I've become newly addicted to chef Gordon Ramsey's two food competition on Fox.  I don't why and I wish I wasn't.  Ramsey is totally despicable, bashing his cheftestants over their heads with the ideas about the fruitlessness of their entire lives when they give him an undercooked beef Wellington or poorly-timed bass garnish.  His cohorts are equally, laughably, serious about food, calling contestants' sanity into question for a poorly-sauced plate. Sigh.

Even as I can't stop watching, I bemoan the America that likes this kind of TV.  Ramsey takes himself more seriously than most doctors I have met.  It's like his customers will spontaneously combust if not presented with their lobster spaghetti in a timely fashion.  Ramsey's ferocious yelling and catchphrases (contrasted with lovely Tim Gunn's "make it work") is f*** off or piss off.  This whole angry atmosphere seems to make the contestants hate each other more than I've ever seen any group hate each other on a reality show. Instults fly, communication is made up of put downs and team challenges are always big messes.

That said, I still watch.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Chef Gordon Ramsey is a 44-year-old British chef who has won a lot of awards.  His most prestigious are his Michelin stars, given by the one of the most well-known awarding bodies in the world.  Three stars mean that a restaurant deserves a special visit and Ramsey has a restaurant like this. It's called Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road in London's Chelsea neighborhood.

So he's good.  We get it. 

He's got two shows on Fox network right now.  The first is called Hell's Kitchen and it pits professional chefs from across the country against each other.  They often work in teams--typically, archaically, in boys versus girls challenges. The winner will get to be head chef at BLT Steak restaurant in New York City. The food certainly doesn't look first-class on this show--Ramsay stops dinner service almost every night--so I must watch it for the fighting!?  

The second show is called MasterChef.  The contestants on this show are amateur cooks and have to make it through a vigorous screening process to make it on air.  The winner gets $25,000. There's one sweet and fat judge on MasterChef that the two other haters (Ramsay and an evil chef whose name I don't know) won't even let taste the food they think is nasty. His softly negative comments must not make for good TV. They rip those MasterChefs apart. Remember, home chef means they watch Rachael Ray and stir cookie batter in their own kitchens. How critical can you be? 

The thing that riles me up the most about Hell's Kitchen is Chef Ramsay's pronouncements whenever he sends another chef packing.  One the episode I watched yesterday, he said that a chef's cooking talent was like her size--tiny.  On another episode, Ramsay said that a chef never had a chance to win the head chef grand prize. Ramsay--or the producers, I don't know who--seems to think it is fine to cut down a chef's entire career for a misstep in the on-air kitchen. They may not have made it in Ramsay's kitchen, but they were obvioulsy making it elsewhere.  Ramsay put them on the show in the first place, after all.

I can barely find anything I actually like about these shows. Yet still I watch. What is it about mean shows that make us unable to turn away?