three bowls

Here's my interview with Ryan, chef most recently eliminated from Top Chef.

I have been threatening for a year and a half that some day I am going to write a book called Everything I Needed to Know about Life I Learned from Reality Television. 

Actually I just remembered that I wrote a bunch of columns with that title last year...but that was literally like 700 articles or so ago and I forgot.   Here's my first - it was actually about Top Chef.  (The formatting issues are not my fault.)

Anyway, I got a little One to Grow On from this interview with Ryan, or at least the process of getting to this interview.

Here's what happened.

1. I found him mildly annoying on the show.

2. I read something on a Bravo blog that compounded my feeling, and I made a snarky aside about his career in a recap.  Now, while I will slag on the producers and editors of the show mercilessly (since they are the faceless Man who gets to manipulate both the players and the audience, and ergo have enough power to withstand my puny poking attacks), I actually generally try to not be too too negative about any individual on-screen person I write about because there's just so much gross hating on the web that I don't want to contribute to.  I might be critical, but I generally try to be compassionate and charitable, even if I am critical.  But this time I was not.

3. Someone called me on my descent into snarkiness. (This is not the first time I succuumbed and was immediately called on it; I was actually confronted via email by none other than Lacey of Rock of Love 1 for what I said about her.  She was friendly but direct and I was chagrinned and felt bad.)

4. As things went south for Ryan in this episode, it slowly dawned on me that I would have to talk with him today.  I would assume he didn't read the recap, but you never know.  Some reality stars do troll sites like BuddyTV reading comments and commentary on themselves before they wise up that too much insight into the public's reaction to your televised persona is a quick route to suicidal ideation.

5. I felt really apprehensive prior to speaking with him, hence my especially giggly and distracted interview.

6. I do hear some things from Ryan in the interview that I would probably find annoying in person.  But to be frank, I find myself annoying in person.  Otherwise, he seems like a nice enough dude.

7. I am reminded - once again - that most people are pretty decent and likable, and every time I get on a high horse about how annoying or dislikable someone is (whether it's a reality character or someone in my actual life who's getting on a nerve), it's probably helpful to remember that everything is edited.  Even my direct experience of ACTUAL reality is, to some extent, edited and controlled by the producer in my head who picks and chooses what stimuli to pay attention to.  And maybe the person that I am finding so tedious and irritating today is just getting too much of an negative edit from my own internal grumpy editor that day.  Since we're always making distinctions anyway, maybe I could pick and choose some other information about the same person and come up with a less-negative take on them.