Cheesy and cliched theme. The words "american dream" are thrown into every other sentence and it's so tedious.
Nicely designed games, and the editing team did a really good job at presenting and making you care for the large cast of characters. Really nice moments of camaraderie (sometimes bordering on cheesy) and comedy between the cast sprinkled about.
My main criticism is that the second quest did get annoyingly repetitive to the point I skipped towards the end. I understand showing the entirety of the challenges for the different teams because people want to see their favorite athletes perform.
I do believe that there were challenges that seemed unfair, where the initial configuration played a big part in the outcome. The show's format would also require extreme luck for a female contestant to win.
Overall, it was a fine way to spend time. The duels in particular were quite hype and I found myself cheering for lots of different people.
It's a fine survival show to pass th etime, I like how it's focused on base capture and has an overall sense of grand strategy. I do believe two of the groups were essentially miscast, only serving to pad numbers. The interviews with the contestants do get a bit cheesy, somehow always commenting "yeah, I do this all the time in my daily work". The challenges were cool but the final ep seemed rushed, with a tacked on sequel bait at the end.
My fears with the show were quickly confirmed: chef Ljubomir is going easy on the contestants. Most of them barely cook let alone worked in a professional kitchen. First episode had one of the most arrogant attitudes shown by a contestant in the history of Hell's Kitchen: refusing to follow the recipes/instructions, leaving to the dorms early during a challenge, whining that their challenge food was cold by the time of judging and lying about not knowing the challenge duration, arguing with her fellow contestants, constantly interrupting the chef during his explanations, not playing as a team player and only caring about her performance during team service, and finally, during her nomination speech, blaming the customers if they didn't like food she made (when the problem was that they didn't get served because chef closed down the ktichens as the teams didn't get food out in adequate time). And she got a free pass.
I already prepared myself mentally that this would be a more relaxed and comedic season. However, it's a shameful display of the state of television shows in Portugal. I understand that the TV executives made the decision to host a celebrities season to boost ratings, but to me, HK was always about giving the common man a chance to show their passion about COOKING (which the celebrities don't care much for) and give their all for the chance to better their lives professionally. Personally, I don't care about celebrities, local or not. I'll watch the show for the entertainment value, but I already know it'll be mediocre—and Portugal, be it TV or cinema, is doomed to produce little above MEDIOCRE.
This is a show that tries really hard to be witty. Has all the random movie quotes, the movie-like "con" situations, and yet you can see through the cracks at times, moments where the show loses its believability. The show is also incredibly formulaic. Every episode seems almost the same, just a different case to sift through. It gets tiresome seeing the same locations all the time. This is the epitome of weekly cable TV.
Oh boy, I don't know what happened. The editing is absolute dogshit, and the production suffers as a whole from it. For all of Gordon's high standards, he still went and served us this crappy mess.The participants are quick to throw hissy fits and cry for no reason. They also push this "we're millenials, we're the young generation, we're the ones with fresh new ideas, old people suck" attitude. I'm not sure if the producers put them up to it, but it's, in their language, C-R-I-N-G-E. I mean, just get off your high horse, you're 23 years old, not child prodigies.
Main criticism I have is mostly with the earlier episodes. It was incredibly easy to guess by the editing who would make it on the bottom or top three. They do fix this over time. The challenges are more difficult and the standards are higher than ever, although so far it feels very formulaic and is missing some spice. Although everyone's really determined and ambitious to win, the truth remains that most of them are already accomplished chefs back home, so it gets you wondering about their personal stakes in the overall challenge.
even past the mediocre first half of the season, it's still just teen media. the mere fact that several groups of humans (and that for some reason all happen to gather at this same location) still inhabit the planet just compromises the whole premise. there is no rigor.
