Robert Irvine Part 2

I have partaken of the second episode in this, the new season of Dinner: Impossible. The season that has resurrected Robert Irvine to his celebrity status. Our protagonist found himself at Yahoo! headquarters today, dealing with a randomly selected computer menu, and it was his job to assemble the menu in an attractive (and I presume edible) fashion. I'm not going to give too much away here, but let me at least say that my prediction was correct: Shit did indeed go boom.

Now many of you may think that I'm beating a dead horse here. "Yeah, okay so Irvine's not the stand up guy who got you on the road to foodstuffs like he used to be. We get it already." Well, I admit there is a little bit of that "I just learned my hero is human" disappointment to this new season. But it's more than that, really it is. Dinner: Impossible is not so much watching the hero fall a little short as it is watching him fall from grace. Watching Irvine drag through these last two episodes is kind of like watching Muhammad Ali suffering with Parkinson's Disease. Except without the integrity and conviction.

It just seems like Food Network is kind of changing the motif of the program. Now it's not so much about sending a skilled and capable chef into a difficult situation and producing top notch cuisine for high amounts of people. Now it's more akin to handing a control freak a steaming pile of crap and having him spray paint it in bright and vibrant colors. Everything is a disaster on the new Irvine Impossible. Equipment is constantly failing, food is spilling all over the place, tempers are flared beyond belief, and the standards? The standards have gone all to hell. No more elegant top tier food executed flawlessly, every single recipe I've seen in the past couple shows has been positively Rachael Ray. This man used to preach about his skills with world regional cuisine and making things gourmet, now he's become the guy who dumps barbecue sauce on everything.

So now it's completely about ridiculous and unreasonable challenges, done without any real kind of emphasis on quality, but painting a happy ending at the end of the program. That's FOX territory right there! Food Network's trying to play this off like their veiled attempt at Kitchen Nightmares (the American version, not the good one.) At least, that's what it looks like to these cynical eyes. British chef, ridiculous settings, big mistakes happening every five or so minutes, and very little talk about the actual food. In fact, the person who seems to talk about it the least, is the host. His job is apparently to either tell people that they cooked something wrong, or scream at everyone to hurry up. And the few times food talk does go on, he basically ruins it.

Here's one of my favorite moments on the Yahoo challenge. I can't quote it verbatim, but it went something like this. Robert says:

"These tuna sliders are too dry. We need to find some way to make them juicy."

Underling replies: "Well, I guess I can cook them to medium rare to retain a bit of moisture."

"I don't care what you do, just make it happen."

Ten minutes pass, Robert returns and samples the newly cooked tuna burgers and says:

"This is rare, nobody's gonna eat it when it's still pink inside. What were you thinking?"

And communication isn't the least of this season's problems.

To be fair, I think Robert did get a bit of a raw deal in his return. I can almost hear the meeting that took place at Food Network when they reenlisted him. "Alright Robert, despite our decision to terminate you due to falsification of your resume and so forth, the fans seem to like you, so we're gonna bring you back. But, just so you don't go out getting a big head about this, we're gonna make a few modifications to how Dinner: Impossible runs. I won't get into the specifics, but I will say this: Dance Monkey Dance!" And now we've got a guy who spends time slapping stuff together in dumb scenarios and pretending it works. The man's just doing the motions people.

And I think that's what makes it sad. He may be back on the air, but he was still beaten. I had hoped he would come back to television with a furious dedication to do it better. Better food, done more precise and more interesting then ever before. And I'm just not seeing it happen. It just seems like he's fallen more and more into Sunny Anderson/Sandra Lee land, which is a bit crippling.

But, I'll probably still watch. Mostly because the constant disasters and arguements make for good television, but hey I'm still watching. At the very least, it's become my textbook guide for how not to cook.