Aaaand, I'm kind of glad, because after four episodes (two 120 minute broadcast blocks) of the current season, I'm so over it.
1. Glitz over Substance: Yes, you have a great big budget. Making something to rival "Kitchen Stadium" on the screen tells me you're going for glitz. I'm interested in the food. The constant emphasis on Biggest and Best Production is … so overblown and distracting.
2. Conflict over Cooking: The show encourages sniping between the competitors. It sets up and foments rivalries. The contestants not only get to act strategically against one another, but are encouraged to gloat about it, and are asked by the judges who they think are good and bad competitors. A bit of interpersonal head-bumping? That's okay. Zeroing in on it as one of the main focuses of the show? Sorry, left that behind in high school.
3. So Much the Drama: So there's always got to be some drama, some expectation, some dramatic reveals. "MasterChef" cranks that up to 11. Dramatic music! Dramatic hesitations! Dramatic announcements broken up by commercials! All! Punctuated! By! Gordon! Ramsay!
Intersperse this with point #2 above, as well as occasional Tear-Jerking Stories (suitable for Olympic coverage), and it's like you don't trust the cooking competition to be enough.
4. Judgmental Judges: Yes, let's be abusive. Not challenging. Not driving to perfection. Not even testing against pressure. No, let's be abusive, insulting, cranking up the drama-meter through insult. Or, put another way, when Gordon Ramsay is not the most snarky attack-dog judge on the team, something is wrong.
In short: too much of the show is just mean.
There was some good stuff, to be sure. Most of it had to do with food. Most of it was in spite of the elements above.
Kay's assessment was "It's like 'Total Drama Island,' but less fun." Yup.
Plenty of other fish in the ocean in this category. Think we'll watch them instead.
Gotta give you credit for watching 4 episodes – I only made it through 1 and thought it was repulsive and encouraging bad behavior. Plus I just cared about the food. Hard to find good real cooking shows.
Well, I wanted to make it through one actual food competition, rather than the audition foofoorah.
I've enjoyed the Iron Chef, Food Network Star, Chopped, and other shows like that. Plus other non-cooking competitive shows (Face-Off is one of our faves, All-American Handyman another).
I do actually like watching Ramsay, but here he's such a drama queen, and the show pushes his abusive schtick, led by Joe Bastianich, way beyond my level of enjoyment.
I actually watched the entire first season. I love Ramsay, but i can't stand the way that Fox manipulates/edits him. He's much more interesting and engaging on the Beeb.
I haven't watched "Hell's Kitchen," just "F Word" and "Kitchen Nightmares" and a few other Beeb shows.
Just watched a few eps of "Food Network Star". While there's competition and some personal drama and some judges-on-tenterhooks kind of bits, the overall tone is more encouraging, more interesting, less apocalyptic, and just as much challenging food fun.
I was addicted to the early seasons of HK, but the manufactured drama wore thin. Love love love The F Word, though.
Sounds completely different to the UK version.
Where I enjoy him, Ramsay's schtick is because I think he really enjoys food and enjoys the ideals of service, and people being lazy or uncaring drive him up the wall. The fact he's not always shouting obscenities at people or belittling them makes that clear, unlike (going back to MasterChef) Bastianich, who just seems to enjoy tearing people down (or playing the "bad cop").