On The Fourth Day Of Christmas

On the Fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....Four Reality-Competition Show Stars. (Well five really but two of these are so joined in the public imagination that they can safely be counted as one.) Okay, admittedly these are people from shows that I watch and I don't really focus on shows like Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, or American Idol, but do you really want to be reminded of Sanjaya?

Yau-Man Chan: Everybody's favourite loser on Survivor: Fiji. Yau-Man was smart, enthusiastic, agile, and beloved by his fellow competitors. He opened a sealed wooden box when brawnier members of his tribe failed through the simple expedient of dropping it on its corner. His childhood in Borneo gave him some knowledge of the jungle. He almost single handedly won an immunity challenge for his team by applying physics – by way of "unorthodox" techniques – to a challenge involving traditional Fijian weapons. He not only managed to tell his alliance that he had one of the hidden Immunity Idols when forced by two other players, he managed to build on his alliance by revealing that his belongings had been searched. He read his opponents so well that he knew the exact time to play his Immunity Idol – if he hadn't played it at just the right time he'd have been eliminated by a 4-2 vote. His one misstep involved the "car curse." In a Reward Challenge he won a new truck. He immediately decided to use it as a bargaining chip, offering it to cheerleading coach "Dreamz" in return for a promise that if "Dreamz" won the immunity challenge in the final four he wouldn't vote for Yau-Man. "Dreamz" took the truck and then broke his promise, with Yau-Man finishing fourth. The "car curse" turned out to be doubly powerful – "Dreamz" not only didn't win the million dollar first prize, neither he nor Cassandra (the other player who faced the final jury vote) got a single vote.

Dick Donato: "Evel" was by turns abusive, arrogant, tender, mocking and strategically brilliant during his time on Big Brother 8. The California National Organization for Women called for his removal from the show because of remarks he made about a female competitor, and online petitions circulated for and against him. And yet there was usually method in his supposed madness because when it came down to it, Dick's primary objective was not to win the half million dollar prize for himself but to win it for his daughter Danielle who was also a contestant. He was the first person in the history of the American version of Big Brother to have been able to used the Power of Veto to save himself and instead use it on the other nominee – his daughter Danielle (she later returned the favour). And although he tended to be less than successful at challenges his determination a marathon task that didn't work as planned (part of the mechanism for the challenge broke down early in the challenge leaving the two remaining contestants to hold onto a rope while being drenched in water) was only a prelude to his success in the remaining two parts of the final Head of Household competition. This in turn allowed him to go to the final two with his daughter, as he had planned. The quality of his game play (combined with his popularity with the public in a season where phone voting controlled one player) allowed him to win the season.

"Jeric" (Jessica Hughbanks & Eric Stein): You know you have something when you have two reality-competition players whose connection is so deep that they grow a compound name, and their fans petition for their inclusion in The Amazing Race. That happened to "Romber" (Rob & Amber from Survivor: All Stars, and one of the best teams ever to appear on The Amazing Race in my opinion) and it happened to Jessica & Eric. Admittedly they didn't win Big Brother 8, or even finish in the final four, but they had amazing chemistry together and their romantic relationship blossomed on the show. Admittedly things were complicated for Eric due to the whole "America's Player" thing, which allowed viewers at home to determine who Eric would vote for and some of his other actions – on his own Eric probably wouldn't have made some of the voting decisions that were made for him – but somehow they worked through it. True, Eric's first kiss with Jessica had been voted on by the fans, and it was their choice that he give his (supposed) childhood "woobie" to her but there was a definite connection there. Even their evictions from the house had an almost Romeo & Juliet quality to it – in a double eviction episode Eric was removed from the show just minutes after Erica. Since their appearance on Big Brother they are apparently still together, if in a rather long distance relationship at the moment. More to the point they were such fan favourites that when Eric made a comment about how he'd like to be on The Amazing Race, fans started a petition to get the couple on the show.

Julia Williams: Reality TV fans are a fickle lot, and nothing showed that more than the reaction to Julia. She became a fan favourite on the third season of Hell's Kitchen due to her underdog status. While most of the other competitors had experience in fine dining establishments, Julia was a short order cook for the Waffle House chain. The abuse started almost immediately, when she was relegated to chopping apples during dinner service. It was only after one of the "better trained" members of her team repeatedly failed to fry quail eggs that she let her frustration go. Even then, some members of her team wanted to eliminate her because she "worked at the (expletive) Waffle House." She was nominated later for "not knowing proper culinary terms," something so absurd that Ramsay voided the nomination. Julia's performance continued to improve, and when Ramsay was finally forced to fire her, he not only praised her performance on the show but even offered to pay for her to attend culinary school. She was most assuredly the fan's favourite at this point in the show. And then came the series finale. The final two were "Rock", an executive chef from Virginia, and Bonnie, a self-described nanny an personal chef from Los Angeles. The relationship between Julia and Bonnie had never been good – Bonnie was one of the people who thought Julia should have been fired in the first episode – and Julia seemed resentful that Bonnie in particular was there and she wasn't. The fans – some of them at least – turned on her. She was pouting; she wasn't sufficiently grateful for Ramsay paying her way to culinary school. Worst of all, she was a "sore loser" and may even have used her attitude to keep Bonnie from winning. Even I felt that if it were a real restaurant rather than the finale of a reality competition, Bonnie would have been justified in firing Julia's ass – after service was over. Still, no one can deny that at least for most of what was really a lacklustre season for the show, Julia was the one the fans were behind.

Get The Hell Out Of The Kitchen

Like a lot of people, I have come to a conclusion about this season of Hell’s Kitchen, which entered its final phase – probably spread over a couple of episodes – last Monday. And that conclusion is that neither of these people should be entrusted with their own restaurant at place as classy as Las Vegas’s Green Valley Ranch. Actually, none of the contestants this year should have been despite one of the contestants having a raw talent that might have made her a winner.

(Not that they’ll actually get their own restaurant of course. Heather West, who won last season, actually received a job at a level "suitable to her experience" at Green Valley Ranch's sister resort Red Rocks. This was determined to be senior chef under Executive Chef Renato DePirro at the already established Terra Rosa, rather than being executive chef at a restaurant built to her own specifications. Season One winner, Michael Wray, was offered his own restaurant, but this was apparently superceded by an offer by Gordon Ramsay to work for a year in one of his London restaurants. Wray accepted but then his wife refused to go. After this, according to Wray, he was given "a chunk of cash and US$75,000 in restaurant equipment" for winning. Hardly the prize promised.)

Not that this season hasn't been entertaining. In fact the cast seems to have been selected for its entertainment quality, with culinary ability seeming to be a secondary concern. That's the only way that I can explain Aaron, the overweight retirement home chef, Eddie, the diminutive grill cook (he suffered for Kidney disease as a child which stunted his growth agave him an almost childlike appearance), or Bonnie, the bubbly blonde nanny/personal chef. There were also experienced cooks. If titles mean anything then Rock had the biggest – Executive Chef – and there were a couple of sous-chefs and line cooks. One of these was Jen, who when talking to the others later in the competition revealed that she had worked as a pastry chef in a number of restaurants including Morimoto in Philadelphia (the first American restaurant of Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto). And then there was Julia, the short order cook from Atlanta who worked in a Waffle House (apparently a southern chain of "low-rent roadside cafe[s] featuring waffles" – like IHOP only worse).

Entertainment-wise the show got off to a great start when candidate Aaron (the retirement home chef) broke into tears when Chef Ramsay mentioned his name. I didn't say "yelled at him," or "swore at him," I said mentioned his name. And this is a man in his forties! As someone (was it Jed Clampett) once said, there's something wrong with that boy. Then during service on that same night, Ramsay coined what would be the tagline for this season – "Hell's Bitches." The Women's team spent so much time arguing that it was amazing that they got any food out. Even more amazing was that they relegated Julia to peeling potatoes or apples or something while three of them tried and failed to fry an egg properly. And then they had the utter gall to try to get her removed because she didn't have the "necessary" fine cuisine credentials. Their chemistry didn't get much better as the weeks went on either. A major problem was Melissa, who decided that the team needed a leader and that would be her. The only trouble was that not only wasn't she good at it, the quality of her performance as a chef went downhill rapidly. So did her appearance – her hair became wilder looking and there was a strange blemish on her chin that almost seemed to resemble a "soul patch" beard

Of course things weren't entirely rosy over on the men's side. Not only was Aaron a weeper, he was also not well. He fainted on a couple of occasions and on the last he hit his head and had to be removed from the show for serious health reasons. Meanwhile Rock emerged as a star. And Rock would tell you that Rock was a star because Rock started talking about Rock in the third person. It's a good thing that Rock emerged as a star even though he was never acknowledged as the leader (because for the most part the men rejected his leadership) because they tended to be a bunch without much in the way of personality let alone skills. With Aaron and Eddie gone they were a pretty dull bunch compared to the fiery and argumentative women.

Later episodes maintained the entertainment factor once the two teams merged into one. In a reward challenge to serve "trendsetters" (which Jen thought meant people like "Mariah, or the Rock", which she said would make her pee her pants!) which turned out to be 100 high school students, Julia won with a grilled chicken and cheese sandwich while the others were trying to adapt gourmet food for high school palates. The prize was a trip to the Green Valley ranch with Jen and Julia being confronted with a bidet – or as she insisted on calling it, a booty washer – for the first time in her life. In the same episode we saw Ramsay quite literally chasing Josh (the only other man left on the show) out of the kitchen and not quite out onto the street; cutlery – well okay, a spoon – was thrown. In the next episode, when they were down to three chefs Ramsay let them run the pass, but first gave them an opportunity for some assertiveness training, which consisted of each one yelling at Ramsay and him giving them tips on how to motivate by yelling. As it turned out blonde cheerful and slightly ditzy Bonnie nailed Ramsay on the first attempt, earning a "bloody hell" from him. This was in stark contrast to Rock, who had exhibited a fiery temper on several occasions – notably when with his team he was ordered to go through the restaurant's garbage to find recyclables – who turned positively meek when given the chance to yell at Ramsay.

So it's clear that Hell's Kitchen has been entertaining this year. The problem is that in a reality/competition where the grand prize is "a restaurant of your own" at the Green Valley Ranch resort, there wasn't one person I'd want cooking for me – well maybe Julia but even she had her inconsistent times. And really that's what it's all about – consistency. I'm not talking here about the woman who tried to serve rancid crab, or the one who pulled pasta out of the trash and tried to serve it on the grounds that the heat from cooking it again will kill the bacteria. That sort of thing happens every season on Hell's Kitchen and usually a one-time mistake – admittedly that's usually because Ramsay finds out about the perpetrator and runs them out of the restaurant on a rail but still it almost never happens a second time. Indeed, Bonnie threw out an entire tray of Monkfish before service because she believed them to be bad – Sous-Chef Marianne caught her and with Scott informed her that the Monkfish smelled like Monkfish. Admittedly she should have asked someone about it, but at least she was concerned about the possibility of sending out bad food. No, it's the little things that they apparently didn't think were important. It's the fact that over the course of the entire series they seemed thoroughly incapable of producing a consistently edible risotto. It's that they tried to cover up their mistakes, like scraping the burned pastry off a Beef Wellington on more than one occasion, or tried to make a Wellington looks as if it was at required level of doneness by putting it in a flash oven. Josh was run out of the restaurant for making too many risottos before they were ordered (none actually edible) and for trying to precook far too much spaghetti and making a mess of it. Most importantly it was the fact that they felt it was good enough to serve the public. This sense that something that doesn't measure up to standards is "good enough" is anathema to fine dining – and indeed should be to a chain like Waffle House. It is anathema to Ramsay. If you've ever seen his British series Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares – an American version of which will be appearing on FOX in the Fall – you will have observed Ramsay's mantra; consistent quality food served in a timely manner. All of the other problems that were seen on the show feed into this problem of consistency. The teams this season have been amazingly unable to communicate amongst themselves while doing service. Some of it was game-playing – the game being the show – by Rock that left Brad floundering while Rock and Josh looked on, but some of it was simple refusal to listen to what the others were saying that led to main courses and side dishes not being ready at the same time, which happened a lot with the women.

This season of Hell's Kitchen delivered on entertainment value, but I think it fell flat with regards to finding a chef worthy of the prize. I am not one of those people who complains because Hell's Kitchen isn't Top Chef; who wonder why they're always serving Beef Wellington and risotto. Top Chef is about finding the "best" chef from the pool of contestants. That show's challenges naturally require them to produce different, innovative dishes every week. Hell's Kitchen is about working in and eventually running a restaurant, and who ever heard of a restaurant that totally changed the menu every week? The qualities that Top Chef is trying to find are not necessarily the ones that are essential to running a great restaurant. But I'm not totally convinced that Rock and Bonnie have those qualities either. Certainly I don't feel it in the way I felt that Heather did last season when I knew she was going to win practically from the first service, and I don't feel it in the way that I did in Season One with both Ralph (the runner-up who later appeared on Iron Chef America) or Mike, who actually won. Either Bonnie or Rock is going to "win" a restaurant. They just shouldn't expect to see my name on the reservation list any time in the foreseeable future – or longer.

Short Takes – June 26, 2007

Welcome back to your favourite NC-17 blog. Actually I think of that NC-17 in the same way that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert regarded it when it replaced the X Rating. They hoped that the rating would be applied to films with artistic merit which also included adult themes but not to movies that were pornographic or "dirty". Mostly they wanted a rating that allowed deserving films to get newspaper and TV advertising because most theatres wouldn't book films that they couldn't promote. It didn't work out that way of course – NC-17 replaced X entirely, newspapers still refused to take the ads and films like most of Pedro Almadovar's work either wasn't shown in most North American cities or, once they figured things out, simply weren't submitted to the ratings boards at all. Anyway, I probably won't be using any of the words that got me the NC-17 for a while. Well okay, I'll probably use "dead" and "death" a bit. And I may use "enema," if only because it's sort of a silly word.

We`ll always have Paris: Which I guess is what I`m vaguely afraid of. I mean sure, I liked Paris Hilton in the Carl`s Jr. Ad, but what red-blooded North American male who didn`t have a stick permanently wedged up their backside (by which I of course mean the males in the PTC) didn`t. But mostly I`m like Evil Willow on Buffy The Vampire Slayer – "bored now." But they keep giving her to us. And sadly by "they" I don't just mean the tabloid TV shows and the stupid reality show. No it's now the mainstream news shows. ABC bids $100,000 to get the first interview with Hilton after she got out of the "Big House" after her harrowing 23 days in "Stir," but they get outbid by NBC, the network that piously proclaimed that that the story wasn't newsworthy. Or at least it wasn't until they could spin it in such a way that it was. NBC offered $1 million, and then when it became public knowledge and there were protests from the news division they not only withdrew the bid but proclaimed that the thing was only a rumour. So now we'll see Paris Hilton interviewed by Larry King – and presumably Larry's research staff will read any necessary books for him and provide him with questions that aren't too tough for either of them. CNN claims not to have spent any money to get this interview, and maybe they're even being honest about it, but setting aside whether Hilton got a sentence that other people in a similar situation – except for not being rich or "famous" – would have received (and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that she was treated differently by the judge because of her celebrity) what has she got to say that could possibly be worth a million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, or whatever "consideration" CNN might be giving her. There is probably a story – even an hour-long news magazine report – on how the justice system treats celebrities (good and ill treatment alike) but this hype around Paris Hilton hasn't done anything like that.

(By the way, once upon a time I used to like Larry King. That was when he was the King – so to speak – of late night radio and operated out of Washington. He worked well with callers – except for anyone calling in to criticise Psychiatrists, who were immediately labelled Scientologists and cut off – and had interesting guests. These days, operating out of Los Angeles, he has his lips so firmly attached to the backsides of anyone in Hollywood that there are still some parts of the United States where he could be arrested for unlawful sexual activities. And he still doesn't read the damned books.)

Couric-watch: Which network has seen its evening news audience drop more since Katie Couric debuted as the host of the CBS Evening News. If you said "Well duh, that would be CBS," You would be, well duh, wrong (come on, you didn't think I'd post something like this if the answer was the obvious one did you). According the Nielsen ratings, as reported by TVNewser, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has lost 287,000 viewers from the same time last year. That's a drop of about 4%. The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams has lost 533,000 viewers over the same period, a drop of 5%. It is almost twice as many viewers as CBS lost (185.71% to be exact) but then CBS obviously had a smaller audience to begin with. And while it can be argued whose fault that is, the one thing that is abundantly clear is that you can't blame Couric for having a smaller audience before she even arrived.

FOX – the clone network: A funny thing seems to happen when some networks come up with a reality or game show idea; FOX comes up with an idea that's almost exactly the same. Sometimes they even get it on before the network that came up with it in the first place. ABC brought Supernanny to American audiences, but FOX had Nanny 911 on the air three or four months earlier. ABC had Wife Swap; FOX came up with Trading Spouses and put it on the air before the ABC series. The similarities between the two shows were so great that ABC sued FOX for copyright infringement. And now Fox is doing it to NBC. One of the "highlights" of NBC's new fall line-up was a show called The Singing Bee in which contestants have to sing a song and remember the lyrics accurately after the music stops. The "bee" part comes in because the format is supposed to be like a Spelling Bee with eight people from the audience competing against each other. The show was supposed to start airing in the Fall, sharing a Friday time slot with 1 vs. 100. Except, FOX announced a new series called Don't Forget The Lyrics. In Don't Forget The Lyrics contestants have to sing the correct lyrics to songs of various genres. Oh there are "differences" – the FOX show doesn't use the Spelling Bee format. Instead a single contestant sings at various levels with the difficulty of the song increasing as the prize amount increases. So you can see, they're totally different shows. As I said, NBC planned to debut The Singing Bee in the Fall but when they got wind of FOX's plan to start Don't Forget The Lyrics on July 11 from 9:30 to 10 p.m. Eastern, that plan went out the window. NBC will debut The Singing Bee on July 10, with a second half hour episode appearing on – wait for it – July 11 from 8:30 to 9 p.m. Eastern; in other words an hour before the debut of Don't Forget The Lyrics. I love this, if only because if both of these shows suck as much as I anticipate (and to be honest devoutly hope) they may kill each other off before the start of the Fall season which will give 1 vs. 100 (a show that I really do like) a straight run.

Who does the PTC hate this week: Boy the stuff you miss when you skip a week. Before I get to that though, I want to remind all of you of the single issue on which I agree with the PTC, which is unbundling cable services and allowing consumers to choose which channels will be seen in their homes. This came up because Representatives Dan Lipinski (D, Illinois) and Jeff Fortenberry (R, Nebraska) introduced a new bill called the "Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007" which would allow consumers to pick and pay for the channels they want. Of course the PTC and I totally disagree on why this should be done. I just don't want to pay for TV channels that I only see when I'm clicking through the channels to get to the shows I want to see. I don't particularly care for most music channels so why should I pay for Muchmusic, CMT, or MTV Canada. And if I save money by not watching those channels maybe I'll spend the money on other channels I want to watch but can't afford at present. The PTC on the other hand sees "pick and pay" as a way to punish the evil entertainment industry. Almost as soon the PTC's press announcement finishes praising Lipinski and Fortenberry (praise that consisted of most of the first paragraph) it spends eight paragraphs talking about the evils bestowed on the poor, innocent American public by cable and network TV (despite the fact that Lipinski and Fortenberry's bill probably wouldn't negate the FCC's "must carry" rules that were further strengthened by the US Supreme Court in 1997). Here's a little bit of the overheated rhetoric of PTC Governmental Affairs Director Dan Issett:

Last year, Congress acted to increase the maximum possible fine for violation of broadcast decency law, but the reaction from the entertainment industry was to file suit, claiming that the 'F-word' and 'S-word' were appropriate to air during prime time television, and that – of all things – a striptease in the middle of the Super Bowl was somehow not indecent. Clearly, the entertainment industry has lost its way, and is failing to live up to its legal obligation to broadcast in the public interest.

Last week, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals rendered a decision inexplicable to Americans families: that the 'F-word' and 'S-word' should be ok to be broadcast on the public airwaves at hours when tens of millions of children are in the audience. While we're a long way from the end of the judicial process in that case, and Congress may weigh in yet again, one thing is clear – if the entertainment industry really want to give parents 'complete control' of their televisions, as it says it does, then it would endorse the concept of cable choice.

And then there's his conclusion:

We commend Congressman Lipinski and Congressman Fortenberry for their excellent leadership on this critical issue, and we thank Chairman Martin for his thoughtful and forthright determination that parents must be given more and better tools to control the graphic sexual and violent content that comes into their homes. It takes real political fortitude to side with families and stand up to the millions of dollars the entertainment industry spends to buy influence in Washington. But make no mistake - the American people are grateful that this legislation is being offered today.

My viewpoint? If the vast majority of the "American people are grateful that this legislation is being offered today" it isn't because it will keep them from seeing the shows cited in the PTC's press announcement – Rescue Me from FX, South Park on Comedy Central, and the cleaned up version of The Sopranos that airs on A&E. It will be because it will save them money and maybe allow them to rid their TVs of multiple shopping channels and religious networks that they never watch. It is also a fact that the "American people" will vote with their pocket books and if the cable industry is smart – and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they aren't – they package their product in such a way as to make picking and paying for individual channels the least attractive option, and packages with a mixture of channels based around an apparent theme the most attractive. Those packages are what most people will buy.

I confess that one of the reasons why I look forward to Hell's Kitchen is because of the fulminating (a particularly appropriate verb for any pronouncement from the PTC – one always gets the impression that an over-abundance of righteous indignation on their part will lead to a massive explosion) they engage in when his show airs. Last week's Worst of the Week was no disappointment. The PTC had this to say of Ramsay (who "clearly plays the role of the Devil in Hell's Kitchen) and the show "What makes this show so bad for family viewing is that it is presented as "reality," when in reality no one would endure the Nazi-like persecution Chef Ramsey dishes out. In that sense, this show is unlike all other reality shows, as it tells young viewers that this type of behavior is what one can expect to encounter in life, and that obscene language, backstabbing, and vile personal attacks are acceptable in the workplace." Well setting aside the assertion that Gordon Ramsay is somehow Hitler-like, the fact is that Ramsay's own early training made Hell's Kitchen look like a stroll in the park. Marco Pierre White was notorious for his rages and bullying – indeed White's recent biography has a picture of Ramsay in tears after being screamed at by White making a mistake. Ramsay's behaviour in his working kitchens as depicted in the documentaries Boiling Point and Beyond Boiling Point is exactly as seen in the show. But perhaps the most telling proof that people will "endure the Nazi-like persecution Chef Ramsey dishes out" is that his restaurants have an astounding 85% retention rate for staff since 1993. (I'd ask Orac for the loan of the brain eating Hitler-zombie, but of course this is the PTC and the poor critter would starve looking for brains among that bunch.)

This week the PTC's Worst of the Week is the FOX series The Loop. This is a series that the network is burning off – airing the episodes during the summer – and doing so in a way that is reminiscent of a high powered industrial incinerator. FOX ordered episodes of this series as a midseason replacement after a brief run in the 2005-06 season but then changed their minds, first cutting the order from 13 to 10 episodes, then not running it at all during the main season, and finally running two or three episodes in a single night instead of one a week like even the weakest series being run in the summer. In other words it's business as usual for FOX where the network weasels are particularly obtuse. And yet the PTC treats it with far more respect than the network does, viewing it as "one of the crudest shows on television" terrible threat to the (non-existent) "Family Hour." The episode in question is called "The Window" (except that it isn't – the actual title is "Windows" which shows the usual PTC level of accuracy). The PTC quotes five "vulgar examples of sexual innuendo and dialogue from this week's episode," including "Sam: 'Did my package come?' Sully: 'No, but mine did.'" I'm not even sure I understand what that means out of context – and all of the quotes in question are out of context – let alone why I should regard it as vulgar. They finish their hatchet job review by saying "The Loop is has a simple formula: place the main character in a random conundrum, litter the script with taboo sexual dialogue and situations, and put it on the air in the family hour. The writers of this program show no regard for younger viewers or families who may be watching their program." I'm not going to defend this show as not being full of sexual innuendo; even though I haven't seen it I have seen reviews by people who have and either hate the sexual content and think that the show is getting what it deserves, or enjoy it and think that the network is treating it shamefully. But you know as well as I do that this series could air in any hour of primetime and the PTC would be condemning it as filth, all in the name of protecting the children.

He's Ba-ack

I don't care what anyone says, Gordon Ramsay provides an evening of good entertainment...so long as you don't work for him and don't try to complain restaurant. But if you're sitting at home eating something that at his most generous Ramsay wouldn't consider a meal, it can be good clean fun to watch Gordon tear someone a new one, whether it's on his British show Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares or on his American show Hell's Kitchen. I first reviewed Hell's Kitchen last year and I have to confess I became a fan, not because of the competitive aspect, which is little more than a clone of The Apprentice but because of Gordon Ramsay and what he brings to the formula.

Ramsay's strength as entertainment is his personality. Outside of a kitchen he seems to be a reasonably sane person - has a nice wife and kids - but inside a kitchen he's a foul mouthed tyrant. It's not an act, as a host of people will testify including Joan Collins who was personally tossed out of one of Ramsay's restaurants. On Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, which airs uncensored on The Food Network here in Canada, he's cruel in an effort to save restaurants that he thinks have potential to become better than the sad establishments they've become, and probably to instill a bit of pride into the people who work in the kitchens of these places. It doesn't always work. In an episode I saw on Sunday night Ramsay managed to return a restaurant's menu to sanity, get the chef to cook with real food instead of prepackaged crap and actually bring customers back, and the owners still had their business taken back by the brewery that had loaned them money to operate the establishment. In Hell's Kitchen Ramsay is taking a batch of people who claim to be able to cook and have some degree of culinary expertise and make them fit to run a major restaurant. Last season the reward for withstanding days of Ramsay's abuse and learning from him in the process was a restaurant of the winner's own. This season it is management and partial profit participation in a restaurant that will be part of the Red Rocks Casino Resort and Spa complex near Las Vegas. Ramsay is brutal but given the stakes these people are playing for it's cruelty to be kind.

Monday night's two hour debut - really two back to back episodes - introduced us to Ramsay's new batch of innocents, all of whom seem to think that he's not that tough, although none of them compared him to Simon Cowell this year; Cowell's a spayed pussycat compared to Ramsay. They're about to have a rude awakening which starts when Gordon has them prepare their "signature" dishes. With one or two exceptions he finds the dishes at best overspiced and at worst thoroughly disgusting. One woman's Plantain soup was described as looking like "baby's vomit", while another cook tried to slip by something she called "Undone Focaccia Bread" with a dipping sauce - Ramsay said he'd rather put a piece of poodle *bleep* in his mouth than that - and he was right, it looked depressingly close to what he said it was.

The first episode only had one challenge to it, to feed a full restaurant only 24 hours after opening. The twelve contestants were split into Red and Blue teams but this time the split was made on gender lines. The six men - Tom, a former stock broker; Giacomo, a pizza maker; Garrett, a guy who learned to cook while doing time in prison; Gabe, a marketing executive; Larry, an executive chef and fishmonger; Keith, a chef and bartender - became the Blue team. The women's Red Team consisted of Polly, a caterer; Virginia, a salad chef; Rachel, a personal chef; Sara, a deli manager; Heather, a sous chef; and Maribel, a cafeteria chef. Clearly most of these people were chosen for their back stories rather than real cooking ability. That becomes apparent with the first service, where things are a shambles. One person on each team is assigned to be a "donkey", getting things for the other chefs and cleaning up. Things got so bad in the women's kitchen that when an appetizer finally did make it out - after Heather (who had taken on the role of donkey) replaced Polly - Sara let out a cheer which immediately earned her Ramsay's ire. In the end the women lost and it was left to Heather to make choices for elimination. She picked Polly and Virginia and Ramsay decided that Polly had to go.

In the second episode of the night things fell a bit more into their normal pattern. Ramsay started with a bit of a lesson - he had the apprentices sorry the cooks empty out the dumpsters outside the restaurant and open the bags to show them just how much food they'd wasted in the previous episode. Wasted food doesn't bring in profits but if you're going to live up to Ramsay's standards you either waste food or you get it right the first time. After that he set the teams an assignment. They had to cut perfect 10 ounce Sirloin Steaks out of a piece of beef. The team with the highest number of steaks would win a reward. The five women cut 12 steaks that measured up to Ramsay's standards while the men cut 11 - and it would have been worse if Tom hadn't managed to cut five of them himself. The women won and the men had to prepare all of the steaks for the next night's service while the women went to dinner with Ramsay at a restaurant that serves wild game. Things got worse for the men when Larry seemed to suffer a heart attack (although in fact it was a severe anxiety attack) which took him off the show entirely. In the night's service the women's team continued to be on a roll, getting a number of entrees out, while the men had trouble because side dishes for the main course weren't being completed. Then disaster struck the women as Heather burned her hand and had to go to the hospital. Before she left though she impressed Ramsay by continuing to control the women's kitchen and letting them know what to do. Suddenly a favourite has emerged.

In the previous paragraph I used (and struck through) the word "apprentices." It was quite deliberate. This show is essentially a remake of The Apprentice but if they'd left it as just a clone of the earlier show, it wouldn't have been a summer hit last year and it wouldn't have been renewed this year. As I said when the show originally appeared "There is one thing that makes Hell's Kitchen worth watching and that is Gordon Ramsay." It still holds true. Ramsay is abrasive and abusive, and a harsh task master, but when it comes to what he does he is the best there is which is why he can get away with being abrasive and abusive. I don't know that you can really say that he's entertaining to watch in a conventional manner but there is something about watching him get angry because people aren't doing the job that they've been given properly, or even competently, that is almost admirable in an odd way. Sure he's a perfectionist, but he is operating in an industry where if you don't live up to standards in terms of the quality of your product you not only lose a sale you can very quickly lose your reputation and then your livelihood. Those restaurants that Ramsay visits in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares are places where the business is declining because reputation has slipped because the proprietors and chefs and the servers don't live up to any sort of standard or expectation. Of course Hell's Kitchen isn't a real restaurant; it's a converted TV studio, the waiters are for the most part aspiring actors and the customers are solicited in the newspapers and paid to come eat there, but the principal remains the same. Ramsay may seem extreme - although from comments that I've read, he's not atypical of really successful restaurateurs - but I have suspicion that the survivor of the Hell's Kitchen process will walk out a better chef as a result, and I wouldn't be surprised if he or she is as abrasive and abusive of the people working under them as Ramsay is. It's the way of their world.

That Was The Summer That Was

Since just about everyone recognises Labour Day (or Labor Day) as the end of Summer, I thought it would be appropriate to have a look at what worked and what didn't in terms of summer programming, based on ratings and general feeling.

We Make Like The Donald But We Hate The Fakes: This summer season saw four shows based around the basic format of The Apprentice. Of those only the Gordon Ramsay series Hell's Kitchen on Fox had anything like ratings good enough to be deemed a hit, although the sometimes funny I Want To Be A Hilton (NBC) started reasonably well but it soon became apparent that Kathy Hilton's style had little ratings substance. The Cut on CBS, which featured Tommy Hilfiger started on Thursday, was moved to Wednesday by Big Brother and then was bumped to Fridays for some reason where it was taken of for at least one week thanks to pre-season football - and no one noticed! But the booby prize has to go to the David E. Kelly created reality show The Law Firm which featured "court cases" (really arbitration cases) which would have been laughed out of Judge Judy's TV court. It ran for two disastrous episodes before NBC decided it would be better off with reruns of Will & Grace and Scrubs and consigned The Law Firm to the dustbin of Bravo. What made Hell's Kitchenwork of course was that Gordon Ramsay was always right down there with the contestants, berating them and constantly being in their faces. On the whole however the performance of the faux Trumps was disappointing and should probably serve as a warning to Martha Stewart and her new show.

Now Fake American Idol We Like: Three series took the basic ideas behind American Idol and made them work: So You Think You Can Dance, Rock Star: INXS and Dancing With The Stars. All the elements are there: live performances, a jury of experts, and audience voting. They all drew at least good ratings, even Rock Star: INXS.

Controversy Is Fine As Long As It's Not Too Controversial: The summer season had ABC promising two controversial reality series. In Welcome to the Neighborhood we were promised a look at people who would have the opportunity to choose their new neighbours in an upper class area of Houston. In Brat Camp we had the chance to watch a group of troubled teenagers undergoing the rigours of an extreme camping experience to scare them straight. Brat Camp made it to air despite complaints from psychologists and critics who felt that the the whole thing was at best voyeuristic and at worst damaging to the future prospects for the unwilling participants. Welcome to the Neighborhood didn't even make it to air because not only did the Left complain about the notion of people getting to choose who they wanted living next to them, but the Right complained because they were certain that "Christians" would be portrayed as the bad guys.

We Wanted Bad Ass Kids Not Good Kids: The aforementioned Brat Camp featured a group of underachievers and disciplinary nightmares. It was one of the ratings successes of the summer. Meanwhile ABC also had a show called The Scholar in which a group of teens that any parent would be proud to call theirs competed to win a full-ride scholarship to the college of their choice. The Scholar started low and sank lower. That may in part be because the show was, well kind of dull, but it's still disappointing that Brat Camp did as well as it did. I liked the kids on The Scholar and was rooting for them, while I couldn't care less for any of the people (event he parents and counsellors) on Brat Camp.

If The British Like It, It Must Be Okay: Setting aside the shows based on American Idol for a moment, it seems as though series concepts imported from Britain were really working this summer. Brat Camp was originally a British series, while Gordon Ramsay did a show which was similar to Hell's Kitchen in Britain. Dancing With The Stars had it's roots in the British Strictly Come Dancing which also spawned series in Australia and New Zealand, while the British also did Hit Me Baby One More Time first. Of these the worst ratings performer was probably Hit Me Baby One More Time which had a strong start but faded over the next few weeks. The major attribute of these series was that they were the sort of ideas that hadn't really been seen on American TV of late, perhaps suggesting that U.S. TV is too blinkered and unwilling to try new ideas.

If It Was Any Good Why Did They Save It For Summer? By comparison viewers really didn't want new scripted program on network TV. Consider ABC's miniseries Empire and the Fox produced series The Inside (sorry, I can't tell you anything about Bad Girls except that it's on UPN - enough said). Empire which had the disadvantage of not being historically accurate as well as not very good finished second in it's debut episode but thereafter was third in a three horse race. More disappointing for me was the failure of Tim Minear's The Inside which I found fascinating. Unfortunately it ran into Dancing With The Stars and Brat Camp ... not to mention the executives at Fox. I don't know that it was born to die, because I think that on any other night it would have been successful. Unfortunately no one at Fox thought to try it on another night.

It Helps If Someone Knows Your Name: Consider the fate of two shows, Princes of Malibu and Tommy Lee Goes To College. Now setting aside the fact that David Foster and Linda Thompson had filed for divorce before this show actually aired (it only became known after the second episode aired) who knew the Foster-Thompson-Jenner menage before they got their own Osbornes clone? Now everybody knows Tommy Lee, if only as that tattooed freak who was divorced by Pam Anderson. Tommy Lee at college is a funny concept but would it have been as funny if we weren't aware of who he was?

Funny Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: I didn't particularly like the CBS series Fire Me Please, but it seemed to do reasonably well in terms of ratings, despite taking what was at best a half hour format and trying to run it for an hour. I thought that the show was at times inordinately cruel to the people who were being tricked by the people who wanted to be fired, but that's me. On the other hand I found the Ashton Kutcher "social experiment" Beauty And The Geekfunny and not particularly cruel at all. Maybe I just identified with the guys a bit too much. In terms of ratings, Fire Me Please had higher ratings than Beauty And The Geek but then again it wasn't on The WB and wasn't going up against a bunch of dancing celebrities. The WB liked the results well enough to renew Beauty And The Geek for another season.

We Like To Watch People Dancing. Who Knew? Biggest hit of the summer was Dancing With The Stars, a show where six 'C' List celebrities went ballroom dancing with six professional partners. It was fun and entertaining, and if some of the dancers weren't particularly good (like Evander Hollyfield, even if he showed a ton of charisma) well who cared. Everyone involved was having a ton of fun and that at least was obvious. So You Think You Can Dance? with its professional or talented amateur dancers hasn't been nearly as big a ratings success as Dancing With The Stars, but it has shown consistently strong ratings which win its time slot and is outperforming any new programming in the week including the veteran Big Brother.

And that was the summer that was. Bring on the new fall shows - PLEASE!!!!!

Hell's Kitchen - The Apprentice For Chefs

There is one thing that makes Hell's Kitchen worth watching and that is Gordon Ramsay. The format is very much taken from The Apprentice. You have two teams of people all competing to become the one winner. In this case the prize is their own dream restaurant. There are challenges to face and at the end of each episode one team wins and one team loses. The best person on the losing team gets to pick two of their teammates for the boss to send home. We have seen the format before, and heaven knows we'll see it on several other shows this season. What makes this show worth giving a second look to is Ramsay.

Gordon Ramsay is a culinary superstar. His British restaurants have a total of seven Michelin stars, he has been the subject of two documentaries - Boiling Point and Beyond Boiling Point - on Britain's Channel 4 in which his yelling and swearing at his kitchen staff were revealed. He has also hosted his own Channel 4 series called Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares in which he showed up to try to turn failing restaurants into successes, all while yelling and swearing at staff. Reportedly he has banned his four children from watching him on TV so that they don't pick up his "colourful" language. He's also written a number of books on cooking. It's a long way from his beginnings. Born in one of the rougher parts of Glasgow, Ramsay was signed at 15 to a football (soccer) contract with Rangers. His career was cut short by a major knee injury at 18 and he studied cooking in Britain and in France. In 1998 at age 32 he opened his own restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road in London. His empire, with partner Marcus Wareing and protege Angela Hartnett now includes seven restaurants in and around London including the Savoy Grill. Hell's Kitchen in Los Angeles is (supposedly) his attempt to crack the American market. That's where the show is set.

In addition to Ramsay the staff are his Maitre d' Jean Philippe, and his two sous chefs Scott and Mary Ann. While Jean Philippe deals with the customers, Scott and Mary Ann are there to advise the contestants but not to participate in the cooking. The contestants are a diverse lot. They include four professional chefs and a culinary student, and seven non-experts, people who like to cook. As soon as they arrive at the restaurant, before they're even introduced to Ramsay they are told that they have 45 minutes to prepare their signature dishes. That's how they will introduce themselves to Gordon Ramsay. It is not a pleasant experience. The first dish he tries is immediately spat out. He describes it as "dog *bleep*" with not only his word but his mouth obscured so as not to offend the sensibilities of lip readers. Then the teams are split into a red team and a blue team and sent to their respective dormitories to settle in. It won't last.

The teams are about to face their first acid test. They have to master five appetizers, five entrees and five deserts. Oh yes, and the restaurant is opening tonight! Each team has its own complete kitchen and it's own half or the restaurant to serve. And this is where Hell's Kitchen veers away from the model of The Apprentice. While "The Donald" usually shows up only to give his little wannabes their assignments then disappears until it's time to find out who won the task and later to do the firing, Ramsay is there all the time and it is a real pressure cooker. It is his reputation at stake and nothing goes out without it meeting his standards. Who be unto anyone who doesn't meet his standards. Or anyone who gets in his way for that matter. In one case a pair of customers who have been waiting an hour for their food come to Ramsay to complain. He drops a rather choice obscenity at them and tells the staff not to talk to "these bimbos". Shortly after, when their friends come up to say that Ramsay has hurt the feelings of one of the women he instructs Jean-Philippe to take these ladies back "to plastic surgery." But it's the apprentice chefs who bear the brunt of Ramsay's ire. When one makes risotto so sticky that he can turn the plate on its side and not have anything slide off he chucks plate and all into the trash. One has his plated lamb chop pushed into his jacket. Finally, after two hours of not being served some of the guests start to leave. Soon after Ramsay closes the kitchen down and tell Jean-Phillipe to ask the patrons who are still there to leave.

In the postmortem, he tells the tams that their section will be judged by customer reaction cards. They aren't pretty and as Ramsay tells the teams it isn't so much that the Blue Team won, rather they did less horribly than the Red Team. Finding one of the Red Team - the risotto lady - whose food was actually edible after the first error to be the least bad on the team he gives her 30 minutes to select two team members for Ramsay to consider firing. The one that he does fire - a woman desert chef who hadn't really pitched in to work with her team - is sent packing, her chef's jacket impaled on a meat hook.

Hell's Kitchen is so *bleep*ing derivative of The Apprentice that it could actually be sued for plagiarism if others hadn't already done the same schtick, and would certainly be unwatchable if it weren't for Gordon Ramsay. One contestant compares Ramsay to Simon Cowell from American Idol. It's a comparison that is about as apt as comparing Rhode Island with Texas. Ramsay and Cowell are both Brits who can be insulting, like Rhode Island and Texas are both states. That's where the comparison ends. Ramsay is driven into rages. He is a perfectionist with his people and there is a quintessential reason for it: it is HIS reputation that is on the line; HIS name is on the restaurant, no one else's, certainly not the 12 - now 11 - wannabe chefs. Simon Cowell doesn't have that. In reality Donald Trump doesn't have that; the people if Trump's apprentices screw up a task it isn't going to make Turmp look any worse to the people he sends them out to. But if the food at Ramsay's restaurant isn't good, it is Ramsay who is going to be hurt. I have to give this show a mild recommendation simply because of Gordon Ramsay's rage and passion.