The Great American Recipe

Wow. I like a good cooking show as much as the next guy. But this show is a joke. They have categories like love on a plate and put your DNA on a plate. And then the judges go around and tell these people who have been making a dish for their whole lives how to do it properly. And then they base their decisions on whether or not they cry during the judging or have a heartfelt story. This is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe I watched it as long as I did. Some of the dishes are actually quite good. But, the fake smiles, the ridiculous sappy stories and constant flashbacks to love and family gets so old. If I hear the word family one more time I'm going to vomit.

The cooks were delightful and the judges kind while being helpful. I can't wIth for the next season!! I hope that they publish the recipes. Every episode was wonderfully entertaining and fun.

It's not the recipes that are judged, it's the cooks who get sent home. It would make more sense if all the contestants stayed for the entire show, and each time a cook created something, the RECIPE would receive a numerical score. At the end, the top scoring recipe would get the award, as would the cook who brought it.

Each week, the cooks pretty much get to cook whatever they want. It's usually something they've cooked a million times before. Where's the challenge? Only on the week that they had to swap recipes did they have to do something unfamiliar. The challenges needed to be much more clearly defined, and they needed to be a genuine challenge so the cooks had to get out of their comfort zone.

I'm not sure why the production is rendered in extra-vivid color, oversharpened. It has a look that reminds me of early astronomical photos from the Hubble telescope that were processed with unsharp masking. The result is unrealistic.

It's a competition cooking show, so that pretty much sums it up. But one thing that kept me watching for the second season was they got rid of the stupid weekly eliminations. Reality TV producers don't seem to understand that introducing us to an interesting person who vanishes in a few episodes (for no other reason than creating tired drama) really does a disservice to the show, and the viewer. I like that this show is overwhelmingly positive, without all the manufactured drama.

Here, we get to follow all of the cooks, hear more stories, and see a lot more interesting recipes then we would have otherwise.

That said, it would be nice if there was some kind of objective scoring system, with blind judging by a tasting panel, for example, just to give an appearance of fairness. As it stands, it feels like whoever has the most heartwarming story for a given recipe usually wins.

As ethnically diverse as the show is, I would like to see more diversity, specifically in the age range of participants. A couple younger and older participants would make a more interesting mix.