Intrusive fan votes, questionable production decisions and stale locations have led to disappointing installments, and the prognosis for improvement is mixed.
‘Top Chef’Â Paul Cheney/Bravo
Survivor and Top Chef are crucial pieces of my television rotation. In a reality TV landscape in which âconsistencyâ is rarely attained, theyâre among the most reliable and prolific shows going.
Survivor and Top Chef have a combined 73 seasons and counting, but if I had my way, theyâd produce four or five cycles per year, because weekly routine hinges on televised jaunts to Fiji and wherever Kristen Kish and company have taken the cheftestants. Theyâre my comfort. We all need comfort.
That makes it worrisome to report that this springâs installments â Survivor: In the Hands of the Fans and Top Chef: Carolinas â suggest that both venerable formats are broken.
Amazing Race, another of my comfort viewing favorites, which has broken itself over (families?) and over (strangers matched on blind dates?!?) and over (exclusively former Big Brother contestants?!?), before bouncing back.
But man, Survivor and Top Chef have gone wrong this season, and you know whoâs to blame? Me! And you! Us! The fans are at least partially to blame! Though perhaps not quite as much as the producers, who have over-relied on us to the detriment of the integrity of their shows.
It was only two weeks ago that Kish, whose success taking over hosting duties for the ostensibly irreplaceable Padma Lakshmi is a small miracle, began a preliminary challenge with the announcement, âToday we thought, âWhy not give the people what they want?’â
My heart sank. Iâm going to speak on behalf only of myself and say that what I want from Top Chef is talented chefs making food that I wish I could taste. Never have I thought that I deserved control over that process.
Instead, 11 episodes into a 14-episode season and with no explanation beyond populism, Top Chef turned the quickfire over to the fans. Given three choices of key ingredients, the fans selected the easiest and most familiar â âpeaches.â So far, so good. Given three choices of cooking times, the fans selected the most generous time â â30 minutes.â You rule, fans! But then, given a list of three potential twists, the fans voted to have the contestants shift work stations halfway through, to make them finish and serve a dish somebody else conceived and started.
Maybe the hope was that it would prove how resilient the chefs were? Maybe it would just create entertaining chaos? Instead, with almost no time and no flexibility, the chefs essentially plated what theyâd been given. Nobody made it better. Nobody made it worse. So the judges were offering critiques to one chef of something a different chef had made. Rhoda, so likable and charming and unassuming, looked embarrassed to be accepting praise for what was entirely Sherryâs dish, which made Sherry justifiably angry. To make matters worse, the show gave the $10,000 challenge prize to Rhoda.
How did the producers not recognize this was going to be a problem? How was there not a quick adjustment to allow the prize to be, at the very least, split between the two contributing chefs?
The season has been plagued by regular head-scratchers.
The location, starting in Charlotte and then moving to Greenville, has failed to provide a unique personality or locally distinctive tasks. Part of me wonders if, when the Top Chef producers decided to do this season in Carolinas, they completely forgot that season 14 had already been set in Charleston, using the most fertile aspects of regional culture then.
Instead, 11 episodes into a 14-episode season and with no explanation beyond populism, Top Chef turned the quickfire over to the fans. Given three choices of key ingredients, the fans selected the easiest and most familiar â âpeaches.â So far, so good. Given three choices of cooking times, the fans selected the most generous time â â30 minutes.â You rule, fans! But then, given a list of three potential twists, the fans voted to have the contestants shift work stations halfway through, to make them finish and serve a dish somebody else conceived and started.
Maybe the hope was that it would prove how resilient the chefs were? Maybe it would just create entertaining chaos? Instead, with almost no time and no flexibility, the chefs essentially plated what theyâd been given. Nobody made it better. Nobody made it worse. So the judges were offering critiques to one chef of something a different chef had made. Rhoda, so likable and charming and unassuming, looked embarrassed to be accepting praise for what was entirely Sherryâs dish, which made Sherry justifiably angry. To make matters worse, the show gave the $10,000 challenge prize to Rhoda.
How did the producers not recognize this was going to be a problem? How was there not a quick adjustment to allow the prize to be, at the very least, split between the two contributing chefs?
The season has been plagued by regular head-scratchers.
The location, starting in Charlotte and then moving to Greenville, has failed to provide a unique personality or locally distinctive tasks. Part of me wonders if, when the Top Chef producers decided to do this season in Carolinas, they completely forgot that season 14 had already been set in Charleston, using the most fertile aspects of regional culture then.
Instead, 11 episodes into a 14-episode season and with no explanation beyond populism, Top Chef turned the quickfire over to the fans. Given three choices of key ingredients, the fans selected the easiest and most familiar â âpeaches.â So far, so good. Given three choices of cooking times, the fans selected the most generous time â â30 minutes.â You rule, fans! But then, given a list of three potential twists, the fans voted to have the contestants shift work stations halfway through, to make them finish and serve a dish somebody else conceived and started.
Maybe the hope was that it would prove how resilient the chefs were? Maybe it would just create entertaining chaos? Instead, with almost no time and no flexibility, the chefs essentially plated what theyâd been given. Nobody made it better. Nobody made it worse. So the judges were offering critiques to one chef of something a different chef had made. Rhoda, so likable and charming and unassuming, looked embarrassed to be accepting praise for what was entirely Sherryâs dish, which made Sherry justifiably angry. To make matters worse, the show gave the $10,000 challenge prize to Rhoda.
How did the producers not recognize this was going to be a problem? How was there not a quick adjustment to allow the prize to be, at the very least, split between the two contributing chefs?
The season has been plagued by regular head-scratchers.
The location, starting in Charlotte and then moving to Greenville, has failed to provide a unique personality or locally distinctive tasks. Part of me wonders if, when the Top Chef producers decided to do this season in Carolinas, they completely forgot that season 14 had already been set in Charleston, using the most fertile aspects of regional culture then.
Instead, 11 episodes into a 14-episode season and with no explanation beyond populism, Top Chef turned the quickfire over to the fans. Given three choices of key ingredients, the fans selected the easiest and most familiar â âpeaches.â So far, so good. Given three choices of cooking times, the fans selected the most generous time â â30 minutes.â You rule, fans! But then, given a list of three potential twists, the fans voted to have the contestants shift work stations halfway through, to make them finish and serve a dish somebody else conceived and started.
Maybe the hope was that it would prove how resilient the chefs were? Maybe it would just create entertaining chaos? Instead, with almost no time and no flexibility, the chefs essentially plated what theyâd been given. Nobody made it better. Nobody made it worse. So the judges were offering critiques to one chef of something a different chef had made. Rhoda, so likable and charming and unassuming, looked embarrassed to be accepting praise for what was entirely Sherryâs dish, which made Sherry justifiably angry. To make matters worse, the show gave the $10,000 challenge prize to Rhoda.
How did the producers not recognize this was going to be a problem? How was there not a quick adjustment to allow the prize to be, at the very least, split between the two contributing chefs?
The season has been plagued by regular head-scratchers.
The location, starting in Charlotte and then moving to Greenville, has failed to provide a unique personality or locally distinctive tasks. Part of me wonders if, when the Top Chef producers decided to do this season in Carolinas, they completely forgot that season 14 had already been set in Charleston, using the most fertile aspects of regional culture then.
