"Next Food Network Star"

The Food Network is holding a contest to see who will be its next "star." I stumbled across the show accidentally last night and became morbidly fascinated.

Food Network has selected eight finalists to attend a kind of Food TV boot camp with elimination rounds. The finalists have to pitch their show idea and cook under pressure (regardless of whether their show is supposed to feature them cooking or not!). Three Food Network executives watch, judge and eliminate.

None of the contestants appeared to have EITHER professional cooking experience OR media experience. The results were cruel. Watching them try to follow their "breakdowns" (cooking scripts), read from the TelePrompTer, keep track of the person with the time cards, wrangle their food, AND act like they were having fun was agonizing. All of them looked panicked, as any sane amateur would who was being asked to do two very difficult and inherently conflicting jobs at the same time. They made massive, boneheaded mistakes. A candidate cut herself seriously--and had to confess this to the hardened professional Mario Batali, who in a sense made the humiliation even worse by NOT chewing her out or laughing at her. A pairs team set their grill on fire. (One partner, who was supposed to be the expert!, made a marinade for some shish kebabs that turned out thick as spaghetti sauce. He ladled it on regardless, then set the sauced-up kebabs on the grill, where they promptly began to smoke up the whole studio. He took them off the grill--leaving the leftover dribs of thick sauce to burst into flame.) One woman was supposed to be making a salad with edamame and grilled corn. She forgot her corn back on the prep grill and hadn't been able to shell her edamame. She covered for the corn, but was unable to disguise the fact that there was no edamame in her edamame salad. It was a full-out train wreck.

To make matters worse, their show ideas were almost all pitifully derivative, impractical or vague. One contestant wanted her show to be about the five senses. (Enough said.) Another proposed a diet show. A third proposed a show where he would travel around finding great and heartwarming food--which is already the premise of "Roker on the Road," "The Secret Life Of...", "FoodNation with Bobby Flay," "Eat America," "Tyler Florence's America" (or whatever it's called), and "The Best Of." The pairs team who set their grill on fire proposed a show about entertaining in the home. One woman wanted to host a variety show with food and live music, which she imagined would attract top-name celebrities as guests. One man imagined that his show would take him to the Andes and the Himalayas and Borneo in search of amazing food experiences. (Had he given any thought whatever to the budget and the taping difficulties such a premise would involve?) One contestant had already been eliminated by the time I started watching. Finally, there was a man who proposed a show about "difficult foods" like squid and tripe and so on--learning to appreciate, cook and enjoy them. At least that one was original, specific and doable, although, as the Food Network marketing person pointed out, its premise was inherently negative ("Now, you're probably grossed out by these tentacles, BUT...").

This, folks, THIS, is why television is inherently evil. Because it does this to people. It beckons forth the unprepared, the amateurish, the unrealistic, the people who have never cooked professionally or done media and who have no idea what a food show really involves or how to think of one that the Food Network hasn't done to death already, yet who sail blithely forth to international humiliation anyhow. The worst part is when they all tell the camera that they know, they just KNOW, that they're doing fantastic or that they deserve their own show.

And the people who made up this contest knew that this would happen.