I think I've said before that I get hooked to reality competition shows pretty easily. Even when they're pretty bad. So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I keep finding myself watching Hell's Kitchen even though that show is not at all about the cooking or the competition, but purely about the drama, yelling, and cursing. Supposedly, the earlier seasons were the reverse, but I haven't seen them to be able to tell.
Then when MasterChef came out a few years ago, I watched that and was pleasantly surprised that there was a severe lack of cursing and it actually seemed to be about the cooking and the competition. Sadly, the more seasons the show has, the more it seems to be about the drama, so it's only a matter of time before it becomes as ridiculous as Hell's Kitchen.
When I started watching Netflix, one of the shows I watched on it was Kitchen Nightmares (the UK version). Much like MasterChef, there wasn't nearly as much yelling and screaming as I expected and it honestly seemed to be about Gordon Ramsay actually helping people make their restaurants work again. Sometimes, the owners would be stubborn (which always makes me wonder why they signed up to be on the show in the first place) and kind of warrant being yelled at. But even the yelling was toned down and more normal than what happens on Hell's Kitchen. I do believe that the American version isn't nearly as nice and involves much more yelling.
So it seems that eventually all Gordon Ramsay shows turn into yelling drama shows no matter how they start. I'm not sure if this is Gordon Ramsay's doing, Fox's doing, or what, but it makes me kind of sad because all three of these shows started with interesting premises. Hell's Kitchen is a competition to find a head chef by making cooks alternate between cooking individual dishes in challenges and serving meals to customers as a team for elimination. MasterChef is essentially Top Chef, but with home chefs (i.e. not professionals) instead of real chefs. Kitchen Nightmares is about trying to help a restaurant owner and their employees to figure out why their restaurant is failing and fix it. I'll probably keep watching these shows and other Gordon Ramsay shows, but I really do wish they'd focus more on what made the shows good initially rather than making every show a screaming match.
American reality television is appallingly banal, and American TV producers are to blame. My husband and I have watched a bunch of the UK Kitchen Nightmares and loved them. I couldn't make it through 10 minutes of a US version! Where were the recipes, the wise advice, the conversations that actually sounded real? The screaming and cursing is pathetic - and not worth watching.
ReplyDeleteI agree there's definitely too much focus on the needless drama, but not all of it terrible. Depending on the contestants, Survivor and The Amazing Race can actually be about the competition more than the "I didn't come here to make friends" nonsense.
DeleteI will say, I was incredibly surprised when I watched the UK Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon was being genuinely helpful and not just screaming at them to get better.
I haven't watched any of these shows, but I still find this clip hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPpzJAzdpTU.
ReplyDeleteHaha that is actually ridiculously accurate. They try so hard at making it not predictable (by sometimes eliminating the first person they bring up, wording things stupidly like in that clip, or playing the "You messed up" music/sounds at the wrong time) that a lot of what they say is just nonsense.
DeleteMy personal favorite is when they say things like, "Really? You put those two foods together? I've never seen that done." as if to say that because they haven't seen something done a certain way, it must be terrible. Who needs innovation or new ideas, right?