I’ve never been a fan of reality TV. I was a little kid during the golden age and if I’m being real, I saw how corny and forced it was even back then. It truly is amazing to look back at reality shows from 2003 and realize this is something people actually watched.
Reality TV makes sense from a network perspective. It’s way easier to pay a bunch of mentally ill people to act out some B-movie script than it is to pay for premium scripted shows. Plus the golden age was pre-internet, so I get why it had some appeal at first. Overall though it was and is just hot garbage, plain and simple.
When it come’s to Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, however, exceptions are made. I mean who doesn’t love watching Gordon Ramsay yell at people? Dude just tears into unsuspecting fat guys non-stop and unlike most reality shows, you get the vibe that he’s actually pissed.
Gordon Ramsay does not take prisoners either. He curses, he goes at people for their physical appearance and he more than likely wouldn’t be able to get on TV in 2019. For that alone, he deserves respect.
The best is when Ramsay actually enjoys the food. You get so used to watching him skewer food truck drivers and tiny restaurant chefs that you start to think the guy has no soul. But every once in a while, Gordon Ramsay enjoys a dish and when he does, you know it’s the truth.
Despite all the success his restaurants and brand have enjoyed across the globe, Gordon Ramsay’s greatest achievement has to be conning the world with Kitchen Nightmares.
Remember that show? The one where Ramsay goes to restaurants, put’s the chef’s head on a stick, yells at the staff then completely renovates the place? That show was the greatest finesse of all time.
The reason why is because just about all the restaurants Ramsay visited are now closed. Not one season of Kitchen Nightmares has a closure rating below 60% with most of them closer to 75%. Season 2 has a closure rating of 100%, not one restaurant remains open.
That kinda changes the whole way you look at the show, doesn’t it? We were told that Gordon Ramsay goes to these failing mom and pop restaurants and makes them successful again. After he fires the guy who never learned not to take his dick out in front of customers and gets rid of all the 20-year-old meat in the freezer, they’re good. Not the case. Most of these restaurants are fucked before Gordon Ramsay walks in the door.
That’s not his fault though. Most of the places featured on that show were absolute dumps that no sensible person would wanna go anywhere near. Especially when you find out that the head chef was ashing his cigarettes into food or some shit.
So while it isn’t Gordon’s fault that the restaurants closed, you gotta hand it to him on this one. He knew we had an appetite for him yelling at people and used that to sell us a pipe dream. All he has to do is go break up a few families (save them on camera though), spend some chump change to renovate the place and then boom, boatloads of TV revenue.
You gotta hand it to Gordon Ramsay; Kitchen Nightmares was the biggest finesse of all time.