Last summer, Hell’s Kitchen was something of a guilty pleasure: a show I started watching entirely by accident, but on which I was actually hooked beginning to end.
So it’s interesting to note that I really don’t care about the second season, at all, and only found out by accident that I missed the first two episodes.
It’s sort of how I felt about 24 in the third season, when I stopped watching. I came to the first season late, but I was hooked from mid-season on. The second season topped it, I felt* and I was really, really looking forward to the third.
And then the third started and I realized, with some surprise, that I just didn’t care anymore and wasn’t going to continue watching. (Maybe I’d just been burned by faithfully watching the awful last season of The X-Files.) I honestly don’t even know what season the show’s up to by now.
Hell’s Kitchen is different, of course, in that it’s “reality TV,” and one season isn’t in any way a continuation of the last. In fact, it’s probably just more of the same, albeit with different people and bigger — and by extension lamer — stunts. I generally don’t watch reality television, but I expect that’s pretty common. One season of Survivor, sure. But twelve? How could that not be tedious? How could it not constantly be repeating itself?
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised I lost interest. I really did enjoy that first season, though.
* Pretend that pretty much everything with Kim, especially the face-off with the cougar, didn’t happen. Better, no?