For the most part, I despise reality television. I don't watch Real Housewives of anything, mainly because they're not. I don't watch the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, or any of those MTV/VH1 shows that follow around people I don't care about. What I do like is Top Chef, Face Off, and Project Runway. I prefer when they make it a glorified game show. As a matter of fact, I dislike when they get too hokey.
Top Chef pits chefs against each other to win lots of money and food showcases in different magazines or various food and wine exhibitions. What they win is unimportant to the viewer; it's just fun to see what they make in each challenge. Usually, each episode opens with a quickfire challenge, followed by an elimiation challenge. The quickfire challenge is a short challenge with no real planning time, done on the fly. The elimination challenge commonly comes with time to plan, a shopping budget, and longer prep times.
Where Top Chef loses its luster is the forced emotion factor. Whether it is the judges participating in uninteresting, childish small talk while waiting for the food, or the overly-dramatic reactions of the contestants when they see a celebrity guest judge, the viewer should be treated with more respect. I'm sure they're excited to see Charlize Theron walk out, but could we please see a genuine reaction? The jokes the judges make during off moments are terrible. Whether the jokes are suggested to them or the judges just have really poor senses of humor is unclear.
Top Chef does excel at creating interesting challenges that force the contestants to think outside the box. For every basic task, such as cooking steak, there is a unique challenge like creating dishes that would please the murderous queen from Snow White. I applaud the use of the basic and the unique to keep the show interesting.
The quick fires are often the challenges that push the contestants out of their comfort zone. They often use weird and unusual ingredients and are born out of odd ideas. One quickfire had the contestants preparing rattlesnake, since they were in Texas. Another challenge found them making dishes out of ingredients found in a snackbar on a ferry. At the same time, going to extremes can cause them to just become silly, as the snackbar/ferry challenge did. At some point in time, it stops being cooking and becomes an exercise in repurposing ready made snacks, something many children do with the contents of their lunch box.
When the rules of the quickfire are explained, you can be eliminated if you don't follow them exactly. Told you must have three ingredients on the plate? If you don't have them, you lose. Supposed to plate two dishes? You had better, or your lose. What I find interesting is that most times, when someone is disqualified for not following the rules, the judges tell that contestant they would have won if they had not been disqualified. I just find that hard to believe, since it happens so often.
The drama between contestants is usually kept pretty low key, which is refreshing in any type of reality show. If the chef contestants are being catty, we see it, but it doesn't come to an overly dramatic culmination. They chefs behave a little more like real people than the individuals on other types of reality shows. The discontent that occasionally crops us between contestants is believable; they act as normal human beings would.
While the competing chefs behave normally, that changes upon seeing celebrity judges. It goes a little over the top. Generally, I find the episodes that feature guest judges who have nothing to do with the culinary arts silly. Not to pick on Charlize Theron, but her appearance on a recent episode is an excellent example. I have nothing against her as an actress or a person. Obviously, I don't know her. What I do know is that her appearance on Top Chef was to pimp her latest film, Snow White and the Huntsman. (No, not my brother.) That's her job, but it has no place on a show about cooking. It yielded an excellent elimination challenge that brought out the best in the competing chefs, but her appearance didn't make sense. She doesn't know a great deal about food as an art form or a profession. We can't identify with her as an average person, so she doesn't help to pull the audience into the show. Other celebrity judges include Natalie Portman and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz. While they may be interesting individuals, they don't make sense as judges. (Also, I know Ad-Rock was on the dessert version.)
Despite a few flaws, I love Top Chef. If they are running a marathon, you can be secure in the knowledge that I will have it on. I am obviously not a chef, as my best culinary creation is my mashed potatoes, but watching the show makes me want to try out different ingredients and cooking styles. I find the finished products to be fascinating. I would love it if they would stop introducing the judges in every single episode, but I know they need to do that for the people who do not regularly watch the show. Of course, that doesn't make it any less annoying.
(Moved from FB - January 25, 2012)
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