JTMacc99

I would love to see the story of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's got all sorts of fun stuff. John Roebling, the designer, had his toes crushed and then amputated by a barge when doing a survey of the site. He died from tetnus about three weeks later (mostly because he decided to skip normal treatment for some sort of running water over the wound method.) His son, who he had just put in charge of the project before the accident, suffered from crippling decompression sickness (the bends from going down to the bottom of the river where they were going to put the foundation) shortly after the start of the project and had to supervise most of it from his home with his wife writing things down and communicating for him. Many workers also suffered the same fate from the bends. Six days after it opened somebody started a rumor it was going to collapse and whole bunch of people died in a stampede. Almost a full year after that, P.T. Barnum helped finally put an end to that rumor by marching his circus over the bridge including 21 elephants. The whole thing is just made for Drunk History retelling.

My favorite as well, and my favorite segment is Lewis and Clark but just barely over Dolly Parton. That segment had the great acting from Tony Hale and Taran Killiam and the really wonderful narrating from Alie and Georgia. Highlights were when Georgia talked about the Lakota Indrians, and the smart-asses who produce the show put "Lakota Indrians" as a caption on the screen, and then very late in the show when one of them called the other one a whore. Heh.

The season 3-9 heyday also had the advantage of still being able to explore new things about the characters. For example, we knew that Moe was a sad, angry guy who was also a little shady and a small time bookie. But in season five, (in the Cape Feare episode) we learned that he was also dabbling in international wildlife smuggling. Of course, when he got caught, he waved the pandas out of the back door. Andele!

Well, you know, that's kind of why I noted that I have that short list that never comes off of my top ten, and then named a few other older episodes that have always made me happy to see them. But it would be unfair of me to say that I haven't really enjoyed many of the episodes made in the last ten years. There are a whole bunch of really fun and smart episodes in the last batch of 200, but there is no chance I'll remember them as fondly as I will the ten or so I just mentioned. I watched those old episodes dozens of times, and that was even before the DVR, which means I video taped the damn things and watched them over and over again. Those are the episodes that made The Simpsons a second language between me and my friends. Those are the episodes that made The Simpsons part of our collective culture.

To start: Cape Feare (Your name is Homer Thompson) Marge vs. Monorail (Simpson, Homer Simpson, He's the greatest guy in history. From the, town of Springfield, He's about to hit a chestnut tree. AAAAGH!) 22 Short Films about Springfiled (An Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?) Flaming Moe's (Hugh Jass! Somebody check the men's room for a Hugh Jass!) Those four have been in my top 10 list forever and are never coming off it. After that, there is an ever changing list that includes: Last Exit to Springfield ("Oh man, I shouldn't have had all that beer and coffee and watermelon.) Homer at the Bat (Hey, Homer's choking again.) Rosebud (Ooooh! A head bag! They're chock full of heady... goodness.) You Only Move Twice (Nobody every says Italy.) Homer the Great (Who rigs ever Oscar night?)

Well, I made the call above that it was going to be at the final six, but Bobby started it last night with "and then there were seven". I'm not sure if I was right and Bobby just jumped the gun because Alton had the week off, but I think I'm going to roll with that explanation.

He had a few interesting post-its during that run: Q: Why is Sarah still on this show??? A: I'll tell you why: The producers liked her interviews. Q: Why do the challenges suck so much this year? A: Well, I'll be honest: No one asked the judges! Q: Why is there such a small emphasis on cooking this season: A: That is a VERY good question. #WeJudgesWerePissed Q: And, yet, last week you sent home the contestant who made the best dish. Seems like you could have emphasized cooking then. A: The point was the DEMO & he demo'd diddly. There were a whole bunch of other things, but I've extracted the ones I thought were interesting to things we've talked about recently. I understand and have always watched this show with the belief that the vast majority of what happens is a result of people making decisions they believe will improve THIS show. The premise of the show is to find a Food Network Star, but the production of the show has to center around making this show entertaining. So I give the producers a lot of room when I see things like they might be keeping around a contestant a little longer because she gives good interviews. I actually have almost no problem with that. Seems like standard reality TV show stuff, and I'm sure that I get more entertainment from good interviews than I do get satisfaction from people getting eliminated in the proper order. And I am only tuning in because I want to be entertained. But when the producers of a reality show tinker with the format to create drama in a way that fundamentally changes the premise of a show, I can quickly lose interest. For example, when Top Chef Masters shifted from "Bring together accomplished chefs and put them through the same competition as the regular Top Chef contestants", to "Bring together accomplished chefs and give them challenges that are way more difficult than the normal Top Chef contestants", I found myself really turned off. I wanted to see great chefs kick ass and show me where the bar should be set for the regular show, and I got that for the first season. Then they changed it and made the poor bastards cook in a camper or in the back of a taco bell, and then they judged them harshly for not producing TCM quality results. And the same thing happens on this show sometimes. For example, the idea of make a product and a commercial that conveys your POV is actually a terrific challenge. And then to ratchet up the drama, we're going to put you on a green screen background that has NOTHING to do with any of the other important components of the challenge. Is there anybody who looks at this in hindsight and thinks the assigned backgrounds ADDED something to the show? The problem for me and probably for the producers is figuring where the line is for each challenge. I personally didn't have a problem with assigning specific American dishes to the contestants last week and telling them to figure out a way to make a version that goes with their POV. I thought that a good POV leaves plenty of room for interpretation. But other people have made convincing arguments that it wasn't a fair challenge. So I understand there is a big game the producers are playing while they try to make this show be as interesting as possible. I am usually willing to give them some slack, but I think they screwed up with this one.

Yeah. Nicole had a moment where she stopped playing the Food Network Star game and got flustered by the challenge of selling her coastal POV while on a wild west green screen. So did Lenny, who fell (further) into a strange used car salesman persona, and Emma, who put on that stupid accent.

I posted a link to her blog earlier where she explains it. I wonder if she gets eliminated before she ever gets to articulate it on the show. To her, it is about a way of life of people who live along the coast, more than it is just food fished out of the ocean. (She explains it much better than I just half-ass attempted to do.) When she explains it, I think it sounds like a nice broad POV that could give her a lot to work with for a long time.

Maybe it is the Game of Thrones fan in me, but I have this feeling that now that I've decided she is okay, I fully expect her to bitterly disappointment me and get the (figurative) axe this week. Also, heh, I love calling FNS contestants clowns. Even though I have a few over the years I ended up really liking, an awful lot of them really have been clowns.

Here is Nicole's explanation of her POV and her recipe for the pork kebab. Actually, it is a whole blog that has an entry after each episode and then a whole bunch of stuff before she started on the show.

I gravitate to level of attractiveness I think I should be if I could just drop a couple pounds and dress better.

I am familiar with certain stories and characters in the comic books. I am generally speaking unfamiliar with CW shows other than The Arrow. And since Satisfaction = Experience/Expectations, I was fortunate that my only expectation was that this would be a good pilot and not how it would measure up against Flash stories or whether or not is just like Smallville or not enough like Smallville. And I thought it was a good pilot. I was engaged. I liked the actor playing the main character. I think there were moments of good chemistry between the characters, which is really all I can hope to see from a pilot. (If the chemistry never develops once the show hits its stride, I'm out, but it is WAY too early to expect great chemistry yet.) And I liked the comic book stuff, both in general and in the few things I recognized. For example, I saw that cage with the Grodd sign on it, and had the same "Cool!" reaction that Oliver and Barry had to each other. So in other words, I agree with the critics. It was a really good pilot episode, strictly as a TV show not measured up against any expectations of what a Flash TV show should be.

The episode that came from was just on the other day. I remember cracking up when I was watching it with my kids, who naturally questioned my sanity. They need to fold everybody's laundry in the house for a couple months and THEN they'll get that joke.

Hee! True, but I was thinking about the people who run the social media part of the business. They're more at the mercy of the content. They probably don't even get warned that the next episode is going to cause a big stink. They'll just go about their business posting things like "What did you think of tonight's elimination?" and then get surprised when there are waves of people straying from the usual reactions about the contestants and into "The Food Network is a joke!" territory. From there it starts turning into spinning and damage control in the present, and definitely running it up the chain of command to the content producers that whatever it is they are doing is NOT generating the right kind of response. It's going to take a while for them to fix the problem they created and produce a better show. Since I like this show, I'm kind of hoping that by the time we get down to the final three that I've at least got some level of confidence that the winner is genuinely enthusiastic about great food, likeable, and hopefully nice to look at. They haven't really given me too much of that combination recently.

As a result of what I do for a living, I've had the chance to spend some time with network executives from all parts of the business, so not just programming (like Bob, who is a really nice guy, and super smart), but also finance, engineering, and HR. They're all pretty much like anybody else who has a lot of responsibility within any organization. They worry about the people who work for them. They worry about whether or not the decisions they make are going to help their business grow. For the most part, they do what they think is the right thing to do. I've never really asked any of them if negative reactions on social media is something they embrace in the vein of any buzz is good buzz, but I have a feeling that most of them would prefer not to have a lot of negative reactions. (And you are right, the marketing group is a big fan of "buzz".) I think everybody who watches TV, especially reality TV, enjoys it more when a show has heroes and villains. As we hit the final 7 of this season, I've absolutely picked my hero and a couple of not so much villains, but duds I can't wait to be shown the door. And in my experience, I think the people running social media for the Food Network would like to see negative reactions about certain contestants in social media, because that means people are invested, but I don't think they like to see overwhelming negative reaction to the general execution of the show. That's not the kind of buzz they're looking to get. As long as one of these remaining contestants starts to earn enough praise for his or her food, they still have a chance to pull this out of the fire. But I'll guess that during the next season, they sacrifice a couple of the bad cooks right up front to appease the angry mobs.

That's a really interesting point. This show has featured good chef / bad TV personality type people before, and they never get very far. But I do remember them and would be interested in eating their food. And it is also really interesting when I ask myself the question, "Exactly what percentage of talented chefs out there would be able to step out of their kitchens today and be entertaining enough to carry a half-hour TV show?" It's got to be a percentage that starts with 0.0 and maybe even another zero or two after that. When the Food Network wants to bring in guys like Christopher, and I believe that they do have a home for good looking talented chefs, they find much more success by putting them through Chopped or Next Iron Chef first. The next move is to use them as contributors on other shows like Best Thing I Ever Ate or other travel type shows. This is where a guy like Christopher could get comfortable being on TV. He could add a lot of information and show us that he truly does have a love of food, and he could do it in a scenario that just lets him talk about food rather than thinking about teaching. Eventually if he did get the hang of it, he could pitch a Sunday morning show to the network and because he's got some appeal, has the cooking chops to teach us something, and the experience of how to be a TV Food personality, THEN he might be able to pull it off.

But Giada spelled it out very clearly. This is a very short process, and while that might be true, there was very little chance it was going to happen in the next 4 or 5 episodes. While Christopher made the best dish, and as a professional chef, might have been the best cook left, it isn't like he was the only good cook. Maybe it just seemed that way because they kept around three (Sarah, Christopher, Reuben) people who the entire comment about them was "we just need to see if he or she can cook", and they dinged three of the other ones about something on their plates (Unseasoned Steak, Bland Guacamole, Not Crabby enough Crab Cakes.) If you've got eight people and only two of them made food that didn't have some sort of issue, it REALLY sticks out when you send home one of those two. Making matters worse, they didn't name the other one as a weekly winner simply because she forgot to link her dish to her POV during the presentation but did name a winner who was reprimanded for a mistake that seemed to be really basic. That, and the fact that the guy they sent home was the best looking of the bunch. That doesn't help either.

But I really liked that Nicole had to figure out what to do with BBQ within her POV. And if she had just either thought of or remembered to say, "I'm bringing you to the coast of Mexico!", she would have won the challenge. Being able to have a fairly narrow POV but also be able to present a wide variety of food is one of the most important things to bring with you to the Food Network. Rachael Ray killed it with 30 minute meals. Giada had a really good and long run with everyday Italian. Jeff Mauro is trying to do with turning everything into some kind of sandwich (which by the way is too narrow compared to my first two examples.) If Nicole can turn BBQ pork into coastal cuisine by just switching countries, then she might be on to something. To me, that was way more impressive than the butcher getting a steak.

I still like this show, and I still mostly like the way the Food Network goes about entertaining me (although a lot of that has to do with the existence of the Cooking Channel.) As long as the common thread between all of the "stars" is a genuine love of food, I'll take any mix of attractive, personable and knowledgeable and pick and choose depending on my mood. They can populate the knowledgeable group from Next Iron Chef and other channels that give them genuinely successful professional chefs. I accept slightly less attractive people from that group in exchange for enthusiasm and good ideas. The can populate some of the other shows with people like the ones (who aren't professional reality show contestants) we sometimes find on this show. I accept slightly less than professional chef knowledge for TV-likeability, but the person HAS to demonstrate a genuine love of food. Demaris was a really good example of this. I thought she really loved to cook, and I am hoping that when she settles in at the Food Network, that she'll take advantage of being immersed in the food world and take us along on her journey as she experiences and learns new things. So, having said that, I'm trying to pick out who I would like to give a chance from this group. Bobby interestingly thought that Christopher had the cooking talent and that they could teach him how to present it on TV. In this case, I agreed with Giada and Alton. It's a short competition, and he was never going to get even remotely good at presenting by the time it's over, so he had to go. The other thing about Christopher on my personal standards is that his inability to present made it seem like he was just going through the motions instead of being genuinely excited about the food he was creating. If you can't convey the enthusiasm, even if you have it, then I will never watch you on TV. Of course, if this were a real interview process, they could have cut it down to Lenny, Emma, Nicole and I guess Loreal by now and go from there. They've all made food that has either been really good, like when Bobby said that he wanted to keep eating Nicole's Pineapple and Pork thing this week, or at least had an excuse for being not that great such as the constraints of the Cutthroat Kitchen challenge.

Heh. I can't think of a character in any TV show, movie or book who would more appreciate being called a magnificent bastard than Erlich.

I have no problem with that. And if the challenges give us some sort of insight into whether or not I should like them overall, I guess that's the way I need to roll with this show. If I'm completely honest with myself, I get a better sense of whether or not I like a person from the side interviews than I ever do from the cooking or camera challenges. I look at the way I choose which shows I'll watch during the weekend morning cooking blocks, and it has very little to do with what any of the individuals are actually making, and very much to do with whether or not I like watching the person on TV. If I want a good recipe for something, I can find 100 versions of it on the internet in 30 seconds on my phone.

The two you left out were eliminated this week Aryen and New Jersey girl Nicole. The latter is my favorite of the bunch. I'm still unclear as to whether or not she can pull off the cooking part of a half-hour show, but I am confident that I wouldn't mind looking at her while she gave it a shot.

Which is in line with my expectations from this show. The judges will eventually toss out the ones who can't cook, so I'm more invested in finding somebody I won't mind watching on TV. I'll throw one positive thought towards this challenge. At least it forced them to be in front of a camera doing something that wasn't teaching, lecturing, or telling stories about grandma. Even with the ridiculous premise, we got to see them have a chance to display some of their own personality (by seeing which ones took the opportunity to do so.)

The CW sent out some DVDs with episode one of a couple of their new shows for the fall. I grabbed The Flash. I'll report back with non-spoiler opinions for you all after I watch it.