24 in 24: Last Chef Standing

I THOUGHT I was going to like this show. It sounded like a great NEW idea, and it was. It's definitely not boring, but they just don't leave enough time for each segment for the chefs to really DO anything. I mean, even the best of the best can only do so much with nothing. It's hard enough working with the conditions that they are working with, but to then put unreasonable time limits on top of it just makes it chaotic and uninspiring. It just seems like they are making a bunch of messes. On top of the unreasonable time limits, you have the "hosts" interrupting them every few seconds asking stupid questions, as if they have a few extra seconds to spare to chat. Geez, just get out of their face! It seems like all the cooking competitions now do this. They have the "hosts" interrupt the competitors over and over again asking mundane, irrelevant questions, taking the focus away from the actual cooking and disrupting the competition. I wish they would just sit and be quiet until it's their turn.

Show was good until this last season when it decided to define itself by a myopic chef who just repeats how many months he has been sober over and over and over and over. Literally nothing else to define that person besides been sober x months. Every time they open their mouth, I have been sober x months. Over and over to the judges and cameras. Never anything more whatsoever. Other chefs talk about their families, the charities they want to help, the issues they want to address, etc. Yet the other chef nothing but I have been sober x amount of months. Nothing wrong with being sober until it becomes your sole defining characteristic with absolutely nothing else to define you as a person. If anything the chef set back the sobriety movement by making it their sole defining characteristic. No better than someone's who defines themselves purely by a religion versus being a complete and complex person.

Watching the first episode. About halfway. At the end of each day there's a new judge, so there's 3. Contestants are licking stirring utensils then using them again, and touching their sweaty hair and faces then touching food. There's so many crew members present, someone should say something. Being that their are 3 judges, they should make 3 servings. Right? Or the first judge to get food that is, say a burger, shouldn't finger it but use utensils to cut it into 3. No, first one picks it, bites into it, and passed it to the next one. That one does the same thing. One cook presented a one spoon bite for the judges. I would think, especially because it was egg, each judge would use a spoon. No. First put lips all over it, second lipped, it. Poor 3rd judge. SO DISGUSTING!

If you want to watch a show where the contestants or rather chefs complain about how tired they are constantly and maybe do a little cooking on the side then this is the show for you. It gets really tiresome, listening to these chefs constantly talk about how tired they are And how successful they are but really just how tired they are. It's a good concept, but they need to figure out how to edit this thing so that it's not so boring where I'm constantly fast forwarding to segments not wanted to hear what the chefs are even talking about because all they're talking about is how tired they are .

There are SO MANY cooking competition shows and I'm sure it's not easy trying to find a new angle. For me, this show has a FUN concept and great pacing! 👍 They don't waste much time before diving into the competition. I think they did a great job turning the tired cooking show concept into something fresh!

The Squid Games comparison comes from some of the aggressive eliminations. This is part of the excitement of this show and keeps things moving along at a great pace. They also did a solid job finding likable chefs to root for.

To be fair, I'm a pretty easy audience when it comes to competition reality shows, but this one was more fun to watch than many others.