THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR…CAN LISA CHANGE? : SNAP PEA OUT OF IT!

Lisa, who has been described as Vulcan, inhuman, extreme, and impossible for viewers to relate to, is going to win The Next Food Network Star, and no one is happy about it except Lisa. It’s completely unfair--and it’s probably rigged--which makes it 56 times more likely to happen.
Of course she will win, solidifying my fears that success is almost never merit-based, but rests on a number of other random factors, including iconic hair, inflexibility, the snake-like female ability to cry on cue, and complete predictability. [photo credit: Food Network]

From the very first episode, when contestants were asked to distill their “culinary points of view” for the camera, where she stridently plucked about 80 props & ever so carefully arranged those severely theatrical bangs to “peek out” beneath her toque, before underwhelming and perplexing Alton Brown with her unintelligible and completely contrived diatribe on “something I like to call the 4 Cs,” I felt an emotion I can best describe and instantly recognize as loathing.

I can only imagine the casting call for this thing. Out of the haze of FN-wannabes, the Dallas Diva emerged, likely grinding the heel of her 4-inch peep-toe pump into the eye of the articulate, funny and talented chef she had just stepped over to be seen. The producers zeroed in on Lisa, realizing ‘Holy Smokes, people are going to hate her, this is fantastic!”
I wonder if she realizes we have all been set up to hate her, or if, as a true batter-ladder climbing contestant, she doesn’t really care, as long as she wins.

You don’t have to watch the show to understand what’s going on here. In fact, my own viewing is spotty, my true motivation transparent: Bobby Flay hosts this culinary version of Survivor. The formula is universal: amass a combustible, rag-tag group which cuts across the viewer demographics, with a single prize in mind (his/her own Food Network show), then watch them scrabble toward that goal under the threat of episodic elimination.
If Lisa keeps blowing it, is continually criticized for her inability to relate to anyone else (the judges, other hosts, contestants, small children), and her stuff isn’t all that great (yes, I’m pretty sure I CAN cook better than this—and would likely win a personality Throwdown betwixt us girls?), why, why, WHY is she still in the mix? [photo credit: Xatufan]

Continuing to fall short in the interpersonal aspect of the challenges—pretty important for a television host, no?-- it would seem she is on a main course with disaster—certain to be booted off next…and yet, she is one of the final four.
She has been told over and over again she needs to “tone it down,” soften, the judges expressing this concern: Does Lisa have a middle ground? So we wait and we watch and the question looms, “Can Lisa change?”

Snap pea out of it!—of course she can’t change—no one is capable of real change. The irony of our rehab-obsessed society is that we are not interesting in the “hab,” we’re merely interested in the “re.” Advised that she must change her abrasive, bossy, severe, QUIRKY personality, what does she do?—she changes her outfit. She dons a “softer” Peter Pan collar, a “softer” shade of yellow, a less dominatrix-y shoe, and hopes that changes her unapproachable affect…which it does, for a few minutes. No one is fooled. The judges aren’t mollified, and neither are we.

Still, they won’t eliminate her, and I sadly predict she will win the whole enchilada. Because, while people loooove a redemption story, what people like even more is a failed redemption story! “She just couldn’t do it;” “He started drinking again after 20 years;” “I can’t believe she went back to him.”

Of course she can’t change enough or in any lasting way necessary to become a Food Network icon, which is exactly what we’re waiting for: that defeat to register on her face, publicly. The humiliating self-knowledge of one’s limitations made public—we have a sad, collective fascination with that.

This means good ratings now, but might very well backfire on FN, long-term. Has anybody at FN thought this through to its conclusion, to what happens after they make her the winner? Um…they have to give her her own show. It'll be like the (first time) Oprah lost the weight on Optifast, and after the initial gawking was over, viewership dropped off dramatically (except people checking back to see if she’d gained it all back) I mean, what could they actually do with her if she won? Does anybody really want to tune in to watch her massacre interpersonal relations as a host? We’re not talking fun-to-be-insulted-by (Bourdain), or grazing what is nearly ungraspable intelligentsia for most guests (Mario)—we’re talking irritatingly, gratingly, just plain clueless about other human beings.
Isn’t that the definition of an “anti-host?”

What distinct role would a show hosted by Lisa be filling at FN? Sacrificial lambchop? We already have Giada’s boobs, Paula’s accepting Aunty Emness, Duff’s skateboard genius, Alton’s academically amusing desseminations, and Bobby—good Lord, that man is the workhorse and resident stud of that place. [by the way: for all the guff it takes, I do not disrespect FN, because it is still a really, really great concept. Hating it would be like despising the public school system, just because it’s not so hot right now.]

The reason they have kept Lisa on TNFNS is also the central problem for FN if she wins: she is the antagonist. If Lisa had her own show, she’d have to be a protagonist. By definition, she CAN’T win ,because she could never exist outside of this role as antagonist. And if you start looking at this thing as a Neil Simon play, Adam is the clear winner.

If she wanted to win AND be successful long-term, she’d have to start doing prat falls right now, and reacting in some new, unexpected ways…She'd have to change--which of course, people never do.

Take everything I say with a fat grain of grey salt, because one could argue I’m just hotly blackened and blistered by her proximity and not my own to Bobby Flay. Presenting my dish, I might well stammer like a dullard, unable to speak, understanding that something of mine would be going in Bobby’s mouth.

Whether or not I can cook better than Lisa or be more charming on camera or DESERVE to be on this show simply because of my flagrant adoration of food (and Bobby Flay) is completely irrelevant. Whether it’s all rigged or she’s got those judges in some kind of Vulcan mind-meld is also irrelevant. [photo credit: J.Ranney]

I wonder what Julia Child would say (WWJS?) were she alive—she’d make a quick reduction of Lisa, I think. My fantasy is that in the final episode of TNFNS, the contestants are asked to revisit their culinary points of view, their Mission Statements. Will it come back to this, I wonder? Will it come back to haunt them?—it should. It should for each of us.
In this ideal episode, the spectral incarnation of JC interrogates Lisa: “You’ve given us some gobbledy-gook about making fine cuisine accessible (by..being…um... inaccessible? ) Do you feel you’ve achieved this? Are you your persona?” We should all have a handle on our personae...think about that Mission Statement and how it matches up with what we do...whether the cameras are rolling or not.

This all sounds suspiciously like the sour grapes of wrath, and I will say it so you don’t have to: I didn’t enter this contest, so how can I be rankled by who wins?

Because I can. Because I am sick of the wrong people getting the right things, having the path ahead open right up for them, while most of us slog along for eternity with our machetes. It’s just so…predictable. I am sick of poor writers becoming BlogHer stars or published novelists, crummy bands dominating the radio, and these people being shoved down my palate as “all that’s out there.” And what lies beneath? Or a little farther back in the Google rankings?...we will never know.
Wilco says it much more succinctly:

The best song will never get sung
The best life never leaves your lungs
So good, you won't ever know
I never hear it on the radio
Can't hear it on the radio
[from "Late Greats"]:

I'm so weary of the same old people winning in life, repeatedly, never doubting that they completely and totally, absolutely deserve it. Mostly, I can complain because I hate when something sub-par wins by default. “There just wasn’t that much to pick from…” Nonsense! I think we should have an immediate write-in ballot (I volunteer myself, if we can get Bobby to wait in the other room, or at least have a supply of hyperventilation pre-empting paper bags on hand).

Dying to know what my culinary POV is, eh? I can name it pretty easily: “Meat Lust & Food Metaphor."
Can you?
To be fair, which life is not, I didn’t have to do it on camera.
Now, if only Bobby had been sitting on that prop table…