Competition Food Shows - Chopped!

After the demise of NBC's The Chopping Block, we can appreciate how difficult it is to create a good competition food show. It takes several things: good hosts & judges, great contestants, a simple and easy-to-understand structure, and high-quality production values. Bravo's Top Chef certainly delivers all the way around. Top Chef has become an influence in the restaurant industry just as American Idol has become somewhat of a player in the music industry.

I think The Chopping Block failed in the most important aspects. First of all - it wasn't original. It is a rip-off of the British series Last Restaurant Standing. It also took aspects of Top Chef's most popular elimination challenge - restaurant wars. This is not necessarily a deal breaker, but when you add a "host" who was so laid back that he tended to be boring or worse, incomprehensible, with a badly cast group of contestants - there is a toxic mix that made the show rather a dreary experience.

Marco White was just too much of a downer. He may have been the guy who made Gordan Ramsey cry, but he displayed little more than a sullen personality in the three episodes that were aired. The casting was wrong - the teams selected didn't really seem to have what it would take to run a restaurant in New York.

I also think a mistake was made in using a different critic as a judge for each challenge. While Top Chef has a guest judge each episode, they keep the core judges the same. This allows us to get to know the judges, what they like and dislike and makes them personalities that we enjoy. The Chopping Block basically used people that were in and out and we had no idea of exactly what they were doing. It made the process more detached and seemingly arbitrary - always a bad thing for this sort of show. (One only has to look at the Celebrity Apprentice to get an idea of how arbitrary eliminations create craziness.)

It's a shame this show failed because the concept is not all bad and it would make a nice summer unscripted show if executed properly. We probably won't get another chance at it, instead getting more of Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen, not high on my list of entertainment. It also makes me respect the efforts of those associated with Top Chef and another less glamorous show, The Next Food Network Star.

The announcement of Top Chef Masters on Bravo this summer points out that you can take from other concepts and possibly fashion a great new show. Masters looks like a cross between Top Chef, and Iron Chef America with a bit of Celebrity Aprrentice thrown in. Starting June 10, 2009 it might prove to be the perfect summer show!