IN WHICH TOM COLICCHIO IS FORCED TO EMPLOY THE PURPLE ROCK OF DEATH: Without spoiling the conclusion of Wednesday's Top Chef All Stars, I can (I think) safely note that the elimination decision involved competitors at the tops of their culinary games, in which everyone acknowledged it was excruciating and unfair for anyone to have to lose. But competitions are competitions, and those who saw it understand what happened.
But I couldn't help but wonder: when has this happened before on other reality competitions, in which "we'd really hate to see someone go home" because it was so close and no one deserved to go home -- and then someone did. First examples I can think of are Project Runway 1's final four (Jay-Kara Saun-Wendy-Austin, given that Wendy won the challenge), ANTM's final four in cycle two (Yoanna-Mercedes-Shandi-April), the Paschal-Neleh-Helen-Vecepia final four in Survivor 4, and the Jordin-Blake-Melinda final three on Idol 6. And, of course, Tom and Ian on the buoys, which remains my favorite Survivor challenge of all precisely because both of them "deserved" to be in the final two, and neither of them was going to take the other into the final Tribal. Someone had to win, and someone had to lose.
(Which in turn reminds me why I love the Amazing Race so much - yes, they're all really good teams at the end. The finish mat is still the mat, and you really have to get there before the last team does.)
SPOILERS below:
ReplyDeleteI think on this one, you have to separate out the three kinds of reality shows - objective competition, subjective judging, and competitors decide.
You'll never get this result in TAR or Survivor competitive challenges because by definition, not everyone can bring their A game on the same day. Someone will be objectively "worse" than someone else - later to the mat, falling off the buoy first - no matter how good their day was, someone's was better.
You should also never get this result on competitor decide shows like Survivor - there is no "objective" standard for better or worse, but it's always in the competitors's best interest to get rid of someone - anyone!- so voting and tiebreakers will accomplish that. Again, "A game" is both irrelevant and itself way to subjective, because the people deciding have a stake in it besides what makes the best TV. Taking it out of the judges hands with audience voting like AI, DWTS or SYTYCD has a similar effect - it's objective because it's purely about the number of votes you get, and objective measure of quality are only partly relevant to the voting anyway.
Shows like PR, ANTM, AI, and Top Chef are subjective, and you're nearly always comparing apples and oranges in judging anyway. Unless it's the mise relay on TC or some sort of pure sewing challenge on PR, you're always comparing the creative outputs of people who can take the same exact inputs and instructions and make drastically different outputs, all of which can be perfect for what they are. It has been and always will be exceedingly rare that everyone gets it exactly right on the same week, but I think that possibility comes with the territory with subjective shows. This is what you get on a subjective show when you don't leave it up to audience or competitor voting - you have expert judges, and you have to trust them, especially (as on TC) when the audience can't judge the quality for themselves. Would you want TC with audience voting?
PR couldn't have gotten away with this result in Season 1, and probably not ANTM in Season 2 - would have undermined the show. The TC judges have earned a lot of credibility with me. The TC folks have had finals where they got two spectacular meals but found some basis for a decision - more than once. If they say that after eight seasons, for the first time they got 5 perfect plates and that they couldn't manage to send anyone home, I have no trouble with that at all.
And yet PR did it in season 3 -- all four made it to the finals instead of 3 (the Jeffrey Sebelia season). At least there, all four were going to show at Fashion Week anyway to spoiler-guard, so it wasn't too much of an extra cost for the production.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right -- if it's something where everyone can execute (whatever it is they're doing) perfectly, then it comes down to whether the judges can further evaluate the relative worthiness of (whatever it is they're doing).
I think, also, that you had a fairly broad criteria, "Make a dish inspired by your family/heritage." If it had been something more exacting, like "prepare a dish made with this ingredient for this audience at this type of event using this equipment" then it would have been easier to ding someone for not precisely meeting one of the criteria. Or at least there would have been more criteria by which to nitpick.
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