Can This Marriage Be Saved?

I am so bored. This current season of Top Chef is draining the life out of me. Why? Let's discuss. Around the Top Chef blogger teepees, the consensus seems to be the quality of the chefs. That this season is just a blip. There is some validity to that argument if you look back at past seasons and realize that casting seems to alternate between having a group of rock solid working chefs with some success under their belts and having a group of marginal cooks with wacko personalities and goofy hats. Take a look at last season and this one. You had four outstanding chefs that made food you remember. Like Kevin's candied bacon jam, or Michael V's Braised Pork Belly. This season we're talking about food that a chef apparently lost in transit. Despite the fact that I've gotten used to the seasonal swing between good chefs/drama chefs I think there's a larger problem that has to do with the whole concept of Top Chef. The series has been set on Auto Pilot while the creative folks that fleshed out some of the better elements of the series have wandered off to do new shows. I don't blame them. I do blame the Producers for not shaking the show up. The basic format has......not......changed! Joel Keller over at The TV Squad has some ideas on why it's so predictable but his major consensus is that the show is still entertaining. As someone who has put a considerable amount of sweat and effort into Top Chef, I couldn't disagree with him more on that particular sentiment. I didn't think Ed walking around the condo in Tiffany's dress was entertaining. I didn't think Angelo plastic wrapping the toilet so another drunk chef ends up peeing on the floor was entertaining. Not to mention how we can all recite the lines by heart of a chef waking up the next morning after another chef has been auffed. If you are boring me it matters not one iota how well produced the damn show is, I'm ready to turn the channel.

Can this Food Reality game show marriage be saved? I think if you radically change it up, you could probably save the Good Ship Top Chef from sinking. How? Hold on to your chef's jackets.

First - Get out of the Studio. It's time to make Top Chef grittier, more realistic. But that means getting out of the Top Chef kitchen. Every season the production crew finds a big empty warehouse and builds the Top Chef Kitchen inside of it. They do this for some very specific reasons. They can control production access, they can fill it to the gills with product and appliance pimpage and it allows them to control camera and sound elements. The Top Chef Kitchen has great sight lines and no outside noise to deal with. You can shoot all night and not piss off the neighbors. But Shamu, didn't they shoot inside the Hilton Hotel this season? Isn't that why they keep showing this shot...
...before each parade of chefs into the Top Chef Kitchen? No. It's just more pimpage. The kitchen was built here.

Some empty warehouse on the outskirts of DC or even into Maryland or Virginia. Let it go. The Top Chef Kitchen is a security blanket you don't need any more. You need to get your hands dirty.

Second - Take Top Chef regional. The whole shooting in one city for a bulk of the season does nothing for the actual competition. It does allow for a lot of pretty local shots but not much else. So what to do instead? Instead of having 17 chefs all in one spot for the season, shoot the first eight episodes in four different cities. Each city gets two episodes and four chefs competing. Epi one, Quickfire eliminates one chef, then the next challenge eliminates another leaving two chefs for the next episode. Episode two cranks up the pressure when it's one on one with the final winner going to the next round. Instead of shooting in some studio, find real life kitchens to shoot in. You've had a huge amount of regional chefs as Guest Judges, time to tap that market and their restaurants. Ask your camera people to get creative. Say hello to a lot more kitchen and food shots. Have challenges that are based in restaurant reality, not stupid word play games. Have the chefs serving food to actual diners. Regulars to whatever restaurant they are filming in. Not handpicked publicity folks invited to eat the chefs food. Who would judge? Sorry Tom, Gail, Padma and whomever is the forth, you'll be staying home. The Regional Rounds are based on how well the dish sells, appearance and the efficiency with which the chefs work with staff, both front and back of house. They've got to order or shop for proteins and produce. They've got to find and procure special ingredients if needed. They've got to budget to make a profit off a dish. You can sell all the lobster you want at $5 a plate but profit will be a judging criteria. If Chef A makes a killer dish that sells 30 servings and actually gets them out on time, correctly prepared, and makes money, they move on before Chef B who could only sell 10 servings and had three come back. The Head Chef of the restaurant will be the ultimate judge but according to the judging elements laid out by the Producers. Oh yeah, the diners won't know what dish is by the guest chefs so none of the voting specifically for Top Chef contestants. So now you've whittled down 16 chefs to 4.

Third - Stay regional. Each of the next four episodes has all four chefs competing in each of the cities the previous episodes. Which means each chef gets a home town advantage at least once. Here's where you could have your chuck wagon challenge, your on the beach challenge, whatever challenge works with the city that you are in. All the judges are back, all regular judging rules (such as they are) apply. However. No chefs eliminated during these episodes. They will all start out with some points but earn more as they win challenges. Points for Quickfires, points for High Stakes Challenges. The more points you accumulate, the better advantage you have in the finale. All four chefs will compete but they will have to use their points to buy the product they want to use for their finale dishes and sous chefs they want to assist them. Also during this series of episodes, each chef gets one opportunity to a Throwdown Challenge. This means that one chef can challenge one other chef to a 30 minute, 6 product dish throwdown. No one has to challenge anyone else but if they do they have to wager points they have against points of the chef they are challenging. If they lose, the chef they challenged gets their points. If they win, they get to take points away from the chef they challenged. Hello pressure.

Fourth - The Finale. Could be one or two episodes. With the layout above, we're up to 12 episodes. Top Chef has for the past four seasons run 14 episodes but they've had as many as fifteen and as little as twelve. You could build some nice audience expectations and buzz with with a two episode finale. Again, it's the cook the best meal of your life....with the points you've accumulated from the previous challenges. There could be twists but the finale should be filmed in one neutral place with all the regular judges and any guest judges they want.

So what does this mean? No more condo segments, no more Whole Food shopping segments, a lot less of Tom and Padma and a lot more focus on the food and the stress of dealing with a working kitchen. If you really want to have some fun, have the chefs travel to each city in the second round in a Winnebago together and run segments on that.

Hell, have Winnebago as a sponsor. That's the other thing, the Producers will have to work harder for their pimpage because throwing up many gratuitous shots of ovens or product would be a lot harder. But isn't that what challenges are all about? Because if you think as many folks are watching what you're doing now, I think you are wrong. When I see comments on various boards that long time fans are forgetting what night the show is on, you've committed the worst TV crime possible and that's boring viewers off your show and onto another. Less viewers viewing your pimpage means lower ratings and less ad revenue. All of which leads down a icy bobsled slope to cancellation. That would make me a very sad TC Crack Monkey indeed.