Cooking shows used to be found pretty much exclusively on PBS back in the day. Julia Child, The Galloping Gourmet, Martin Yan ("...Can Cook!") and others were chefs with shows that I stumbled onto and discovered an early love of food and wanting to cook it. With the advent of cable in the 1980's and 1990's, these cooking shows found larger audiences on many other channels. Then with the subsequent advent of reality television, cooking competition shows started up too. One of the first was "Ready, Set, Cook!" and it ran for years. Nowadays that show seems primitive compared to what's out there, but frankly, most of what's out there now just isn't too exciting. "Chopped" is OK. "Iron Chef America" too (although a pale comparison to the original Japanese series that really was the single show that put Food Network on the map). One show stood out. Debuting in 2006 on the Bravo network, "Top Chef" was the first cooking competition to be of marathon proportions, and ultimately the food is what mattered. It was an instant smash, and many of the winners (plus a few non-winners) have found their careers to flourish after competing on the show. By the time Seasons 6-8 rolled around, this was legitimately one of the best, if not THE best, competition shows on TV, period. As always seems to be the case though, producers always want to tinker. And tinker. And tinker. And the result usually ends up a stinker. And stinker. And stinker. In just over one year's time, "Top Chef" went from the heights of awesomeness to audience revolt. And the worst of it is, Season 10 almost got it right and washed out the nasty taste of Season 9 from everyone's mouths. But then that finale...ohhhhhh, that finale...
