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'The Chew' takes soap's seat at the daytime table
By GAIL PENNINGTON
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Friday, after 41 years, "All My Children" ended its run on ABC, going out with a flurry of return visits from favorite characters and tears from cast and fans.
On Monday, "The Chew" arrives, and the welcome could be chilly. The food-themed talk show puts on a happy face about its prospects, but soap fans threaten to shun any replacement for "AMC" and, in January, the also-canceled "One Life to Live." (A plan to move both shows online is still in the preliminary phase.)
"We hope that they will enjoy our show," Gordon Elliott, executive producer of "The Chew," says when asked about "All My Children" fans' disappointment. "We were asked to come and join the daytime lineup because daytime tastes have changed.
"Look, I understand completely how those viewers feel. I enjoyed those soaps for years, too. But I don't control the process that made that change. ... I can just control what goes on our television show."
"The Chew" will be a party every day, suggests Elliott and his cast, who include co-hosts Clinton Kelly, Carla Hall, Daphne Oz, and chefs Mario Batali and Michael Symon.
"I think a lot of people tune in to soaps because they feel as though the cast are their friends," Kelly says. "What we can (do is) welcome viewers to hang out in the kitchen with us. We can't be soap operas to you, but we can be a group of people that you might want to hang out with."
Kelly is best known as a fashion stylist on TLC's "What Not to Wear," but before that he was a journalist who wrote about topics including food. He's also a passionate home cook who loves to throw dinner parties, he says.
In addition to Batali and Symon, who are "Iron Chefs" on the Food Network, "The Chew" also recruited fan-favorite Hall from Bravo's "Top Chef." Describing herself as "a recovering caterer," Hall promises that "The Chew" will feature plenty of cooking, "pulling somebody from the audience to actually cook with us."
She hopes much of the cooking will speak to busy people like herself.
"Fifteen minutes, 10 bucks, you can do a chicken, a sauce and a rice in a rice cooker, bada bing," she says.
Oz, the daughter of television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, takes a healthy approach to cooking and eating.
"Having had a lot of health information around me ... I actually was about 180 pounds at 17," she says. Now, she's "still dealing with the weight issues and dealing with trying to make healthy food a priority but not an obsession. But I want to be able to enjoy wonderful meals, and that's something that I think every red-blooded woman in America deals with on a daily basis."
"The Chew," which will air live at 1 p.m. EDT daily, is "a natural, living, breathing organism, which will present to America every day useful, relevant, honest and entertaining people and information that will give them something that they can use in their daily lives," Elliott says.
He promises a flexible format including "field pieces, extraordinary food, amazing food, food stories, the world through a food lens. A lot of the guests, the celebrity guests we'll have on every day," will talk food, too.
But, Oz adds, "We'll also have the best cake baker in Mississippi, so you get the local element there. We actually will be doing the kind of exploration that you might want to do in your own hometown."
Elliott goes on to rhapsodize about such ideas as nationwide "pie swaps" and about taking phone calls and using Skype to bring viewers into the conversation. Audience members and guests "will be coming and sitting at the table," Elliott says. "We'll be throwing food out at them."
As nice as that sounds, the idea is unlikely to pacify "All My Children" fans like the one (using a hunk of roast beef as an avatar) who posted on a Food Network blog:
"I'm not only boycotting ABC for canceling 'All My Children' but any chef/cook who dares to appear on this show will incur my wrath. The giant slab o' beef has spoken!"
_________________ The Hawk wrote: There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.
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