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Top Chef
This one is a request from a long time ago. Wintercow20, a loyal MR reader, asked:
What do you think of Top Chef? I am an addict!
I am a fan of reality TV but mostly I have chosen blogging instead. I've seen about a dozen Top Chef episodes, mostly through the urging of darling Yana. Mark of excellence: the drama is so good that the commentary makes sense even though you can't taste the food. It's a show about learning, excellence, and motivation. The voice-over narratives are an object lesson in behavioral economics and self-deception.
Here is a wonderful post by Grant McCracken on reality TV; excerpt:
Reality programming is not just cheap TV, it is responsive TV. Surely, one of the most sensible way for the programming executive to get back in touch with contemporary culture is to turn the show offer to untrained actors who have no choice but to live on screen, in the process importing aspects of contemporary culture that would otherwise have to be bagged and tagged and brought kicking and screaming into the studio and prime time. Reality programming is contemporary culture on tap. It is by no means a "raw feed." That is YouTube's job. But it is fresher than anything many executives could hope to manage by their own efforts. In effect, reality programming is "stealing signals" from an ambient culture, helping TV remain in orbit. (Mixed metaphor alert. Darn it, too late.)
Grant adds: "Reality programming also serves as a way for a divergent culture to stay in touch."
Addendum: I don't see why she married Salman Rushdie; books are reproducible after all.
Second addendum: Here is Matt Yglesias, on the new form of reality TV...markets indeed in truly everything.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 24, 2008 at 04:21 AM in Television | Permalink
Comments
Well, she later filed for divorce, so perhaps she agrees.
Here is my question. (Perhaps you have addressed this before.) What do you think about the fact that you have achieved the kind of celebrity (minor or not) where people who don't know you care what you think of their favorite television show? Do you know of anything interesting to read on the phenomenon of personal fandom?
Posted by: Christopher M at Aug 24, 2008 4:37:18 AM
"I don't see why she married Salman Rushdie; books are reproducible after all."
Words to strike fear in the heart of most any intellectual.
Posted by: Tom at Aug 24, 2008 5:29:01 AM
I was a regular Top Chef watcher for the first couple of seasons but eventually gave up on it. Too much petty bickering and too many hissy fits. It's almost as if personalities are more important than cooking skills.
Tapout, on the Versus network, is lesser-known but excellent reality show.
Posted by: Peter at Aug 24, 2008 9:58:46 AM
I really like top chef and even project runway. Fashion and cooking are two professions where the people involved are likely to be interesting by virtue of the work they do and their personal idiosyncrasies. Also making food or an outfit are things that you can sensibly compare people on. Compared to the apprentice where the challenges are at best metaphors for business skills and the characters are dull little jerks.
On the other hand is Hell's Kitchen where a sad assembly of Gomar Pyles goes through more abstract cooking challenges that are more about testing compartmentalized skills that would be kind of nice for a cook to have. The contestants lack the faintest spark of competence and the only delight is watching the shows only personality lash out at them the same way the viewer might like to for having been subjected to the show.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Aug 24, 2008 10:51:35 AM
My wife and I also like to watch Top Chef, for many of the same reasons mentioned above: "the commentary makes sense even though you can't taste the food. It's a show about learning, excellence, and motivation."
My main complaint is the lack of blind judging. This is especially problematic for the non-guest judges who can amass biases over the course of a season.
The dishes should be presented and tasted without connection to the competitor(s) who created them. I think the drama would be enhanced when we can the surprise on both the judges' and competitors' when the results are revealed each week. As a potential customer of these chefs, I would place a great deal more faith in the accuracy of the assessments if they were blind.
Alas, that would mean they couldn't fix the results keep the high-drama chefs on the show until the very end...
Posted by: Tim Cullen at Aug 24, 2008 11:02:25 AM
Reality programming is contemporary culture on tap.
God help us if that were true. In fact, attention-whore drama addicts are wildly overrepresented on reality TV shows, not to mention argumentative and disagreeable types who like to push other people's buttons and create conflict, and a generous sampling of folks who are a few Froot Loops short of a bowl of cereal. That's entertainment.
Casting for reality TV shows is done as carefully as for any sitcom or prime-time series. Your average real person would have no chance at all to be chosen.
Posted by: at Aug 24, 2008 8:49:53 PM
Actually, I've another reality tv request, which pertains much more directly to economics: what do you think of Deadliest Catch? The entire show is basically a real-life experiment in economic behavior.
For example, season 1 was the last year that crab were fished under the 'Derby' rules (each boat fished as much as they could, until Fish & Game called an end to the season based on when they expected the quota would be met). Starting with season 2, they fell under the Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ), where each boat was assigned a different fishing quota based on their past hauls. The idea was to make it safer by giving boats more time to reach their individual quotas, thereby removing the incentive to work 30-hour shifts in terrible conditions.
Instead, what wound up happening was that the larger boats started leasing the quotas of the smaller boats, and continued to work 30-hour shifts in lousy weather to make huge sums of money. As risk declined, the crews increased their workload until the risk was exactly the same as before, with a proportionally larger reward (more money). So instead of 250 boats working under extremely hazardous conditions for 10 days, you get 80 boats working under extremely hazardous conditions for 60 days. The accident & fatality rate hasn't changed, except you now have fewer people capturing most of the rewards under what is essentially a government-sponsored monopoly.
Posted by: Independent George at Aug 25, 2008 11:08:31 AM
