The Return of the Chopping Block: The show that just won't die

The Return of Chopping Block
Or (The show that just won’t die)

This week I decided to take a break from crop circles and sci fi movies because I just found out that NBC has decided to keep cooking reality show Chopping Block on life support rather than accept the fact that great chefs don’t always make great reality shows.

I knew that this show was in trouble before the first episode aired. The voice over in the promo says that the host of the new cooking show Marco Pierre White was “the man who made Gordon Ramsay cry.” So what! They forgot to mention that the incident happened over 22 years ago when Mr. Ramsay was only 20 years old.

What does making someone cry have to do with cooking anyway?

The problem with The Chopping Block is that it lacks creativity, and imagination. That’s what usually happens when you try and produce a quality show on the cheap. What you end up with is a bunch of angry chefs yelling at each other. If that’s your kind of reality TV just surf on over to VH1will you will find plenty of that kind of entertainment, if you can call it that. Chopping block was pulled after only three episodes; that should tell you something about the quality to the show.

As you may have guessed I like Gordon Ramsay’s shows especially Hell’s Kitchen. I am sure that he doesn’t need me to take up for him but the fact of the matter is that there is a method to his madness. At the end of the day he actually helps people. My interest in reality cooking shows is more than that of the casual viewer, a few years ago; I researched them before creating my own reality cooking show called America’s Greatest Chefs. What’s that? You say you never heard of it. Well there’s a simple explanation, MONEY. Everything about the America’s Greatest Chef competition different from what you see on TV today, it is creative, entertaining, and witty, but it is an unproven formula and expensive to produce but that’s another story for another day.

When I heard that The Chopping Block was added to the NBC line up to compete with FOX's Hell’s Kitchen I almost fell off of my chair. With only 3.9 million viewers the first week and dropping to 2.6 million viewers by the third week I wondered what the suits at NBC were thinking when they decided to bring it back to air the final episodes in June. It’s the same bloody show, do they think that people forgot how bad it was or were they just waiting for this season of Hell’s Kitchen to end? Ironic don’t you think? I wonder who’s crying now.