing the pause button on the DVR and then announced that Justin’s inventive take of beef stroganoff won him the $10,000 ‘special prize.’ 

He thanked Discover Card.

Really.

Notwithstanding Whinging Twat Judson’s shitty food, Team Alton managed to carry the day, and as they came together for a group hug, Judson mumbled his tearful thanks to them for saving him from elimination. Unlike the set-up at The Pamella Roland Fashion Show, there was no conveniently-placed camera or microphone for this unplanned event and so his grovelling had to be subtitled.

Eric, as expected, wasn’t bringing anything memorable and Ippy was so ‘laid back’ that he appeared not to be interesting in winning the competition. As such, they were placed in the Producer Challenge which, Bob T droned on, was ‘all about bringing food to life. Not through your cooking this time, but just through your words.’ And anyway there was only 15 minutes left in the programme so the whole 30-minutes of cooking things wasn’t going to work out.

They each got the same pre-prepared dish – French toast with a strawberry compote and a dab of whipped cream – and had to describe how it tasted in a one minute to presentation ‘to camera,’ which is industry-speak for ‘to the camera.’

‘This is about you eating it,’ Dark Lord Flay explained to his Apprentice and Eric felt compelled to emphasise, ‘This is about me eating it.’

This statement would prove prophetic, of course, as Eric did, in fact, eat it and The Stark Fist of Removal fell upon him. At the Eye of Sauron Table, Susie explained that choosing between Ippy and Eric was ‘Really one of the hardest decisions of all my years,’ but Eric’s rote description of ingredients sounded more like a grocery list of items needed to make French toast, not a description of how it actually tasted. Ippy was still dangerously tranquil, but his ability to translate his Hawaiian culture to the masses through the medium of food and his marginally better presentation saved him from the lonely walk through the darkened kitchen and into obscurity.

Next week, in yet another 90-minute catastrophe for some reason, Guy Fieri will wear a cheap bowling shirt and have his sunglasses jammed on the back of his head as if it’s the coolest thing ever but isn’t.

Kill me…

Torture Basket

In the teaser for episode four of Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star, a stern and cruel-sounding Susie Fogelson is seen dressed in gay apparel whilst attempting to make it abundantly clear to a presently-unknown Sith Apprentice that, ‘You’re not delivering anything memorable!’

In many ways, her statement sums up my feelings on this New & Improved version of the programme in a very simple and concise manner. Food Network seem to believe they have rather miraculously managed to put a fresh, exciting spin on this tattered old concept of theirs when, in reality, they have sucked the very life out of it – if it had any life remaining – as it lay sputtering and dying on the studio floor, eyes wide and filled with despair.

As a means of illustrating this lifelessness, the third episode, called Dessert Chopping Block, was a half-hour episode packed tightly into just 90 fleeting minutes of almost some interest because it harkened back to episodes of year’s past. It opened with the once-obligatory and familiar segment of Sith Apprentices rising to face a new day full of new challenges and new personal demons to slay. Martie With The Partie, being the oldest member of the group, reflected on how her age, which she described in her bio as being ‘somewhere over thirty-years-old,’ may play a role in her varying levels of confidence and self-esteem, especially when she realises that she is surrounded by young, beautiful women and Michele. It was also pinpointing her as the next likely target to be eliminated which, as we all know from previous years, wouldn’t happen in this episode. In a future one, surely. But this was typical Food Network Diversionary Editing Tactic No. 1, used to such little effect last year to play on Cold Steel Whitney’s personal fears and to make viewers believe she was next to go home and wasn’t. 

Almost immediately thereafter we returned to another once-obligatory segment of the Sith Apprentices being whisked away to their next destination in a fleet of shiny Black Ops SUVs provided by Buick (all promotional considerations paid), which were seen in dramatic action shots and tilted angles to look far more exciting than they truly are – like a crap, low-rent take on the equally crap and low-rent US version of Top Gear.

After that, as you might probably have already guessed, we were quickly taken to the Food Network Kitchens for the equally once-obligatory gathering together of the Sith hopefuls to be congratulated on making it to the third most unexciting 90-minutes of television since the last most unexciting 90-minutes of television and to hear about the tedious Star Challenge.

‘This week,’ Darth Giada spoke with great enthusiasm, ‘it’s all about food expertise,’ which, to my way of thinking, was very much like describing HGTVs Design Star as all about interior décor. ‘So we’re bringing in a few people,’ she went on, ‘who know a thing or two about that.’

‘That’ being food expertise, not interior décor.

And those ‘few people,’ if it wasn’t obvious in the title or in the teaser or in the endless adverts squeezed into every available inch of air time on Food Network over the last week, were Scott Conant, Alex ‘Take No Prisoners’ Guarnaschelli (and we got to see a little awkward editing where she presumably was laughing at this new description of herself), and Marc Murphy; ‘one of the most feared panel of judges in food,’ Dark Lord Flay announced without a trace of interest. ‘They are the judges of the hit show on Food Network, Chopped.’ His excitement level in making this needless addition could only have been surpassed by announcing that ‘head cheese’ is not a dairy product.

Having the Sith Apprentices pretend to be on an episode of Chopped is a fairly radical departure from the previous norm of Next Food Network Star and an interesting trek into uncharted territory for this New & Improved series. It’s so new and so innovative and something so unique that I had to walk into the next room and scoop out the litter pan and take the recycling bin out and do a few other odd fiddly things.

Also the ridiculously-named ‘The Network’ was there.

And as ‘a stark reminder that this is, after all, an individual competition,’ Sith Master Alton Brown explained that the Star Challenge this week would place the Apprentices in direct competition with each other, and they were all appropriately stunned with the help of careful editing.  They would compete against other members of their own team and one loser from each team would be up for elimination and would face off in the Producer Challenge – something of a sudden-death cook-off.

As seen on Chopped, each of the three teams would have a basket of four ingredients and, as Sith Master Alton pressed on, ‘thirty short eentsie-beentsie little minutes’ to prepare a dessert from those ingredients. Unlike Chopped, however, and continuing to wade deep into unfamiliar waters, the Sith Apprentices would then have to present their dishes to ‘the most feared panel of judges’ – BUT!

Wait for it…

Sith Master Alton added that they would have to include in their 60-second ‘intro’  (which is industry-speak for ‘introduction’), ‘a culinary tip, if you will, to show off your expertise,’ and they were all quite stunned via thoughtful post-production. The cunning and evil architects behind these infinitely diabolical rule-twistings must be congratulated for the constant New & Improved ideas they have carefully crammed into every subtle nuance of this new Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star and making it unlike anything we have experienced before.

Unfortunately the editors lacked the same amazing and crafty touch as their Masters, and as Team Alton were told to ‘go stand behind your baskets,’ the Sith Apprentices were jarringly and without any warning seen to be suddenly standing in the Chopped Jr kitchen all dressed in grey chef’s coats without having had any intermediate steps involved. This juxtaposition of elements is often referred to as a ‘jump cut’ and speaks to a dramatic lack of technical ability. A simple transition would have been nice. But with only 90-minutes allocated for this special episode, there was probably very little time to waste with such trivialities as adequate scene transitions, not when they had to make room for doing everything possible to make Martie With The Partie seem absurdly inept and ready to be eliminated.

Sith Master Alton, having a bit of a meltdown with her at one point, was seen to shout, ‘Ms Duncan!  If you can’t cook and talk at the same time – shut up and cook!’  And as ‘the most feared panel of judges’ and ‘The Network’ stared at him for his outburst in what appeared to be posed shots, he said, ‘Sorry’ almost as though he wasn’t acting.

There was also time in the editing process for languishing shots of Hershey’s Kisses Chocolates (all promotional considerations paid) which the Sith Apprentices rather awkwardly held towards the camera and then placed cautiously on the stainless steel table so that we at home could clearly read the packaging. The chocolates were part of the Team Alton Ingredient Baskets which also included pancetta, graham crackers, and kumquats.

The over-long ‘cooking segment’ included, apart from Martie’s supposed ineptitude and distracting focus on her age, the fact that Justin attempted to melt his chocolate candies with the foil wrappers still on them and then tried to supplement this mistake with microwaved chocolate bits which he burnt, and Whinging Twat Judson whinging about how dessert brings back bad memories of his ‘personal weigh-loss journey.’ His apprehensions aside, however, he managed to deliver an undercooked wad of cake which paled in comparison to Emily’s nearly flawless cupcake and the surprisingly good no-bake cookie Justin managed to execute despite the adventurous editing to the contrary. To further solidify Martie’s likely elimination in another episode, her S’mores were not very good and Sith Master Alton admonished her for beating the dead horse of her age-issues.  

It is interesting, too, that Marc Murphy noted that part of the failure of Martie’s dish was that she did not really ‘transform’ the ingredients, a much-discussed ‘rule’ on the set of Chopped, yet one not frequently adhered to and certainly one that is never fully nor formally explained in any detail and often left as ‘understood.’

Also, some of the first bits of advertising seen after this segment were for Buick and Hershey’s Kisses Chocolates. Funny, that.

The Ingredient Baskets for Team Flay (wearing black, of course) were Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars (all promotional considerations paid), pineapple, pasta sheets, and black lava salt. Those for Team Giada (dressed in virginal white) were Reese’s Pieces candy (all promotional considerations paid), unpopped pop corn, coconut, and grape soda. Upon seeing her Team’s ingredients, Darth Giada turned to ‘the most feared panel of judges in food’ and scowled, saying, ‘I’m irritated.’

In a very prophetic statement, Martita (inexplicably the current ‘fan favourite’ on the Food Network site for no reason I can comprehend) called this ‘a torture basket,’ also concisely defining the New & Improved Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star.

The next 30 minutes were simply full to the brim with riveting moments such as:

Eric claiming that cooking food would be his ‘little secret weapon’ to help him win the cooking challenge…

Martita forgetting to include her ‘culinary tip’ and personal reflection in her introduction…

Josh also forgetting to include his ‘culinary tip’ and not entirely popping his popcorn…

Darth Giada putting ‘the whammy’ (or the power of The Dark Side of The Force) on Michele and ‘freaking her out…’

Nikki delivering an infommercial-style introduction and believing that bread pudding could set in less than 15 minutes and having Scott Conant suggest that it was ‘like soup…’

Darth Giada telling Yvan that his Culinary Point of View (CPOV) ought to be ‘Family Style’ which didn’t work for Aria in series 6…

And perhaps more surprising than all of this was Yvan mentioning that he’d actually been on Chopped once before – a fact confirmed by a quick glance at the Chopped wiki in which one can find that Yvon Lemoine was indeed a competitor in series 2 in 2009, episode 6, ‘A Prickly Situation,’ where he was eliminated in the dessert round. Funny Alex Guarnaschelli never mentioned this, as she was one of the judges on that episode along with Aarón Sánchez and Chris Santos.

Seems the ‘The Network’ have no compunction with allowing a former contender on Chopped to vie for a spot amongst the Food Network pantheon by having to perform in a Chopped-style contest which no-one else had done. Sure. That seems perfectly fair to me.

Of course it was no surprise at all, after their compulsory post-trial pep talk and then gathering before the big cartoon doors to listen to SyFy Channel’s Face Off theme as ‘The Network’ marched out, that Martie With The Partie, Nikki, and Rock n’ Roll Josh were up for elimination in the Producer Challenge. This would be a something of sudden-death cook off in which the bottom three Sith Apprentices would have just 30 minutes (again) to prepare an amazing dish – and offer a one-minute presentation for it (again) ‘to camera’ (again) – in effort to prove themselves worthy of continuing on to the next level of competition (again).

The nature of this challenge would be to answer the apparently most-asked question on Food Network’s website, which is How Large Are Sandra Lee’s Breasts, If You Don’t Have an Outside Grill, What Can You Make? What this fairly ambiguous and poorly-crafted question does not clarify, of course, is that it seeks to discover what, in the absence of a proper outside grill, might one grill indoors and how might this be done.

Once the cooking commenced, Nikki shouted out ‘Who’s ready for some girl-on-girl action?’ and, shockingly, Michele was the loudest in affirmative response. Turns out, unfortunately, that it was girl-on-grill action – an innuendo she would later be told was too risqué for Food Network’s TV-Y rating.

Shortly thereafter, in the Inner Sanctum at the Eye of Sauron table, Nikki was also told by Bob T that, apart from her inappropriately entendre-laden presentation, she ‘just went from forgettable to a contender in sixty-seconds flat.’ Dark Lord Flay felt he had to remind ‘The Network’ that this single presentation wasn’t meant to be Nikki’s Emmy performance, just a simple food introduction. His remarks noted, Bob T and Susie had sufficient means to consider Nikki ‘safe’ and sent her and her Mentor on their merry way so that they might turn their ire upon Martie and Josh.

It seemed Martie’s grilled tuna fish tasted surprisingly like tuna fish, but her genuine qualities with people and before the camera, even with her tendency to ramble along for lengthy periods, were quite rare indeed and Sith Master Alton felt confident that he could nurture those qualities. 

Josh had lost his beat in his presentation and didn’t explain what was in his dish, but it was clear to ‘The Network’ that his Danish-Asian fusion could be a wealth of untapped potential for Food Network if only they didn’t have to cut him loose in order to follow the well-established path of hoping to trick the viewing audience into believing that someone else would be leaving first.

As Josh made his lonely staged walk through the darkened kitchen towards the big cartoon doors, he rightly indicated that he had followed the instructions and notes given to him by Darth Giada and by ‘The Network,’ though it clearly did little to save him being chopped.

The nature of the ‘deliberation’ between Bob T and Susie Fogelson seemed to hinge upon hoping there was more cooking technique hidden in Martie to balance with her big Southern Charm and, if so, she would be worth saving – though it seemed rather a large ‘if’ in the mind of Susie. As for Josh, they focussed on what they felt was his ‘120-miles-per-hour’ delivery which didn’t work for Susie, but they agreed his Danish background offered something very special.

Of course they followed the same backward logic as last week when, after arguing that Whinging Twat Judson offered them a dull plasticity, a corporate robot personality, and a plate of uninspired food which did not meet the criteria of the challenge, they cut Kara.

Obviously someone had to leave – that’s the nature of  the competition – yet by the standards unevenly employed on the New & Improved Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star, their choices appear more and more arbitrary, certainly vague, and based upon criteria not entirely shared with the viewers – which is not a terribly good way of gaining the trust or interest of your audience.

And Avery is still shining brightly in Around The World in 80 Plates, so I’m cool with that…

Embracing The Pickle

The Sith Apprentices were summoned to their New & Improved And Not At All Like Before Star Challenge without much fiddling about after the mandatory recap of what was supposed to have been interesting about the previous two hour programme and wasn’t. And it was probably a good thing so little time was wasted, as this very special 90- minute episode really needed the extra room to sprawl out lazily like the original Director’s Cut or ‘work print’ of Heaven’s Gate and really make you acutely aware of just how impossibly long one and a half hours can feel.

It seems a group of 20 ‘tourists’ (wink-wink) likely culled from a cryptic advert on Craig’s List were going to be arriving shortly for, as Darth Giada explained with all due exuberance, a ‘City-wide food tour through the most iconic food neighbourhoods in all of Manhattan.’

The Sith Apprentices stared at her.

‘And guess who’s leading that tour?’ she asked rhetorically.

The Sith Apprentices stared at her.

‘That’s right,’ she smiled as though someone had responded. ‘You guys!’

Again the Sit Apprentices stared at her.

They would get to visit these various neighbourhoods first to learn what they could  ‘on the ground,’ as Sith Master Alton insisted, and to collect whatever information they could in order to conduct these ‘tours.’  The amazing New & Improved spin, of course, is that they would then be charged with returning to the Food Star Kitchens sometime later to create a dish inspired by the pre-determined places within those neighbourhoods and those dishes would be served to The Tourists.

‘And,’ Dark Lord of The Sith, Bobby Flay explained carefully, ‘you’ll also have to be a tour guide’ in case the explanation Darth Giada offered just 23 seconds before had been somehow unclear. And Martita, shown in one of those New & Improved Never Before Used ‘commentary’ segments from the Clinically Stark Cookware Showroom, immediately proffered ‘we have to present to a bus-load of tourists while conducting a tour’ in order to clarify Dark Lord Flay’s rather wordy and circuitous description.

Darth Giada then reminded them that they would need to make an impact with their food and with their personalities, because nobody will watch your programme if you suck.

Of course Team Giada were given ‘Arthur Avenue,’ the original Little Italy, and Rock n’ Roll Josh (who has a band) explained that this is because Giada is known for her Italian cooking. Lord Flay’s Team took Harlem, a place the Dark Lord knows very well, as any geeky, pale-skinned, freckled ginger would, and Team Alton would head to ‘the Lower East Side’ to visit a ‘traditionally Jewish neighbourhood that has a rich history with their food.’

There was a moment where Judson appeared to mouth ‘Oh brother’ because he had no prior knowledge of the Jewish culture or food whilst Emily nodded knowingly. She would be told later to ‘Tap into your inner Kosher self and just go mashugana on this thing.’  Judson’s lack of knowledge lead him to sit in silence whilst assignments and locations were discussed and chosen by his colleagues, thus leaving him to take The Pickle Guys. He was unhappy with the decision and felt uninspired by the thought of pickles.

‘Embrace the pickle,’ Sith Master Alton commanded him. ‘You’re gonna love you some pickle.’

‘Oh I love pickle,’ Judson said without excitement and glanced away.

Eventually they visited Kossar’s Bialys, Katz’s Delicatessen, Streit’s Matzo Market, and The Pickle Guys wherein Judson learnt the rich and valuable pickle lessons he would soon be expected to embrace and would later impart loudly at The Tourists and ‘The Network’ on The Bus in what Justin (not a fishmonger) described as being ‘in the front pew at The Church of The Pickle.’ Sadly, however, Judson did not connect with the pickle in any meaningful way and the remainder of the bus tour, taken after the New & Improved ‘cooking segment’ was finished, only served to show that poor Emily got motion sickness as the bus lurched and lumbered through busy Manhattan traffic.

Team Flay went to Sylivia’s, a butcher shop called Casablanca, the Savoy Bakery, the Dinosaur Barbeque and Melba’s, where Kara, rather like Judson, would be stuck with last choice – the unfamiliar soul food dish of chicken and waffles – and targeted for potential elimination. Team Giada visited Mike’s Deli, wherein was learnt the proper and needlessly long  pronunciation of the word ‘mozzarella,’ David Greco’s Trattoria, Cosenza’s Fish Market where (as Martita would volunteer from the Clinically Stark Cookware Showroom) there was ‘seafood everywhere,’ Peter’s Meat Market where (we would see clearly without assistance) there was meat everywhere, and Palombo Caffé.

The other thing we learnt from all this was seen in the newest game called

in which the Sith Apprentices would be seen prudently holding their Discover cards at appropriate heights and angles so that they could be plainly visible at great distances and have the cameras catch them just right.

How many product endorsements did you see? Good!

And as the following hour dragged on, Eric said he would craft everything by hand and take enormous amounts of time to accomplish basic tasks, Malcolm appeared to make Bob T want to burst into Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, Michele’s catfish was ‘dry and flavourless’ as her presentation, Nikki was smooth and ‘impersonal,’ Susie liked the smell of Eric’s cheese, Yvan’s dish was too simple, Rock n’ Roll Josh (who has a band) matched Martie With The Partie for longest and most uninteresting tale of the day and had a very basic dish, and Kara went off the rails with her story of chicken and waffles and the careful editing made it look like everyone squirmed and winced and felt completely uncomfortable with her awkwardness. Also, some fat bloke on the bus (sitting next to someone who looked like Mark Wahlberg) didn’t like the chicken and waffles, so Kara would obviously be contending with Judson The Pickle Hater for elimination because evidently fat people love chicken and waffles.

It is also of interest to note that professional and semi-professional chefs do not know or do not appear to know how to pronounce the word ‘caramel,’ preferring instead to rather gratingly call it ‘carmel,’ and that ‘Hey guys, howya doin today?’ has managed to supplant the more traditional ‘Hello, everyone, my name is…’

I am also curious as to just how large the tour bus was. The utter volume of shots and the number of different angles used – not to mention the amazing clarity heard in the private conversations and ‘whispered’ commentary of The Tourists and ‘The Network’ – seems to indicate a fairly large number of cameras and scene set-ups which could have proved to be a hindrance in a smaller vehicle.  I am reminded of the classic film Broadcast News in which a defiant Albert Brooks insists that Holly Hunter, and I am paraphrasing, ask herself precisely how a specific action was captured on film if there was only just the one camera…

It felt as though the last hour had flown past in a mere 60 minutes and suddenly we were transported to a room adjacent to the Council Chambers where each group of Sith Apprentices was given a pep talk by their assigned mentors. After, they gathered before the pointless theatricality of the big cartoon doors as Bob T and Susie entered dramatically to tell them that Team Giada were safe and that, as was clear from the onset, Judson and Kara would face each other in the Producer Challenge – which is something like a sudden-death cook-off.

Because of the complexity of the given ingredient – a potato, with which they were charged to create ‘the most memorable dish we’ve ever had’ – they would have an astonishing 45-minutes to cook. This stands in stunning contrast to the tired and overused 30-minutes of last week’s programme and could possibly signal another new direction for Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star.

Once a ‘memorable dish’ had been achieved, the Sith Apprentices would then have to step before the camera and, as we saw last week, give a one-minute presentation on the memorable nature of their respective dishes and sit in judgement before the ‘The Network’ in the Inner Sanctum over The Eye of Sauron table.

Kara made a twice-baked mashed potato with cream, butter, garlic, a dash of olive oil, topped with cheese, bacon and chopped scallions, and presented the dish in a tasteful ‘home-style’ format using individual serving-sized cast-iron pots because she – and Lord Flay – felt the challenge was primarily ‘about the potato.’ As the awkward editing rather clumsily inserted nice glamour shots of carefully arranged cast iron cookware, however, one must presume that these cast-iron pots were thoughtfully provided by Lodge Cast Iron – America’s Original Cookware since 1896. Kara connected her dish with her nostalgic take on cooking which was deeply inspired by her love of family.

Judson The Pickle Hater put slices of potato round a large salmon filet stuffed with a mascarpone – which he called ‘marscaponay’ – and goat cheese filling and fried it. He said it’s how they do it in New Orleans. He also made a sauce to go with it.

In the Inner Sanctum, Bob T explained to Kara that her offering was ‘an incredibly rich, comforting dish. I would question, though,’ he said, ‘whether it’s a memorable dish.’ She smiled, nodding her understanding of what he was saying, but her eyes cut through him like glass. His transparent pandering felt utterly disingenuous and Kara could clearly sense it. Her eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly and you could see she disagreed with him.  ‘I feel like I’ve tasted this kind of dish a lot before,’ he said in conclusion.

Susie thought Kara had a ‘great package,’ but not a ‘total package’ like Judson had shown last week and now did not.

Judson’s presentation, conversely, was slick, smarmy, and pointedly insincere. He babbled on about slicing the potato thin, dipping it into fat to get it soft, and then ‘encrusting it with this salmon’ which, of course, is not at all what he did. He wrapped the salmon with slices of potato, not the other way round. Regardless, he continued on, repeating again that he wanted to ‘wrap the potato with that salmon just to form a beautiful crust,’ because the idea of crusty salmon must be a New Orleans favourite, and finished by saying, ‘Remember, it’s all about the technique.’

‘I used the potato as a centre for not only technique but flavour as well,’ Judson gave a sycophantic explanation he wasn’t asked for.

‘The challenge was to make a memorable potato dish, though,’ Bob T said to him. ‘You didn’t quite satisfy the challenge because you used potato in a really interesting way, but it still feels like salmon is the star of this dish.’

Susie felt that Judson offered a certain sense of sophistication and good ‘layers’ in his cooking and said he was ‘a great corporate spokesperson’ but concluded that being a corporate shill ‘doesn’t work here.’

Judson, in turn, knowing all the best strategies employed in the Halls of Power in the corporate world as he does, played a cunning hand.

And just how do you best a competitor with more talent and a solid skill-set? You play a vicious and superficial round of

and burst into tears like a little bitch to make them feel sorry for you and eliminate the smart, savvy, and determined woman who should have won until you turned on the water works like a fucking sissy. Remember it’s all about technique.

The duplicitous nature of ‘The Network’ made it clear that although Kara had followed the rules of the challenge, created a superior dish, and had a concise personal story to tell about it (which even Lord Flay admitted was better than his own first ‘to camera’ presentation many years before), they frowned quite heavily on her lack of fawning parasitism.

Bob T paid no attention to Judson’s clear confusion over how he had prepared his own salmon (and not potato) dish and yet stupidly complained that Kara confused  him with how nostalgia fitted in with her point of view. Susie was, if nothing else, icy towards Kara, and said her use of the words ‘fantastic’ and ‘great’ felt to her ‘a little hollow’ (even though Susie herself had just used ‘great’ to describe Kara’s overall ‘package’ not two minutes earlier) and yet she said nothing about Judson’s constant use of the word ‘beautiful’ in describing his dishes.  ‘The Network’ were obviously disinterested in anything Kara had to say and you could see that disinterest in their eyes and in their body language, especially once they got down to ‘deliberating.’ Discussing Kara they seemed tense and irritated; completely negative. And yet once they dispensed discussing her it was as though they’d shrugged off a funeral pall and they talked about Judson in a cheery, light-hearted sort of way. 

And, obviously, Kara hadn’t been reduced to a blubbering, jelly mess who had to be saved by her mentor.

It’s all about technique.

Next week another needlessly sprawling 90-minute episode will surely flit by as if it were just an astonishing 5400 seconds…

Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star

Although I’m not specifically a fan of tattoos and curious piercings, I’ve decided that I would make an exception for Avery Pursell. It’s rather unfortunate that in order to watch her compete against the other chefs, I had to sit through the newest version of The Next Food Network Star. Well, ‘sit through’ is a bit of a stretch, really. More like ‘strolled in and out of the room and be annoyed that it wasn’t 11pm yet.’

I would be remiss in my blogging duties (not that I have been terribly thorough of late) not to mention here that my rather lengthy love/hate relationship with the Food Network is rapidly becoming more of a hate/hate relationship. The last series of The Next Food Network Star counted as one of the worst, heavy-handed, manipulative,   ill-conceived and scripted excuses for ‘reality’ television I’ve seen in ages, and it succeeded only in driving me away from almost anything on the network since.

After seeing the advertisements for the new eighth series of The Next Food Network Star, now no longer called The Next Food Network Star, and seeing that the network have decided to ‘revitalise’ the programme by giving it something of a face-lift and a new format, my immediate reaction was one of enormous joy that it would be over in time for me to catch the re-broadcast of the Around The World in 80 Plates premiere on Bravo.

Seeing the fabulously uninteresting group of Paul Stanley, Big Chris, Vic ‘Vegas’ Moea and Justin the Second, Fishmonger compete on Chopped All Stars only just reignited my antipathy for last year’s programme and fuelled my utter indifference to the New & Improved version. And the melodramatic adverts for it, which had been slathered over every millisecond of available air time on the Food Network for the preceding month did, if only by their sheer pervasiveness and seemingly desperate grappling for potential viewers, almost  nothing but repel me.

My only real interest – vague and half-hearted though it was – in subjecting myself to this programme again after last year’s misery was to see just how the promise of a new format and new rules would be handled. But even that did little to intrigue me, and I found my already waning attention frequently drifting during the 2-hour debut.

For whatever pointless reason, Dark Lord of the Sith Bobby Flay, Darth Giada, and Sith Master Alton Brown divided the 15 – yes, again – new Sith hopefuls into three groups of five for whom they would each act as mentor, making the competition just as much about themselves and their abilities as it is about their apprentices.

Team Flay was a Malcolm Jamal Warner circa the Jeremiah period look-alike called Malcolm , Michele (or Anne Burrell 2.0), Eric, Nikki, and Kara, who has my vote for the win. And it’s not because she’s attractive (which she is, of course) but because she seems to have strong presence ‘on camera,’ which astute readers will no doubt recall is industry-speak for ‘on the camera.’

Team Giada was a children’s programming-inspired group with names like Ippy, Linkie, Martita, Yvan, and Josh ‘The Rock n’ Roll Chef’ (because he has a band), and Team Alton was Cristie, Justin, Judson, Martie With the Partie, and Emily, also my pick for the win because I have a weakness for certain nerdy women in glasses.

I think I got their names right. Does it matter? No. Not really.

Once all the introductory nonsense was out of the way, the newly-formed teams of Sith Apprentices were thrown immediately into the…

…are you ready?

Wait for it…

The Star Challenge!

Of course it wasn’t the old Star Challenge we’ve seen carted out splashily for the last few years in which a celebrity chef or ‘star’ provides the contestants with some form of challenge which would lead to an inevitable elimination of one or more of them – this was the New & Improved Star Challenge! 

In this version, celebrity chef or ‘star’ Robert Irvine marched out wearing the same black t-shirt he’s worn for a year and explained that on his programme, Restaurant: Impossible, he has 48 hours and $10,000 to rebuild and redesign a failing restaurant. The Sith Apprentices, he said, would have just half that time and half that money to design and open their very own restaurants from the ground up. But despite what you may immediately be thinking, this wasn’t anything at all like 24 Restaurant Battle, because on that programme two teams are required to create an entire restaurant in just 24 hours from the ground up. This is clearly very different to that concept simply because there are three teams, not two, competing in the challenge and at the end of it, one of the new Sith Apprentices would be eliminated.

The other major shift in narrative was that, once the Sith Apprentices had figured out their restaurant menus, themes and names – Do South for Team Alton (Do South, get it? Do? Due?), the not-at-all-pretentious-sounding Blu for Team Giada, and the dull Tasting Space for Team Flay – each team would have a limited time frame in which to purchase their own goods. This entirely New & Improved concept required that the teams would further divide themselves into even smaller groups: one portion would go to a place called ‘Fresh Market’ and the other portion would go to a warehouse-like location called ‘Restaurant Depot.’ Once at their respective destinations, the teams would communicate via space age consumer-grade electronic devices held in their hands and shout instructions at each other very loudly whilst running about.

To further complicate an already complicated scenario, the Sith Apprentices would be given Discover cards and be required to hold them at curious and cumbersome angles during use so the cameras could languish on them to ensure paid sponsorship.

Once this so-called ‘shopping’ task was completed, the Sith Apprentices would then have a mere six hours to prepare their various foodstuffs for a staggering 150 people! 150! That’s like tons of people! One can only imagine the pressure. And a big hats off to the producers of Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star for throwing in such an unexpectedly New & Improved twist to such an otherwise tattered and threadbare concept. 

This new ‘cooking’ segment included lots of exciting camera angles and spirited music so that we at home could really feel the intensity of what it would be like to work along side total strangers in big professional kitchen for six hours. Very often the action was intercut with, for lack of a better term, ‘interview’ segments filmed in what appeared to be some sort of clinically stark cookware showroom wherein the Sith Apprentices spoke ‘on camera’ about topics relevant to the particular situations seen along the way – a type of narrative or informal dialogue, if you will, which provided colourful commentary and keen insights. Overall it was quite a radical departure from all that has gone before.

In this New & Improved bit we saw, for example, that Eric wanted to make pasta from scratch – and he was see making enough dough to create almost 20 noodles; Yvan didn’t buy eggs no matter how often Rock n’ Roll Josh told him to buy eggs; Martie With the Partie felt it was ‘over ambitious’ of her to make three different devilled eggs all at the same time, but at least she had eggs; black-eyed pea and cabbage purée is not, in fact, a proper soup, no matter how much Cristie wanted it to be and does not have flavours that ‘pop’ and, as Judson said, it ‘doesn’t look pretty to look at,’ and, finally, Nikki wants to see the ‘dynamic personalities’ of her companions ‘on a plate’ – a concept I never would have thought possible.

Amidst this profusion of terrifying new ideas, Dark Lord Flay, Darth Giada, and Sith Master Brown interrupted their apprentices to explain that ‘There’s one more thing we have to do’ or, as Alton suggested, add ‘a twist of new flavour’ to the proceedings. Like me, I’m sure the reader will be echoing the sentiment of all the Sith Apprentices who stared in abject horror and astonishment at their mentors. How could anyone be expected – in a fierce competition such as this – to shop and cook – all in one day! –only to have matters complicated all the more by having another theoretical spanner thrown in the works? It’s unimaginable!

Truly the producers have shown their mastery of The Dark Side with these New & Improved ideas.

Gathering together once again, the Sith Apprentices were told by Chef Robert Irvine that the group of 120 diners (with no indication as to why the number had dropped so dramatically) would be able to choose where they want to eat ‘at.’ This stunning and unexpected turn is completely unlike 24 Hour Restaurant Battle where 150 guests pick which of the two just-opened restaurants they want to experience based on the menu options and concepts presented to them.

In this New & Improved twist, each of the three teams would be required to do a live two minute presentation of their respective menus and concepts upon which, then, the prospective diners would decide where they wish to ‘eat at,’ and everyone looked shocked because this was no new and nothing like it had ever been done before on Food Network. Josh said he would ‘rock it out,’ though, because he has a band. And by ‘rock it out’ he meant struggling to memorise the complex Shakespearean-style soliloquy of ‘Welcome to Blu where we are serving California cuisine.’

And the final shocking twist, however, was to introduce the new Sith Apprentices to ‘The Network’ for whom the winner will be working: strangely only comprised of Bob Tuschman, the senior vice president and general manager of Food Network, and Susie Fogelson, senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy, who was wearing a black skirt with a giant Santa Claus buckle on it pulled up above her navel. One would think more than two people were involved in programming and operations. Do they act as janitorial staff as well? Unless… it is possible that the sweeping changes in this new iteration included a dismantling of the previous power structure into which void stepped Bob T and Susie to re-establish the Dark Jedi under the Rule of Two and, in all probability, usher in a new Supreme Order unified under a Grand Lord…

Over the next hour, the Sith hopefuls performed their much-rehearsed two minute presentations before the assembly of 120-150 eager diners – which included Rock n’ Roll Josh doing a cartwheel described by some guests as simply ‘too much’ but which got a wide-eyed Susie Fogelson all sticky in her girl parts – and then they individually served each of their own contributions to the overall meal rather laboriously to ‘The Network’ and their mentors.

The end result of this hour was the revelation that black-eyed pea dip should be more ‘liquidy’ in order to be called a proper soup, Darth Giada believes ‘you want to be with Yvan,’ Emily brought a smile to the brain of Bob T in a creepy sort of way I didn’t care to explore further, and Cristie would be the first Sith Apprentice to be eliminated. Not because her pea and cabbage purée wasn’t really a proper soup – because it wasn’t – but because the careful editing strategy telegraphed her departure large enough to be seen from orbit and cunningly depicted her as a bumbling fool. For example, when it comes to the critical issue of childhood obesity and the general lack of healthy eating in this country, Cristie, portrayed as defensive and joyless, said she wanted to use the word ‘fed up.’ Which is two words.

Although Not Necessarily The Next Food Network Star appears to be so radically different to The Original Series in design and structure and, as such, is almost wholly unrecognisable, there were subtle elements included in it which fondly recalled the early days. For example, after the overlong ‘food service’ segment the young Sith Apprentices and their mentors assembled in the familiar Council Chambers of Food Network’s Los Angeles Bureau to listen to the emphatic music appropriated from SyFy Channel’s tiresome Face Off series and to glance awkwardly at each other.

Suddenly, whilst the music thundered to a crescendo, all eyes were on an enormous section of brick wall on the other side of the room which, in an electrifying twist I would never have predicted, actually slid apart revealing that it was, in fact, not a brick wall with ‘Food Network Star’ painted on it at all – but a giant cartoon door!  And before you hastily jump to conclusions, this was clearly unlike the giant cartoon doors used on Who Wants To Be The Next I-ron Chef or Sweet Genius because they obviously didn’t have the Food Network Star logo painted on them. So it was very different. And they were made to look like brick.

Rather than sit at a cloth-lined dais in pompous judgement of competitors as in years past, Bob T and Susie Fogelson strode out from the giant cartoon doors and stood before the Sith Apprentices and explained to them what they’d done in the previous hour and twenty-seven minutes in case they hadn’t been paying close attention. It was also noted that Susie enjoyed Judson’s ‘total package,’ and Bob T wanted more Ippy. And really, who could blame him?

The team headed by Dark Lord Flay had the favourite restaurant with the stupidest name and were safe from elimination, whereupon they filed slowly out of the Council Chambers in gloating fashion to the chagrin of their adversaries.

Some other things happened too. They weren’t very important. I’d filled my glass with more malt whiskey, though. That was important. And then Cristie and young Rock n’ Roll Josh (he has a band) were up for elimination. Mostly because Josh was told he couldn’t just rely on tricks to mask his culinary inabilities and he was wearing a scarf. Cristie, on the other hand, had been touched by the Stark Fist of Removal from the very beginning and was undaunted by the fact that ‘fed up’ was two words.

In what was perhaps the most surprising declaration of the evening, however, and a bewildering spin which blind-sided me by its sheer innovation, Bob T explained that the two Sith Apprentices would have ‘one last chance’ to save themselves by being set against each other in a culinary combat he called a ‘Producer Challenge.’  This would be something very like a ‘sudden death cook-off’ of sorts in which the Sith Apprentices would have just 30 minutes to prepare one dish. Whomever created the superior dish would overcome their competitor, seal their fate and their advancement towards The Dark Side would be complete.

But this New & Improved segment, I soon realised, would be absolutely nothing like other cook-off bits we’ve ever seen on Food Network, for example in Who Wants To Be The Next I-ron Chef or the more recent Rachael v Guy: Celebrity Shaka Zulu. In those programmes, two I-ron Chef hopefuls or two nominal celebrities, each of whom had been considered the least effective at their various tasks, were given one half of an hour to compete in a one-on-one trial, often beneath the intense scrutiny of their companions, in which the victory of one competitor would be based entirely on the judgement of their final offerings.

And this was called the Producer Challenge. So it was very different.

But wait! There’s more! After the Sith Apprentices have cooked their potentially last meal under the duress of the ever-watchful gaze of their teammates, they would have to videotape a one-minute presentation ‘to camera’ in which they would introduce their dish through a personal story – in this case a tale and dish suited to a Mother’s Day brunch. The unmitigated newness of this idea – the massive brazenness of it – has no analogue to anything viewers have ever seen on the Food Network before.

And the final New & Improved twist was that these brief, personalised introductory segments, forged with fifteen minutes of aid from the mentors, would be ‘screened’ – industry-speak for ‘viewed’ – in The Pitch Room where, we are ominously told, ‘the fate of shows and talent’ is decided. Oddly, the ominous nature is quickly dispelled when you realise it’s just a painfully sparse room reminiscent of an embarrassing downmarket attempt at the conference room in the overbridge on The Death Star, with a few chairs positioned round a plain rectangular table whose centre has been carved out so a white light shaped much like the Eye of Sauron can shine through an opaque Perspex insert.

Rock n’ Roll Josh made a frittata and, in The Pitch Room, noted that, amongst other things, he used herbs, goat cheese, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and onion. Bob T was duly impressed and noted that, amongst other things, there were herbs, goat cheese, garlic and onions in the frittata and that he kept getting ‘happy surprises’ from it. You and I would call that ‘gas.’

Cristie made a Scotch Egg and her assessment that ‘you can’t go wrong with an egg’ was immediately disproved by the confused ending to her personal story which, to the studied eye of Bob T, lacked the joy and excitement to excite a nation and thus the Stark Fist of Removal came down as was prophesied.

Her exit was made in an understated, completely realistic and absolutely not staged in any fashion tracking shot which began as she entered alone into the dimly lighted Council Chambers from an unseen anteroom and crossed towards a large proscenium at the back of the room in a wide arc. As she passed through the proscenium, the large cartoon doors cunningly disguised as a brick wall closed behind her and a spotlight shone brightly on the Food Network Star logo. This was completely unlike the dark and lonely perp walk often seen on HGTV’s Design Star where an ousted competitor would be forced to exit down a darkened hall and out through an obviously artificial iron door made of cheap plywood and grey paint. This was something totally New & Improved.

According to teasers in the opening montage, we get to see Sith Master Alton cry at some point this year. Probably not before I do, though…