People say the same of Guy Fieri, who I like better and who has one good cookbook and one mediocre. Bourdain seems to have spared The Food Network from his wrath maybe since communities are small. Not every chef is as or can be as philanthropic as Andres, Boulud or Fieri and many do so in smaller ways.
I found the show’s concept to be abrasive. It’s like dude we get it. You’re a successful chef with your own TV show. You don’t need to “challenge” respected and loved local chefs across America to show off how much “better” you are. Talk about ego. Jeesh!
He’s another one where I readily acknowledge that his on-screen persona may well be very different from his actual personality. As you mention, I’ve only recently learned that he does a lot of philanthropy, which is awesome. I still find his on-air persona to be that of an obnoxious, over-the-top dude-bro douchecanoe. 
The “challenge” is intended to highlight and promote the chef/restaurant featured, win or lose.
We binged through a bunch of seasons when we first got Discovery+. It’s a solid cooking competition show, but you start to see patterns emerge.
Bobby is an incredible chef - but his main skill on the show is knowing the tricks to build layers of flavor in a short period of time. If there’s an episode where he doesn’t use Calabrian chilis, I don’t think I’ve seen it. His knowledge of southwest flavors is also fairly unmatched - it’s extremely rare for someone to challenge him with something in Bobby’s wheelhouse and win.
One of the bigger pitfalls is coming with a dish that the chef typically makes in massive bulk. Great - you make a shrimp poboy 1500 times a day. But I’m going to guess your skill is in making cheaper/bulk ingredients taste good. Bobby’s skill is in elevating that poboy with ingredients your restaurant would never use because they’re too expensive/time-intensive. Also, you’re not using Calabrian chilis.
The eyebrows might not be doctored but the photo as a whole sure is (in a way; see below). The perspective is out-of-whack with the lower part squeezed in a lot more than the top part making him look like a creepy, alien elf with no chin whatsoever. The lower-third graphic confirms what is already pretty obvious from seeing that catastrophically proportioned head.
But this might not have been done on purpose. It resembles stills that people shoot off of their TV screen with a cell phone and I’d venture to guess that’s what is is. Perspectives get thrown off when a camera is at 60-70" off the ground and the subject (the TV screen) is only 30-40".
ETA: Hard to know if the eyebrows are fake considering his forehead is about 1000 times bigger than reality.
Here are some other images, with hopefully a more faithful perspective:
Look up photos of him, and usually his eyebrows look normal. But at one point they sort of EXPLODED onto his forehead. My wife and I watch a ton of Food Network, and so we’ve seen him a lot, and it was jarring. Like Joe Biden suddenly wearing a clown wig in press conferences.
Why are you posting photos of tv screens? You can just search google for actual photos of him. I watch this show all the time, I do not see what you are claiming. He looks normal to me. This is such a weird conversation…
Because those are the only photos I could find where his eyebrows are weird. Possibly because he only appeared that way on TV. I don’t know, I don’t know the man personally or work with him.
Um, yes I can, and I did, which is how I found those photos… 
Which does not contradict anything that I said.
As I said, all of a sudden his eyebrows started looking crazy, like someone painted giant eyebrows to cover something up.
As I said, it was jarring because they looked so different than usual. Maybe they’ve gone back to normal, because they don’t look so wacky anymore. But it’s like he went through a crazy eyebrow phase.
This isn’t something I made up. There are many discussions of it.
https://twitter.com/bchirpietoo/status/849264701624201216?lang=en
Read the first comment here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/foodnetwork/comments/6qtvsy/does_anyone_else_think_giada/
Apparently someone else shares my theory in that thread.
I could be wrong, but I feel like they changed significantly after the week he had to miss on food network star (at least that’s when we noticed it), so maybe he accidentally signed them in a grilling maneuver gone wrong?
Idk I’ve watched many many episodes of his show, and plenty of him on Iron Chef. Never once did I ever think that his eyebrows looked weird. This is the very first I’ve heard of it, and if the only pictures you can find are distorted off angle bad phone camera pictures off of TV, well I mean whatever I guess. Still weird IMO. Maybe he accidently shaved a chunk off of one while grooming himself and the makeup people had to put fake ones on for a few days. If that’s what interests you to talk about, knock yourself out. Everybody needs hobbies.
I was responding to a comment about his hair, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with his hair. But at least for a while, there was something really strange going on with his eyebrows.
That’s just false. I posted one that was definitely weird, and then followed it up with a few that were not distorted.
OK. He had a couple off days eyebrow-wise. I’m sure if I was on TV as much as he is I’d show up looking weird sometimes too. In fact I did have an eyebrow grooming incident once. Left a bit of a bare patch, had to even them up. I doubt anybody noticed, but I was a little self conscious for a few days.
I’d like to go back to somebody else’s earlier comment that Food Network has “devolved into “Food Competition TV””. I disagree. The competition shows are my favorites and pretty much all I watch on Food Network (I watch quite a bit). I don’t need 100 different shows of watch me cook. But that’s my opinion. Tournament of Champions is my absolute favorite these days.
Agreed 100%. I love their competition shows. I do sometimes watch a few of the cooking shows, but that’s rare. Their competitions make for the best viewing, in my opinion.
Tournament of Champions is especially enjoyable for people who watch other competition shows, because it collects some of the best chefs from the other shows. I look forward to that every year now. 
If I ever get the chance, I would pay really good money to eat food prepared by Brooke Williamson. Her stuff looks so good!
I started getting into cooking competition shows during covid lockdown. I like to cook and eat good food, so it’s great to watch these chefs work and try to learn some things, plus as a sports fan the competition part is what makes it so interesting. Watching them compete and seeing their different interpretations and creativity is great. If only I could taste it all with the judges lol. Plus you get to know them personality-wise and Guy Fieri and his big group of chef friends all seem like such nice, down to earth people.
She has been my favorite since Tournament of Champions 1. I always root for her, Maneet, and there’s a few others I like to watch like Michael Voltaggio. It’s great because there aren’t any bad guys, and they all like and respect each other.
Different strokes and all that. I generally don’t care for “reality TV,” and the manufactured drama that they’re full of.
Plus, not all of Food Network’s old programming was just “watch me cook” – Alton Brown’s “Good Eats,” in particular, was educational and entertaining, while wrapped up in “here’s how you make this dish.”
The best example of that, I thought, was Chance of a Lifetime, where Guy was picking who to run one of his Chicken Guy franchises. He had some good, heartfelt talks with some of the contestants there which really made him look human. Some of Guy’s chef friends also had some good moments with the contestants as well on that show.
Like I said, just my opinion. I don’t like reality TV very much either, but these shows don’t have that kind of negative fake drama. To me, these cooking competition shows, at least the ones I watch, aren’t like that. They compete, but also help each other when necessary and it’s positive. Kind of like the british baking show. It is reality tv, technically, but it’s people being kind while competing. Very different than most reality tv.
That is one I haven’t watched. I will add it to the rotation.