Kitchen Nightmares

Kitchen Nightmares  --- What did people do before television?  Kitchen Nightmares is a compulsively fascinating reality-Tv show that comforts and enlightens by being always exactly the same.  You watch a show  like Kitchen Nightmares because you know that each episode is always exactly the same.  The effect is like that famously proclaimed by Andy Warhol – “all Cokes are exactly the same.  And all Cokes are good.”  George Kubler wrote an important book about artifact sequencing in archaeology in 1961, The Shape of the Past.  Kubler says that most artifacts are replicas of an original prototype.  In traditional cultures, the object is to precisely imitate the replica.  Perhaps, once in an artisan’s life, after thirty years apprenticeship, the craftsman is allowed one tiny innovation.  The artifact evolves over generations into a perfected form and, then, slowly spirals into decadence either because the object’s meaning or purpose has become obsolete or because of cultural degeneracy or, sometimes, because the best craftsman have migrated into imitating another form.  Kubler declares the great majority of objects in the world to be “replica-mass.”  Television embodies these principles:  most TV shows are slavish imitations of other shows that have proven successful:  NCIS is a replica of other crime lab shows, for instance,  CSI: Miami and CSI: NY which were spawned by CSI which, ultimately, harkens back to the old Jack Klugman show Quincy M. E., and, further, each episode of NCIS duplicates previous episodes.  Only the most tiny variations on the form are permissible.  In Kitchen Nightmares, Chef Gordon Ramsey, always simply referred to as “Chef”, appears at a failing, once majestic, restaurant.  The restaurant is typically an ethnic, family-operated establishment that was once renowned, but with its glory days in the mid-1970’s.  In the show’s first fifteen minutes, Ramsey meets the characters, generally an endearing group of siblings with hot-tempers and anxiety disorder, establishes a bond with the family’s matriarch or patriarch, a seasoned by elderly restauranteur who, generally, speaks in a heavy accent and rolls his/her eyes at the antics of the cooks.  The cooks are a group of ill-mannered, foul-mouthed – although no one gets to swear as vehemently and poetically as Ramsey – Mexicans or Asians.  Ramsey always discovers horrific code violations, pigeons in the kitchen, rotting meat in the coolers, dead lobsters in the toxic-looking aquariums.  The head cook serves Ramsey his signature dishes which the spitfire host declares inedible and, even, possibly poisonous.  In the second fifteen minutes, we see a catastrophic dinner service – Ramsey’s presence apparently entices everyone to come to eat in the restaurant and the place is full – the joint hasn’t had a decent crowd in a quarter century and the beleagured kitchen workers can’t keep pace with demand.  Food emerges from the kitchen raw, or over-seasoned, or burnt and most of the plates are sent back creating further chaos in the back of the house.  Finally, someone rips off his smock and there’s a fistfight or a tearful hysterical breakdown.  In the third fifteen minute segment, Ramsey supervises another dinner service, this time encouraging better teamwork among the cooks and waiters.  More chaos ensues but Ramsey pronounces the restaurant, hitherto thought to be doomed, worthy of salvation.  In the final quarter hour,  Ramsey remodels the whole kitchen overnight, rewrites the menu, and supervises a dinner service that, after a few preliminary hiccups, works like a charm.  Ramsey hugs everyone, the warring cooks shake hands, the siblings are reconciled, the matriarch (or patriarch) praises Ramsey’s genius, and our hero walks off into the sunset in search of another restaurant to rescue.  The formula is always the same, Ramsey always cusses at everyone and shrieks insults, and, in the end, all is well.  Each show is the same and each is satisfying.  Hard work and commitment pay off.  The family works together to save their restaurant.  And every show has an identical happy ending.  Decisive change occurs literally overnight.   What’s comforting about this is that what we are seeing is supposedly real life.  But, of course, it’s all totally contrived and fictional, more theatrical than an episode of The Wild, Wild West.