Rachael vs Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off returns as the worst watchable reality cooking show on TV

Do you hear that sound, the sound of the season … three of Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off? It’s that sound of uber-irritant cook personality Guy Fieri’s whiny drawl and the raspy laugh of celebrity chef Rachael Ray. I stumbled across this little gem of a terrible reality show last year, in which barely notables competed as so-called “good” cooks for charities they supported. Sometimes, you got the feeling that the charities should’ve been themselves. The format is simple, because it doesn’t need to be complex. Guy and Rachael pick teams that face off, voting off a person into the final showdown, with various quirky and stupid “themes” each week, basically the sorts of things Top Chef decided were too easy. I can barely contain my excitement as I consider this wondrous new season of awfulness made watchability. Because I will be watching the whole season, I promise you that, unless it gets boring. But when you look at these magical con-“chef”-stants, that’s hard to imagine. We’ve got ‘em all, folks.

Vanilla Ice joins as a triple duty reality star. He’s a former musician turned laughingstock, a former reality show contestant turned laughingstock, and a beautifully aware camera mugger. Bless you, Rob Van Winkle, for causing Guy Fieri to tell you to “stop talking to the camera so much.” If I had been drinking something at that moment, I’d have spit it out because that’s advice Guy himself should take. Tiffany describes herself as the “voice of the 80s,” which is ludicrous, because it’s a tie between Steve Perry, Whitney Houston, and Billy Joel. Oh wait, she didn’t mean best voice of the 80s, just indicative of how people remember it, loud, brightly colored, and overrated. Okay then. She’s boring, though. Next is Penn Jillette, celebrity magician and far and away the smartest person there. Maybe Penn doesn’t realize that he needs to be so present on TV, but I guess he got addicted after being the smartest one on Celebrity Apprentice. His strategy was an interesting one, cramming a bunch of cooking techniques from Vegas masterchefs to learn a couple of fancy dishes. So he may suffer on improvisational cooking or the fundamentals, but he’s a charismatic presence nonetheless.

In the first episode, we saw a key difference between expertise in showmanship, with Penn effortlessly winning over the crowd of a Medieval Times (also used last season because … well, they said yes) but not former SNL cast member and failed movie star Chris Kattan. His attempts at “riffing” were actually a bit painful to watch, and I really thought he’d be cut at the end of the episode because he seemed the least interesting, besides Tiffany, who cooked the most popular dish (and so was safe) or random sports veteran Herschel Walker, who may run restaurants in real life but is a black hole of personality on the screen. He seems like a nice guy, though. I felt a bit bad for Chris Kattan, because his food (roasted vegetables) should be easy if you know to make consistent sizes and keep things simple but interesting. Instead it sounded pretty awful, overcooked and undercooked, bland and overpopulated with too many things. I shouldn’t forget comedian Judy Gold, who shocked me by being so virulently unfunny, but maybe she was just edited that way. I’ve seen her do funny things in the past after all. So we’ve got the former musicians, the legitimate performer, the C-grade comic actor, the unknown female comic, and the required sports person. Who are we missing? We still need a terrible person known only for being on a reality show and an older performer that you can’t quite believe is doing this terrible show.

Oh, and that’s just what we have, with The Bachelor‘s (and other reality shows) Jake Pavelka, who face literally screams “unctuous.” Figuratively. This guy, talking about competing to win with a smarmy grin serving food with a literal rose petal (which isn’t really a food). Did 800 bachelorettes really find this charming? I admit I may have the number wrong, I didn’t watch his season. And Florence Henderson, matriarch of classic TV fluff The Brady Bunch, working gamely through an injured foot and clearly holding back on any complicated dishes. That’s a smart move. There wasn’t a whole lot of craziness or zaniness in this first episodes, but it’s essentially the perfect reality show, epitomizing the entire genre all at once. It’s terrible and very watchable. Everyone has an ego far more than they deserve. And there are varying degrees of delusions of grandeur and mental illness. This particular show is unique, in that you can often imagine you’re better than the so-called “experts” (I’m discounting Worst Chefs in America, because those people are intentionally picked to be bad). I gotta tell you, sometimes trainwreck television is just the right thing when you’re relaxing after a long day and don’t really want to pay much attention to detail. At this point, the train is still on technically on the track, but I’m hopeful. Ever hopeful.