As a cooking competition, it was ok. The amount of contestants, judges and challenges were what they needed to be for the relatively short 6 episode run. The contestants were likable and at least one judge was articulate in his critiques in a more technical way. Beyond that, there were issues.
The judging criteria seemed to be made up on the fly. Soon judges were critiquing on the buzzword "innovation," which was frustrating when during the finale they did not mention this criteria at all. So how important was it really?
The episodes were just shy of fifty minutes each, and contained far too much fluff like contestant biographies, exit speeches from both the judges and contestants. And then language about soul food cooking that yes could've on point and educational, but somehow just lacked detail, clarity and impact, to really hold my attention. I also found the host pretentious as she kept asking the contestants why they were there like it was some spiritualist job interview. Isn't wanting $50k grand prize enough?
I skipped to the plating of the food and the judging at times. Some challenges were on theme and had relevance, such as the music theme challenge or the tribute challenge or the grandma dessert challenge, all three of which brought out sides of the contestants I was actually interested in, apart from their main backstory which I was not. But other challenges were not as inspired and also did not give players significant or interesting advantages when they won the mini "starter" challenges (which also didn't come into elimination criteria that much?).
I think overall, the show is far too self-indulgent. Much of the repetitive things the host, judges and contestants say should've been edited out. Probably each episode could be ten or twenty minutes shorter.
I can applaud the show for trying to validate soul food cooking, and raise it up to be as important as other cuisine. But there's other ways of doing that then just talking about it. Show more of the actual cooking.
While controversial, the end result is not contradicting the values of the show. However it was misleading of the judges to consistently ask for innovation when the reality was they valued another criteria more apart from that. Kudos for the runner up to be graceful about it, as it wasn't his fault the judges didn't know what they wanted, and they had actually against their own values some of the time. Which again lent to the sense of pretension I was getting irritated by as the show went on.
Still a unique show, and possibly worth checking out in any next season. If you really want a cooking show though, I think there are more fast paced and exciting options.
