| Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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Top Chef, I Love Your Forever |
The last month has provided a bounty of prestige television—a ludicrously capacious bag full of them, even. Inside, you’ll find flat shoes for the subway, a lightning-rod series satirizing a murderous Beyoncé fan, the return of TV’s finest cannibalism-survivalist-mystery drama, a show based on Fleetwood Mac, Real Housewives getting wasted together in Thailand, a mustachioed soccer coach’s swan-song season, a lunch pail, and, of course, Succession. |
Those are the obvious choices to mention among the glut of really good TV out right now. The source of that bag meme, Succession, especially stands out for premiering amidst outsized, hyped-up expectations and somehow meeting them. But fans of one particular genre of television are really feasting. (And not on the corpses of our best friends who froze in the woods, either.) While it is never a bad time to be fans of food television—at any point in these glorious United States of America, it’s almost guaranteed that an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives or Chopped will be on, God bless us all—it’s particularly great right now. The genre’s three current standout series are each quite different too. (Variety is the spice of life! Food sayings!) The crown jewel of these is Top Chef: World All-Stars. (Or is it “the Japanese Kobe steak” of these? I’m already exhausted trying to come up with food metaphors.) |
This is, believe it or not, the 20th season of the Bravo culinary competition. Some people have spent their entire lives watching the same soap opera. Others have watched all of The Simpsons. There are even people who have inexplicably watched every season of Grey’s Anatomy. Yet I cannot judge them, for I have seen every episode of Top Chef and contend that not only is it still the best reality show on television, but that this all-stars iteration also might be the finest the show has ever been. Top Chef has perfected the need for long-running reality series to escalate scale, stakes, and spectacle, as a means for staying both exciting and relevant. Yet it does this without becoming so ostentatious or convoluted that it loses the core tenets of what made the show great in the first place. Not only is this an all-stars season, which the series has done several times in the past. But it is also an international all-stars season. The contestants are made up, for the first time, from winners and finalists of the franchise’s many global spinoffs. There are chefs from France, Brazil, Mexico, Jordan, Thailand, and…Kentucky. It’s also the first time the entire season is taking place abroad, with the contestants gathering in London. One might instinctively scoff at the destination for this historic Top Chef outing being the home of British cuisine, which doesn’t have the most sterling reputation. But all it takes to get on board is for host Padma Lakshmi to explain the culinary esteem of the city once—such are her powers. Top Chef has also unlocked the secret that it is far more gratifying to watch contestants be excellent and do well on the show than it is to watch them fail—which often on shows like these happens by entrapment, due to outrageous or nonsensical challenges. While we can’t taste the food ourselves, the series manages to telegraph unequivocally how masterful the work is. Instead of a cruel snickering at a contestant’s downfall, we’re treated to an intense emotional investment in the chefs. Their personalities and passions are given more space to shine because the baseline is already established: They’re damn good cooks. Sylwia Stachyra, from Poland, delivers a weekly soliloquy about potatoes that makes me laugh harder than most comedies on TV right now, while her account of what it’s like to live near the Ukrainian border made me cry. (In fact, I have cried during every episode of this cooking competition.) The passion with which Brazil’s Luciana Berry speaks about her country’s food and the pride with which Jordan’s Ali Ghzawi serves his local recipes are inspiring. There are plenty of delightful “melting pot” moments, like when the Congolese Italian chef Victoire Gouloubi attempts to pronounce the British pub dish “toad in a hole”—and then wrap her head around why anyone would ever eat it. And, while it’s certainly not the point of a show like this, there is an inordinate number of chef contestants I would very much like to kiss this season. Watching each week is an emotional, vibrant joy, especially with the knowledge that you are watching a specific kind of television that is executing at the top of its game. Of course, I am not going to let an opportunity to rave about food television go by without mentioning our nation’s greatest hero, Guy Fieri. It appears I am a sucker for an all-stars format, because that’s essentially what Tournament of Champions is. Now in its fourth season, the series has some of the most visible chefs from across the Food Network (and several Top Chef alums as well) compete in a March Madness-style bracket. This is a tournament hosted by Guy Fieri; it relishes extremes and bigness as much as Top Chef thrives in its elegance and nuance. Yet the mark of a great show is knowing what it is, and pulling that off expertly, which is precisely what ToC does. There’s an athleticism to the show, which lends itself perfectly to frontrunner and underdog narratives, thus lending the proceedings a certain emotionality. You’re crestfallen when one of your Food Network favorites loses, but you’ll brim with pride when a newcomer prepares the meal of their career and wins. It’s the closest thing to a sporting event that doesn’t feature Rihanna performing in the middle that I’ll watch. |
Then there’s the quiet gem of TV food series, Restaurants at the End of the World. The National Geographic series is hosted by Top Chef winner Kristen Kish (I guess Top Chef is a common theme here), following her as she goes to extreme locales to learn how esteemed chefs there source and prepare their signature food in those extreme conditions. There’s a surge in host-fronted food-travel series that take a classy, educational approach to a genre that, for a while, was overrun by bombastic personalities globe-trotting to gorge on gluttonous amounts of food. (I used to watch those but had to stop, because who really wants to see their typical Friday evening dramatized on TV?) The experience of watching a show like Restaurants at the End of the World and similar recent series like Taste the Nation With Padma Lakshmiand Searching for Italy With Stanley Tucci—all of which are obviously in the Anthony Bourdain tradition—is so much more rewarding. It’s the difference between dining on a meal prepared with the finest, cleanest ingredients, versus processed empty calories. And at the moment, we’re all dining real well. |
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I am utterly devastated that my favorite TV show ended this week, though, as a true fan, I’m glad that it ended on such a perfect note. Now, I am just waiting for Rolling Stone to update its list of Greatest TV Shows of All Time to include Gwyneth Paltrow’s hit-and-run ski trial. We’re supposed to revel in pretentious celebrities’ downfalls. Schadenfreude! Cancel culture! Other talking points! Yet here we were, not just rapt by this SNL sketch of a bizarro trial—in which Paltrow was accused of crashing into a fellow skier, she counter-sued for $1, and what Taylor Swift receives for Christmas was invoked—but also actively rooting for the GOOP Queen to triumph. Public opinion on the Oscar winner shifted quicker than a cup of bone broth moves through my body. Her matter-of-fact, almost catty smugness was heralded—not criticized—as peak rich white lady behavior. We fawned over her courtroom outfits with such fervor, you’d think “expensive sweaters for lounging around your chalet” was just announced as this year’s Met Gala theme. And then there was her grand-finale kiss-off: a whispered, “I wish you well,” to her accuser, as she floated out of the courtroom victorious—a poison-dart pleasantry if I’ve ever seen one. |
But people were injured, and lives, ostensibly, altered from the incident in question. The money in question seemed almost petty to go to court over for someone like Paltrow. Wasn’t it all a bit twisted to be so cheery about all of this? Some of the finest minds at the most renowned publications have attempted to analyze this phenomenon. (Naomi Fry at The New Yorker called the trial Paltrow’s “best role in years.”) That I was more emotional when her verdict was read than I was when I heard Trump was indicted, just minutes before, is something for my therapist and me to parse for years to come. But while on that journey, at least I’ll have this mash-up of Paltrow singing “Landslide” on Glee with quotes from her trial to help me through. (Watch it here.) |
Kelly Clarkson Rises…Again…Even Higher |
Scorned Kelly Clarkson Season is upon us, and, like the first few mildly sunny days of spring bringing the calls of scattered songbirds back early from their migration, the early signs of what’s to come are warming my soul. Or, in this case, setting it on fire. On Instagram this week, Clarkson revealed the name of her new album, Chemistry. Fans had already been calling Clarkson’s “divorce record,” as she’s opened up about how she wrote it following her ugly breakup and legal battle with ex Brandon Blackstock.
The album won’t be just “I’m angry, I’m sad,” she promised in the video, which, great! No one wants The Greatest Gift to Pop Culture in Modern History to feel badly. That said, she did tease a bit of what those emotions might be like in her new music during an epic recent rendition of “Kellyoke” on her talk show. She covered “abcdefu” by Gayle, changing the lyrics to reflect what seems like her own breakup experience and…damn. Here’s what she sang: “Forget you, and your dad, and the fact that you got half, and my broken heart, turned that shit into art.” I’m salivating for more of this energy. (Watch it here.)
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Which brings me to the most important update in the Kelly Clarkson beat: She is doing a short Vegas residency this summer. That’s actually not the big news, though. The big news would be that I have secured tickets to one of the shows, a momentous moment both for myself and for Clarkson, who will be gifted the experience of a Kevin Fallon sob-scream as she performs live, a magical sound that I’m sure is going to change her life in meaningful ways she never imagined. |
One way celebrities, especially musicians, express their outrage over a state’s political decisions is to remove their business, i.e. not film a TV show there or cancel a concert. Madonna has employed the opposite tactic, and I love the meaning behind it. In the wake of Tennessee’s drag bans and anti-LGBT legislation she added an additional stop to her tour, which features RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen as an opening act, in Nashville. And she released this statement: “The oppression of the LGBTQ+ is not only unacceptable and inhumane; it’s creating an unsafe environment; it makes America a dangerous place for our most vulnerable citizens, especially trans women of color. Also, these so-called laws to protect our children are unfounded and pathetic. Anyone with half a brain knows not to fuck with a drag queen. Bob and I will see you from the stage in Nashville where we will celebrate the beauty that is the queer community.” |
This Means Something; I Don’t Know What |
This means something for “our times.” Check with me in 2043, should the world/America still exist then, when I’ve figured out just what that is. |
More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed |
The entire cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is reuniting for a new Netflix anime, which explains the high-pitched cheers of delight you heard Thursday afternoon. Read more. Remember when Archie got mauled by a bear and still took his SATs the next day? Or when Betty’s mom joined a cult led by Chad Michael Murray? Or when Cheryl developed superpowers to save the town from a comet? We’ll miss Riverdale’s wildness. Read more.
Shows like Real Housewives are supposed to be fun to watch. Those women should be entertaining. So why did the fans become so…mean? Read more.
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A Thousand and One: It won the top Sundance prize this year. Those mountain people have good taste! (Now in theaters) Rye Lane: We thank our Lord and Savior, Nora Ephron, every time a new rom-com comes out and it’s this good. (Now on Hulu) Schmigadoon!: The musical-comedy spoof I never knew I needed is back, and it’s still so bizarre and brilliant. (Wed. on Apple TV+) Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Sometimes a movie I can’t imagine would be good is actually a ton of fun, and I just have to admit that I was wrong.
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