Iron Chef America: "Captain America". One question, though. Where's his dorky shield?
As mentioned above, the very best thing about Iron Chef USA was William Shatner. His overacting was masterful. Best of all, at the end of the episode, he got to give a speech. At first, I had no idea what he was doing when he started talking and gesturing wildly. It turns out, he was giving the moral of the episode. You've gotta love shows that think they're good enough to give advice to their viewers. (Although most of the time, were it good advice, it would say simply: 'Change the channel!'). Not so in Shatner's case. His speech was totally hillarious. It basically seemed to be paraphrasing his classic Star Trek lines, and adding referances to cooking. I don't remember it exactly, but I believe he said something about, "These are the Iron Chefs of Iron Chef USA. Their mission is to find new recipes, new tastes. To boldly cook as no one has cooked before. To find the Spice of Life!" A Star Trek episode couldn't have had a greater plot.
I've mentioned Iron Chef many times on this website. If you need proof, just glance back over my gallery of quotes. There has been more than one focused on this topic. However, this one takes on a slightly different note. That is because it concentrates on Iron Chef USA, the Americanized version of the classic Japanese show. I had the good fortune to catch the final half of this show the other night (thanks to an 'annonymous' tip), and I liked what I saw. Now, most fans of the Japanese show were severely disappointed. They did not like the way the American version seemed to go overboard on the useless commentary, ignoring the food almost altogether. I'd have to agree with this, and also frankly note that the music for this show was seriously lacking when compared to the original version. That said, there were a couple things that impressed me. Most importantly, with whom could this program replace the dramatic Chairman Kaga, the centerpiece of the whole show? There's only one man on this continent who could do it, and they beamed him down for the job. Only William Shatner can be so dramatically over-the-top while taking himself as seriously as he did when he gambled with the lives of the entire crew of the Enterprise. (Note that he did actually do this once!) The other aspect of the show I liked was the cheesy nicknames they came up with for the Iron Chefs. This is an idea the Japanese version could nicely adopt, since they always give nicknames to the challengers anyway. For your enjoyment, I present a list of these nicknames.
Iron Chef Asian: "Samurai of Stir-Fry". Funny how Chinese and Japanese cooking both got lumped into Iron Chef Asian.
Iron Chef Italian: "The Itallion Scallion". Oh yeah! I expect him to suddenly start punching his opponent in the middle of the show.
Iron Chef French: "The Battering Bonvivant". Actually, I'm not positive if that is indeed his nickname. He never seems to do anything.
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