Sunday, July 21, 2013

Lovely Loses Again on Next Food Network Star

OK, can we just declare Nikki Dinki the winner of season 8 of the Food Network's Next Food Network Star. Clearly, she is the only finalist in a very weak field of contestants who even has a chance of hosting a watchable show on the Food Network. Nikki won again this week, taking the first challenge and then putting together a team - with good choices of Demaris and Stacy - to win the food promo competition.

Lovely returned from the Food Star Redemption competition - in a baffling decision by Robert Irvine. What the Restaurant Impossible host saw in Lovely defies all sense that he is a true culinary artist. Lovely never made anything that my wife can't whip up in the kitchen on any given Tuesday. And the dishes she created to beat Viet, Chris, and Chad were utterly forgettable. Seriously, she made a crumble with potato chips. That was weak. But she was allowed back in ... and promptly shown the door when she validated her early exit by being almost a non-entity in the team promo with Russell and Rodney. In the promo she had next to nothing to say - and that was only slightly worse than the other two. In fact, it would have been preferable for Rodney to say nothing at all.

Rodney and Russell are almost certain to be the next two to go home. Hopefully, Rodney goes first. The "Pie Guy" is simply crass and unsophisticated. There is simply nothing he can bring to the Food Network that it needs, and I am weary of his low-class, wacky guy exterior. Rodney would never entertain me as a Food Network Star. Russell can cook, no doubt. But he's not close to polished enough for the Food Network. And that comment about culinary sins in the promo? Ridiculous. The problem with people like Russell and Rodney is that they think they can be like a Guy Fieri or Alton Brown - edgy and cool. But they can't ... because Guy and Alton know food and they know it well. Guy would never have ignored a story about 500-year-old yeast or the use of potato flour in doughnuts. Guy and Alton would have spun some great commentary out of that because they know food. Rodney and Russell don't.

This is clearly the weakest and least entertaining field of Food Network Star contestants I've seen. Even among the finalists now, only Nikki is slightly interesting.

Let's just get it over with.


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