Salivating for some heavily scripted reality TV drama, Chopped viewers expressed shock and outrage when contestant Julie Valentine won the competition without frantically jumping back with her hands up when the buzzer rang at the end of each round. Though Julie struggled a bit throughout the episode, she also managed to avoid classic made-for-TV scenarios such as needing the ice cream machine while it was already in use, undercooking a pork loin, and delivering a soliloquy on how she had never worked with jackfruit before. Is she even a real chef?!
“What the hell was that!” questioned local middle-aged woman Sandra Baker. “It’s total bullshit that she won the competition without a single bout of crazed last-minute garnishing. How do we even know she can COOK?” continued Sandra as she angrily threw her remote into a mass of decorative throw pillows. “If I wanted to watch a calming cooking show, I’d put on that god damned British baking program. I am here to see blood.”
We feel you, Sandra!
When reached for comment, Julie attempted to explain her never-before-seen stunt. “Chefs on competition shows sometimes hop back from their dish with their arms in the air when the time is up, to show that they’re not cheating. I just didn’t feel the need to theatrically leap away from a plate of food like it’s a grenade,” said Julie.
Valentine’s explanation did little to appease Chopped fans, who were still frothing at the mouth for kitchen accidents and tragic scenarios where chefs forget to add one of the basket ingredients to their dish. “She looked so freakin’ smug in the dessert round, putting that final swirl of salted caramel on her pretzel-crusted bread pudding with plenty of time left on the clock. It made me SICK,” said viewer Carl Washington. “I’m not here to learn about food and cooking, I’m here to watch people suffer at the hands of difficult ingredients. She only looked moderately stressed, so I want my cable money back.”
Apparently yearning for all the drama of an overwrought middle school theater audition, Chopped fans also complained that Julie had no sad backstory. “She didn’t even have a fucked up personal history that they referenced in voiceovers multiple times throughout the show. Jesus Christ, she could have just made something up, like that she needed to win the show to prove her evil parents wrong for criticizing her choice to become a chef. I want to know her pain,” complained a commenter on the Food Network subreddit.
Ugh, we know, we were hoping that she would at least mention that she needed the Chopped money to save her family from sad financial ruin!
“I have a happy life and my parents have always supported me,” explained Chef Julie in her post-victory interview as disgusted viewers vomited in their living rooms, exasperated that they were robbed of the opportunity of savoring the misery of a stranger. Chopped fans, who hated to see others succeed because it reminded them of their own inadequacies, reported that they were going to change the channel to Deadly Women on ID Discovery for some real juicy drama.
