Food Network Star: Handicapping The Final Five

It's that time of year when Food Network is close to anointing someone (maybe) to be the next Food Network Star.  

The "maybe" has become an important proviso since two of the last three winners never got their promised series;  season 8 winner, Brooklyn restauranteur Justin Warner, turned up on a one-hour special and has appeared sporadically as a guest judge on Food Network series, but season 10's "chuckwagon chef"  Lenny McNab disappeared down a black hole after his win.  (Several news sources reported McNab had made homophobic, racist, and misogynistic comments on a private blog,  which probably led to his banishment, but Food Network has never confirmed why McNab was not given a series.)

Interestingly, for the first time,  the final five competitors  on this season of Food Network Star are all men.  (There is still one female contestant competing on the web series Star Salvation who might get a second chance to enter the competition.) Before we handicap this season's finalists though, let's take a look at what Food Network has been up to lately.

Just has MTV turned to reality programming when viewers tired of 24-hour videos, Food Network has had to adapt, and most of its primetime schedule is now devoted to either cooking competitions (like Chopped) or cooking competitions turned into silly game shows (Cutthroat Kitchen, which wastes the talents of  the great Alton Brown, or Guy's Grocery Games, which features the ubiquitous Guy Fieri.)

There's also Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, which is broadcast on what seems like a continuous loop (over 100 times a week!,)  and several new shows that ape its formula (one with Paula Deen's sons and another with Iron Chef Michael Symon traveling around the country sampling classic recipes, burgers, and BBQ.)  There are also a handful of reality series in which a so-called expert helps a struggling restaurant or  barby hiding cameras and spying on the employees. And then there are the Bobby Flay shows, too numerous to mention, in which he either recreates his Iron Chef heroics or barbecues or makes brunch.

Weekend mornings remain the last stronghold of Food Network's traditional "chop-and-drop" cooking programs.  (These programs are repeated endlessly weekdays but new programming is relegated to Saturday and Sunday mornings.) This is the kind of show that Food Network Star promises its winners, but let's be honest, the network has shown little interest in hiring anyone but white female home-cooks lately.  From "Pioneer Woman" Ree Drummond to farm cook Nancy Fuller to country/western star Trisha Yearwood to FNS Season Nine winner Damaris Phillips, all of Food Network's cooking shows that remain in production look very much alike.  They've joined legacy stars Ina Garten,  Giada deLaurentis, Sandra Lee, and Rachael Ray as Food Network's "ladies of the afternoon."

But when it comes to hiring new stars, Food Network clearly knows what it  wants. If you include Food Network's sister network The Cooking Channel, you'll find mom, blogger, and standup comic Daphne Brogdon,  Minnesotan farm-to-table cook Amy Thielen, "Hungry Girl" Lisa Lillien, and a gaggle of Hollywood has-beens (Tiffani Amber-Thiessen, Debi Mazar,  Hayley Duff) inviting us into their living rooms for dinner or desert. All women, all white, predominantly rural, and  all home cooks.

There was a time when Food Network hired professional chefs to host its cooking shows,  but Ann Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli's shows failed to find an audience, and clearly Food Network's target demographic has decreed it wants to watch relatable moms in the kitchen and nothing else.

How does that bode then for the all-male finalists of Food Network Star?  Will any of the dudes still in the competition have a chance to break through the Velvet Apron of Food Network female hegemony?  That remains to be seen, but in the meantime, here are your finalists:

Alex McCoy -- At age 31, he looks 25 and brings a boyish, youthful enthusiasm to the show.  Pros: Alex is a real-life professional restauranteur but comes off as the lovable boy next door.  Cons:  His "point of view" is sandwiches, and Food Network already has a "Sandwich King,"  FNS season 7 winner Jeff Mauro.  Odds:  5-1 

Arnold Myint - It should probably be noted that aside from Iron Chef Cat Cora,  Food Network's only gay presence in the past 20 years has  been FNS Season One winners "The Hardy Boys," whose show only lasted one season. Arnold is not only openly gay but a professional drag queen, although his cooking point of view simply stresses throwing fabulous parties.  He could be the queer Sandra Lee if he weren't so sweaty and stiff on camera.  Pros:  Inclusivity is in this year, and Food Network could use some positive press after the Paula Deen scandal.  Cons:  Gay or not, he's still a dude, and while he's had flashes of fabulousness, his camera presence and cooking have been less than stellar.  Odds: 7-1

Eddie Jackson -  A good-looking former professional athlete, Eddie sailed through the opening rounds of the competition but has faltered lately with both his camera presence and his cooking.  FNS season 4 winner Eddie McCargo Jr. was one of Food Network's very few black on-air personalities (BBQ cooks Pat and Gina Neely and Sunny Anderson are the only other ones I can think of,) but of course race isn't supposed to enter into a competition like this.   If you take that out of the equation, Eddie's probably still a front runner but fading fast.  Odds:  3-1

Jay Ducote - This big bearded friendly guy wants to teach the world Louisiana cooking.  I like his personality,  I like his point of view, and he's been as consistent as anyone else on this season of FNS.  Then again, season 9's Rodney Henry (the "Pie Man") seemed like a shoe-in but Food Network decided it didn't want a fat white guy on its schedule and went with the much blander (but prettier and more accessible)  Damaris Phillips. Odds:  3-1

Dominic Tesoriero - Yes, Dom was eliminated in last Sunday's episode but he's still alive on Star Salvation.  This Staten Island native has a decidedly New York personality (Food Network likes that,) runs a mac-and-cheese food truck (how's that for relatable?) and the Italian dishes he's made  have shown him to be the season's best cook, hands down.   He's been a trainwreck on camera but his next-to-last challenge showed promise.  If he can figure it out in time, watch for Dom to win Star Salvation and come back to win the whole thing.

Then he just needs Food Network to put him on the air.

Becoming Us: The New Normal?

I'll be honest: I watched the first two episodes of Becoming Us thinking it was another of ABCFamily's teen-oriented scripted dramas with a timely twist, like The Fosters (about a lesbian couple who adopts a multi-racial group of kids.)   It was only when the cast turned up on a talk show that I realized that Becoming Us is a reality series about an extended family in Evanston, Illinois that - as we now know well into the first season- includes three transgendered individuals.  It's almost as if Caitlyn Jenner were anticipating this series when she proclaimed, "I am the new normal."

The series revolves around 17-year old Ben, his mom Suzy, and his transgendered dad, who now goes by Carly.  "Who could have guessed that just as I was becoming a man, my dad would decide to become a woman?" Ben asks us in one of many direct-to-camera asides.    Becoming Us loves to break through the fourth wall, letting Ben narrate his own story with remarkably adult perception.  It's one of several factors that makes becoming Becoming Us feel like it's scripted.  Reality shows like the Real Housewives franchise or  Jersey Shore show us stupid people doing stupid stuff; here, a remarkably empathetic family goes through an incredibly stressful situation with grownup understanding, compassion, and  humility.  They're almost too good to be real.

Ben has two allies in dealing with his dad's transition, his understanding older half-sister Brook  (who's busy planning her wedding) and his platonic girlfriend Danielle, who also has a transgendered dad.  (What are the odds of that?)  In addition, Ben has two older friends, Ayton and his live-in girlfriend Brook, who are dealing with Brook's couch-surfing kid brother Lathan.  Lathan's "going through some stuff" but just when we're ready for the skinny goth boy to come out and announce he's gay, he instead reveals that he's transgendered too and was actually born a girl.

Ben's obviously got a lot to deal with:  Poor grades, his weird but co--dependent relationship with Danielle, and his evolving relationship with his father (whom he refuses to call "mom.")  Lathan's cloying presence stresses out Ayton and Brook's relationship, while Brook has to deal with introducing her straight-laced in-laws to her transgendered step-dad (and deciding what role, if any, she'll play in the wedding.)

I don't watch much reality TV - I've never seen an entire episode of any show  featuring real housewives, Kardashians, Chrisleys, or duck-call salesmen - but I assume one problem they all share has to be vignettes that feel, if not completely scripted, at least set up for the cameras.   In one episode, Danielle's dad and Carly go bra-shopping together with their two kids in a tow, which has to set a new watermark for teenage humiliation on TV.  When Ayton and Ben's relationships with their girlfriends sour, it happens on the same episode at supposedly the same time, which didn't feel natural either.  And when Carly takes Ben, Ayton, and Lathan camping for some she/male bonding in the woods, their campfire confessions don't ring true at all.

Still, Becoming Us couldn't have arrived at a better moment,  coinciding with Caitlyn Jenner's front-page transition and  raising  positive awareness of this unique segment of the LGBT community.  You might not believe every minute of Becoming Us, but it's nearly impossible not to like these people or root for them to stay together.  That, after all, is what Robert Frost told us family is all about:  When you have to go there, they're the people who have to take you in.

 

AMC's Humans revisits the singularity conundrum: What happens when machines can replace people?

AMC's Humans takes place in a world very much like our own, except for lifelike robots called Synths that have taken over most of mankind's menial jobs.  The show debuted on AMC with very little fanfare, suggesting that the channel is saving its promotional firepower for the debut of its Walking Dead prequel in August. But on the basis of the first episode, Humans has plenty to recommend it.

The first episode introduces three concurrent plotlines:  A dysfunctional family with two working parents and several obnoxious kids buys a Synth to help run the household; instead of helping though, the Synth, named Anita, exacerbates existing family friction. Meanwhile an elderly physician (the great William Hurt) tries to hang on to his obsolete Synth, whom he has come to think of as a surrogate son.  And finally, a young man named Leo runs around trying to rescue a small group of rogue Synths who have acquired true sentience and have self-awareness and emotions.

It's a sci-fi trope as old as Isaac Asimov's 1942 "Three Laws of Robotics,"  which have formed the foundation of almost all robot/android fiction since.  In case you're not familiar with Asimov, here they are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.  

From Star Trek's Replicators to The Terminator's Skynet to Battlestar: Galactica's Cylons, the idea of sentient robots has amazed, terrified, and beguiled us in a thousand different forms, but inevitably the story always returns to the question of what scientist John Von Neumann called "The Singularity:"  The point at which technology exceeds humanity and the machines no longer need humans.

Humans raises some interesting questions about the idea of robot slaves replacing people, but never really wraps itself around the bigger issues. Everyone in this universe seems to have a job, although obviously the displacement of human labor by machines would be devastating to world economies.  The teenage daughter of the family who brings home a Synth wonders why she should study medicine if a Synth will soon be able to do surgery better than a human doctor; just imagine how Synths would impact manufacturing, the service industry, government bureaucracy, or even the military.  If everything from flipping your Big Mac to directing traffic on the corner can be done better by robots, what will people do for a living?  We can't all be scientists, although Humans seems to suggest otherwise.

William Hurt's role as Dr. George Millican, a pensioner who's grown overly fond of his Synth, despite the fact that he's long overdue for an upgrade, and National Health has just purchased millions of the latest model.  George's Synth has become the repository of a lifetime of memories with his late wife, memories that George himself is starting to lose because of dementia.  If the Synth "dies," those memories die with him.  And bringing that human element to the story makes all the difference.

Colin Morgan's role as the leader of some sort of Synth underground, trying to save a handful of sentient Synths from capture by the authorities, will need some fleshing out.  The first episode doles out  details in bits and pieces and it will take a while for the whole story to make sense.  But we do learn in the first episode that a secret government agency (apparently we'll never run out of those) is on the trail of the sentient robots, whom some scientists fear could bring on a Terminator-like Armageddon.

There isn't a single idea in Humans that you can't trace back to Pinocchio (or Frankenstein.)  But the idea of man making life in his own image, and then being destroyed by his creation, is such a powerful myth that there's certainly room for one more television series about it. 

Humans airs on AMC on Sundays at 9 p.m.

Major Crimes - Check out Rusty Beck's vlog

If, like me, you're a fan of TNT's Major Crimes, you know that Graham Patrick Martin's character Rusty Beck has started an investigative-journalism vlog called "Identity," which chronicles his search for the identity of a Jane Doe killed in a drug case.  The vlog has been an important sub-plot in this season's storylines, and it turns out "Identity" really exists; the show has had Martin posting to Youtube as Rusty Beck, sharing his research and his search for Jane Doe #38's name and family.  You can check out the first posting here:

Major Crimes airs at 9 pm Mondays on TNT.

Teen Wolf - Season 5 gives us steampunk baddies

Teen Wolf was the first television show I ever wrote about, back in its first season, and it's still a series that I look forward to.  If you've never seen it, I can promise you that it's not what you think it is.  Let's face it, ever since MTV stopped caring about music and became a reality channel, its motto has been "Stupid People Doing Stupid Things."  The rare exception has been some of its scripted series, like Awkward and Faking It, and of course Teen Wolf, which follows the adventures of Scott McCall and his pack of high-school misfits, most of whom are endowed with some kind of supernatural powers. While the show's first two seasons wallowed in a bit too much teen beefcake (lots of scenes of hunky lacrosse players in the shower,)  over the course of four seasons, the show's consistently delivered first-rate supernatural thrills and suspense, even if it's never quite received the critical acclaim of other gothic hits like American Horror Story or the popularity of the CW's Supernatural.

Scott's pack includes a young werewolf (played by Dylan Sprayberry, promoted this season to a full cast member,) a banshee (who can predict death,) a kitsune (with ninja powers,) and a were-coyote (who spent most of her childhood in animal form and is having problems catching up in school.).  The one exception is Scott's best friend "Stiles" Stilinsky, who was possessed by a demon in one season but otherwise remains quite human.  He's also turned into a very perceptive detective (his dad's the county sheriff, after all.) 

New this season is Pretty Little Liars hunk Cody Christian, who plays a childhood friend of Scott and Stiles who returns to Beacon Hills  as a werewolf who wants to join Scott's pack.  Scott, as Stiles complains, wants to give everyone the benefit of a doubt, but Stiles is immediately suspicious. Something about this guy isn't quite kosher.  And while Scott, his pack, and Stiles' father doubts him, Stiles is usually right about these things.

The first episode opens with a harrowing scene in which Lydia, the show's banshee, has been imprisoned in Eichen House, the local insane asylum.  Apparently catatonic, Lydia suddenly explodes with one of her banshee screams, and then uses previously unseen super powers to nearly escape.  She's stopped by Max Carver's Aiden, the surviving member of a pair of werewolf twins the pack tangled with in an earlier season. As Lydia is dragged back to her cell, she screams that she has to reach her friends and tell them that they're all going to die.

Well, that turns out to have been a flash-forward, because when Scott and his friends show up for the first day of their senior year, everybody (including Lydia) is just hunky-dory. Scott even ponders to Stiles  that things never stay okay for very long; they'll either get very good or very bad very soon.  And since this is Teen Wolf, it's a no-brainer which way things will go.  Scott's looking forward to senior year and thinking about college, but Stiles seems obsessed with making long-range plans to make sure the pack stays more or less together. "Nobody gets left behind," he says, and that even includes his dilapidated old jeep, which has played an integral role in several of the team's adventures.

Sadly the jeep seems on its last legs and that's only a tiny problem compared to what a student named Tracy (newcomer Kelsey Asbille) is going through.  She's having night terrors, visions of some black-garbed creatures (henceforth to be known as Dread Doctors) sneaking into her room at night. She's also having visions of black crows.  When she meets with the guidance counselor (a job now held my Lydia's mom) and shares her dreams, she winds up vomiting up gallons of black goo... and a crow feather.  

Lydia agrees to look into Tracy's visions and enlists the aid of Deputy Parrish, whom we know is also some sort of as-yet-unidentified supernatural creature himself (and apparently invulnerable.)  When Parrish looks on Tracy's roof, through a skylight that had supposedly been sealed, he sees dozens of dead birds on her roof, and offers to stake the place out.

Meanwhile, the Dread Doctors - horrifying demons in steampunk goggles and rubber suits - stalk Tracy through the halls of the high school in what appear to be blackout visions.  That's until they turn out to be real, and spirit Tracy away to some spooky laboratory, where one of the goggled creatures injects her with a serum that seems to turn her into a werewolf.   Soon after, Parrish follows a lead and is confronted by one of the monsters, who winds up mangling him with horrific talons. Scott also has an encounter with one of these monsters, that sort of looks like a werewolf but has an eagle's talons.  What that thing is and where it will fit into the season's storyline remains to be seen.

As for that new guy, Theo, well of course Stiles is right.  In the second season, we see him not only transform into a real wolf (not a werewolf-boy like the others) as well as break the hand of his supposed dad for screwing up a forged signature on his transfer papers.  (That signature, which differed from the signature on an old traffic citation, helps raise Stiles' suspicions.) 

This season starts out without a few of Teen Wolf's regulars - most notably Tyler Hoechlin as Derek, the older werewolf who mentored Scott, but also Ian Bohen as Peter Hale, Derek's uncle and one of the series' recurring bad guys,  and JR Bourne as Chris Argent, the wolfhunter who was also the father of Scott's murdered girlfriend, Allison. But Dr. Deeton, the kindly vet who also has a doctorate in the supernatural, is back, and with Cody Christian pumping up the hunk factor, the series should be fine.  You needn't have watched the first four seasons to get into season five, but you really need to watch the first two episodes, because Teen Wolf traditionally throws a ton of confusing images at the viewer early on and then slowly uses subsequent episodes to unravel the puzzle.

Teen Wolf airs 10 p.m. Mondays on MTV.