House of Dioxin

So as was probably apparent from my previous NFNS recaps, I somehow got hold of the wrong end of the stick (and proceeded to beat around the bush with it). The winner of Next Food Network Star was NOT decided by fan phone/internet voting. I assume I must have had reality show transference from Design Star. The judges made the call after last night's final challenge. Which was to shoot a demo pilot w/ production help from Gordon Elliott. Who I have, in the past, found rather annoying. But he has calmed way the fuck down since moving over to the other side of the camera. Each of the contestants got a sitdown w/ Elliott to pitch their idea. Lisagarza was first. Oh and I gotta say, they did an intro and backgrounder segment on each of them at the start of the show. Over the last few weeks, I'd if not warmed up to her at least come to respect her game. But that intro made me hate her all over again. And the smugness and arrogance she projected going into her meeting w/ Elliott was infuriating. She actually had three different pitches; food & fashion (rejected out of hand as "a episode, not a series"), pure & simple (the way she described it came out sounding like Emeril: Green) and we don't actually know what Elliott thought of it cos he gravitated immediately to her other pitch, which was beautiful basics. He got that as a great title. It's shows that Lisa understands branding. But, he asked, what's the show about? This, I think, has always been at the core of Lisa's problem. As seen on the show, she's all style, no substance, all form, no content. Obviously she can cook but what does she want to say? She clearly wants to host a show on FN but what would it be about? The fact that she did two ridiculously trendoid pitches (and kept Elliott waiting long enough for them to film and air he's peevish reminder to her that he didn't have all day) along with the Beautiful Basics pitch suggests that she may not have as much to say as she thinks she does.
Fascinating to watch Elliott work all three of them, in different ways, in the pitch meetings. With Lisa it seemed all about supporting a delicate star and basically creating a show out of a title, but in a way that made it seem like it was her idea (altho from what aired, it seemed more like it was mostly his concept). Where Lisa was all branding and high concept, No Longer Boring Aaron is whole show himself. Much like Paula Deen, Aaron's show is about Aaron so Elliot's job was to draw him out enough so that his personality would come across on TV. Smokey Joe continues to kinda split the difference between Lisa and Aaron. He's the best on-camera presence of the final three so clearly any pilot he shoots will rise and fall on his performance. But he's almost as enamored of high concepts as Lisa. Except he's not as good at it as she it. Or at least when she's at her best (Beautiful Basics). I've lost track of how many concepts Adam's tossed around. it's always roughly centered around barbecue in some way. But the idea he pitches is Hungry in Philadelphia, where he'll take questions from the internets and use that as a springboard to put his spin on a classic dish and help someone solve a food problem. If that sounds familiar, well, more on that after the jump. Anyway, here Elliott seems mostly to be about trying to get Adam to focus and stick to his idea and make it work.
I have to say that all three of them did really well. Don't know how many takes it took but the results were all solid, well done pilots.