TV Watch: Special "Food Network Star" Election Guide -- Everything you need to know before casting your vote

Who to vote for? Damaris, Rodney, or Russell? Um, no, thanks.

by Ken

Actually, the post title is a little misleading, with that "everything you need to know before casting your vote." For those who haven't heard, this year the choice among the final three candidates is being made by viewers. And since, as I understand it (which isn't very well), voters can only cast 10 votes a day from any particular e-mail address or mobile phone, you can be sure it will be a meaningfully representative vote. Votes have to be cast by sometime Wednesday. I don't remember when, because as you'll see in a moment, it doesn't make a bit of difference to me.

Actually, there's only one thing you need to know about voting for Food Network Star, and here it is. I think you'll agree that this alone is worth the price you paid to read this post. Okay, here goes:

No, you cannot vote for "none of the above."

Trust me on this. I looked.


THE EPISODE STARTED OUT WITH A SHOCK FOR ME

What a glum moment that was, at the top of last night's episode, when the remaining contestants were introduced as the "final four." My goodness, out of this year's crop of candidates did it really come to this? But how could this be, with Rodney and Russell still standing?

I didn't think Season 9 of Food Network Star started out all that badly, and in fact wound up writing a more positive piece than I thought I would wind up with when I started writing (">If Food Network Star has often felt a bit wheezy in Season 9, it's still had its moments"). Judging by where the season has wound up, I think I really need to take it all back. Sorry about that. Worse still, I'm afraid that the disaster has closely followed what for me is increasingly looking like the demise of Food Network, at least as a network devoted to food.

The Pie Man and the guy with thoae incomprehensible food "sins"

Rodney slots comfortably, in a competition show, into the role of "character," a specimen of local color who's humored allowed to hang around awhile to amuse and to boost morale, even though he has no visible food knowledge or skills and has the personality of an ugly bar drunk. Somehow the idea keep being floated that there's something "star"-like about his personality. Alton Brown actually said, when it came to eliminating one of the Final Four, "Rodney's just too fun to not give a shot to." Fun? Rodney? I know there's been a lot of laughing when he's been around, but most of it was done by Rodney. Think back. Did anything remotely amusing ever happen involving him?

Then there's Rodney's "concept." He's the Pie Man (he does actually own a pie store), and his life philosophy is something he keeps referring to as "pie style." Everything gets turned into pie. This might actually be a workable concept if the Pie Person could actually (a) make us want to make pies and (b) make pie-making "as easy as pie" for the viewer. Sort of the way the great baker and baking teacher Nick Malgieri really did years ago on Food Network in some of his baking segments on Sarah Moulton's Cooking Live. From Nick's repeated explanations and demonstrations, I had the feeling that I could actually roll out pie dough. I would watch Nick M do most anything. Rodney is another story, though. From what I've seen of his savage attack on messes of ingredients in the kitchen, his pie-making skills look pretty retarded. At that they outstripe his communication skills. As was frequently noted, if you actually listen to the words he puts together under the guise of sentences and "thoughts," it can be awfully hard to figure out what the heck he's talking about. Under camera pressure this has tended to deteriorate into plain gibberish.

As for Russell, no question he has a pleasing personality, and seems to care about food, but in all these weeks has he shown anything else? Least of all anything that would make anyone want to watch a show of his? Especially with his truly incomprehensible program "point of view,"
that nonsense about food "sins" -- stuff like bacon and booze and I forget-what-else. Week after week he was told that nobody understand it, and it never seemed to occur to him that there might be a wee problem.

I mean, usually sins are bad things we're supposed to be trying to avoid or conquer, but Russell seems to be trying to sell his sins. Huh? I guess if you think of "sins" in quotation marks, um, well, I still don't get the point. If it occurs to you that his "idea" might be like to add bacon to everything, it turns out you're not far from the mark.

It's easier to believe the ladies slid through to Final Four

True, their limitations, at least as of this competition, have been frequently and accurately diagnosed by "mentors" Alton Brown, Giada De Laurentiis, and Bobby Flay. Nevertheless both Stacey and Damaris have food knowledge to share and some personal magnetism that might attracts viewers, but Stacey's considerable camera ease and poise are indeed cut off by her "guarded" quality, which forms a kind of veneer, while Damaris, for all her bubbly unpredictability, and her unquestioned passion for and apparent abilities in Southern cooking, tends to be all over the place, including lots of places no one would want to accompany her. And in neither case did it seem as if the contestant was going to be able to get around her blockages.


FINAL FOUR? THIS IS THE FINAL FOUR?

I'm thinking, "Let's call the whole thing off. The only one who seemed within hailing distance of a producible let alone watchable show was Stacey, who can cook, is attractive, and has noted has considerable camera poise, and she also has a potentially interesting POV: a nostalgic passion for old-time dishes, which she nevertheless feels eager and able to update to suit more modern sensibilities.

So naturally Stacey was eliminated before the pilot-making second part of the show.

The structure of the episode was sensible. The mentors were to assist all four finalists in preparing a "pitch" for Food Network execs Bob Tuschman and Susie Fogelson, who (as I noted before) have been mostly absent from this season of Food Network Star. Based on the pitches, Bob and Susie would choose three to make pilots.

Damaris and Rodney were their easy picks. Then they opened the choice between Russell and Stacey, on a straight vote of them and the three mentors. And bye-bye, Stacey!

One thing that became clearer as the pitches were developed is that the Food Network execs are getting closer to admitting that they're no longer interested in putting shows about food on their air. What they want is gimmick shows that use food as props, under the "star"-powered aura of a sort of circus master. No wonder Stacey had to go.

Curiously, as the pitches were imagined and hammered out, they generally seemed to involve, not the star's presentation of topics based on his/her POV, but visiting a food emporium on each show where professionals are producing something that can be either transformed or competed against.All of the pitches were bent into shows involving visiting restaurants and, well, doing something. Thus:

Rodney's gimmick . . .

is being challenged each time out by a restaurant chef to transform a signature dish of his into pie, which is then judged against the original vs. the pie version. It's sort of Bobby Flay's Throwdown but with most of the food interest squeezed out, and all of the authenticity and most of the charm. For the pilot, the challenging chef was L.A.'s Eric Greenspan, producing what I have to say looked to me like itself a grotesquely overblown grilled-cheese sandwich. The only question was whether a pie version would be more or less nauseating. With ace direction by Guy Fieri (who directed all the pilots), the result was simply repulsive.

Russell, meanwhile, is apparently . . .

going to visit a food purveyor each time to sample a great creation suitable for conversion via the magic sinful ingredients into, well, a "guilty pleasure" -- a much more useful term than "sin." So for the pilot he visited this ice cream guy and sampled his cabernet sauvignon sorbet, and then he proceeded to make bourbon bacon ice cream. The professional ice cream guy tasted Russell's concoction and was impressed to be able to taste bourbon, salt, and of course bacon. It struck me as loathsome.

And then there's Damaris

You have to blame her for the original idea, because it's one of the two she brought to her pitch brainstorming session with the mentors. She was going to teach guys pining for love how to cook -- Southern-style, of course -- so as to impress the objects of their affections. I know I've seen shows based on this premise. Creepy-terrible, public-access-cable-quality shows. In the pilot I credit Damaris with seeming seriously uncomfortable, as well she should have been. It's a pointless and idiotic premise, one that pretty well guarantees that none of the star's potentially starlike qualities might come through. I barely watched.


DO I HAVE TO POINT OUT THE OBVIOUS?

Tthat these show premises, appalling as they are, aren't much worse than the dreadful new shows the Food Network has been inflicting on viewers in recent times? (For a while it looked like the new sister network, Cooking Channel, might provide some relief, but it seems to have been personality-obsessed from the get-go and now seems to have sunk into food-averse gimmick shows.) If we consider that the network brain trust is now looking for stars of that particular luminescence, well, all the rest seems to follow.

I suppose I should thank them for freeing up a nice chunk of time for me.

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