The "Kitchen" is Closed

I have to apologize to everyone. It’s my fault. I wish I could tell you how this horrible, sick, twisted game I have with network television began. I can only assume I was drunk at the time, blacked out, and therefore have no recollection of what I did, or said, that started this sadistic cycle. It must have been pretty bad.

Whatever it was, it caused network television to start making shows designed SPECIFICALLY for me to love. Network television – let’s call her “Netty” – knows my tastes, my secrets loves, my fondest desires (that “formerly analog but soon exclusively digital so get your government upgrade vouchers now” little minx that she is), and each new season – sometimes skipping one just to throw me off – she comes up with something irresistible to me. Just as she planned, I fall in love with it. And then she quickly yanks it away (cancels it) and laughs cruelly as I’m left with a broken heart and handful of episodes that I can’t bring myself to delete from my DVR. The apology I owe to everyone is that sometimes they, too, are dragged into this mess, falling for the same show that (I swear) was made only with me in mind, and, too, feeling the pain of the loss of the series, though the punishment was meant for me. For whatever I did. To Netty. Seriously, does Netty HAVE a sister? Did I get drunk and sleep with HER? Did I knock back too many tequilas and bang Telemundo one weekend?

In 2005, when I was just starting to get over my “Firefly” heartache (which I was actually getting over nicely, since the theatrical resurrection, “Serenity”, was just about to come out!), and Fox (the same network that stuck it in and broke it off with “Firefly”) announced a new comedy. Now I don’t normally truck with TV comedies. I find very few of them are actually funny, to me. But news on this new one at Fox rang my bell, big time. It was called “Kitchen Confidential”.

Why did this show immediately call out to me (yea, siren-like)? Let’s look at the cast. First, the main character in the New York restaurant comedy, the head chef, was played by Bradley Cooper. I was a huge fan of ABC’s “Alias”, and Bradley played the character of Will Tippin there, a big fan favorite (the non-spy guy best-pal of Jennifer Garner’s character, the one secretly in love with her? Yeah, EVERY guy who watched that show felt like they were Will Tippin), and did a great job. At this point, I had yet to see him in the role that most people now know him for (the awesomely jackassical fiancé of Rachel McAdams in “The Wedding Crashers”), so when I heard the guy who’d played the prototypical “nice guy” in Alias was now going to be playing a recovering addict, womanizing, obnoxious, eccentric chef? I thought “awesome”, of course! Payback time for Will Tippin! We’ll show that Sydney Bristow tease, bro!

But I was even more blown away by who was backing him up! Zounds! Nicholas Brendon (as in Xander Harris from “Buffy”?! Me = big-ass “Buffy” freak?) as a neurotic pastry chef?! John Francis Daley (holy crap! The main kid from “Freaks and Geeks”, one of my favorite shows EVER, all growned up!) as the rookie Mormon chef from Utah?! JOHN CHO (as in Harold of “Harold and Kumar”, as in guy who first uttered and popularized the phrase “MILF” in American Pie?), for crying out loud, as the bitter seafood chef?! (Note that I meant he was a seafood chef who was bitter, not a chef who made bitter seafood. In case that confused you). And Count Drac himSELF, Frank Langella, as the restaurant owner?!

Plus…Jaime King.

Um…if you’re a guy? And you saw “Sin City”?

Jaime King.

Sigh.

(IMDb her if you need to. I’ll wait).

Okay. Moving on.

So BAM, right? Sure winner of a show! Because it’s blatantly made for ME! It comes on, and oh my GOD I love it! Awesome show! Funny as hell! Brilliant performances! Star-making vehicle for Bradley “surely soon to be a household name after this” Cooper! I was so damned proud of the guy you’d think he was my brother or something. And just getting to see all these actors together that I love – a couple of whom I hadn’t seen at all since their previous cancellations – was such an amazing treat that this quickly became my favorite TV night of the week!

For four weeks.

It’s not a Fox record. But it’s still pretty impressive. I hear one time they canceled a show before Joss Whedon even had the idea for it.

Fox had bought thirteen episodes, canceled it after four. Son of a (wait for it…) bitch. I should have seen it coming. Great cast, great writing, great premise, quality show…OF COURSE it was set up to be drawn and #$%& quartered like William Wallace! Well-played, Fox! AGAIN!

Okay. Okay. Enhance your calm, John Spartan.

Yeah, I’ve been through this before, and sadly, enough times to where this really isn’t the big (try to hear Bon Jovi singing the next four words, just to mix things up) shot through the heart that it once was. One learns to look at the bright side. Does it still suck? Hells, yes. But unlike the olden times (olden times were, like, three or four years ago, by the way. Isn’t it funny how time works differently in the 21^st century?), there’s a consolation.

DVD sets!!!

Since the studios started realizing there was cashy money to be made off selling the corpses of aborted shows, now you can get nearly ANY show on DVD (except (fill in the one you want the most here (NBC’s “Ed”, NBC’s “Ed”, NBC’s “Ed”…), of course). And you don’t even have to buy them if you don’t want to! Those sets are at Blockbuster and on Netflix! So now if you want to try a show you might have missed the first time around, or just drop in and see your old friends on a show that’s no longer in your life, you can do so, any time.

When “Kitchen Confidential” came out on DVD, I grabbed that sucker the first day I could one-click it on Amazon. This was extra-exciting for me because I’d only seen the four eps that aired on Fox, and the set contained the whole thirteen!! For those of you starting to do the math at home, I’ll save you the time – that’s nine episodes, of a show I loved, that I’d never seen! Come on, picture that one show (you know you have one) that got canceled that you really wish you could have seen more of. And then imagine someone walking up and handing you nine never-before-seen episodes of it! Seriously, are you AS excited as me by that idea, or are you just looking at me funny, like I’m jumping up and down over my “Hardcastle & McCormick” collector’s plates finally coming in the mail?

I got the set right away, but shelved it. Why? I’m a patient guy. Ask your mother, she’ll tell you…I like some foreplay (obviously that joke was directed at someone ELSE who I knew would be reading this, not you. I’d never make that joke about YOUR mother…). I knew that I would only have one chance to watch those episodes “new”, and then there would never be any more. This is why it took me almost two years to finish “Freaks and Geeks”. So, I’ve been waiting for some time now, but I finally felt the time was right to dive in and work my way through the “Kitchen”. Would it be as good as I remembered?

Better, thank you.

So I’m now done with all thirteen. Damn, what a waste of potential. I tried not the think about that, to just enjoy the episodes I had, but I couldn’t help thinking how criminal it was that something this entertaining didn’t get the shot it deserved. Interestingly, it didn’t start off as a TV series at all. It was meant for the big screen. “Kitchen Confidential” is based on the book “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly”, the New York Times best-seller written by Chef Anthony Bourdain. It was a tell-all on restaurant life, but also autobiographical on Anthony – right down to his drug use and wild lifestyle. Hollywood liked the potential of this and snatched up the option, and it was originally a Brad Pitt vehicle, set to be directed by David Fincher. But it eventually ended up in the hands of Darren Star (“Melrose Place”, “Sex and the City”) and as a TV pitch, greenlit by Fox. If that’s the right word. I think Fox only ever yellowlights things.

The premise was strong. You’ve got an incredible chef (in the lead character Jack Bourdain, based, of course, on Anthony) who got out of control with the drink, the drugs, the ladies, the wild life, and blew his career. After a year of recovery, he finds himself working at a cheesy Italian-themed restaurant and, naturally, hating it (but it’s the only gig he can get). However, when his girlfriend gets his resume over to the owner of the impressive Nolita restaurant, Jack gets his second chance, and knows he can’t blow it. So he pulls together a team to make it happen, guys whom he worked with back in his glory days – his “fish guy” Teddy (Cho), his pastry/desert guy Seth (Brendon), and his former partner-in-crime and wingman, the combined chef/thief/confidence man/ticking-time-bomb-of-excess known as Steven (played by the occasionally over-the-top but usually-to-good-results British actor Owain Yeoman. Who went on later to play a Terminator on the “Sarah Connor Chronicles”, FYI…). He ends up kind of stuck with the restaurant’s rookie chef, Jim (Daly), who’s exactly what you think a young Mormon guy would be like in New York – culturally retarded, hilariously gullible, painfully virginal and apt to utter curses like “jiminy!” when he gets really frustrated. And while he’s got control of picking the chefs, he inherits the wait staff, a fantastically jaded and opportunistic group. This is mostly shown in Cameron (played by Sam Pancake. No, I’m not making that name up!), the blunt and bitchy gay waiter, and Donna, his sometime foil, sometime partner who’s mastered cleavage presentation to an art form (tips aren’t going to give themselves away, you know). On the totally non-duplicitous end of things for the front staff, though, is the Tanya (the aforementioned (mmmm…) Jaime King), who takes the dumb blonde standard to new and glorious heights. And leading things out there is Mimi (Bonnie Somerville), who, it turns out, is the daughter of the owner, Pino (Langella), and has major can-never-please-Daddy issues, and naturally wants Jack to fail (since Daddy seems to like him so much).

Cooper does an AMAZING job carrying the show, a huge comedic presence with loads of confidence. He sets the perfect center for the others to orbit. We find ourselves rooting for him, this imperfect, often morally questionable man-child, as he struggles to evolve as a person and escape the ways of his old life. And that ain’t easy to do in the high-pressure world of high-end kitchen living. We learn a lot of the ins and outs of the restaurant world, much of it taken from the real Bourdain’s book. You can feel the excitement, the fierce competition, the recklessness of true geniuses at work. Jack’s cockiness, mixed with his always-present self-doubt despite it, makes for a lot of fun watching – as that kind of personality leads to lots of overcompensation and biting off more than you can chew.

The chemistry on the show really, really worked for me. You could just feel the backstory between Jack and Steven whenever they were in a scene together, almost see all the hedonistic adventures and terrible choices they made together. Steven’s a great vehicle in the show, heavily there just to remind Jack what he used to be (and tempt him to turn back that way again…). On a different side of that, Teddy and Seth have a sort of old-married-couple thing going on, guys who have been friends long enough that they know everything about each other (and therefore are ten times as likely to snap at each other at the drop of a hat). The bickering and competition between them is hilarious (you’ve never seen two people put more thought into a “dessert vs. fish” argument). I loved the Jack and Mimi tension, which was just always building (and always funny).

“KC” (as we’ll call it, to both save keystrokes and sound like industry insiders) had a pace that I loved, too. The whole show moved at the speed of life in the kitchen, the same frenetic hustle. It never slowed down. The moments, the jokes, the scene changes, the plot twists, just BOOM BOOM BOOM…one after the other. Never dull, to be sure. It was also NOT a family show, very sexed up and pushing some network limits from time to time. Which, I think, might have been its ultimate problem. It’s a show that didn’t want to be on the same network as “Malcolm in the Middle”. It at least should have been on FX, probably should have been for HBO. It felt like it wanted to go further, but was held back. It seemed to have a good time pushing the envelope, but was probably hamstrung, more than anything. But, if you want some sexy in your comedy but still don’t want to go “full Samantha”, you won’t be disappointed by “KC”.

I had some personal favorite moments, some of which involved guest stars. What a treat to see John Larroquette suddenly show up on TV again, here as Jack’s former mentor whose heart is about to give out, who wants to eat himself to death on Jack’s cooking. As an Alias fan, it was hilarious to see Michael Vartan reunited with Bradley Cooper for an episode (even using the line “it’s like we’ve worked together before or something”), playing the quintessential evil Frenchman chef-rival. Oh, and if you’re a Firefly fan, you had best NOT be the one who has to admit you didn’t see Morena Baccarin’s wonderfully sexy (and loud…and drunk…) appearance. And man, did I ever fall for the 5-episodes-only female chef Becky Sharp (played by the daaaaammmmnnn Erinn Hayes). Guys, you know that chick you’re for some reason even more attracted to because she can drink you under the table and beat the crap out of you if you say the wrong thing? Yeah. That’s her. Got to give it up for Becky’s memorable application of the “shocker”. There’s a whole episode involving a bet with her and Steven to see which one of them can get the other one to ask to have sex. It’s…pretty painful. She’s good at what she does. And a good part of that, show-wise, is to be the female Jack, another person from his past tempting him back to the old wild ways.

Here’s a thing I just never figured out, though. John Cho and the show. He was in the pilot. Then gone for three episodes. Then back, and there for the whole rest of the show. He’s in ten of the thirteen episodes…yet he’s never in the opening credits. He’s always listed as a guest star. What the hell happened THERE? Is this some weird Hollywood contract voodoo thing I don’t know about? If I ever meet him, I’ll have to ask him. Not cool keeping my boy Harold out of the credits, man! He’s gonna be Sulu next summer, you know. THEN you’ll be sorry!

It was a bittersweet ride, but a great one, running through this whole series. The show’s a nice metaphor for cooking, actually. Sometimes you can have all the right ingredients, cook them up just perfectly…and then everyone ends up ordering the veal instead. No explanation. Just happens. And then the restaurant decides it had better just keep cranking out nothing but new (though derivative) veal dishes and never try anything new and daring again. Yes, veal is the metaphor for reality shows in this story. Thank you for paying attention. But, as I said…thirteen episodes of great comedy with some of my favorite people (and now some new favorites), and I’ve got them all on DVD to enjoy whenever I want. Thanks, Darren Starr (never in my life did I ever imagine I’d be whipping that sentence out) for something wholly unexpected and amazing to add to my list of shows I loved that no one else will remember. And thank you, Netty, for once again making me your bitch. All because I made made Telemundo say, “Si! Si!”.

Hey, and for you uninitiated KCers out there who might want to jump in and try it for yourself? Technology is now SO rockin’ that you don’t have to spend a dime on a DVD, or wait for a Netflix mailing. Thanks to the Fox/NBC site “Hulu”, you can try “Kitchen Confidential” (I just used the whole name there for any people reading who might not be as cool as you and me) RIGHT NOW. All you gotta do is go here:

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL on HULU

…and you can watch each and every last episode (or at least just the pilot to try it out) right on your computer, if you please. And I do hope you do. The Kitchen may be closed, but for you? I’m sure they’ll turn the burners back on. Just for a quick bite.