Hey Kids,
For those who haven’t heard, NBC announced last week that due to poor ratings, The Chopping Block has been cancelled after only 3 episodes. Apparently NBC thinks that reruns of Law and Order will give them the boost they need. (Dumb-asses!!!) NBC said that the would like to air the remaining episodes sometime in the future, but are unsure of when that will be. First of all, as excited as I was for the show to premiere, I knew it didn’t stand a chance against American Idol. But regardless, NBC needs to learn to finish what they fucking start! Don’t they pay people to think about these things first!? Especially since TCB was really just taking off, the last episode had everything you could ask for; drama, excitement, blood, and revenge! I’m sure Panya already thinks this was another plot of “The Alliance”! She probably thinks me, Lisa, and Vanessa have a secret underground lair where we plan strategic attacks against her and all the free world! (evil laugh: HAHAHAHA!!!!)
I just think its really sad for the remaining contestants who won’t be able to talk about the show again (we all have gag orders preventing us from discussing unaired events). Its almost cruel to have had all of us go through that experience, come home, wait 9 months for it to come out, only to 86 it prematurely without any closure. It’s pretty clear that NBC, like many big businesses these days, make really, really poor decisions. It reminds me of when I left Gifford’s, they started losing money, and instead of trying to really figure out why they just decided to use cheaper ingredients and increase the overrun in the product (overrun is the amount of air in ice cream, more air creates a higher yield but a cheaper product). Over time, the quality of the ice cream kept going down, and so did the sales. I left just as the decision was being made to have another dairy produce their ice cream for them. They never realized that people could tell their product had turned to shit, they took the customer for granted and without any respect or integrity they ruined their name for the sake of profit. It feels like NBC is making the same types of decisions, rather than looking inward and trying to give people better quality shows, they are just cutting corners and reselling old shows we’ve already disposed of.
What’s the most pathetic thing is that the main critique of the show has been how Americans perceive Marco Pierre White. Many of the blogs and reviews I read, said that Marco was a drag to watch, he was too calm and didn’t make good TV. I think its a sad state of affairs when Americans only watch reality TV when people are being yelled at, exploited, humiliated, or made to look like idiots. I praise Julian and David (the exec producers) for making a show that wasn’t over-dramatized and sensationalized. If you watch BBC reality shows, they are much like TCB, even Gordon Ramsey, who Americans can’t get enough of on Hell’s Kitchen, is as calm as a kitten most of the time on BBC’s Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. Marco’s interests were to guide us and help us become better restauranteurs, and to bring the reality back to Restaurant TV programs. In an interview with Fancast, Marco said he’d gotten fed up with the Hell’s Kitchen portrayal of the restaurant industry. “Well, firstly I only do TV if it’s going to be inspirational, educational and interesting. If it’s not those three things, then it’s not worth doing. And what is important about doing reality TV is to put as much reality into TV as possible. Not trying to turn it into a circus.” “The only reason a person loses their temper is because they’ve lost control. If you watch me do Hell’s Kitchen in the UK, I never lose my temper. I never swear, I never put people down. Because my job as the chef is to absorb the pressure and to distribute it through the kitchen. And the reason why I stepped back on to the stage is because I don’t like the way certain people portray my industry to the public.”
It’s just sad to me that some one like Marco, who I learned so much from, can be collectively dissed like that. I really hope NBC does the right thing, and airs the remaining episodes. But in the meantime, things here will still be active. I’m still working on new and exciting ventures, the first of which, T-shirts I designed for shirt.woot.com, will be out soon! Check back within a few days to find out when!
thanks for watching/reading,
mikey