Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Hell's Kitchen Indeed

This isn't just hate, it's hateration. I have hateration for the stupid Hell's Kitchen tv show. It ranks right up there with Britney 'n Kevin Chaotic for the worst reality show. I caught the first 40 minutes of it that J TiVoed. Goddamn if that wasn't painful to watch.

This show should be made for me. I love reality TV and I love food. I love watching the behind-the-scenes at restaurant reality shows. I loved The Restaurant because Rocco was a true asshole. His complete cluelessness about his assholery made his eventual smackdown so delicious. Since Gordon Ramsay seemed to be running the show, there will be no delicious Ramsay smackdown. And due to bad editing, you don't get a sense of who the asshole contestants are when Gordon gives his initial browbeating.

I think the thing with this Gordon Ramsay guy is that his asshole act is simply that, an act. I'm sure he's an asshole in real life but all of the stuff he does is so Rachael Ray affected. Instead of the perky "How GREAT is THAT," we get the "this bleeping sucks!" Either way, you know they spent hours in front of the mirror coming up with their stupid catchphrases and personas. It was painful to watch him spit out the food. What kind of shit is that? I spent the whole time feeling bad for the P.A.s who had to clean up the predigested food that Gordon spat on the ground.

The restaurant challenged sucked so hard. The contestants broke up into two teams and each team had to make dinner for half the restaurant. From what I saw, Gordon the Screamer would intercept the plates and criticize them before they reached the customer. Stupid stupid stupid. How much more fun would it be for the fame-whore customers to have to eat an ill-made dish and have to give an evaluation of it on camera? Instead we get more of the blowhard. And you know the customers could not have a good time with that since their food kept on getting sent back.

For a show like this to work, you've gotta have some respect for the person deciding who gets to stay and who gets to go. And people have to EARN their smackdown. They have to be assholes like Wendy Pepper and YaYa. Seeing of prick throw a tantrum at people isn't fun unless the peopel are also dickheads themselves. Otherwise, it's just an excercise in cruelty, which invariably makes me lose my lunch.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was excited to see this show. So in channel surfing last night, I stumbled upon a reality cooking show that I THOUGHT from the title was the one you hated so much. But instead, it was on PBS, and I think it's called Cooking Under Fire. It actually was pretty interesting, and I enjoyed it. Certainly there was no yelling and screaming -- more, "Are you sure this is going to work?" comments from the celebrity chefs/judges. Check it out.

DC Food Blog said...

Thanks Jon. I definitely have to check THAT show out. YOu figure pBS would do a good job iwth something like that.

Anonymous said...

If you get it in the US, watch Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Gordon Ramsay's an asshole there, too, but you learn so much about running a restaurant.

In Hell's Kitchen, some of it is an act, but he really is the epitome of asswipe chefs that run a lot of restaurants. I know from real experience.

BTW, the customers are not real. They actually are paid to be there. So that part is kind of staged.

Also, one of the contestants from Season 1 is a Canadian TV commercial actor - but I haven't confirmed that 100%. So I wouldn't be surprised if Sara, the backstabbing b*tch is too. They have similar personalities and did similar types of sabotage.