If you’ve watched even a handful of Food Network’s 500+ Chopped episodes, you may have noticed a trend: While the show is ostensibly about cooking with weird ingredients, many contestants come with a dramatic backstory. Of course, this is not unique to Chopped. Whether it’s Queer Eye, America’s Got Talent, or The Voice, trauma seems like a requirement for appearing on reality TV. For Chopped, it could be a life-defining memory of escaping Communist Vietnam on a raft at a young age, or being bullied as a child, or maybe their mother fought cancer 18 years ago — she’s fine, by the way.
You may rightfully ask: What does any of this have to do with a cooking competition?
These stories aren’t just incidental to high-stress, high-stakes competition, they’re brought out intentionally. Contestant testimony confirms they are coached by producers to spill their deepest secrets. The logic being: the more the audience knows about a contestant’s life struggles, the more emotion they feel when said contestant wins or loses. Then, humbled and excited about their victory, the winner contextualizes their victory within the logic of their particular conflict, as if winning a reality TV show has validated their life-long struggle.
Of course, we know this is done because reality TV is just like narrative TV. It needs to be structured into a palatable story so that it…
