Reality TV Let Me Down This Week

I'm concerned too, Tim

I have complaints about all 3 of the tv shows I watched this week. In order of airing:

1. Master Chef. I enjoy this show very much. I do not enjoy Hells' Kitchen, Gordon Ramsey's other cooking competition show. Hells' Kitchen has too much yelling and too many morons being stupid and nasty and acting like petty children. Master Chef usually does not involve a cast of sneering Survivor-reject jackasses, which is a big part of why I like it, so I do not appreciate the recent trend of stoking personal grievances by borrowing the Cutthroat Kitchen gimmick and letting one contestant take the pasta machine away from another. Don't do that, Master Chef. Let people win with talent and ingenuity like the classy competition you claim to be.

2. So You Think You Can Dance. This show has some of the most freakishly talented competitors of any competition show, ever. I will stand by that claim. But even the staggering gifts of the dancers and choreographers can't cover for how obnoxious literally everything else about this fucking show is (with the possible exception of Cat Dealey, who seems like a lovely person). You couldn't pay me to watch it without fast forward. This week, they made poor Cat introduce Christina Perri by pointing out the last time she was on the show she "didn't even have a record contract" but because Mandy Moore used her song in a stunning routine she's now super famous and has records. OMG, they just totally made an intro of a singer about nothing but themselves. That was the tackiest thing EVER. I hate Nigel, hate Mary, and just hate everything about how this show presents itself. Ugh.

3. Project Runway. OK, wtf this week. The task itself was stupidly convoluted. Use inspiration from your 20-years-ago self to create something for 20 years from now. Jigga-wha? Why not just do the last part, which is actually interesting? What will fashion--and your designs in particular--look like in 20 years? Boom. Good challenge! What does 1994 have to do with anything? Nothing. A couple of them were toddlers then. Stupid. My real complaint though is that NOT ONE DESIGNER thought, "I bet in the future we'll be less obsessed with binary gender roles so I will design with that in mind." Not ONE even went with androgyny, which seemed to me like the most obvious idea ever. Come on! Like, 90% of the contestants on this show are non-hetero and/or non-cis and SHOULD be primed to interrogate gender with their designs, and this was the perfect opportunity. What a disappointment.