Bourdain on "A Cook's Tour" Re-Airings
Monday, January 07, 2008 | posted by Mike
Well, with the eventful return of A Cook's Tour to the Food Network, the most pressing question in my mind was what the man himself had to say about the whole situation. Things were oddly quiet for a while.That just changed.
In a post dated Friday, January 4th on his Travel Channel blog, Anthony Bourdain weighted in with his reaction to the news that the Network was going to begin re-airing old episodes of his series. What did he think?
Why - after all these years - would they put my old episodes back on the air? The damn things were filmed in 2000 and 2001!! They have nothing newer, or fresher or better - after all that time - than my first, stumbling, nascent attempts at making travel/food television? They don't have any material from anyone else - like from someone who doesn't make constant rude and obscene suggestions about their stable of "stars?" Surely they haven't reached so far down the bottom of the archives as to want ME back?!Well, that was...uncomfortable.
This was like being unexpectedly groped and publicly slipped the tongue by the ugliest girl at the prom. You're flattered by the attention - but frankly ... embarrassed. And the timing seemed suspicious. As I ordered two more and then a third Mai Tai, paranoia began to set in.
This was the thing that was always in the back of my mind when I heard they were going to rebroadcast the show. They had to know that Bourdain was going to come out with guns blazing. Why open yourself to the criticism? I would have loved to have been a fly on the FN wall during the cost/benefit discussion of re-airing the show.
The rest of the post covers the Cook's Tour situation, as well as his deconstruction of the New York Times article on the state of the Network. He doesn't bring a whole lot more to that conversation than what was already being thrown around by the snarkier corners of the commentariat, but we'll forgive him his lack of timeliness -- if we were in Hawaii, we wouldn't be posting, either.
Labels: Anthony Bourdain
