Past Shows: Aired in 2013 or Earlier, But We Can't Forget Them

[jcbrown]

Not sure where to post this--hope this thread is appropriate. I've been trying to envision a Monty Python round of Chopped. The basket ingredients would be elderberries, a herring, and a wafer thin mint. But what would the fourth ingredient be?

[Bella]

A dead parrot?

[xaxat]

You have to include coconuts and an unladened swallow.

 

 

ETA: And rabbit, provided you are brave enough to hunt one.

 

Edited July 12, 2014 by xaxat

[Julia]

Oh, my people. Obviously, the answer is, well, Spam.

Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and a fried egg is a pantry ingredient, right?

eta: the beleaguered husband is holding out for crunchy raw unboned dead frog. He's agnostic on the issue of peaches.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Julia

[jcbrown]

And now we're getting a whole Python-themed episode, not just one round. Cool!

[xaxat]

We could include a cheese plate as well. That would present quite the challenge 

given that there is no cheese.

[Surrealist]

I started watching Hell's Kitchen back when it first aired. I've been on and off with it ever since. I only started watching MasterChef last season and Kitchen Nightmares in the past couple of years.

 

Anyway, I'm rambling. I've been binge watching some of the Food Network shows, including Chopped. I don't know what it is, but I cannot get into Chopped.

 

I feel like there are too many sob stories. I get that every reality contestant has a story, but as the title of this thread points out "Everyone is sad." For me, that's kind of a turn off. Everyone has a sob story. I'm interested in actual cooking and a worthwhile competition.

 

From what some of you all have said, it used to be a different show. I'm not sure if I can stick with this one.

[cooksdelight]

I remember a lady who came on the show, never complained or had a sob story. She was actually delightful to watch, even though she didn't win. At the end, they had "in memory of...." with her name. I looked it up at the time, and she was killed in a car accident just weeks after taping.

So, when someone comes on and whines about their life, I just tune them out and think of that lady.

ETA: Here is her story.

http://dining.14850.com/features/1108-whiting-chopped

Edited July 16, 2014 by cooksdelight

[Julia]

I remember a lady who came on the show, never complained or had a sob story. She was actually delightful to watch, even though she didn't win. At the end, they had "in memory of...." with her name. I looked it up at the time, and she was killed in a car accident just weeks after taping.

So, when someone comes on and whines about their life, I just tune them out and think of that lady.

ETA: Here is her story.

http://dining.14850.com/features/1108-whiting-chopped

 

Oh, how awful. I hadn't heard about that. Not that I'd have been glad if someone whiny had died, but there are far too few positive people in the world.

[NikSac]

Surrealist you might like the early episodes better. Unless I'm remembering wrong, I don't think they started getting into the relentless sob stories until the more recent seasons.

[auntie thesis]

Surrealist you might like the early episodes better. Unless I'm remembering wrong, I don't think they started getting into the relentless sob stories until the more recent seasons.

 

IIRC, any episodes that occurred prior to the first champions tournament were pretty good. Back then, they had a rotating panel of Geoffrey, Amanda, Scott, Aaron, Chris, Marcus and Alex. All male panels were common and Geoffrey was ruthless in his commentary. Scott was also a lot harsher in the early days and Aaron was usually billed as the "resident Latin expert" or something of that nature. Maneet was rarely around and she looked really pregnant in early seasons, I think. Alex was much more bearable, since she wasn't on every other show yet. She had just came off of competing in NIC, IIRC.

 

People were often (but not always) chopped for forgetting ingredients. The chefs were usually there to win. Ted didn't walk around the kitchen trying to interview contestants. They didn't restock the fridge after every round either, meaning that bacon, butter, and cream were usually gone by the dessert round. They was less bullshit, imo.

 

The end of the quality era in regard to Chopped came after Lauren's unexpected trouncing of Wayne in the first champions tournament. That was probably one of the highest of the points in the show's history, imo. She was a total dark horse and she whipped everyone with that red wine and suckling pig ravioli that remains to be the only dish that effectively silenced Alex for most of the episode. I can't remember if the Lance/Yoanna episode occurred before or after the first champions round, but that was probably the best episode in the show's history, imho. Lance's first appearance would round out my top three. All of those were early episodes.

 

The first Grilling tournament was what really stuck the nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned. That sucked and the show had been going downhill and leaning towards sob stories every since.

[cooksdelight]

Here's a rundown of each episode, who participated, who judged, who won, etc.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chopped_episodes

[nitrofishblue]

Lance went on to be one of Madison Cowen's sous chef on Iron Chef America. The other sous chef was also a Chopped competitor and I can't recall the name. The team did win over the Iron Chef. Great show. I always liked Lance for being such a good person.

[devonshiredeb]

For me and my hubby it is completely possible to determine the winner of each episode:

 

1) Overcooked food never wins

2) Really cocky people never win

3) "I'm here for my (insert) wife, mom, dead dog" rarely wins

 

and on we can go...

 

4) If Scott is judging - bad pasta never wins.

5) If Alex is judging - a women almost never wins....

 

who can add to this list?

[Julia]

It is possible to win because your sad, sad story is just that pitiful, but not if Maneet is on the panel. Maneet will send your ass home.

[picklesprite]

Maneet will send your ass home.

haha!! I love this. Words to live by.

 

Mom to Little Susie, college dean to student, Obama to Putin: "If you don't stop this right now, Maneet will send your ass home!"

[rujasu]

For me and my hubby it is completely possible to determine the winner of each episode:

 

1) Overcooked food never wins

 

I would say the first and foremost one is that missing a basket ingredient means you lose, even though they say it's not an auto-loss.  You might make it to the next round if someone else missed two ingredients, but it will come back to bite you in the final round.

 

Overcooked food is a big no-no, as you mention.  More specifically, improperly cooked meat is usually a trip home while screwing up the starch or veggies is more forgivable.  If you serve a rare steak, best you can do is hope someone else burned theirs.

[NikSac]

We haven't seen it in awhile but I think bleeding anywhere near your food is also an automatic loss.

 

Licking spoons or tasting stuff straight out of a container (backwash anyone?) is apparently fine though.

[cooksdelight]

Depends on who drinks out of the bottle or licks the spoon. I've seen them totally ignore it for an eventual winner.

[Surrealist]

Surrealist you might like the early episodes better. Unless I'm remembering wrong, I don't think they started getting into the relentless sob stories until the more recent seasons.

 

Thank you!

 

Earlier seasons are always better. In the past couple of years, I've started watching more of the cooking competition shows. I'm not much of a cook, but I enjoy watching the competition between talented chefs and cooks. I'm always happy when they dial back on the theatrics, but this seems to be a rare thing.

[Lukeysboat]

I'm watching an episode from 2013 that I somehow missed. It's "Cloche Call" (with the brothers) and this woman, Emilie Friedman, is driving me absolutely batty with her vocal fry. I can barely listen to her, she is so unpleasant. Just stop already!

[cooksdelight]

I remember her. She drove me nuts too.

[cooksdelight]

Do you guys remember Christopher Coombs? He was the one bragging about his stars and his restaurants when I think either Alex or Marc told him to get back to the food. Anyway, he was annoying on that show but as I've gotten to know him via Facebook, he's really OK. And look who he fixed dinner for last night....

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202621744855470&set=a.1042196305816.2006462.1552832225&type=1&theater

[mlp]

CC was one of the most obnoxious contestants ever so maybe he saw himself and read comments and grew up a little.  Also, he looked like a walking cadaver but he appears rather cute in that picture so maybe he's put on some badly needed pounds.

[cooksdelight]

And now Chris is being profiled in Forbes. The guy may have been a jerk on the show but he's going gangbusters.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2014/09/14/boston-chef-chris-coombs-has-turned-humble-beginnings-into-success/

[mlp]

I must say what Chris has accomplished is impressive for one so young.  For anyone really.  I didn't realize he once worked for Ming Tsai.  Interesting.  He looks a lot better in that picture.  Maybe he's gained a little weight. 

[cooksdelight]

I'm watching a redemption from the third season "Sweet Redemption" ep. 34. This guy Chris who cannot shut up is driving everyone nuts. Even Ted told him to be quiet and let him announce the basket ingredients. I'm adding him to my list of the most annoying contestants ever.

ETA: Chris Burke is his name, he's a private chef, I hope I never see him anywhere again.

[ellystar]

I'm watching that episode right now. Chris has to be one of the most insufferable people I've ever seen on this show. I'm shocked he helped her with the can.

[mlp]

I Googled him because I couldn't remember what he looked like and found this: 

 

http://atomicpaulsen.hubpages.com/hub/Bad-Sportsmen-like-Chris-Burke

 

Clearly he affects everyone the same way.

[Julia]

Here, Serious Eats post about Chris Burke on Chopped with a comment thread packed with first-time posters who are seriously invested in teh awesomeness that is Chris Burke. One of them even signs off on his saliva (so nobody needs to worry about having it in their food and shut up already about the doubledipping). Either his friends or his socks love him very much.

http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2009/02/omg-chris-guy-on-chopped.html

[cooksdelight]

I'm watching Top Chef and spotted a Chopped winner in the lineup. Here's an article about him and it gives some really good inside info about how long the day is for filming, how long the food sits before tasting, etc.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/foodaism/item/katsuji_tanabe_takes_chopped

[NikSac]

I'm watching Top Chef and spotted a Chopped winner in the lineup. Here's an article about him and it gives some really good inside info about how long the day is for filming, how long the food sits before tasting, etc.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/foodaism/item/katsuji_tanabe_takes_chopped

 

Wow interesting article, thank you!  No wonder stuff ends up over or under cooked often. I mean it's really pretty hard to guess how much longer your risotto (or pasta, or meat, or whatever) truly needs to finish cooking while still staying at the consistency you want. The coffee thing cracked me up. All of a sudden some of their jitters make even more sense.

[cooksdelight]

Funny black grandma is on!! My favorite Halloween episode. Yay!!

[cooksdelight]

Awwww, the episode where I fell in love with Vinson Petrillo is on.

[cooksdelight]

I'm watching a rerun of"Blood Orange Sorbet, Sweat & Tears" and calling foul on Ted telling the guy not once, but TWICE not to cook with the cheramoya seeds. Once should be enough, not when you see a contestant screwing up and thereby helping him.

The guy with the father issues cried a river. Glad he got cut.

[cooksdelight]

Watching rerun of "Cake Walk?" which I somehow missed the first time around. My Wife Has Cancer guy seems so smug, it's hard to root for him. I hate that I feel bad that he won.

[Bella]

Since we've been discussing the show in general, I thought I'd revive this thread, which I particularly like.

 

I have a deep background in statistics and I work as an editor, so the randomness of the seasons really goes against the sense of order that runs through my entire career. However, one of the best pieces of advice I ever read concerned writer's block: "Lower your standards and move on." So I just pretend the Chopped people have never discovered math beyond being able to count 4 ingredients and run a clock down.

[FormerMod-a1]

It seems like 2013 is when they started overlapping seasons within the same year (link).  Makes you wonder how they define a season.  I haven't watched closely enough to tell, but is it based on the judges?  Like one season has the same set of 4 judges?  or conversely different combo each episode?  More likely it's based on filming - I know a bunch of eps are filmed at once, so maybe a season is now all eps filmed week of X/X/X through Z/Z/Z ?

[cooksdelight]

One episode takes all day, and they film one season within a 2-3 week time frame. Way ahead of time. I guess it takes that long to edit it down to look like what we see. But they might run the risk of having someone on the show who passes away (that happened once) or someone who gets involved in a scandal. I'd think they'd want to air them quicker than they do.

[FormerMod-a1]

Yes, I know that.  That doesn't tell me if that's how they are now defining seasons though.

[cooksdelight]

The book "From Scratch: Inside the Food Network" hints that it's all about ratings. When Chopped became a hit, they couldn't make new episodes fast enough.

 

Here's an article from FN on how a show is put together:

 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/articles/shooting-baskets-behind-the-scenes-of-chopped.html

[FormerMod-a1]

I understand wanting a lot of shows, but why multiple overlapping "seasons" w/in one year.  They could air them all as one season a year, or multiple non-overlapping seasons w/in the same year like they used to.  Defining the season is so arbitrary after the episodes are in the can.  First one aired could be ep 1, then 2nd one aired ep 2, etc. Does that article explain the rational behind defining a season?  If so can you just quote the section or explain it?

[cooksdelight]

No it doesn't. I've never seen anything written that explains how they do seasons. Ask Gordon Ramsay why he is airing MasterChef Jr. this week when his most recent season ended just a few weeks ago. Ratings and ad money. Which is what I got from reading the book From Scratch. Ratings and money make people do strange things.

[FormerMod-a1]

I'm not sure how the numbering of seasons and episodes translates to ratings and money.  I can see how airing episodes, how many, how often and when does - but that has nothing to do with season and episode numbering as far as I can tell.

[cooksdelight]

There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why they shoot 13 episodes and call it a season, and then shoot 6 episodes and call that a season also. At first I thought it had something to do with an All-Stars competition being considered a season, but it doesn't. 

 

This chart only complicates things:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chopped_episodes#Season_5_.282010.29

 

And it looks like they've pretty much started one "season" right after another ends. Maybe I'll run into Ted one day and ask him. :)

[theatremouse]

I'd guess, and this is just a guess, that the contracts/salaries of the people involved, not just the judges/host, but even down to the producers and crew is in some way based on the concept of a "season". This happens all the time and networks often tweak what they define as a "season" to get the most benefit out of current contracts. One not really great analog example of how HBO would sometimes split a show's season into two parts and air them a year apart, maybe 8 episodes here and 5 there. That's sort of the opposite of what Chopped is doing, but it was to squeeze more money out of it basically, even though most viewers might surmise episodes airing a year apart would not be considered the same "season". In the HBO example, if they'd made those two blocks of episodes separate "seasons" they'd have owed various people more money because of contractual things tied to the number of "seasons".

 

Not that we likely have any chance of knowing how the Chopped contracts are structured...but if we start at the known bit that early on they couldn't produce episodes fast enough, presumably they structured this whole thing of each "season" filmed in a mad rush 3 week period, many within the same year, to accommodate something about how the contracts were structured. What exactly that something is, we don't know. They may have negotiated certain judges per season, and so they bundled the eps like that. They may have negotiated certain people be available certain times of year for filming and thus defined those seasons based on those people contracted to be there during those times. Or after X seasons certain people may get more money per episode, or only have agreed to participate in X episodes for season n through n+b, and Y episodes for season n+b thru n+c, and so. But if they were in high demand to crank out more shows than they originally planned for, I would not be at all surprised if they renegotiated things with people, or just plain negotiated things to bring in more people, and it resulted in the wierd constructs we now see.

 

I mean, I realize I'm probably not shedding much light on the situation, other than to say the audience's internal brainspace definition of a season, and how this type of show markets itself, and how the production may be required to construct a "season" do not necessarily require that one's definition of "season" remotely fit in with the other's. Which is a sort of long way of saying: I don't think they care or expect the audience to try to make sense of which "season" is which. It's not as though there's a continuous storyline anyone is trying to follow. It's not as though these are likely to be released on DVD in some needed chronological or even logical order. So it may not translate to ratings, but it almost certainly does boil back to money.

[Bella]

Thanks, Theatremouse. That's helpful.

 

 

I don't think they care or expect the audience to try to make sense of which "season" is which. It's not as though there's a continuous storyline anyone is trying to follow. It's not as though these are likely to be released on DVD in some needed chronological or even logical order.

 

We're thinking linearly, it seems, while they are thinking in blocks that do not necessarily need to be linear even though such blocks usually are linear for other shows.

[FormerMod-a1]

And until 2013 they were for this show.  

 

Film in whatever blocks they want.  Group them into whatever seasons they want based on contracts.  Air new episodes every day if they want.  It still seems there should be some way to air them or number them so all "seasons" aren't happening at the same time.  All that said, it's a very minor point for me (hard to tell, I know) and I don't care that much.  I was just musing on how it came to be or how they now define it rather than how they used to.  It seems to me contracts and ratings would always be a thing and for other networks, but only this show has this weird overlapping season issue - and it's a LOT of overlap.

[GHScorpiosRule]

As I'm watching the episodes out of order (I'm dvring all new and repeats), I find myself rolling my eyes at the judges' snobbery over the use of Indian spices/ingredients that have been put in the mystery boxes, as well as the contestants'. It's like the contestants never heard of Indian food before or pickles, or whatever.

 

And yet some of them are so arrogant in the confessionals? Is that the right word? When they say how great they are and how they're going to win this, only to be booted off.

 

And y'all weren't kidding about Alex's stink-eye. I think I caught two of the earlier seasons (8, I think it was), where she's looking as if she wants all the contestants dead or something. So color me shocked when in that one episode where the chefs cooked from their own culture, that Roshni, who Alex really seemed to not like, won. But I feel she won by a technicality only because the guy she was up against failed to complete plating for each course.

 

And I don't know if it's the editing monkeys, but it really grosses me out when I see the chefs sweat dripping off their heads/noses and into the food while they're cooking. Blech. Or when those that have their hair hanging in their faces...I worry that strands of hair have fallen into the food. Scrape the hair back, for goodness sakes!

[cooksdelight]

You will cry with joy when you see the episode which has a chef named Lance, and a female chef from France named Yoanne. It's my favorite episode, ever. It shows that there are really good people in the world and that competing on this show is not always about bragging rights or having your mom and dad be convinced that you chose the right profession.

It's in season 8, called Sweet Second Chance.

In a Chopped Redemption episode, Ted Allen challenges returning Chopped competitors Lance Nitahara, Yoanne Magris, Siggy Sollitto and Chris Coombs to create a three-course meal using mystery ingredients. The judges are Geoffrey Zakarian, Amanda Freitag and Marc Murphy.