Kitchen Confidential - The TV Show
Apologies on the tardiness of this post, but Blogger has been wigging out on me the past few times I've tried it.I hate to admit it, but I like this show. Sure, they get a lot of details wrong (whites aren't dirty, no self-respecting restaurant would ever put their male servers in those outfits, etc) and yeah, it just isn't dark or filthy enough (the language they use on the show is, well, G, compared to some of the stuff you hear in the kitchen), but it's an entertaining show none-the-less.
What interests me about it the most isn't the actual details of the show, though, but instead the story arc that they've chosen for the character. We meet our hero after he's been a boozing, womanizing drug addict and has now reformed to become a better man. Nice, but not exactly the spirit of the book on which this show is - loosely - based. The book actually waxed nostalgic about the hedonisim of being in a kitchen where the cooks were cooks. On TV, well, maybe they're not ready for Adam Real-last-name-unknown or Bigfoot or their like ... or my like, for that matter, just yet. Actually, I think in a lot of ways I'm too damn clean for the subject material. But I digress.
You see, I find it a bit difficult for the show to be so in love with the idea of being in a professional kitchen and running a restaurant when they miss a lot of the darker areas. It's been sanitized, packaged for the general public, and has lost a little bit of the spirit that makes it such the insiders community. So, yes, Bourdain has admitted that he's sold out, but with the book and his travel TV shows, that's alright ... they appealed to a relatively small market and were still in keeping with the spirit of a cook. This show, instead, isn't the sell out of one man's story but of how we as an industry work and live. They've whitewashed our entire world to make a sitcom out of it. Now that's a sell out.
And that's why I hate myself for laughing while watching the show. Recent story line? John Laroquette plays a tyrant cook that was once a teacher for our hero, Jack Bourdain. He's had this third quad bypass and just wants to kill himself through eating over the top food. Naturally, Jack accepts at first, but then shows some semblance of a conscience at the end and serves him a crudite platter along with a moral message. Great. Me? I would have been shoving foie gras down the bastard's throat. Other cooks? I'm not so sure ... perhaps pancetta instead?
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