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Iron Chef USA debuts Friday
devinoni writes "Yes, the long awaited American version of Iron Chef is coming. As reported on Slashdot, William Shatner will be hosting it on UPN 9pm (8 central) on Friday. The 4 Iron Chefs are: Todd English, Iron Chef American; Jean Francois Meteigner, Iron Chef French; Alessandro Stratta, Iron Chef Italian; and Roy Yamaguchi is Iron Chef Asian. Check out UPN's site (flash required) for more info." CD: The SF Chronicle review wasn't all that enthusiastic about this, so heads up, foodies.
Yeah, I can NEVER wait until great foreign TV shows get moved over to the US, where they are immediatly ruined (eg. Whose line is it anyway, Junkyard Wars, Robot Wars, etc.) The originals are much better.
If you're like me, you assumed that this was the Japanese show "ported" over to the USA, with no modifications. Don't be silly.
What made Iron Chef so entertaining? The hosts. The voice-overs. The theatrical music. Kitchen Stadium.
Guess what! They're all gone. They've been replaced by Shattner, English-speaking announcers, no sound effects, and a mock-up of Kitchen Stadium, but including screaming fans. That is NOT what Iron Chef was about.
It's lame, through and through.
9. Show is more concerned with obnoxious video effects than with food.
8. William Fatner is a pompous ass, not a dignified chairman.
7. Can't hear the commentary through the crowd noise. (What you say again?)
6. Commentary sucks anyway -- not enough substance about the food, but plenty of information about who cuts the chef's hair. Anthony Dias Blue should be ashamed of himself.
5. Judges are obviously two-bit no-name losers from failing UPN shows (no wait a minute -- all UPN shows are failing...) that are about to be canceled.
4. No drama. No logic behind why the theme ingredient was chosen. Doesn't matter, nobody seems to notice anyway. (Since when is Dungeness crab "unusual"?
3. Chefs are more concerned with playing to the camera than with cooking -- talking on the cell phone in an obviously set up call (you could hear both halves of the conversation!) and throwing caviar to the commentators? Puh-leeze! Escoffier would roll over in his grave....
2. The three "Iron Chefs" watching the competition look like the Three (fat) Stooges.
1. Commentator's yellow blazers look like they were fished from a dumpster behind the local Century 21 office.
0. Sissy Biggers.
Maybe this was all just a bad Priceline ad. We can only hope. The show was so bad that it made Shatner's toupee look good.
On a clear disk you can seek forever
The good points:
The two chefs really kind of got into it.
Shatner's natural cheeziness is perfect for this sort of production.
I thought the audience screaming, cheering, and holding up signs like it was a SmackDown! taping was hysterical.
The motorcycle entrance.
The suckitude:
Lame secret ingredient.
The announcers absolutely blew goats. Big-time.
Way too much computer graphics to distract from the action.
And not enough attention was paid to the food itself - the sheer exoticness and detail is one of the key things that makes the original Iron Chef so cool.
There's a fine line between the kind of cheeziness that comes from good intent and earnestness, and the kind that comes from a calculated effort to be cheese. Iron Chef (classic) is the former kind - the US version, while watchable, is more like the latter. I'll watch the second one, but I'm not sure I'd watch it regularly if it became an ongoing series.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."