I Have No Witty Title

Ok, this is the point where I admit to you that I've been watching The Next Food Network Star. Some people like American Idol, I happen to like this show. In case you haven't seen it and have no idea what it is, just think of AI only with hosting a cooking show instead of singing. The contestants have to prepare dishes on and off camera, explain what they are doing and go through various challenges. When it gets down to the last few (4, I think), the audience gets to start voting. Really quickly, let's run through the contestants who were remaining before this week's show.

Reggie: This guy is a happy, goofy, rather rotund fellow, and I like that about him. After all, you know the saying, "never trust a skinny cook." He has great energy and really can connect with the audience. He seems to be having problems dealing with the time constraints of working on a show, but has been progressively getting better.

Nate: Bald ex-model who loves showing off his classical culinary training almost as much as he loves himself. He knows exactly what he's doing when he's cooking, but he makes me want to be sick. Last week, when he was criticized for being nasty to a person who he thought was interviewing him on live TV, he agreed with them and gave the most horrific fake smile I have ever seen. Besides, why would the Food Network need an annoyingly arrogant, condescending chef? They already have Sara Moulton.

Carissa: She seems to think that she is the greatest thing to happen to cooking since fire. Fortunately, when she stops doing interviews and starts doing cooking segments, she turns her personality around and manages to be energetic and friendly. Now if she could just get the hang of preparing for cooking on set rather than in a normal kitchen she could turn in dishes that are actually cooked, and she'd have a chance to do pretty well.

Guy: He has a couple problems, the biggest of which is that he tends to speak almost entirely in jargon. Actually, this is really the only problem. The frosted hair and always wearing shorts are just his personality and they work for him. He has a lot of energy, he has a lot of personality and his dishes look great. If he tones down the jargon and slows down just enough to make himself easy for a home cook to follow, this competition is his.

Andy: The stuff he makes looks great. He seems like a really nice guy. The problem is that when he gets on camera, he has no personality. Zero. If he can find some sort of energy, he can end up being one of the last two or three. If not, he could be gone next week.

Evette: There was pretty much no doubt that she was going to be the one to go this week. Her food never looked good, she never actually showed much of the actual cooking or preparation in her segments. She also didn't take criticism well at all. She seemed to think that the reasons people critiqued anything she did was because they didn't "get" her style, when in fact she was lucky not to have been the first one eliminated. The thing that did keep her around for this long was that she has a great on-camera personality that helped counter some of the other shortcomings.

This week, the contestants were split into groups and had to perform a segment where they worked together to prepare two dishes. The two teams of men did pretty well, working together and sharing both camera time and duties. The team of two women, on the other hand, was awful. They didn't work well together, they talked about not liking some of the things they were making, and they ended up moving to opposite ends of their work area almost immediately as if it were two separate shows. The second challenge for the week had to do with multi-tasking. Each contestant was given 45 minutes to prepare for a 7-minute segment about preparing two appetizers (their own recipes, but selected by the judges). Pretty much everyone had a hard time with this, other than Guy, who never has a problem moving quickly. Nathan didn't even manage to plate his food and Evette decided that she didn't have enough time, so she would only do one. This unfortunately really defeats the purpose of trying to show that you can multi-task. In the end, Evette had to go, leaving only 5 contestants.

I enjoy this show, but I do have one final thought and that is about the host. Marc Summers. I really wish someone would call him out on a couple of things. First of all, you'd have a hard time convincing me hasn't had some serious plastic surgery. He looks like he's one nose job away from going the full Michael Jackson route. More importantly, let's not forget this is the dude from Double Dare. At some point during this show, someone needs to have the guts to tell him they'll take the physical challenge instead.

Until later...