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I watch an awful lot of Iron Chef America. As a result, my kids watch an awful lot of Iron Chef America. I used to consider it the most G-rated show for grown-ups that kids can watch too. After all, it has everything kids love: competition, sharp knives, food, fire, mysticism, overacting, science, and Jeffrey Steingarten. (Well, I love Jeffrey Steingarten).
But lately, things have been slowly going awry, especially if you consider the fact that kids are watching. I worry that omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-goofy “Chairman” Mark Dacascos has taken his eye off the ball in the kitchen to work on his moves on Dancing with the Stars.
In the imaginable words of his uncle (Japanese Iron Chef chairman Takeshi Kaga), “What the heck is going on with my show?”
Case in point: Earlier this month, and perennially in reruns, Iron Chef Opie—err, I mean Bobby Flay—faced off against Indian food specialist Floyd Cardoz. Floyd is of Indian descent, as in the country of India, not in the Native American sense.
But Dacascos, whose reliance on word play rivals Flay’s obsession with chili peppers, inexplicably said this to Cardoz:
“Which Iron Chef will feel the wrath of your war whoop?”
I blinked. I cleaned my ears. I confirmed it on another blog.
Talk about a blast chiller. This is akin to Dacascos asking a Spanish contender which Iron Chef will become “his Alamo” or a Korean chef to “avenge Iwo Jima.”
How could host Alton Brown, with an IQ presumably around the boiling point of water, let that go?
I didn’t second guess Iron Chef when it started using food-illiterate celebrity judges, including former quarterback Boomer Esiason, pro wrestler Batista, and rapper Bone Crusher (who Steingarten affectionately called “Chef Bone Crusher”).
I also let go of some recent Iron Chef savagery, those family-friendly moments when live animals are hacked, boiled, and gutted in gruesome detail. Particularly egregious was the “suckling pig” episode, which seemed to borrow cinematic pointers from Rob Zombie. In it, we saw a table piled high with lifeless whole pigs that were pulled off one by one and vividly dismembered—all during the supper hour. Now there’s something you don’t see on The Wizards of Waverly Place.
But an idiotic and easily offensive lapse in judgement like this needs to be called out. No, it won’t do any real harm to kids or anyone else in the audience (most children know their teepees from their Taj Mahals), but this is supposed to be thinking person’s TV, not VH1.
And producers know better than anyone: When a television show turns off its audience, the audience is very likely to return the favor.
