Food Network Celebrity Challenge-It's Over, There's a Winner, Was It Any Good?

Pic of the Day

The Winner is Announced.

The requisite six episodes of Guy Fieri's and Rachel Ray's Food Network Celebrity Challenge has been aired and one disparaging sign is the fact that the last two episodes were both aired on the same night. If a show is proving to be wildly successful networks will try to spread them out.

When all is said and done, also covered on this post,  this series was the formulaic cooking contest type of show, the kind you see on MasterChef or Top Chef or Food Network's Next Food Network Star. Except, of course, that the contenders are "celebrities" D list types, the kind of celebrities seen on these celebrity type contender shows.

It's a concept that could work. There's a plethora of viewers out here across the fruited plains that like these type of food contest shows, including me. The notion of having celebrities competing in the cooking challenges is a concept that might not quite capture the interest of these same cooking show contest aficionados.

This series had some okay celebrity types. Cheech Marin was a good choice, as was Lou Diamond Phillips. Joey Fatone, well he's a celebrity type show regular. I didn't know Coolio or the other celebrity challengers.

Still and so, the celebrities don't have to be all that famous. The celebrities on Dancing With the Stars are often not all that well known. Trump's Celebrity Apprentice stars aren't world renown either.

It's just hard to get to know these famous folk as they cook up dishes to win money for their charity by winning the cooking challenges. On Celebrity Apprentice the celebrated contenders are doing all sorts of different things as they try to win challenges that might involve opening a store to performing on street corners. On Dancing With the Stars the celebrities dance, true, but there's the behind the scenes vignettes that shows the celebrities as they struggle with the tortuous practice. Their beloveds are often in the DWS audience and the viewers get to better know the stars struggling to win.

These cooking celebrities...well they...they cooked.

Nothing wrong with this but I don't see audiences across the fruited plains tuning in to see Chastity Bono cook a steak.

Thus the element of celebrity is lost on this series as I argue.

It becomes another MasterChef or Top Chef Nowhereburg is what I'm saying here.

I did think that Coolio was a really funny guy and his kind of cooking was just my speed. But I'd have felt that way even if he was not an alleged celebrity. The challenges were typical in many ways for these cooking shows. They had to make barbecue, prepare food from strange ingredients, run a food truck operation, up to running a restaurant for a day. A typical food contest spread up to the finale.

This series had Rachel Ray and Guy Fieri, himself a winner of Food Network's Next Food Network Star, as leaders of two teams. As it would turn out the teams managed to keep an even keel throughout the series. , even ending with a finale featuring a member of Guy's team and a member of Rachel's team. It would not do, wink, wink, to have either of the Food Network Celebrity loose all their assigned contenders to have one twiddling their thumbs at the finale.

I'd watch this series again should Food Network decide to go with it again. But then I'm a bit of a cooking show contest junkee.

I don't think they need the celebrities is what I'm saying here. After all, how many celebrated types can cook all that well?