'Chef Academy' - Putting the Studs Out to Pasture

by Michael Thomas Hastings, Posted Nov 24th 2009 @ 10:30AM

Photo: Bravo

Like a bad community college class, two weeks of "Chef Academy" -- Bravo's latest experiment in food-competition/sexed-up reality show -- is starting to make us wonder why we signed up in the first place.

Actually, make that a bad community college class in L.A., where everyone seems like he or she is permanently out on an audition. Whether it's their "candid" confessions to the camera, their home lives or their googly eyed reaction shots, Jean Christophe Novelli's nine would-be culinary students all seem so practiced, so rehearsed, there's nothing left to chance, and even less at risk.

Case in point: Emmanuel Delcour, the Mick Jagger-with-a-six-pack Frenchman who sauntered onto the set last week, demanding to be given a shot in this would-be rarefied kitchen on the basis of his sheer "passion" for food. On this week's episode, he was revealed to be a recovering porn star named Jean Val Jean. (Any reference to the lead character of "Les Misérables" is purely intentional, we think.)

Fair enough -- the lines between reality TV and adult entertainment are increasingly blurry, anyway -- but did he also have to have once guest-starred on an episode of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians"? We're not sure which is the greater indignity, frankly.

Perhaps this lackadaisical career path explains why Emmanuel keeps showing up to class late, or maybe it's just because he's angling for a role as Bravo villain/pinup. "When you cook, as well as when you make love," he said, "you touch everything all the time." If he's going to keep laying one-liners like this on us, we pray his tardiness gets him canned soon.

Emmanuel's canned persona is sadly indicative of the rest of the class: a motley crew of stereotypes, who divide their time between contorting their faces into quizzical looks and endlessly praising the lessons of their oh-so charismatic master chef.

There's the two bald Kyles, uber-dudes whose stumbling across Emmanuel's former life on Google reeked of a producer's intervention. ("Dude! Look at what I found!") More interesting to us was their, um, affection for each other, as when Kyle No. 1 helpfully dabbed the sweat off of Kyle No. 2's forehead while cooking. And their moments of profundity are frequently hilarious. Kyle No. 1, pointing out the brilliance of using a hollowed-out apple: "You don't have to use a dish to cook something in. You can use an ingredient."

Speaking of those ingredients, our funnily accented leader, Jean Christophe -- oh, yeah, him! -- got down to the nitty-gritty of making dessert this week: soufflés, chocolate pots and creme brulées, and enough pointy spun sugar to put your eye out. (How many times can he keep dragging out that hoary trick?)

When it came time for his pupils to remake what they just saw, few made the cut. More than half of the nine students failed -- three failed tests and you're out. But when they flopped, we finally got a taste of the Gordon Ramsay-inspired fun that could be had if this season whips itself into shape soon. We don't suffer fools gladly, and "Chef Academy" is full of fools, whether real or fabricated. Seeing them chewed out on a weekly basis for poorly blanching their orange rinds, however -- now that's entertainment!

Filed Under: Television/Film
Tags: chef academy emmanuel, emmanuel chef academy, emmanuel delcour, emmanuel delcour porn star, EmmanuelDelcourPornStar, jean val jean, jean valjean

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

11-24-2009 @10:14PM slippahgirlie said... Hmmmm...is it hard to believe that someone could want to break away from a career in porn to make it in Hollywood? I think it's commendable that he'd like to venture elsewhere. He's an attractive young man...he has wicked charisma...and he has talent. If I'm not mistaken...being on Keeping up with the Kardashians was him taking an acting class. Perhaps...just perhaps it was coincidental that he was then on screen there as well. Give the guy a break...Good luck to you Emmanuel! You deserve a chance at mainstream success!
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