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 fuck up on a cooking show, you immediately become Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Fuck-My-Life.
Now sure, they kind of shit 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 shit 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.
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