Part 1: The New Review

Here in Sloucholand, the television is far more likely to be tuned to the Food Network than to any other station. As much as I look forward to weekend marathons of Alfred Hitchock Presents on TVLand or Spencer Tracy films on Turner Classic Movies, I am an absolute sucker for shows that make learning fun. The reward for learning that Ottawa has the audacity to be the capital of Canada is not exactly obvious, but the reward for learning how to prepare a delectable spinach lasagna is, oddly enough, a delectable spinach lasagna.

Emeril Lagasse, the most notorious persona to have been forced into the public consciousness by the Food Network, is not at all representative of the network's many hosts. He is the P.T. Barnum of culinary preparation. Although he teaches us virtually nothing, he manages to distract his live audiences from the fact that he is wasting their time by yelling "Bam!" an awful lot and passing out food that no one seems to be able to prepare at home (at least not by following his sketchy directions).

At the other extreme, we have the extremely priggish and condescending David Rosengarten, a man who knows a great deal about culinary history and has a way of making the rest of us feel rather ashamed for not being as well educated as he is. Although Rosengarten is a much better teacher than Lagasse--so much better that it's almost laughable to mention the two of them in the same breath--he sometimes gives his own explanations for things short shrift, choosing to intimidate us into accepting his position rather than to fully elucidate the thinking behind it.

But however effective or ineffective they may be as teachers, Lagasse and Rosengarten are both entertaining in their own way, as are such shows as The Naked Chef and Iron Chef. Any network that expects to pay the bills by generating advertising revenue is bound to put a premium on the entertainment value of its programming whether that programming is designed to be educational or not. So I hope that at least a few of my readers will understand the magnitude of the compliment that I am trying to pay Alton Brown when I say that he is easily the most entertaining educator on the airwaves today.

Although Brown's show (Good Eats) airs sporadically throughout the week, the best time to catch it is on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. [1]. Each installment of Good Eats covers a different topic, ranging from pasta to pancakes, canning to pantry-stocking. But the topics are never as interesting as Brown's presentation. His show on pickling should probably be watched by all two thousand Americans who are interested in pickling, but it should definitely be watched by the twenty million Americans who teach in one capacity or another.

I've been teaching for fifteen years now, and I will freely confess that I am not one-tenth the teacher Brown is. To my credit, however, I want to be as good as he is. I want to organize my material so successfully that my students have no choice but to learn it. I want to be mesmerizingly interesting and self-deprecatingly humorous and extremely knowledgeable and accessible and patient all at the same time.

Brown is quirky (like Bill Nye) without being goofy (like Bill Nye). He is energetic (like Bill Nye) without being frenetic (like Bill Nye). He never stops making fun of himself and his show, but the many jokes do not prevent him from being thorough. He doesn't just tell you to throw a pan full of vegetables into a 275 degree oven for 45 minutes. He explains what happens to the vegetables as they cook. He gives you background information concerning the breakdown of starches; he tells you what sort of color changes to expect and why they're important.

And once he has broken down the chemistry behind a particular cooking method, he takes you on a shopping trip for the exact right implements to use in conjunction with certain dishes. If the best way to cook something is in a $200 specialty item, he will say so. But if you can get the same results with tinfoil and cheesecloth, he will say so. There's not a pretentious bone in the man's body. He tells you what you need and why you need it and invariably teaches you how to be a better, savvier cook--not simply how to cook whatever it is that he has chosen to focus on in a particular installment.

I recently saw his show on lobster, the crustacean that everybody loves to eat, though few of us are courageous enough to attempt to cook it. He didn't get sidetracked by a discussion of half a dozen side dishes that could be served with lobster. Instead, he dedicated the entire program to the fears that we have about cooking lobster, our reservations about cooking things alive, the absurdity of trying to boil a lobster on an ordinary kitchen range, and most importantly, how to get the meat out of the carapace. Like all good teachers, he doesn't assume that we know anything; and like the very few great teachers that there ever have been, he manages to keep us interested even when he covers the information with which we're already familiar. He invariably illustrates his points with clever anecdotes or off-the-wall mnemonic devices. If we had one thousand English teachers who could discuss literature as effectively as Alton Brown discusses food preparation, Americans might take up reading again.

______________________

1) Watch for Good Eats at 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesdays,
9:00 p.m. on Saturdays, 6:30 p.m. on Sundays, and
12:00 a.m. on Thursdays and Sundays. All times listed
are EST. I recommend the 6:30 Sunday timeslot because that gives you an hour between the conclusion of Good Eats and the beginning of The Simpsons to prepare dinner.


Part 2: A Word of Explanation and the Old Review

This review is being submitted as part of scmrak's re-write off, a write off in which the participants have all agreed to try to turn one of their older, lamer reviews into something presentable. Be sure to check out the contributions of my colleagues: 1truluv, adjensen, arada392, bermudabum, bmcnichol, cartman_2k, ChrisJarmick, colldy, ed_grover, eplovejoy, fallyn96, jankp, jcvsmom, jo.com, joubert, korova, lynnzop, machkick, magenta321, msmorvay, naphtalia, nfp, proeditor, quasar, saxguy, scmrak, Social14, & tinasamuels. Links to the reviews of all participants can be found on the profile page of eplovejoy.

Although I'm hardly qualified to say whether my revision is superior to my original version, I've reprinted the original version below so that you can see the review I was so eager to change:

Good Eats = Good Programming

Pros: Good Eats is extremely informative, intelligent,
amusing, and useful
Cons: The Food Network is yet to designate a
particular daily timeslot for this show
Recommended: Yes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like everybody else, I manage to get a grin every time
I see Kaga staring sternly into the camera at the
beginning of Iron Chef. And like everyone else, I give
a hearty thumbs up to David Rosengarten every time I
see a new episode of Taste. I'm afraid I can't go
along with the majority concerning Emeril (who makes
me tired and angry as I watch him, and even angrier
after I try to reproduce his recipes), but for the
most part I'm willing to concede that the Food Network
is one of the better channels on television.

If I could make one improvement to the Food Network,
however, it would be to have them air Alton Brown's
Good Eats at a consistent time. Brown is a rare
individual with a rare personality for television. He
is a born teacher. He has a remarkable knack for
conveying information in useful, memorable, accessible
ways. He's as funny as Bill Nye the Science Guy
without being quite as goofy or gimmicky. He's as
intelligent as David Rosengarten without being
condescending. And what's most important is that he
anticipates the questions that will pop into his
viewers' heads and answers those questions both
thoroughly and amusingly.

There are very few shows that I actually make a point
of catching. In fact, I can't think of a single
educational or specialty niche program that I would
actually make a point of setting time aside for . . .
apart from Good Eats.

If only the network execs would decide on a timeslot
for this excellent show, I'm sure they would find
Alton Brown to be far more popular than Emeril. Not
only do his recipes work, but his viewers understand
why they work. When you watch his shows, you don't
simply become better at cooking a dish; you become a
better cook--and a more knowledgeable gourmand.

Programming Schedule:

In the interest of strict accuracy, allow me to
confess that Good Eats does air according to a
schedule; it's just that the schedule is neither
intuitive nor memorable nor daily (when it should be
all three).

Watch for Good Eats at 1 p.m. or 9 p.m. on Wednesdays,
9:00 p.m. on Saturdays, 6:30 p.m. on Sundays, and
12:00 a.m. on Thursdays and Sundays. All times listed
are EST.

Just to give you an idea of how excellent a teacher
Alton Brown is, I'm sure that if he did a show
concerning the scheduling of his show, he would be
able to make us understand the reasoning behind the
schedule and would provide us with a nifty little
mnemonic device for keeping up with the broadcast
times.


Part 3: A Few Reflections on What Participating in the Re-write Off Meant to Me

My original review of Good Eats was my first casual contribution to epinions. I didn't put together an outline or even organize my thoughts. I just had half an hour to kill and decided that it might be fun to try to raise the general awareness concerning one of my favorite television programs. I was confident that my review would be rated Very Helpful because I intended to write in complete sentences and stay fairly focused on my chosen topic. And it was rated Very Helpful by most readers, but merely Helpful by Christoff, an epinioneer I admire.

Then it was rated Helpful by a few others, all of them fairly discerning readers and writers on the site. The overall rating remained Very Helpful, but I began to wonder what sort of rating I would have given it if it had been written by someone else. Certainly it was nothing special. It was kind of dull and pointless and only useful to a consumer who would sooner read about a television show than tune in and give it a chance (though I suppose the same thing could be said of my revision).

But wasn't it precisely the kind of review that epinions wanted? A no-frills introduction led into a bare bones discussion of the product and segued to practical information (the schedule). It was a no-nonsense review targeted at consumers in search of no-nonsense information. It wasn't professional; that much was obvious. But wasn't it precisely the sort of review that the founders of epinions had in mind when they put their site together--a review designed to help forge connections between products and the folks most likely to consume them?

I revisited this question when scmrak first proposed a rewrite off roughly a month ago. I had long since given up on the idea of writing for the average consumer. I don't know the first thing about the average consumer or what s/he wants from a review. I write my reviews for the folks at epinions because they're the ones who can give me feedback. The average consumer merely clicks on the link to my review or doesn't. That decision is likely to be determined more by my title than my reputation (pffft!) as a writer. If I were interested in reaching as many average consumers as possible with my reviews, I would entitle all of my contributions "All-girl, all-naked, all-the-time!" and simply watch the non-member hit counts skyrocket.

But I'm less interested in turning myself into a consumer reports service than I am in observing and participating in the bizarre (but incredibly interesting) social dynamic of epinions. More often than not, I try to write reviews not for the average consumer, but for the average epinioneer. And something tells me I'm not the only one.

After I signed up for scmrak's rewrite off, I decided, as a sort of social experiment, to write a review according to my idea of what the average consumer is looking for. It was an embarrassing little piece about a drill that hammered away at a single thesis with all the witlessness of the half-dozen other tool reviews (all rated Very Helpful) that I read before throwing the review together.

Who buys tools? Men. And what do men want? They want you to get to the point. In a world in which epinions actually functions the way it's supposed to, a guy in need of a drill doesn't rush off to Home Depot without first checking with epinions for testimonials and recommendations. If you like the drill, he wants you to tell him why in as few words as possible. If you don't like it, he wants you to tell him why without getting too specific. He doesn't care which finger you punctured while using the drill, only that it's clumsy to operate. He certainly doesn't need you to list all the information that's printed on the box, since that will be available to him when he gets to the store. What he needs is a personal recommendation one way or another from a voice that presents itself as marginally intelligent and reasonably sincere.

My drill review, like my first review of Good Eats struck me as marginally intelligent and reasonably sincere--precisely the kind of review that I imagine the average consumer looks for. But it was a wretched piece of writing as compared to a movie review by mangiotto or a book review by eplovejoy or even the average comment by nfp. Perhaps because I tried too hard to keep it succinct, it lacked the thoroughness of kboo, the charm of jrk, and even the easy confidence of phineaskc and dr_steph (both of whom rated it Helpful).

I can't say why those who responded less than enthusiastically to the drill review responded as they did. Perhaps they merely have different ideas than I do about what makes a review useful to the average consumer. Perhaps they simply reacted appropriately to an inferior piece of prose. But I can say that Christoff was even harder on my drill review than he had been on the original version of my piece concerning Good Eats. His rating was less interesting to me than his comment, for he spotted the review for what it was, a 'turd,' and didn't hesitate to say so.

I was grateful for his comment, for otherwise my experiment wouldn't have yielded any results worth mentioning. Thanks to his critical eye, however, I feel confident in saying that it is not at all uncommon for us to rate and respond to reviews based on what they do for us as readers rather than what they are supposed to do for nonmembers as conusmers.

I suppose the sane thing to do before trying to determine whether most epinioneers are really writing for each other or for the consumer would be to figure out who exactly it is that I'm trying to write for. But the answer to that question seems to change with every joke that I decide to try to tell. If the joke is bad, it is aimed at the faceless consumer. If it's good, it is aimed at hard_to_please.

I can't say that I really learned anything important from my drill review experiment or that I expect to learn anything from the experience of rewriting my piece concerning Good Eats. So since I'm not in a position to say anything worthwhile, I'll share a comment that nfp left on one of my recent reviews:

Country Joe and the Fish say:

And it's one, two, three......
....who are we writing for?
You know I don't give a damn,
If the reader gives me a slam.

'Cos it's five six, seven...
let me try and get this straight:
I write for myself and for my WOT,
and for everyone else I care not.

Many of us forget that these are supposed to be consumer reviews. On the other hand, many of us could care a whit, preferring to pretend we are writers. Some manage to find balance, which makes, of course, for the ideal review.

That's what makes this place fun. It is what it is for whosis.

Obviously, we all have different ideas of what constitutes the ideal review. And even our own ideas change over time--else what would be the point of a rewrite off?





Recommended: Yes

Average Program Rating: TV G -- general audiences