The winner of America's Next Great Restaurant hasn't quite lived up to expectations.
The reality competition, an NBC mid-season replacement, promised the winner an "extraordinary prize" of three restaurants in three cities.
In a final competition that resembled Top Chef's restaurant wars, 32-year-old Detroit cook Jamawn Woods beat out the Brooklyn Meatball Company and Spice Coast with his concept of soul food for the masses.
The day after the finale aired, Soul Daddy opened its doors in Los Angeles, New York and at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. But, even with the financial and culinary support of Chipotle Grill founder Steve Ellis and celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Curtis Stone, things just haven't turned out as planned.
In fact, two of the restaurants have already been shuttered after a mere six weeks in business. Soul Daddy remains open in the Mall of America and Woods has reportedly moved to the area to devote more energy to his remaining restaurant, but the wound to the America's Next Great Restaurant brand has proven fatal and NBC will not be bringing the show back for a second season.
So what went wrong?
- Poor ratings plagued the pre-Celebrity Apprentice Sunday night time slot
- Over the course of the competition, the judges (who were also investors in the project) transformed Woods' concept of a fried chicken and waffles joint into a healthy soul food eatery. Speaking only for myself, I'm far more compelled by "fried chicken and waffles" then anything starting with the word "healthy."
- The Soul Daddy's official statement that "the realities of running a restaurant are very difficult, more so with multiple locations in multiple cities," is certainly accurate as well. This is why the standard trajectory is for a restaurant to develop a signature taste and loyal following before opening multiple locations on opposite coasts of the country.
- The menu of pulled pork sandwiches, black eyed pea salad and cheese grits might not appeal to the masses. (It remains to be seen if it will appeal to the Mall of America's visitors. Local reviewers have pointed out that Minnesota has only a 5.2% African American population, a large portion of whom are pork-avoiding Muslims.)
So, what does it take to successfully open a new restaurant? Read our advice here.
Photo © NBC
Just in time for LGBT Pride season--when gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals and their allies come together to celebrate at festivals and parades nationwide--comes a PBS special featuring the stories of sexual and gender minorities.
The show is an unique reality TV/documentary hybrid that eschews stereotypes about LGBT communities. According to the show's director, Andrew Goldberg, OUT in America is "a more realistic portrait of LGBT life than almost anything seen on TV before. So often, media coverage of LGBT life in America is polarizing or exploitative of controversy and homophobia, or alternately LGBT individuals are presented as caricatures of a stereotype. OUT in America however focuses on empowerment, diversity and relationships."
Among others, OUT in America features:
- Bravo bigwig Andy Cohen, the Executive Vice-President of Original Programming and Development at Bravo, he's best known as the host of the network's reunion shows (like Real Housewives of New Jersey) and Watch What Happens Live.
- Country music singer Chely Wright, who came out as lesbian last year
- Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin
- philanthropist James Hormel
- Urvashi Vaid (former Executive Director of the pre-eminent civil rights organization National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, recently cited in Out Magazine's list of most influential men and women in America)
- Dr. Patricia Hawkins (psychologist renowned for her early work with HIV patients)
- Reverend Peter Gomes, who came out on the steps of Memorial Church at Harvard
- PJ Serrano, Puerto Rico's first openly gay and HIV positive political candidate
- a transgender police lieutenant (who transitioned while on active duty)
- a Muslim lesbian immigrant
- a queer great-grandmother
- the organizer of Capital Queer Prom
- and a gay couple PBS calls "the Harolds" and describes as, "a giddy bi-racial couple in their 80s, who reminisce, in unison, about their five decades together."
Deeply moving and often humorous OUT in America is an uplifting collection of compelling stories reflecting the true diversity of the LGBT experience across the US--from the heartland to New England, from San Francisco to Harlem.
Viewers will get a glimpse of awakenings, first crushes, unlikely soul mates, intimacy and liberation. Even better, the show reveals often-overlooked aspects; such as the role family, religion and public service play in queer and trans lives.
Goldberg, an Emmy-winning director, produced the special in conjunction with National Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. According to The Salt Lake City Tribune, Out in America will air in 72 percent of U.S. markets--check your local listings for times and dates.
Photo © PBS
I'm a crier. Life insurance commercials, some episodes of Big Love, the series finale of almost any show I like--I cry watching all of them. But I've never sobbed watching a reality TV show.
Until now.
If the debut episode of The Glee Project, which premiered on Oxygen June 12, is any indication of how the series will go, then Oxygen may just have launched the most thrilling reality show this year.
There's no bug eating, global travel, boardrooms, runways or Kardashians. You can tell that many of the contestants have no interest in the gym bodies or spray tans that populate Jersey Shore.
But what they do have is the kind of authentic core uniqueness almost never seen on television. Unlike American Idol, a talent show where judges and voters supposedly value merit above all else (but actually weed out anyone noticeably different--like effeminate boys or pimple-faced cherubic girls), The Glee Project casting process eliminates anyone without character.
And what a casting it was. Almost 40,000 people posted audition videos, and it was up to casting director Robert Ulrich and vocal arranger Nikki Anders to watch each one in its entirety.
Sure, some were terrible, but many audition tapes, Ulrich says, were so compelling he admits to watching them "like 40 times." Eventually, producers narrowed the list down to just over 200 people to call back for live auditions and the potential contenders flew in from around the country (several contestants came from as far away as Singapore, London and Northern Ireland).
The winner of The Glee Project, the reason 40,000 young people posted videos, gets cast and given a seven-episode arc on Fox's hit series, Glee. That opportunity, Ulrich says, is not just a chance to appear on the show but also an opportunity to launch "a career."
Ulrich, Anders and choreographer Zach Woodlee act as mentors on The Glee Project, all while simultaneously holding down their day jobs on Glee, so they become equally invested in seeing the cast members succeed.
Clearly, when the call went out recruiting contestants for The Glee Project, it invited anyone--regardless of size, shape, race, gender presentation--to apply, with the only caveat that they had to be over 18 and be able to realistically play a high school aged character.
The contestants are effeminate boys and masculine girls, fat kids and pimply faced geeks, lots of folks with braces and glasses, a girl with only one hand and another with a missing finger. They're all inspired by Glee, a show that popularizes the underdog.
And believe me, these contestants are underdogs, often bullied in their own communities for being gay or short, for being mixed race or poor. They're inspired by, and sometimes demanding of, a world that makes way for them to be themselves and take center stage.
Many have ideas for the kind of character they'd play. One young man with Down Syndrome, an excellent dancer, says he wants to play the boyfriend of Becky Jackson, a cheerleader on Glee who happens to also have Down Syndrome.
"She's really hot," he tells Ulrich.
Watching The Glee Project I began to cry not because it was bad but because I realized how groundbreaking it was. These potential castmates are revolutionary; there's the biracial home-schooled country singer McKynleigh, the cute fat chick Hannah, and the Brazilian-born Matheus, who sports glasses and braces and is least a foot shorter than the girls on the show.
The message of staying true to yourself shines through in the initial episodes. And watching the show really underscores just how rarely we see these kind of much these kind of people on TV. Even reality shows rarely give us the full spectrum of human diversity. But that's the allure of The Glee Project.
These kids are all good enough for TV. And The Glee Project is a rarity: a reality show that's good enough to compete with Fox's animation block.
I love The Glee Project. Which new reality show is your favorite? Or is it too soon to say?
Photo © Oxygen
Nobody could accuse political commentator and The O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly of keeping his opinions to himself. But now he's taking on pop stars and surprising us with his virulent take on reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
According to Daily Caller, O'Reilly has called the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star a "pinhead" just for accepting the $2 million engagement ring given her by her fiancé, Kris Humphries.
O'Reilly, the author of Pinheads and Patriots, said, "For some reason, 30-year-old Kim Kardashian has become very famous in America for pretty much doing nothing. Now she's engaged to basketball player Kris Humphries, who apparently gave Ms. Kardashian a ring worth more than $2 million. Now, we believe in true love, but that seems to be a bit much. A $1 million ring would have been nice, and then you could have used the other million to help people who need assistance. Ms. Kardashian and Mr. Humphries are pinheads."
O'Reilly also dissed Kardashian last year when the then-29-year-old posed for Elle magazine with teen pop sensation Justin Bieber, saying, "If a 16-year-old girl was pictured with a 29-year-old man in any of that, he'd be in big trouble. I wanted to be a baseball player [when I was 16]. I didn't want to hang around with Kim Kardashian...I had a baseball bat and a bat and [a pair of] ice skates! That's what I was doing."
O'Reilly has been dishing on pop culture frequently as late. But not all stars have gotten the Kardashian treatment. Lady Gaga, in fact, got praise after she ate David Letterman's list of questions in response to an seemingly annoying on-air question about Gaga eating a Barbie doll head. O'Reilly said, "I think Lady Gaga is a patriot for eating Dave's note cards. I wish I had thought of that when I was on the Letterman program. I would have done that."
Photo © Jackson Lee/Splash News Online
