"Outrageous food" outrageously bad

I turned on Food TV the other day, and came across yet another inane, time-slot-filler of a show, “Outrageous Food:”

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The host, a runner-up on Next Food Network Star, basically hams it up and smiles for the camera while pretending to cook/prepared various “outrageous” dishes that he finds in restaurants. In this episode, he finds a pizza place where apparently the staff is allowed to design their own pizzas after getting very drunk and/or very high (my theory).

Uggggghhhhhh.

Bruce

I liked him more than the winner of his season, but I agree, this show is terrible.

But the runner up from last season now has his own show on the Cooking Channel, while not great, much better than Outrageous Food. It’s all a little over-dramatic.

I haven’t seen it, but this is apparently just one more indicator of the degradation of the Food Network. The one-time home of actual chefs has become a carnival side show. Not only do we have Fieri, Deen, Yummo Rachael, Sandra’s two best friends and the unwatchable Neelys, Juan-Carlos Cruz was sentenced to nine years in prison for trying to pay two homeless men $500 to off his wife.

All that said, I find it hard to believe that this show could possibly be worse than the one “starring” the WINNERS of the first Next Star contest, The Hearty Boys. If Queer Eye and Jack on Will and Grace were genius born of flamboyantly gay men, those two dorks were about as exciting as watching an amoeba divide.

I admit that i temporarily was sucked in to “the worst cook in America”

Yes…a terrible show. Sort of a ripoff of Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel. But, the food is eaten on this show by a group of contestants, not the host. Same idea, though.

Likewise, there is now a ripoff of Gordon Ramsay’s show on making over restaurants that need it…hosted on the food channel by Robert Irvine.

Both shows are clearly clones of longer-standing shows on other networks.

And, the Michael Symon show taking various cities’ “best” places and having a runoff…is a ripoff of the Travel Channel’s Food Wars.

Maybe all of these started as a knockoff of something else, but the Food Network is clearly last on the pile.

I have to agree that the Food Channel has gone seriously downhill. The Cooking Channel, which was formerly Fine Living, is vastly superior for actual cooking.. My only complaint is that it is not a HD channel, at least not in my area.


Cheers!
Marshall

I like Anthony Bourdain’s take on this from Medium Raw:

"There is an unimpeachable logic to your argument when no matter what one may say about what you do - or even how true their observations might be - you can respond with two words: ‘It works.’

Whatever Brooke Johnson has done, it is working. That success ensures that whoever complains about ‘quality’ sounds quaint - even deranged - like some sad Old Hollywood shrunken head, talking about Ford and Lubitsch, Selznick and Thalberg - to an interviewer who has no idea who or what they’re talking about."

Can you tell us what the heck you’re “talking about”?

Pappy

Stuart…I have no idea what you are talking about and that certainly is not my quote!

Cheers!
Marshall

Marshall…you’re right…i had noticed that…not sure how it came out that way…i hit “quote” and…maybe I did something to make it seem that way…sorry…

Food Network simply is appealing to the masses- in terms of actual cooking shows, well that market is a lot smaller- Its like putting a show about sharks on TV - talk about the science of sharks and no one watches- show sharks eating a lot of stuff and people tune in-

And the bottom line for Food Network is they are doing great with their format, it just is not geared towards us old timers who remember when Emeril had a tip jar on his show and Mario didn’t sweat so much because the oven on the show didn’t really work-LOL

No problemo!!

Cheers!
Marshall

Or a neck!! Saw his new show on the Cooking Channel yesterday; he must be pushing 300 lbs easily.