{"id":7,"date":"2008-04-01T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=7"},"modified":"2008-04-01T10:06:03","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T14:06:03","slug":"best-reality-tv-show-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=7","title":{"rendered":"Best. Reality. TV Show. Ever."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ramsay<\/a>
\nDevil in the details: Chef Gordon Ramsay emerges from the flames<\/em><\/p>\n

Hell\u2019s Kitchen<\/em><\/a>, whose 4th season begins tonight on FOX at 9 pm ET\/8 pm CT, didn\u2019t get even a nod from me during its first two seasons, but after a chance viewing last year, I\u2019ve become perversely hooked. Set in the titular TV restaurant\/studio of Scottish chef Gordon James Ramsay, the contest pits two ambitious teams of would-be head cooks against each other, as they struggle to win top dog status in their own \u201cmillion-dollar restaurant\u201d (although, when you think of it, a million-dollar restaurant could be, like, a little corner eatery).<\/p>\n

So what? This is the essential topology of every r-show since the May 2000 U.S. debut of Survivor<\/em>. I think what roped me in, however, is:<\/p>\n

1. To me, cooking is really hard\u2026no, scratch that\u2026impossible<\/em>.<\/strong> With every other kind of reality show, I can at least imagine myself performing the task of, say, climbing a tree, or figuring out how to sell wedding dresses.<\/p>\n

But with a cooking show, I haven\u2019t a clue what<\/em> they\u2019re doing. I mean, to this day, peering over my wife\u2019s shoulder as she\u2014a really good cook\u2014watches one cooking show or another, every time I hear the word reduction<\/em>, I just feel dumb. Yet, I stay emotionally connected to ritual I\u2019m viewing, because the output, is, after all, food.<\/p>\n

\"Ramsay2. Hell<\/em> is hell.<\/strong> The first time I saw Hell\u2019s Kitchen<\/em>, it looked like a lot of high-angle shots of people walking around through steam, cursing incessantly. (The words, bleeped out on American TV, are reportedly not covered up on the show\u2019s Australian or late-night UK editions.) The Apprentice<\/em> looks positively genteel by comparison. In fact, watching Hell<\/em>, it quickly becomes clear why, until Celebrity Apprentice<\/em>, Trump was in the dumps, while Hell<\/em>\u2019s Ramsay is branching out into additional TV vehicles. At least until the recent season, The Apprentice<\/em> maintained a somewhat disassociated, country-club feel that, I believe, came from each challenge\u2019s vast, three-day taping. Hell<\/em> clearly appears to be shot in one day\u2014a move The Apprentice<\/em> has, at least temporarily, adopted\u2014giving the proceedings a tightly-wound knottiness. And, you know how, on Tyra Bank\u2019s America\u2019s Next Top Model<\/em>, when a girl gets kicked off, her picture in the group shot softly vanishes? On Hell<\/em>, the departing kitchen grunt\u2019s photo is consumed by flames.<\/p>\n

3. Ramsay: Madman of the Moors.<\/em><\/strong> I don\u2019t know what they pay Trump to show up at the beginning and end of The Apprentice<\/em>, and nod powerfully in headshots on phone calls, but they should just give that money to Ramsay. The spitting Scot is in almost every frame of the hour-long show. When it\u2019s time to open the Kitchen<\/em> for service, half of those aforementioned bleeps come from him, as he utterly berates his staff. His caustic braying (\u201cThis sope<\/em> is AWWFOLE!! It\u2019s HIDEEYUSS!! GET OUT!!!\u201d) creates an unbroken tension that\u2019s never relieved for the viewer, nor, clearly, for the contestants. Hell’s Kitchen<\/em> is cooking porn, S&M-style, at its finest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hell\u2019s Kitchen didn\u2019t get even a nod from me during its first two seasons, but after a chance viewing this year, I\u2019ve become perversely hooked. Set in the titular TV restaurant\/studio of Scottish chef James Ramsay, the contest pits two ambitious teams of would-be head cooks against each other, as they struggle to win top dog status in their own \u201cmillion-dollar restaurant\u201d (although, when you think of it, a million-dollar restaurant could be, like, a little corner eatery).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}