There is no dearth of cooking shows to explore as one casts about for ideas for Thanksgiving—or just for Sunday dinner. In fact, the cooking show has spawned multiple subgenres. There’s the competition show (the hammy theatrics of “Iron Chef”; the kindly, well-behaved “The Great British Bake Off”), the home-kitchen show (the butter-basted-everything “Paula’s Home Cooking”; the upper-class serenity of Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa”; the celebrity-kitchen adventures of Martha Stewart, Trisha Yearwood, Valerie Bertinelli, and Tia Mowry), the cooking talk show (“Rachael Ray,” “The Chew,” “The Kitchen”), and the travel show (“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”). And then there’s “Good Eats.”
“Good Eats” premièred in 1999 and ran for more than two hundred episodes, until 2012. This year, the show was resurrected as “Good Eats: The Return,” and is, fittingly, a return to form. Whereas many cooking shows fit into one category, framing the kitchen as a space for culinary clashes, everyday food preparation, artisanal eating, or the discovery of new cultures and traditions, “Good Eats” was the happy bastard of the genre, playfully manic in its approach to food—not just its means of preparation, with breakdowns of recipes and kitchen tools, but also its science and history. It upended the form with humor and a strange, variety-show style.
The charismatic host and showrunner of “Good Eats,” Alton Brown, pairs clear-eyed practicality with free-range dad jokes and Internet-age goofery. In each episode, Brown fast-talks his way through the rules of the kitchen, debunking common myths and providing helpful tips while using costumes, puppets, props, and campy characters to illustrate his culinary know-how. Set changes (say, a sudden move from the kitchen to a classroom), blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cuts, and obtuse camera angles from inside cabinets and pantries lend the show a sense of lighthearted exploration. The series also specializes in educational nuggets, explaining the chemical process behind fermentation or the anatomy of a knife, with accompanying trivia-style factoids that flash onscreen. Like “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” which also featured rapid-fire pacing, comical interludes, and a focus on science, “Good Eats” is neither too precious with its subject nor too flippant; the show frames cooking as a constant process of discovery, each dish and even each motion (for example, cracking an egg) providing an opportunity for knowledge. Many cooking shows adopt the mode of instruction—Julia Child counselling aspiring chefs from the screen. But, in “Good Eats,” Brown delivers a performance that is equal parts lecture, theatre, and winking conversation between friends. Sure, there’s delicious food, but you can get that anywhere. The show is also food for thought, with a side dish of oddball humor.
