The Secret Ingredient Is … Celebrity

(Guest writer Chris Morgan returns with an examination of the celebrity judges on Iron Chef America)

Once upon a time, there was a Japanese cooking based competition show called Iron Chef. In said show, an esteemed chef would challenge one of the titular Iron Chefs in a battle revolving around a secret ingredient. The show found a foothold in America because (1) It was a good show and (2) There was a bit of a kitsch factor to it, because, after all, anything than is dubbed is totally hilarious am I right? Although, truth be told, I was always endlessly amused when they would show the dishes and explain them in unnecessarily florid language as easy listening music played in the background.

An American version was tried in 2001 by UPN, one of the parents of The CW along with the WB, called Iron Chef USA. Unfortunately, the show decided to focus on the kitschy aspects of the original, as evidenced by the fact the chefs had nicknames such as “The Italian Scallion” and that William Shatner was the host. It lasted a whopping two episodes, just like the Mike O’Malley Show.

Fortunately, the Food Network decided to give it another go with Iron Chef America. Wisely, they focused on the food based competition and brought in host of Good Eats and all around awesome guy Alton Brown to host. The show has found quite a bit of success, and I personally am a big fan of it.

However, there is one thing all three variations have in common I’ve never been a fan of. In fact, I would go as far as to say it compromises the integrity of the show. For you see, in Iron Chef America the winner of these battles is decided by a panel of three judges. Often they are people who work with food professionally. Cooks, food critics, what have you. But sometimes the judges are celebrities.

Additionally, in the original Iron Chef the celebrities, which included Jackie Chan and former Seattle Mariners closer Kaz Sasaki, not only helped choose the winner, but provided oh so interesting commentary. This often consisted of bon mots such as “What is that?” and “Oooh, that looks good” the latter of which was often spoken by a female judge and thus always sounded the same because the same woman dubbed pretty much every voice.

Anyway, while they were there for commentary in the Japanese version, in every version they taste the food and then judge it on the parameters of the contest. This is what sticks in my craw. I don’t feel that people without professional experience with food have the ability to judge the quality of the dishes well enough to make the results fully legitimate. It compromises the results. Now, there are a few counterarguments I can imagine one coming up with, so allow me to address some of them.

They may not be food experts, but celebrity judges still have taste buds. Isn’t that qualification enough?

Well I have a vague knowledge of human anatomy, does that qualify me to perform surgery? As my bargain appendectomy business taught me, no. Now, obviously my example is more serious than a television food competition, but the principle is the same. The vast majority of us have the ability to taste. However, few of us have a truly honed palette, at least one good enough to judge foods in a nuanced fashion. The food critics and chefs of the world have spent their lives immersed in the world of food. They can decipher between different spices. They can tell the doneness of a piece of meat with tremendous accuracy. They’ve eaten many foods the average person has never heard of. When Masaharu Morimoto pulls out some obscure Japanese fish, is your average celebrity going to know what it’s supposed to taste like? Sure, they can tell you whether or not they think it tastes good, but their opinion hardly has much merit.

It’s like voting in an election based on the political party of the candidates. By using such a small amount of information, your opinion is still uninformed. When experts chefs are putting together elaborate, elegant dishes that are likely ten times better than anything you or I will ever eat, I’d like a discerning palette making the decisions. There’s a reason on The Next Iron Chef all the judges were professional food experts. Why should they treat their regular episodes with any less importance?

OK, so maybe the celebrity judges don’t have the proper expertise to really judge the competition fairly. However, doesn’t their renown make up for that?

Basically, the question I have posited to myself here is: Does Iron Chef gain anything by having celebrity judges? I am going to have to go with “no” for several reasons. One, even in this celebrity worshiping “culture” of ours, is anybody going to tune it to Iron Chef to watch them judge a cooking competition? The judges are only one screen for a small portion of the show, it is mostly cooking. A few minutes of screen time may have won Judi Dench an Oscar once, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to entice more viewers. Unless you are interested in watching two chefs cook, or interested in food in some way, you probably won’t watch Iron Chef.

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.

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.