Does the world need another Iron Chef? I don't think so. I'm comfortable with the current assortment, and frankly I don't know who any of the potential future Iron Chefs are on the ads for The Next Iron Chef. I recognize Amanda Freitag, but that's it. The rest of them are cyphers to me, unpalatable ones at that.
But I think to a large extent it's the way the ads are filmed that puts me off the project. They're all shown in this cold, dead light that makes them look like zombies or corpses. Whose idea was that? "Hey, I got an idea, let's light them in a way that makes them look sallow, unhealthy and dead! Even Alton Brown will end up looking spooky and diseased! It'll be great!"
Yeah, great. The lighting on Dr. G Medical Examiner is more flattering than the Next Iron Chef ads. How strange it is that a TV show about a morgue seems warmer and more inviting than a show about people cooking things in a kitchen. But it could be worse - it could be Chopped, with its endless loving footage of sweat dripping off the noses of the various competitors and falling into their freakish dishes. That's appetizing.
Is That All?
11 years ago
3 comments:
Competitive cooking shows mostly bore me, though I do like Throw Down because Bobby is always trying to learn how to make something crazy. Chopped? Naw. Iron Chef? I tune in at the very end, to see what they've cooked. Watching them run around the kitchen with their hair on fire isn't entertaining.
And just forget all those nutty cake competitions. Food should look like food, not the Eiffel Tower.
I worry that soon there'll be nothing but competitive cooking shows on the Food Network. I'm growing really weary of listening to people say things like "If they come at me, I'm going to come right back at them." For crying out loud, you're cooking, not boxing. I don't find hypercompetitiveness at all interesting.
As for cakes, I don't mind as long as they're actually made of cake, but what fun is a "cake" that is composed mostly of styrofoam, even if it does look like a scale model of the Lion Gate in Babylon or whatever?
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