Did anyone watch this past season of FNS?  Did you care if you did? I did watch it but I did something I rarely ever done in the past; I DVRed it to watch later. I opted to watch Game of Thrones and then Masterpiece Mystery instead.  Yes, British accents often trump all, it’s true.

The format of the show as a bit different this year; 3 current FN stars (heh) would act as mentors to 5 home cooks each and send them all the way to the top of the FN food chain (see what I did there?) and to their own show. We had Giada DeLaurentis, Alton Brown and Bobby Flay. So, big head, big attitude and big ego. Nice combo!  Don’t look at me that way! You know Giada has a giant head for that wee little body she’s toting around.   

At first, things seemed promising but soon, it felt like they all hated their teams, and each other. If you had forced me to take a guess at the beginning of the season as to top 3 standing; I actually would have said Justin, Ippy and Yvan. Instead, I was almost right…we got Justin and Yvan, but Michelle snuck in there. Michelle is the Guy Fieri look alike in case you weren’t sure. We also got Martie at the end there because her Southern charm and chutzpah won over Bob and Susie, who seemed softer and gentler this season.   And you may be saying to me “But Lori, what about Eric? He has had chef’ing skills.” and I will answer with “Firstly, who said you could use my name, and secondly…yes. But that doesn’t necessarily make for good tv.” His chef’ed his ass right on out of there actually. I admire him for sticking to his culinary guns. But those guns could not stand up Justin’s lip balm and Martita’s Latin spice.

And let’s go there..if that woman “Un Beso” ed me one more time, I was going to punch her. Must we ALWAYS have the spicy Latina?  If I ever get on one of these shows, I am going to be the spicy Jewess. See if I’m not! There was a soul food guy, or should I say… a guy they tried to put in the soul food category. There was the type A overly competitive one…Nikki, who I never quite warmed to. Actually, I wanted her to go home the first week. The fact she kept hanging on was commendable and annoying.  Emily was retro girl and I liked her, it was hard not to.  I like a bit of quirk.

In the end though, it was Alton’s love child, Justin that took the prize. And I think, deservedly so.  People often say that they think outside the box, but they seldom do it.  Justin actually does. He would do things and I would think “how cool!” It wasn’t how I cook or I how wanted to cook, but it is how I would want to be entertained by a cooking show. In the end, I can cook and I do get a lot of my ideas online and from books, sometimes from shows. But mostly I watch these shows to be entertained by the person doing the cooking.  I don’t watch Bobby Flay because for all of his culinary prowess, I don’t enjoy watching him.  Ok, I want to punch him in the face, but that’s just me I’m sure.

I am not entirely sure how I feel about this new format. I don’t mind it as much now as I did at the beginning and now I know that Alton is a big ole crybaby.  He teared up at the end there, go watch it. And I suspect he was the biggest surprise for me, how invested he actually got. I saw the most commitment to a team from him actually, and while I am not a fan (of him, I have watched his show), I give him props for actually giving a shit.

So, do I still care? I guess because I posted about it, I do. And I still actually want to be on this show so I must care. I think the shake up in format was probably because people were caring less and maybe this shook things up. I still really like the idea that I could be sitting here typing this one day and the next, have my own show. In theory.  I was asked recently about Master Chef and the difference there is that I want to cook on tv, I admit it. I’d like to be tv personality (I think. I could hate it). I don’t need to be a master chef, I don’t necessarily need a cookbook either…and honestly. Joe Bastianich scares me…even while he is a little sexy. Shut it…he is.  Also, I think MC is HARD. Like really hard. I think it probably is harder than FNS and that kind of scares me. I like being an armchair judge for that one.

Next post up…food trucks I have known.