Additionally, not only is there little to no theoretical advantage of having celebrity judges, there is even less advantage in practice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a commercial for Iron Chef America in which a judge was featured. They usually focus on some sort of “crazy thing” happening that, in context, is actually not at all crazy. I don’t know how many commercials for the show I’ve seen where they played up somebody struggling with machinery or what have you only to find out it was a mere blip in their cooking time and didn’t cause them much trouble at all. I’m going to guess I’ve seen in nine times. Thus, clearly Iron Chef doesn’t expect much boost in ratings from their celebrity judges. Besides, you only see commercials for ICA on Food Network, so you’d already have to be watching the channel to see the commercials anyway. Also, most of the celebrities aren’t particularly exciting. I know Tina Fey was on an episode once, but that’s about the high point of their celebrity judges. I mean, they had Lou Diamond Phillips on once. He was on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. You are officially slumming when LDP is your celebrity.
Resolved: Lou Diamond Phillips is neither a diamond nor a fillip. Discuss.
Alright, so celebrity judges don’t help the show at all and their ability to rate food isn’t likely to be satisfactory, but do most people really care?
Well… no, they probably don’t. As I said, most of the show is the chefs cooking, and that’s what they emphasize in the commercials. Why? Because that is what people are tuning in for. I presume many people don’t even care about the results. They used to show the Iron Chef’s records on the show, but they don’t do that anymore. It’s likely only a select few people like me who care who wins, and probably an even more select few who worry that amateur judges compromise the results. Incidentally, if you will allow me a side bar, who do you root for when you watch Iron Chef? I personally root for the Iron Chefs, which I think might be in the minority. It’s a pattern of behavior I have. I used to root for Ben Stein on Win Ben Stein’s Money (this was before I knew what an utter jackass he is) and I would also root for the geeks on Comedy Central’s short lived Beat the Geeks. I also hoped the show would be on TV long enough that I could someday be on there as The Simpsons Geek. Tragically, this never happened.
However, by focusing on whether or not people care you would be missing the issue I have with celebrity judges i.e. that they negative effect the integrity of the show. This isn’t like American Idol, which is also decided by non-professional, and in many cases painfully stupid, people with little to no knowledge of what makes a good singer. American Idol is not about finding the best singer, it is about a record company using a television program to make a ton of money and also find a “musician” who registers with the teeming masses, thus making them more money. Talent is entirely irrelevant, and voting is left in the hands of the people who should be voting, no matter how uninformed their opinion is, and thus the show loses no integrity vis a vis putting the decisions in the hands of less than qualified people. Instead, American Idol lost any integrity it had through a multitude of other ways.
Iron Chef is about judging a chef on three things: taste, plating, and originality using the mystery ingredient. While a celebrity can still understand the aesthetics of good plating, in the other two categories they are out of their element. I’ve already discussed the likely limitations of their palette earlier in this article, but it is also important to mention that judging a chef’s originality, particularly with an obscure ingredient, is something I don’t think a non-professional is capable of as well. When a celebrity judge is on Iron Chef, the show’s producers are basically saying to the cooks, “We’ve decided to let an amateur (or two, occasionally even three) decide which one of you did a better job.” That doesn’t seem sensible, because it isn’t. How can a show claim to be a true culinary battle when they don’t even consistently do the chefs the service of getting them experts to taste their food? That said, it is still the preeminent cooking competition on television, if the one episode of Top Chef I couldn’t even make it all the way through was any indication.
In conclusion (as I was taught to begin final paragraphs with in junior high) celebrity judges do compromise the integrity of Iron Chef by calling into question the legitimacy of the voting. Most people, the kind who don’t over think things, will never have it cross their minds, but for me and folks of my ilk it will always be a blight on the show. I wish they would just allow people with professional expertise judge the battles, but that’s not likely going to happen. However, I think I can manage to still make it through the show, and even enjoy it. If a lifetime of watching sports has taught me anything, it is how to push aside minor annoyances (idiotic announcers, with a special shout out to Tim McCarver for ruining the World Series every year) in order to enjoy what I am watching. All that said, if the people of Iron Chef America are reading this, please, no more Mo Rocca. If I want bad puns, I’ll go with Bruce Vilanch, who, incidentally, was a judge on one of the two episodes of Iron Chef USA.
Yeah, it’s a real wonder why that show got canceled so soon.
Chris Morgan, to ensure he can spend all his free time watching television, is a huge sports fan, and you can find his writings on the Detroit Lions and the NHL over at Examiner.com.