More Food Television

I just read this at eGullet, posted by a man who manages to be both eloquent and hysterically snarky at the same time: Tony Bourdain's views on "Celebrity Cooking Showdown."

I sat and watched an entire episode, absolutely riveted by its mesmerizing awfulness. A loud, toxic, ineptly conceived pastiche of half-baked concepts and contrived melodrama. One bad idea after another, layered like some surreal Hawaiian Lasagna recipe:

The never-watchable Alan Thicke. Two words that absolutely guarantee nothing good to come.

A bunch of D-List celebrity fucktards. Who ARE these people?

A confused looking Wolfgang Puck? You don't have enough money to have SOMEBODY on staff with brains enough to tell you not to do this?!

Screen Actor's Guild member and "celebrity chef," Cat Cora. Who I increasingly am coming to believe would cheerfully hump a fire hydrant in order to get on TV. Her performance brought to mind an earlier NBC masterwork--the vastly underrated Lancelot Link, Chimp Detective.

An addled Gael Greene--still under the mistaken impression that somebody somewhere still gives a fuck WHAT she thinks--and that we want to imagine her crushed under late-era Elvis' bloated abdomen. Ending a once glorious career in grotesque fashion.

Some douche bag with some kinda speech impediment. WHO is he?

A ritalin-jacked audience, no doubt dragooned off a mall and lubricated with Red Bull and Jolt Cola. (They were TOLD Clay Aiken might appear).

Horrifying. Can't wait to watch it again.
Posted by Bourdain on: Apr 20 2006, 10:00 AM

Dontcha love it? I never watched the show, and now I'm glad.