Yesterday I was chained to the couch and forced to watch the Jamie’s Kitchen Marathon. As usual, with TV, this six hours of my life raised more questions than answers.
Jamie’s Kitchen Mararthon FAQ:
Who the hell is Jamie Oliver anyway?
A celebrity Chef. He cooks simple, no-nonsense, elegant food. And he’s (allegedly) cute, with a lopsided grin that people seem to find attractive. He also has a hell of a lisp but hey – that’s not his fault.
See? Irreverent.
Why broadcast all 6 hours of this “reality” show on New Year’s Day?
I suspect because nobody cared to watch it the first time. Plus: two new episodes at the end!
What is this show “Jamie’s Kitchen” about, anyway?
Jamie Oliver, Celebrity Chef, decides to open a restaurant. He decides to staff it with 15 young people who don’t know how to cook. He trains them to cook and then employs them in his restaurant, which he calls “Fifteen.” By the end of the show, there are 7 trainees left in his kitchen. But the restuarant is still called “Fifteen.” You can eat there, but make a reservation. And it’s in London.
Are there any compelling characters?
Yes: Jamie Oliver’s wife, Jools. She has a newborn baby at the beginning of the series and delivers another one near the end. That’s all we see of Jools. I predict a sequel, called “Jamie’s Divorce.”
Any other compelling characters?
No.
Really?
Really. The kids who are good, smart and obedient are not profiled at all. The kids who skip school, mouth off, punch walls and threaten the headmaster are followed closely, but they’re little shitheads and you really aren’t pulling for them. At hour three, I was shrieking at the screen, “Send the ungrateful bastard back to South London! Hire someone who can take direction! For the love of your wife!”
I think JO is meant be portrayed as some sort of saint; he has endless “heart-to-heart” talks with these troublesome trainees and the trainees continue to screw him over. He mostly comes across as a poor businessman who is darn stubborn. By hour four when the accountant says, “you’re up to 1.5 million pounds now. that’s more than double the original budget,” I see no real remorse or fear in Jamie’s face. He’s laughing his ass off. And I think that might be because he’s a very rich man and the “budget” of which the accountant speaks is merely a late addition to the script, meant to build tension for us, the viewers.
Is there coarse language in “Jamie’s Kitchen” that might offend my delicate ears?
That depends. The words “piss,” “shit” and “bugger” are all used liberally. The word “fuck” and its derivatives are bleeped out, which makes understanding what these people are saying very difficult. First, there’s the accent. Then there’s JO’s lisp. And plus, now I’m missing every fourth word.
After each commercial and before each segment, the television warned us in dire tones that there was offensive language. But it failed to deliver! I will be writing to the Food Network Canada to complain.
The two new episodes left “fuck” in. Except for within a few minutes of the end of the second, where the censor woke up from his nap – not that I blame him, it was a long series – and started bleeping again.
Didn’t Martika have a show like this?
Yes, Martika’s Kitchen. The chorus goes, “Get some, get some, get some, in Martika’s Kitchen, baby.”
The beginning credits for the penultimate episode in the marathon, “Back to Jamie’s Kitchen,” show Jamie dressed in his chef’s whites, getting on his moped, putting on his helmet and sunglasses and speeding off through London. At one point, a white van changes lanes and Jamie and the camera that are attached to his head get knocked off the bike and sent spinning off onto the sidewalk. He does not get up and walk away. What the hell?
No idea. This scene was not repeated or explained. An initial search of the internet didn’t turn up anything. But I’m a little scared of delving too deeply into the Jamie Oliver fan sites so it wasn’t a very thorough search.
Can I conclude from this marathon that women are lazier and more troublesome than men?
Absolutely! C’mon: I sat on the couch for 6 hours, watching something I wasn’t really enjoying. That’s lazy.
For another thing, the females in Jamie’s Kitchen give him much more trouble than the males. Sure, one of the guys has anger management issues, but at least they all work hard and show signs of brilliance. The females just stand around and complain about how hard their lives are. Then again, this might be a reaction to Jamie not ever referring to a female by name, but insisting on calling them “shweethaht” “dahling” and “gohghuss.”
I especially liked when Jamie suggested that one of the trainee women “show [‘im] yeh tits dahling!” as they are driving past a cyclist in the British countryside. I would rather have heard each utterance of “fuck” for 6 hours than hear Jamie treat the female trainees like an unwanted litter of puppies. That’s probably just me, though.
I hate washing my dishes with yesterday’s smelly dishcloth. It’s so germ-laden! Is there a solution?
See? Lazy!
But yes, thanks for asking! Palmolive Dishwipes allow you to use one cloth per load of dishes (apparently, that’s 21 dishes. They did a study…) and then just toss it away! After all, as the woman in the commercial says, “There’s plenty more where that came from!”
Palmolive was a sponsor of the Jamie’s Kitchen Marathon. The commercial was shown once per break. That’s roughly 50 times (I did my own study…). Each time I saw it, I wanted less to buy the product. They should invite me to more focus groups.
I can not believe this product exists. I can not believe an R&D team got money to develop a “cloth with the Palmolive liquid built right in,” that an advertising company got the account, that people in the world have expressed dissatisaction with the “old-fashioned” method of cleaning more than one load of dishes with the same cloth, that no one stopped the ad campaign and said, “there may be more where they came from, but where are they going when you throw them away? have you heard of landfills?”
In short, I can not believe that it is 2004 and we, as a culture, are becoming more instead of less wasteful, stupid and short sighted.
