This show made me really wonder about the casting and preparation. I picked up watching last season in the middle, when there were pretty competent cooks dealing with the stresses, so I don’t know if last season started with this chaos.
But in this show, it seemed to me that they picked a dozen people based on their video applications, without much consideration of whether they can cook or handle the pressures of a commercial kitchen (much less a GR kitchen). I don’t know how much GR was being (or was edited to be) overly critical, but I found it really surprising that he had nothing positive to say about all but two or three dishes. I would think that the twelve best candidates of the of all those who applied would at least be able to throw off one competent dish on a moment’s notice (and not almost faint before GR tasted it) – particularly when I understand that this is the traditional opening activity. It made me wonder if the casting involved any cooking at all, or just the videos and interviews.
The next day they were thrown into cooking for the restaurant without any apparent organization or explanation of what they were to do (though I’m sure there was some explanation not shown). It seemed that they were told “cook these dishes” without any training or mentoring, and GR expected them to be able to do it. That’s fine if you have a group of competent and experienced line cooks from high end restaurants, but the show deliberately cast a group with varied experiences. It was, it seemed to me, deliberately cruel and a recipe for disaster to throw them together to run a restaurant.
For the women at least, it seems like they almost universally cast the ambitious and egotistical, as opposed to, for instance, women who could actually cook eggs. It seemed that everyone looked down on Waffle House Julia both before and after the night’s debacle, despite her being the only one who seemed to have basic egg-frying skills (and I suspect that Waffle House is not the only thing in Julia’s culinary background). I forget who it was, but there was the one who wouldn’t give up the “glamour” of failing disasterously at the apps station by accepting Julia’s help. It is almost cliche to put the women together and have a catfight, but here there seemed to be nobody with any interest in teamwork (a necessary skill), save for Julia, who was universally disdained, or at best ignored. They all seemed to already think they were prima donna chefs, rather than trainees. The only ones who stood out at all were Melissa, who seemed both competent and wise enough to not to choose Julia for elmination despite her collegues recommendations, and Julia, who was personally likable and has the potential to be a diamond in the rough. The rest just seemed like bitchcakes in this episode.
For the men, I didn’t see such obvious mutual bitchiness, just an absence of competence. They seemed to be personally getting along well enough, and I wasn’t sure why they were so delayed in getting the apps out, other than difficulty with the particular recipes (which, if I recall correctly, one of them said were never demonstrated to them). Other than Aaron, who I initially liked when he sassed GR back over his cowboy hat but disappointed me when he totally melted down despite no apparent personal screw ups or GR abuse, and Vinnie, who seemed like he’ll be a short-lived asshole unless he has the actual chops to back up his attitude, I couldn’t really distinguish between the guys (other than the fact that one is black and another is short with some kidney disease).
Was it this way in the opening episode of the other seasons, or does this seem to be a particularly messed up group of misfits?