My Love/Hate Relationship with Food Network

Last night my roommate and I rewound Jamie at Home three times to watch Jamie fall in his garden in slow motion. I heart Jamie Oliver and his new show. I heart alot of programs on Food TV. In fact, I watch more hours of FoodTV than anything else and after all these years of viewership I feel I have earned my right to criticize the network for their failures. Namely: Ultimate Recipe Showdown.

Ultimate Recipe Showdown is maybe the worst idea ever. Hey let's watch boring Midwesterners pour pre-measured ingredients in a bowl and stir. Brilliant! Additionally, the judges have nothing interesting to say. Perhaps I am just used to watching quality judges like Mo Rocca, Ted Allen and Andrew Knowlton (swoon!) on Iron Chef America, or maybe it is that card board cut out people are more interesting.

Let's see what the rest of the blogging world thinks:

Food Network's Ultimate Recipe Showdown
1.) Commentary by the incredibly annoying duo of Marc Summers and Guy Fieri, both of whom are trying to match the original Japanese Iron Chef commentators.

2). Competitors are set up on fake Iron-Cheffy set. But they're sooooo slow and boring instead of fast and dynamic. It's a mental disconnect.

3). Randomly inserted, seated interviews with competitors (which actually makes them seem somewhat human, unlike their snail-paced cooking).

Quite possibly the worst Food Network show ever, with the exception of Dweezil and Lisa. A stunning new low, in my opinion.

I couldn't agree more! Weird-O interviews with Guy as they watch the judges eat their food.. LAME! Plus they are required to wear aprons that tie around the neck.. Middle aged women with a respectable sized bosom beware- these make you look frumpy!

Ultimate Recipe Showdown is like Iron Chef for regular folks… if you strip out the excitement of a secret ingredient, cooking in real-time, world class chefs, and the eccentric, campy charm of the original Japanese show and instead replace that all with a non-secret ingredient cooked by too many challengers per episode, jerkily edited cooking segments that barely hold your interest, regular home cooks, and the forced, witless humor of none other than Guy Fieri. Throw in the do-no-wrong credibility-infusing Marc Summers, and you still have a pretty weak show. In short, I didn’t love it.....

The whole spectacle just has too much of everything—too many hosts, too many challengers, too many dramatic pauses (there seems to be a horrible battle within reality competitions to see who can hold the longest dramatic pause), too many lights and lasers and sound effects… just too much hype. I found myself bored throughout my various attempts to get through the episode, hoping that something would eventually grab my attention. Nothing ever did. In a television world in which nothing is ever overdone (Lie detector game show? Sure. America’s Sexiest Fetus? Absolutely.), the producers just seemed to throw a little bit of everything into URS in the hopes that something would work.

All in all I guess all I have to say is: This is what happens when Friday's sponsors a cooking show. More from my kitchen and less from my couch coming soon.

Muffin love,

LJ