Rick's List
Visiting my mother and sister Mic before Christmas, I was assimilated into a lifestyle dictated by the television shows they watch serially. This is mostly due to Mom’s advanced age and a physical inability to, oh, go skiing or practice ballet. She also has a dwindling attention span, and so TV programming is geared to anything that still entertains her: “Law and Order,” “Mike & Molly” and, for a mercifully brief period, something called “My 600-Pound Life.”
This onslaught is tempered by my sainted sister’s occasional “I can’t take it anymore!” breaking point, when she commandeers the remote and they might watch compare/contrast screenings of Branagh and then Olivier’s “Henry V.”
Somehow, Mom and Mic discovered an aesthetic overlap. Both are fascinated by a cooking competition show on the Universal kids network called “Top Chef Junior.” I saw it while I was there and, within two episodes, was addicted in opioid-crisis fashion.
The kids are adorable, charming and gracious in ways that adulthood will probably erode, and their skill and creative vision make me ashamed at my inability to master a toaster.
A sample of a “Top Chef Junior” show challenge: “Today, young chefs, you’ve each been given a terderloin of particle board, a bag of dust, and a Dollar Store half-off coupon. You have one hour to create a dazzling entree.” Sixty minutes later, the host says, “Young Chef Karen, what have you prepared for us?”
Karen, her voice piping with nerves and excitment: “I made back of venison roasted with citrus-fruit sparkle, celeriac ravioli, beetroot and raspberry condiments — all in a Poivrade foam.”
Amazing! And it occurred to me: why can’t TV expand the conceptual parameters of kids reality shows? Through my many contacts in Hollywood, I hope to produce the following programs: 1 “Who Wants to be a Homicide Cop?” — Middle schoolers work with LA cold-case officers to solve decades-old murders. 2 “Typhoid Tykes” — Precocious youngsters are innoculated with increasingly virulent tropical plagues in a contest to see which have the most powerful immune systems. 3 “American (Kids) Sniper” — Cunning sixth-grade marksmen and marks women undergo rigorous Special Forces-style training; the winner is deployed to Afghanistan to take out insurgents by the hundreds. 4 “I Like Ice Cream” — Host Rick Koster eats his way through the Ben and Jerry catalog to the increasing nausea and embarrassment of gatherered senior high students. 5 “My 600-Pound Rick” — Interviews with nonagenarian Thelma Koster on how her son ballooned via a fevered ice cream campaign.