[Blarg]

Agreed on everything you said. Gordon Ramsay has to wheel out his abusive schtick regularly for program demands, and the cooks they chose were far from top of the line. I don't think they need to be for the purposes of the show. All the show needs to do is provide a cook, not show us top cooks.

Surprisingly, I've seen Ramsay be quite complimentary numerous times this season, which I saw virtually none of last season. He compliments Rock fairly constantly.

Next Food Network Star is a bit of a puzzle. The cooks are obviously not top level, and don't seem ready to be televised authorities. When getting quizzed on a basic ingredient like canned tomatoes, one contestant is completely flustered and starts babbling. Then again, their job is not just to cook, but be photogenic, clear, and personable on screen. So cooking is a demonstrably smaller part of their job. On screen, it may finally be nonexistent, as there are plenty of shows in which the host doesn't cook at all. So the show moves in multiple directions at once, which multiple ways to succeed or fail, and those all have to be measured at once with some sort of balance.

Bourdain's entries on the show, on the link, have a lot of good things to say about the show.

Top Chef this season seems interesting, and the contestants are notably good this year. It's the cooking contest show I like the most because it is the most serious and has the sexiest hostess(so much for serious, on my part!).

I'd love to see those old Gordon Ramsay BBC shows. I'm going to check to see if they have any of them at Netflix.