Top Chef is good, but it isn't genius, and last night's episode--which I'm dubbing "Smoked Pork Christmas"--proved why.
In a nutshell, the show needs to get over itself.
But I should clarify. First, let's begin with the premise that no Bravo reality competition is all that important. Entertaining? Yes. Addictive? Obviously. But really, it's just people sewing dresses or designing living rooms. Or making food.
The other series in this family embrace their campiness. Tim Gunn's very demeanor reminds us it's all kind of silly, and when Shear Genius asks contestants to make real people look like Marge Simpson, you realize the producers know the score.
Now, I'm not saying fashion design or hair styling are silly per se. I don't think that at all. But everything becomes ludicrous when it's the theme of a reality competition. Take obesity: It's a life-or-death problem, but when the folks on The Biggest Loser stand weeping on a giant scale, flanked by judges and ceremonial objects, their plight is encrusted by the ridiculous.
But no one on Top Chef acknowledges that. The show is so stone-faced you'd think entire nations were going to rise on fall based on the freshness of a scallop.
More to the point, Top Chef forces the same ridiculous crap down our throats as every other reality series, but it never lets anyone admit for even a moment how foolish and manipulated it is.
In "Smoked Pork Christmas," for instance, we see an early scene of Hosea talking to his sister on a personal communication device that I'm calling a Cohort. While Hosea asks her about their cancer-ridden father, we get a tight close-up not of his face, but of the product. It's such a baldly tasteless moment that I groaned when I saw it.
Yet the entire scene is played as though Hosea is the star. At least on Project Runway, you can hear the wink in Tim Gunn's voice when he mentions the Bluefly.com accessory wall. At least when we were learning about Korto's terrified flight from Africa, she wasn't sitting on an inflatable Target chair.
But as revolting as it can be, the product placement makes sense: The sponsors are footing the bill. However, Top Chef is just as humorless about things that don't even matter.
Like, does anyone believe the Christmas episode was filmed at Christmastime? We see shots of contestants walking around in shorts, for God's sake. Yet the producers dress the set with garland, bring in the Harlem Gospel Choir to sing a carol, and force everyone to wish each other happy holidays. It's just like the Thanksgiving episode, when everyone was cooking outside. In November. In Rochester. The night that show aired, I looked up the weather in Rochester, and it was below freezing. Yet as they were stirring up stuffing under the clear night sky, the chefs just swore they had that Thanksgiving feeling.
With a light touch, this faux-holiday spirit could be charming. If someone had pointed out that it's crazily awesome to see a gospel choir in kente cloth singing "12 Days of Christmas" in front of an industrial stove, then the show could have kept it's grip on reality.
Instead, we saw rapt reactions and people getting chills as some guy went melisma-crazy about a partridge in a pear tree.
By playing everything so straight, the show creates the impression that it has a lesson to teach. By showing contestants helping each other in the name of Christmas, Top Chef presents itself as a moral arbiter and not some goofy reality show on extended cable.
Even worse, the show suggests its audience is too stupid to realize what's going on. As though we're sitting there, jaws agape, waiting to be enlightened by Radhika's message of forgiveness.
To further insult us, "Smoked Pork Christmas" also has the guest judge act like she's spontaneously deciding to give the entire cast a copy of her book. She even says it's their reward them for helping each other through a difficult challenge.
And look: I don't begrudge anyone their efforts to move their product, and I doubt this woman believed she was doing a great act of charity by going on TV to plug her book. But by framing her as the Mother Teresa of recipes, the producers made the author and Top Chef itself nauseating.
Sanctimony also infects the judges. My favorite thing about this season of Top Design was the sassy interplay between India Hicks and Jonathan Adler. They actually had fun together, like when Michael, Nina, and Heidi cut up after someone sends a tacky disaster down the runway.
But over in the kitchen? It's doom and gloom and "I am very disappointed in you."
I'll grant immunity to Padma Lakshmi, because she seems so lovely and supportive, but where does Tom Colicchio get off? Why is he always so stern?
Of course, this could all be the magic of editing. Maybe it's yuks galore backstage and Tom Colicchio is the jolliest clown. But if that's the case, why frame the show this way? Why is it better for Top Chef to be so full of itself?
My boyfriend Andrew makes the interesting point that the series is the least gay of Bravo's Big Four. Fashion, hair styling, and interior design just naturally attract more homos, so maybe their respective series have a more inherent sense of camp. I mean, if the Harlem Gospel Choir shows up on Project Runway, you'd better believe that some queen is jumping in to sing along... possibly Tim Gunn.
So maybe Top Chef's sensibility is just too "straight." Maybe it needs an intrinsic queer element to loosen it up. And I say "intrinsic" because the "Team Rainbow" thing was obviously a manufactured sop to gay fans.
And whatever: Maybe you can't survive in a real restaurant if you're overly campy, but Top Chef isn't real. So pull out the glitter, Colicchio, and make me a cake with sparkles.
Follow Mark Blankenship on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CritCondition
I don't watch Top Desisn and I have ZERO interest in Shear Genius even though I am gay. Those seemed so contrived I couldn't watch. Hair styles????? Seriously.
I also laugh at the product placement on these shows - having the camera focus on the electronics so long during the last TOP CHEF was laughable.
However I do disagree with this article. I enjoy the seriousness of the contestants and the show. It makes the stakes higher.
No one will beat Tim Gunn for humor, style, taste or class. (Certainly not Beary crabby Tom C)
I don't think he's always too hard on the contestants, but I thought it was definitely warranted in this episode because of the event. Sure, a judge can laugh at a poorly sewn dress that Lindsay Lohan might wear on the red carpet, but the chefs were cooking for an important charity, and in doing so, representing the charity itself. I think it would have been in poor taste if the judges weren't serious about the quality of food in this challenge.
"Haha! You guys served horrible food to people who donated money to aids research!"
I have cooked in professional kitchens for 30 years; it's very serious stuff but lots of fun and lots of yuks too. I would love to see Gail hustle her fat butt around a stove and break a sweat-THAT would be entertaining. Maybe give Chef McGrumpy a wedgie when he's grimly trolling through the kitchen.
We all called this day "Hell Day" and each and everyone of us would kill to get get burner space. If you did not stand at the stove or oven to oversee your space, a fellow student would remove or set aside your pot and takeover the spot. Brutal. I, of course, could not find any rice or potatoes in my basket. To my chagrin, I got flour and eggs. I don't do pasta or pie dough well. Never have and never will.
All that I want to say, is that these chefs are under a lot of tension, and yes, I think an elf went into the kitchen late at night and opened the fridge. It was very nice that the group all pitched in and helped the others. Cooking is not an easy job, it is passion but in my opinion, Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) which many of them don't get. I am so over the 2 page descriptions of a dish.
All of the good chefs I've ever worked with take themselves very seriously. As you might imagine, the lack of campiness on Top Chef doesn't bother me. Most of them are a-holes. What bothers me is the disclaimer at the end acknowledging that the judges consulted with the producers and Bravo in making decisions. In season 2 I felt that Sam was the best all around chef and the match up of Ilan and Marcel only happened because it made better TV. I don't remember the specifics, but all 4 chefs in the semifinal round made small errors, and with that being the case you go with the overall body of work on the show. If that's the case, Sam should be in the final.
And again, I accept that real-life kitchens are intense places... but in the land of bogus TV kitchens, I submit there's room for a little more glee.
P.S. -- Gothamist has fun take on the episode as well: http://gothamist.com/2008/12/18/top_chefs_celebrate_faux_holiday_se.php
I watch Top Chef. I love watching the chefs scuttle around the kitchen preparing food within a time period. It's great, too, how they seriously take their food. In the end, it's the diners who benefit from their passion. I don't take the show very seriously though.
The main thing that was glaring was the Christmas food the chefs created. It was awful. I would had left that Xmas party hungry or drunk off my @ss or both. Tom Cocchilio (sp) did the right thing by in essence telling the chefs that they needed to step up their game. For real!
Oh yeah Fabio the Italian chef is pretty entertaining. His grandmama is non to please with Martha Stewart after last nite. lol
The professional kitchen is a notoriously serious and macho place, isn't it? You really don't mess around with the freshness of a scallop. It's a high stakes, high celebrity business and if you've ever been a waiter, you know how nuts people can get about their food.
Top Chef uses this in the contest. Of course there is product placement; of course there are contrivances; and I wouldn't be surprised if the producers messed with the fridge. "Total drama island," as the spoof show would have it. But the seriousness is real. And if I were Colicchio, I'd be underwhelmed by the product also. Deviled eggs, indeed.
The behavior of the chefs in pitching in to help their distressed competitors seemed natural and was terrific; and the award of the book to the whole team, and the pass that the bottom three got were appropriate responses to their behavior, not to the season.
So lighten up and get serious!