Karl Klockars

I’ve officially set the DVR to record all the upcoming “Worst Cooks In America” shows from the Food Network, a channel I have mostly been ignoring for the past three years of my life.  This is a major step and I commend FN for finally coming up with a concept that doesn’t just rehash recipes from “Better Homes and Gardens” or is hosted by a guy that pulls his script from Urban Dictionary postings.

Why?  Because I’ve already seen tons of shows from people that can cook.  I already watched the eight dozen travel shows from people that know about food.  The television landscape is chock-a-block with people who know what the hell they’re doing.  Maybe it’s just my learning style, but I get more from watching people fail rather than watching people do everything really well.

It’s like Rule #49 of The Internet:  If you want a right answer about something, don’t post a question.  Instead, post arrogantly about the wrong answer and you’ll be flooded with responses from people who can tell you all about why you’re wrong and how terribly wrong you are and no one has ever been more wrong on the internets.

If I had to point out the obvious downside of the Worst Cooks in America, it’s that the finale seems set up to make the guest judges or the hosts look like fools.  I think we all know that there’s no way that people cooking for a week or two are never going to be able to completely recreate the technique of a seasoned chef de cuisine.  So whoever “wins” will be a better cook at the end of it, but the professional judges who have to pretend that the food is restaurant quality (a lie) and the hosts who now apparently cook just as well as these hacks (as we’re being led to believe is going to be the result) are going to look terrible.

So here’s my suggestion.

The best part of American Idol is in the first few shows, when they take the over-priviledged kid who has been taking vocal lessons for a decade and thinks they’re King or Queen of the world because they’re leading the glee club and cut him or her down to size.  It’s not making fun of the freaks, and it’s not celebrating the talent.  It’s taking the hyperinflated egos of those who don’t deserve them, and telling them they suck.  That simple.

So:  Taking from that mold (hey, a food pun!) let’s create a new show, one based on taking those people who buy all the food magazines and own a lot of cookbooks and take good care of their fancy-pants knives and gloat over their spice collection.  Then let’s make them cook for real chefs and have them knock them into line.

I’m calling it, “So You Think You Can Cook.”

We’ll grab foodies and dinner party organizers and food bloggers and other categories that I conveniently happen to fall into.  (Keep in mind that as acting executive producer, I don’t have to compete.  I just hang out and go to dinner with all these guys after the shoot is over with.)  Then we put them up in front of all the guys who guest judge on Top Chef.  Did I mention that this is for Bravo?  Yeah, there’s that.  We’ll program it head to head.  It’ll be foodie-wannabe-tv war.  Glorious foodie war.

You’ll take the guy who considers himself a gourmet, the guy who makes his own pizza dough and scoffs at Boboli, and make him create a pizza for some of the best pizza joint guys from New York.  Then they can tell him how horribly tasteless his concoctions truly are, which is what his friends have been wanting to tell him for months so they could just order from Domino’s because they’re all drunk anyways.

We’ll cast the girl who loves to bake cookies and brownies and torments her coworkers because she’s made a new kind of pie with bacon and thyme and pears.  Then we’ll have her work a shift in a famous bakery starting at 3:30 in the AM and force her to be up to her shoulders in flour and making mountains of cakes until she cries.  Then famous bakers will laugh at her.

And we’ll all get special pleasure out of taking the individual who is so damn proud of his steak-cooking prowess on the grill.  First we have him butcher a few dozen ducks or rabbits or something at the prep table for an hour.  Then when his hands are raw and exhausted, we tell him they’re all wrong and toss them in the stockpot to try and salvage some sort of soup out of them.  Then we stick him behind the grill station for a shift and watch him literally mess himself.

Or die.

Television producers, the line to take me up on this brilliant foodie death show forms here. We’ll all be terribly rich and have a hell of a good time torturing those who have ever said to themselves, “I could work in a restaurant.  I just choose not to.”  It’s time to prove that they can’t.