If you don't watch cooking shows, you may be entirely unaware that they're 50 percent cooking and 50 percent human tragedy. Everyone has a story on cooking shows. Everyone's mom had a leg eaten by a Yeti, or their house was stolen by squatters, or they woke up one day with their face on backwards. You'd think that becoming a cook could only be born from some manner of low-level calamity. Taquitos were invented by a man who was actively in the process of being set on fire by his own estranged father. Oatmeal was actually invented by a Scotsman while he was inside a bear. Food is life is pain.

If you can't drudge up a backstory, then by God, you make that person their own tragedy. Nothing crushes a person more than undercooking pork loin. If you f**k up on a cooking show, you immediately become Dr. Jekyll and Mr. f**k-My-Life.

Now sure, they kind of s**t on that woman, but it was definitely "kind of." It was "Why'd you put macadamia nuts in here?", not "Lean forward while I drive this corkscrew through your temple." But taking criticism with a nod and a degree of self-reflection is for s**t that happens in Margaret Atwood novels. We demand emotional breakdowns and half-assed tantrums! If I have to endure watching someone cook eggplant, it better end with them tearing the hair from their scalp and running full bore into traffic while screaming or else what's the point? This same approach is reflected ten fold on America's Got Talent where it seems like your best chance for impressing Howie Mandel is to show up with one hand holding in your exposed entrails after being gored by a bull.

Oh man! Absentee, junkie parents and dead children? Who's ready to be entertained?! Jesus Christ, AGT, stop trying to emotionally ball punch the universe and just show us parrots that can play the piano.

There's not a lot of foundation to the Steve Harvey empire and when he pops up in the public eye, it's almost never for a reason that actually makes him look good. No, Steve Harvey's forays into our pop-culture consciousness usually come in the form of things like those leaked memos about how he hates staff looking at him, or that time he misread the names of pageant winners, or when he acted like human trash, or even utter bullshit like this:

But the producers of Funderdome didn't give a s**t about that when they offered him his 17th TV show. He looks stylish and people know who he is, and that's all that matters. Literally all, because no one wanted Funderdome and unlike other shows which may sound dumb to you, you can objectively prove Funderdome's suckability. Not only is it an inferior ripoff of shows like Shark Tank in which inventors beg for funding, it's so abysmal that hackers leaked it online and no one watched it. Literally, no one chose to download it.

20th Television/Debmar-Mercury
But how? How could anyone not download all of those HILARIOUS reactions?

Naturally the first couple of episodes are bound to get a number of views from grandparents -- episode one of Funderdome had about six million. Just don't expect those numbers to hold up over the weeks since the show is essentially Steve Harvey making fun of people's life works and then telling strangers to vote on what random product they feel deserves validation and which one gets thrown in the trash. Your best bet is to go on the show with a revolutionary new mustache comb.

Funderdome is an answer to a question that not only no one asked, it's one no one had even considered: How can we get more Steve Harvey on TV? Steve Harvey is like a set of keys being proffered to a small monkey. Yes they're shiny and make noise when you jingle them, but what the f**k does a monkey need keys for? What do we need Steve Harvey for? To look faux-baffled when someone on Family Feud answers the question "What's the last thing you stuck your finger in?" with a predictably dirty answer?

The hole ABC has chosen to squat over for this new show is a strange one and what's burbling inside is equally bizarre. Mike Myers, who you may recall as Shrektin Powers, is Tommy Maitland. He's hosting in character. And of course, everyone knows that but they're still presenting it as if Tommy Maitland is real. And you have to sit and guess if the network is seriously trying to trick you, or if it's all some meta thing where it's supposed to be humor, but the humor isn't funny. And it's not even "not funny" really, it's just devoid of anything worth actually feeling something about. It's the beige of feelings.

Some people, if internet forums and Twitter responses are to be believed, are genuinely unsure if Mike Myers is the host. And maybe that's what ABC is going for. Maybe Myers is 2017's Blair Witch, forcing people to decry its falsehood on one side of the fence, while a strange contingent of others swallow Tommy Maitland whole hog and maybe share stories about how they heard about him years ago so they know he's legit. I have no idea. All I know is, to me, that's clearly f****n' Mike Myers doing the same English accent he's done for literally 25 years now and I not only don't know why, I can't even make myself care. I can just look at it and see it's a thing and tell you it's a thing while ABC plays pretend because nothing is more magical than the power of imagination.

Sony Pictures Television
Well, imagination and MIKE MYERS IN FUNNY HATS AND SLIGHT MAKEUP. I AM A CHILD AGAIN.

Chopped has been on TV since food was created and every episode is literally the same. It's stunning when you think about it. Here are four ingredients even a hobo wouldn't eat together, now cook something while three professional chefs judge you for either making trash edible or somehow failing in that task.

Food Network
"I made these eggs out of an apple, a bottle of vinegar, some cat hair, and a KFC Double Down."

These shows have grasped the simple premise that every game show grasped years ago: If you like this one thing now, you're going to like it forever. Is Wheel Of Fortune ever going to throw you a curveball? No. You could watch these shows after a bottle of tequila and six licks of an unhappy toad and it wouldn't change a thing. They're as regular as nap time and just as challenging.

If I win Chopped, I get $10,000 and that's awesome. However, you'd never see that on Chopped. You'd see a quick cut scene where I say I need the $10,000 to open my own restaurant and then the rest of the show would be devoted to me droning on about how I need the title of Chopped Champion. This is turned up to 11 on Master Chef where every home cook in the world's biggest cooking competition is eager to take home the title of Master Chef. Not to mention the competitors on Iron Chef Gauntlet vying for the title of Iron Chef. For f**k's sake. Here, let me make it easy for everyone reading: I grant you the title of Super Techno Commodore of Fun Time Squat Thrusts.

MrsBrown/Pixabay
Take a trophy, everyone. They mean everything and also literally nothing.

Food Network just ran a season of Iron Chef Gauntlet and crowned a new Iron Chef who will now presumably invade people's houses and outcook them during the dinner hour since Iron Chef: America hasn't been a show since 2014, and being acknowledged as an Iron Chef is a lot like being called "Pirate King" or "Pornography Baron." Yes, they're words you can put together but what the hell do they mean in any practical sense? If a chef cooks in a random kitchen with no chairman, are they really iron?

I defy you to find a cooking show that doesn't feature at least one contestant in their private on-camera interview excitedly planning to take home the coveted title of America's Greatest Ham Jockey or whatever goddamn thing, as if literally anyone else on Earth would ever care. If you win Chopped, it means you cooked several baskets of cockamamie ingredients better than three other chefs. If you do anything better than three other people, you don't get a title for it. That's absurd. I can walk to the corner faster than my three elderly neighbors, and I'm not Don Julio de Walksalot as a result. By Food Network logic, I should have been crowned Overlord Wankington about 15 years ago.

Unsplash/Pixabay
Go ahead. Try to usurp my throne, Beatrice. I will speed walk you into a slightly early grave.

The goal of most of these shows is to make you think winning is its own reward, and that it's in some way prestigious and important and not mind-numbingly arbitrary and insignificant. Essentially, it's cool because it tells you it's cool. And since no one can exist in the world of the show who doesn't think it's cool, you have no other alternative but to see that reality and be slightly saddened by it even as all the cool kids form their own super badass food clique. So fetch.

Be sure to check out our new Cracked Podcast miniseries, "Looking The Part," in which Soren Bowie and Daniel O'Brien are dissecting pop-culture's greatest beards, scars, and tattoos. Listen to part one HERE and catch parts two and three in the Cracked Podcast feed on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more check out 5 Ways You Don't Realize Reality Shows Lie and 6 Reality Shows That Aren't Just Fake, They're Outright Evil.

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