A cooking show … without cooking
Food Network debuted in 1993. As it found its footing, it worked out a general scheme: Daytime programming that was primarily instructional-type shows (the traditional “cooking segment on a talk show” sort of thing), and “Food Network Nighttime,” which featured the more competition-y shows, today highlighted by Chopped and its ilk.
(I’m getting all my Food Network history information from Wikipedia, so if it’s wrong … well, shucks.)
The network gradually added celebrity chefs and came up with new formats, because filling 24 hours of television with programming is hard enough before you limit yourself to only food programming. Chopped has almost 600 episodes, for crying out loud! There’s a different Baking Championship for every season, every holiday, and every demographic (miss you, Reggie!), and enough cooking competition shows that every aspiring chef in the world has been on nine different Food Network shows apiece.
All that means that the network has to stretch its legs sometimes and try things that are a stretch to really count as “food” shows. For example, have you ever seen Halloween Wars? Or any show with Wars in the title, really? Food Network loves to bring out these “food artists” and have them create enormous dioramas that include, like, three inches of blown sugar, 19 pounds of fondant, 18 2x4s, oh-and-there’s-a-cupcake-over-there-as-a-tasting-element.
At some point, the shows are as much about “food” as MTV shows are about “music,” only with 5% less grief for the divergence. The Tasty Facebook page has been increasingly sharing generic Buzzfeed links, and inevitably, the comment section of every post lands on sarcastic “Oh, cool recipes!” slams. That’s basically what some of these Food Network shows have become.
Case in point: Buddy vs. Duff. The show, which debuted last summer, pits Duff Goldman against Buddy Valastro, ostensibly in a cake competition. Over the two seasons, the two guys (and their baking/design teams) have competed in a series of judged faceoffs to make the biggest, most extravagant, most exciting designs. On this most recent second season, they made a mini golf course, they made scenes from Star Wars, they made dinosaurs.
Just one thing.
They didn’t make cake.
Oh, there was cake. When Buddy made a merry-go-round, the top was layered in sheet cake and slathered in buttercream. When Duff modeled Jordin Sparks for a Waitress-themed display, she was made from modeling chocolate. At the end of the episodes, when there’s a wrapping-up montage, I think we see people eating cake? Maybe. That definitely happened in the first season, though I won’t swear that conceit continued into Season 2. At the least, “how the food tastes” was apparently not a factor in judging who won.
Do you get that? It’s a competition show … on the Food Network … where it doesn’t actually matter how the thing you “cooked” tastes. It also doesn’t show them making any cake. It’s like they have a supply room with lumber, metal, and sheetcake in equal supply. On the most recent season, the most riveting cooking segment was when Duff decided to bake a pie from scratch (on a cake show) to be part of the display and it fell, so he had to do it again. That pie, for the record, went uneaten on the broadcast. It’s like if the main tasks on American Idol were the contestants doing their makeup, hair, and wardrobe.
Dramatic moments in each episode come down to whether the hydraulics work, or if the mechanism will fire when it’s supposed to, or if the woodwork is too big to fit into the semi truck. It’s exciting as a game show! My wife and daughter and I watch it regularly! But it could be on ESPN with essentially no changes.
Duff Goldman is the Ace of Cakes. Buddy Valastro is the Cake Boss. They made a very riveting game show around those personas … that did not require them to be what they were. Drew and Jonathan Scott could have made the same show. Heck, Jeff Probst and Phil Keoghan could have made it. Any two relatively handy people could have made it.
I don’t envy the programming folks at Food Network. Ted Allen (who, I maintain, holds the all-time record for “most times counting on television) can only record so many episodes of Chopped, and there are only so many variants on that general conceit. Since Buddy vs. Duff got one season and came back for another, I can only conclude the ratings were good enough to justify its existence. So it’s fun.
It’s just not a “food” show.