Top Chef

A cooking show that focuses on flash rather than the ingredients needed; it's all about privilege, product placement, busswords (organic) and an anti-science (gmo) approach to agriculture.

Top Chef is more of a "Housewives" show that centers around chefs and their egos than the food They prepare. It's a reality show that places far too much importance on tears, conflict, & petulant temper tantrums.

The best episodes & seasons are ones that feature Anthony Bourdain - because he was always unpretentious, honest, and genuinely cared about food.

I started watching this reality series with the second episode during the first season. I have loved it ever since. I really like the challenges. I have heard the complaint that it is not always about the cooking but being a top chef is about the cooking.. the challenges in my opinion are set up to evaluate how the chefs interact with each other, co-workers, underlings, and customers. I think the show is designed to challenge the chefs in ways that they are not accustomed to but yet, the effect is the same as things that happen every single day in the kitchen. THe challenges force the chefs to look deep within themselves. What I mean is that the challenges are set up to encourage out of the box thinking, what happens when half the staff is out with the flu, the delivery truck is 6 hours late, the market sent the wrong type of lettuce/squash/herb, the freezer went out, the house is overbooked by double, as someone got a date wrong on the books so 2 whole seating's are scheduled for the same time, when something gets burned etc. This show just puts what normally might happen over 6 months of problems squashes it into a couple of days, a group of people stuck together away from home, living together, working together,cooking together-from all walks of life, all kinds of cooking experience and education. Add it all together, stir it up and you get a great show

Or cooking. It is ALL about product placement. Hey, let's step into the kenmore pro kitchen and gather all the calphalon equipment which is, of course, prominently displayed. This has the opposite affect on me. I would NEVER buy anything so unabashedly hawked.

And I don't understand why the so called hosts in season one and two are so monotone and awkward. Their delivery is incredibly lame and boring, no personality at all. They are a mess.

Add the insanely frenetic editing, which never focuses on anything for more than a millisecond, and it all adds up to nothing more than a shameful display of product placement.

Season 15 brings up Parma dressing herself in the most inappropriate clothing for a cooking show. Her dresses are so revealing that she might as well not be wearing anything at all. It is garishly inappropriate.

A group of budding professional chefs come together to compete in a contest to see which of them will become "Top Chef". Each week they have a challenge and a "cook off" with the winner lauded by the panel of judges, while the individual deemed the weakest is sent home and takes no further part in the competition.

Yes, here we are in familiar territory with the reality contest model of a group of gradually dwindling people competing for a dream job. Fans of America's Next Top Model will recognise it and I'm sure it has been done many times in other guises in shows I just not aware of. Like ANTM, the contestants want to get a major jump in their chosen career and compete to get it. Each week we have the challenges, the in-fighting, the tensions and then the removal of one of the group. It is a winning approach so I can understand why others have just tried to apply that model to other disciplines – in this case cookery.

As with ANTM, the subject isn't really important because it the show is driven by the tension tensions between the characters. It may be clever editing but the most is made of the minor snaps at one another and the "diary room" comments are used to feed the minor fire. As such it is engaging enough guff that I find easy to watch without actually having to commit any emotion or brain power in watching. Everyone hates some characters and likes others and this is where the entertainment comes from. I confess that I found the judges quite dull and lacking in the sort of character and extremes that other similarly structured shows tend to have.

Overall then a fairly derivative affair perhaps but it is a formula that works and those that like this short of show will enjoy it. For my money though, it is distracting enough nonsense but nothing that I remember for more than five minutes after watching an episode.

So here's the formula....if you're Italian or French or from any predominantly historically white country, you have to change your style of cooking for every challenge. You may even get knocked if you do the same kind of technique (ie pasta) more than once in the entirety of the season no matter how long through the completion you make it. If you're a person of color, you can and are encouraged to make the same style of food every challenge on repeat and you're applauded for it. This goes double for South American chefs...even if they're born and raised in America, since they're of Latin decent, they're encouraged to make latin food from start to finish. But god forbid a white chef goes Italian, French, Greek, west African, Indian, Asian, Italian.....this second Italian dish will get them knocked by the judges for repeating a style. But the Latina can go 15 for 15 Mexican food and she'll be lauded. The double standard is so painstakingly obvious and the good news is, these shows are all run by liberal progressives and if they didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all so we can look forward to this kind of added racial bias on white contestants from here on out. Equality y'all! Ain't it grand?!?!? Sad broken leftists....