Of The best chef to chopped up to Hell’s Kitchen and many more, people are obsessed with Food Network cooking competition television shows. Maybe it’s the fact that food is a passion that almost everyone shares or maybe we just like to see what it takes to make the perfect dish. Whatever it is, the global obsession with cooking contests has made us all foodies.
One would think that the only complaint people have about such a popular genre is that they cannot taste food when it is ready. But in reality, a real complaint that continues to appear within the fandoms of these programs is not far from that. So what is this complaint and what could be behind it?
Fans Say Cooking Competition Programs Have Too Many Famous Judges
For television producers, a famous judge is supposed to be a tie. If you know that a celebrity you love will be on your favorite cooking show, you’re more likely to tune in and see how things are going. At least that’s the idea.
But some people say that the famous judges thing has gotten out of hand. In other words, they don’t want to see so many famous judges appear to influence how these competitions turn out, especially if they are not that famous.
They also don’t like to see the same culinary personalities from one network appear on every show on that network just because the TV network is trying to promote their other cooking shows.
Fans prefer to hear what real people have to say
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This discussion came up on Reddit when talking about the different food celebrities featured on the Food Network. Many people mentioned that they don’t like particular personalities and therefore don’t want them to appear on shows that they generally like otherwise. Others mentioned that if they are going to have famous judges, they should at least come from outside the network so that they don’t have the same people over and over again on each show.
However, a redditor made the observation that they actually prefer to listen to what regular older people have to say about food. One reason could be that he better imitates what his own experience would be if they could test it as well. They noted that Beat Bobby Flay it does this with great effect. It also helps change the evaluation format, so it’s not always the same over and over again every time you look.
Fans have other good ideas on how to mix it
Another idea had to do with the format of the cooking competition programs. Specifically, they talked about how cooking shows often like to get up close to live action, trying to make cooking sound more exciting. Or they wear a loud and sensational host that constantly narrates the scene like it’s a game announcer.
An alternative publication described it as occasionally “[going] Old School Discovery Channel ”and simply filming kitchen scenes in a more traditional narrator voice that explains what’s happening in the kitchen and what kinds of steps competitors are taking along the way. Show how The great British pastry show and Right on the spot! I already do something like this. There may be a way to further incorporate this style of storytelling into other shows, and that would also break some of the fast-paced intensity of traditional cooking shows.
Anyway, the only reason fans have so many opinions on these shows is because they watch them all that time, and that means they are a big part of our culture today and probably will be for a long time. Who knows what kind of innovations in the kitchen competition format we will see next?
