My Thoughts on the First Fifteen Minutes of the Food Network Awards
Monday, April 16, 2007 | posted by Mike
You'll all be thrilled to know that the big move of TVFF Headquarters went well thanks to some help from a bunch of people. I managed to miss the big Nor'easter, which was good timing. But getting all that stuff moved was a huge project and it left me in pretty bad shape. By the time that Sunday night came around, I was bruised, sore and extremely tired. For that reason, I wasn't in peak TV-watching form in the evening. Also, I was confronted with a dilemma.
As I was looking at the listings, 9:00 was clearly going to be an issue. On one hand, there was the Food Network Awards, which I knew I should check out for this site. On the other hand, there was The Sopranos, which I knew I would have to watch in order to prevent any unfortunate spoiler conversations around the TVFF offices on Monday morning. I had to make a choice, and let's just say that one of the shows made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
I did check out the lead-in to the Awards, though, including the red carpet footage. Wow.
Mrs. TVFF is a red carpet junkie, so she perked up when she saw it. However, it wasn't quite up to her Golden Globes standards. And who played the cruel joke on Dave Lieberman? Someone must have said to him, "Dave...everyone is wearing jeans! It's casual!"
Frankly, I'm going to be sure to tune in to E! tonight to find out what the fashion mavens think of Toucan Sam's outfit.
As the clock approached 9:00, my fellow New Jerseyans beckoned and I was off to HBO.
Food Network did rerun the show at Midnight, and I tried to make a go of it. The show confirmed a lot of what I thought going in based upon what we had heard in blogs and articles.
The show just seemed...off. It was disjointed, with audience reaction shots looking like they were taken out of context, perhaps an example of all of the editing necessitated by the stopping and starting and technical issues. Emeril wasn't terrible, but he just basically did what Emeril does. He yelled. That's fine, but I didn't want to watch an hour and a half of that.
The main problem with the show, however, was that you really didn't have a rooting interest in who won. Think about the Oscars, Emmys, Whatevers. The nominees are movies or shows that you've seen and that you have some sort of emotional investment in, and you like seeing them win. Or maybe you dislike an actor or actress and would like to see them not win. Either way, you care who gets the trophy. That's just not there when the competition is among three pastry chefs over who is doing the most interesting things with chocolate. And they're all more than 750 miles from where you live.
It was a cute idea in general, and I'm sure it was a great excuse to bring all of the FN stars together, but it just didn't quite work for me. It served as the crown jewel of the South Beach event, so they might keep it going. I'm sure the ratings for the broadcast will have something to say about that.
As for me, the Sandman came calling for me around 12:15. I knew that staying up was a losing battle and so I shuffled off to bed. Maybe things picked up after that...maybe I'll check it out if they rerun it. Anyone who stuck around for the whole thing is more than welcome to share their thoughts in the comments below.
Labels: Food Network
