Piling on the Food Network is hardly original. I know. It’s practically a cottage industry in the “blogoshpere”, and it’s been done here before and in much more eviscerating fashion elsewhere.

Like most self-absorbed “foodies”, I’ve long tired of the Food Network and their endless attempts to shove perk and pomp up our asses. There was a time when the channel was a mildly interesting conceit, but that ship has longed sailed, punctuated by endless “Food Challenges” that eventually culminated in a contest to determine who can build the the largest agar agar-crusted, cake-like confectionary public works project in the shape of a lovable Disney Character (broadcast from Epcot Center).

Some time in the late nineties, with the ascension of Emeril, the Food Network became decidely personality-driven, which gave way to the rise of other bankable brands such as Tyler Florence and Alton Brown. Bobby Flay was given ample face time, graduating from “Grilling and Chilling” to a myriad of shows, including “Boy Meets Grill”, another show whose name escapes me where he hammed it up with that vaguely hot New York chicksa in front of an audience of metrosexuals and Sharper Image enthusiasts, “Iron Chef America”, and “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”.

The opposite gender was also featured prominently. Giada de Laurentis flashed smiles and breasts in her plucky routine, charming herself into several different shows of late that properly showcase her huge teeth. Ina Garten gave us a slightly creepy Mrs. Robinson, breathily mugging for the camera as if she’s shamelessly coming on to you everytime she makes a salad. I secretly think she keeps a 14-year old Samoan male on the side when Jeffrey leaves for the city to stockbroke or whatever he does to subsidize her Long Island lifestyle of table decorations, effusive gardening, and the endless parade of oh-so talented gay friends.

Sandra Lee seemed like a fusion of the Mary Kate/Ashley Olson Wonder Twins, all grown up and joined together in the shape of a percoset-hungry housewife who lives in the shadow of an abusive husband with a predeliction for cheap bourbon and forced threesomes. You can actually smell the heavy stank of Aquanet and desperation seeping through the television.

The Food Network soon morphed, however, almost entirely into the network of Rachael Ray, whose unbridled, percolating ebullience makes you understand why the Terrorists really hate us. However, with Ray spread thin of late with her own show and magazine and hanging out with Oprah at Chippendales, a void of sorts has been created, a chasm from whose distended belly erupted that peroxide-stained bobblehead toolshed named Guy Fieri.

You might have seen Fieri in “Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins”, where he roams America’s backwoods looking for honest grub. Apparently, despite constantly making the show about him rather than the people he’s in the business of exposing (or maybe because of this), Food Network has decided to give him another show, “Guy’s Big Bite”.

Nothing really prepared me, however, for the “Ultimate Recipe Showdown”. The show itself is kinda like “Iron Chef” for people who think “Iron Chef” is too educational. Three contestants compete to complete the best dish based on a particular theme (in this case, fried chicken).

It was hosted by Fieri and Marc Summers (nee Marc Berkowitz). The latter personality normally talks you through a half-hour look behind the scenes in “Unwrapped”, a show that exposes how industrial grade surimi is produced, thus scarring you for life. Summers was also once the host of Nickelodean’s “Double Dare”, where he similarly vacillated between effortless cipher and cheerful douchebag. There was a moment in the opening intro of “Ultimate Recipe Showdown” whereupon Summers enunciated every syllable of Fieri’s surname with such Italian-inflected patois that you’re simultaneously suprised by the jarring dissonance and astonished that he’s not an android.

Fieri actually used the line “Domo Arigato on that one, Mr. Summers” when describing one contestant’s decision to use panko in creating her chicken katsu. And when he uttered that phrase, a little kitten was mauled by a panther. He later said “Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing” in regards to another contestant’s (this was an African-American woman, incidentally) recipe for fried chicken wings with fruit sauce, exhibiting that Guy Fieri’s erudite Urban Dictionary prowess is dangerous enough to set race relations back half a decade or so.

This is typical of the banter thrown around during a typical episode:

GF: “Summers(1)…I’ve seen meatballs deep fried.”

MS (incredulously): “Really?”

GF: “Oh…slamma damma ding dong!”

I really have a hard time understanding why the Food Network has decided that Guy Fieri was it. He emerged victorious from the scrum that was the second “The Next Food Network Star”2, but never seemed to possess that je ne sais quoi (thx Nancy) that I thought America would require out of its future Applebee’s pitchmen.

But what do I know. Apparently what America really wants is some pear-shaped loser who looks like he totally owns Smashmouth on karaoke night, who buys all his shirts from PacSun and all his Dep gel from The Dollar Tree. He also owns restaurants in California with names like “Johnny Garlic’s California Pasta Grill”, and “Russell Ramsay’s Chop House” and “Tex Wasabi’s Rock-N-Roll Sushi-BBQ”. All of these names are horribly embarrasing. If anybody you knew asked you to meet for some “Killer Shrimp Yaki-Flautas” and a stiff “Kick-Assarita” and at any of the aforementioned places, you would feel immediately compelled to punch that person in the face.

Ultimate Recipe Showdown

Check your local listings.

1 Fieri frat-affectively calls Summers by his last name, which seems rather misplaced considering this name is completely fabricated.

2 By the way, where did they stash the two gay guys who won the first The Next Food Network Star? Did test marketing snuff their nascent Food Network careers? Did they not play well in Peoria? Were closeted gay homophobes who secretly wished Tyler Florence would baste them too threatened by an openly gay couple?