Wait, 30 minutes? That's, like, three quibis of content. You sure you want to give that away for free? That's a lot of quibis.

"Kitchen Fantasies" - a reality show where Gordon Ramsay goes to thriving, successful eateries to sabotage their kitchens and jokerfy the chefs

I think there is another group that gets more to why this show is popular, and that group is people who have worked in hopsitality. The industry is a hellhole and I'd say most of the owners call in Gordon Ramsay because they're convinced they aren't the problem and why the staff are unhappy or untrained or the food sucks. It's like a kind of catharsis for people who have worked in a kitchen, the idea someone from outside could actually talk back to the shitty boss where they work, even just once, without getting fired.

I will say this: the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares at least, like tries to be about the restaurant industry and Ramsay's insights, giving cultural context to the places he's going to. American TV really does a disservice to Ramsay's genuinely interesting perspectives.

Hotel Hell is basically, "Kitchen Nightmares, but about an entire hotel, and the 3-Part Structure always has a scene where Gordon strips naked to try the hotel bathtub"

Every. Single. Episode.

But, if he does sue you, you'll get to make "Gordon Ramsay Sent Me a Legal Threat and then It Got Worse"

As someone who's worked in kitchens their whole life, the show is very lightly staged, if at all. If they actually do find random nobodies or get the employees to act in a way that's so pitch perfect to how an actual dysfunctional dinner service goes at a shitty restaurant, those people should be famous method actors. The state of the walk ins, the unwarranted egos and tempers, the degeneracy of the kitchen staff, the baffling management decisions, it's all stuff I've seen at multiple restaurants in real life.

And while Ramsay is playing it up for the cameras, his temper isn't from nowhere. Long before he was a celebrity, he had a reputation as being one of the most difficult chefs to work with in fine dining. The reputation is what got him the fame, not the other way around. I have heard from several chefs that have worked in his companies that he's much nicer now that he's not working in a kitchen 75 hours a week.

Honestly, 22 out of 105 total restuarants still operating seems like a pretty good margin of success for the show, considering the margin of success in the industry. Which is not to deny that it's still heavily produced.

Does anyone else justify their love of Gordon Ramsey by how he's always nice to the wait staff?

There’s a quote from mark Burnett, a legendary tv producer who made both survivor and the apprentice about how he considered reality tv a bad term for something like survivor and preferred unscripted fiction, with the idea being that they construct a narrative out of a month of raw footage

The three act structure is also a big part of internet drama analysis videos too: the history, the controversy, the outcome

Love that including quibi as a streaming service is in itself a joke.

I have an interesting story about Kitchen Nightmares. Specifically the Italian version.
For those unfamiliar with it, soon after the American version of Kitchen Nightmares ended, Fox Life started production on a fully Italian version of the show, with chef Antonino Cannavacciuolo instead of Gordon Ramsey (if you're curious, Cannavacciuolo doesn't cuss. He's nearly 2m tall, about as wide, and slaps you like a truck).

Now, the thing with Italian cuisine (and i'm sure many others) is that it's heavily regional, sometimes even provincial, and it's not difficult to stumble on some obscure tradition that is a curveball compared to the national stereotype.
In an episode I caught, Cannavacciuolo was rescuing a failing restaurant in Mantua. The curveball here is that traditional risotto in Mantua is more akin to stir fried rice than the more common creamy dish you'd find elsewhere in Italy or abroad; I'm familiar with it because I have friends from there who would not shut up about it, but it's not widely known outside the area.
During the act 1 segment when the chef tastes the restaurant's dishes, Cannavacciuolo gets the risotto and complains it's not creamy. On screen, it looked the part, a well executed Mantuan risotto. Now, I'm sure that thing had plenty of defects otherwise we wouldn't be speaking of a failing restaurant, but of all the shortcomings you could point out, it not being creamy is possibly the only wrong one. I had imagined the owner of the restaurant coming out of the kitchen to explain that it's the local tradition, but nothing happened. Which is suspicious, but anyway.
Then the show proceeds, and in act 2 there's an added segment that the US/UK versions don't have in which Cannavacciuolo demonstrates a recipe to the restaurant's chef. Guess what they cooked? Risotto. The creamy version. And again, this proud, local, thick accented chef doesn't bat an eyelid, he is in fact in awe of Cannavacciuolo's technique. Imagine if you open an American restaurant, and here I come telling you that Buffalo Wings should be boiled and made into a soup instead of fried, and you are all "oh, you're so much better than me at cooking".
The creamy risotto ends up in the renewed menu proposed by Cannavacciuolo, and then again highly praised by the (supposedly) very local crowd which attended the reopening. The show went out of their way to include a clip of a few patrons praising it as the best risotto ever (which I'm sure it was, don't get me wrong. Cannavacciuolo has three Michelin stars as of today, I'm sure he knows a thing or two about restaurants and food. But it wasn't their local traditional recipe, that should've raised a few eyebrows). Not a single soul came out saying they were expecting a different dish.

I'm sure it was all genuine reactions. /s

I don't think enough appreciation is given to the fact that you picked Gordon's creation of the worst grilled cheese ever for your black and white transitions

I found out about Amy’s baking company after I read an AMA of the server who was fired for asking a question on reddit. Man, I can’t even rewatch the episode itself because of how awful the owners acted, it’s like watching a car crash but in agonizing slow motion.

Oh no, why'd you have to tell me Amy's is on youtube? It's... too powerful... it's... pulling me in... I can't-
[begrudgingly moves to the youtube search bar]

9:14  I'm a wrestling fan, I've long since gotten used to the people who need to interject with "It's fake" like that makes it bad

Goku is fake and he's pretty awesome.  Case closed

I remember my step dad used to put this on while he cooked dinner sometimes. It made me think that my father should start one. So I told him about it, because I loved his cooking. He told me that he would probably end up on the show if he did. He also told me that there wasn’t hard enough drugs that would allow him to not die of a heart attack from the anxiety of running a restaurant. Not really a point to this I just remember it. It makes me remember a simpler time in my life and it’s kind of homey. So yeah, good show.

Ok, to be fair, I'd watch a season of Gordon helping out one restaurant to succeed, ESPECIALLY if it's more edutainment and really gets into the details and nuances of what could be going wrong and what they think the best plan is

One comment; The numbers on how many restaurants actually succeed after his visits is astounding. It's actually way above what most economists would have thought. He is quite a miracle worker in that sense.