Behind the Scenes at Good Eats - Some Perspective

I was excited to see that my experience on Good Eats had been covered on Slashfood.com, an excellent gathering place for food news, blogs and other tidbits of the foodie web content. Unfortunately, while reading their paraphrasing of my post I realized that my portrayal of Good Eats may not be taken in it's proper context.

Now that the show has aired, and I've had a chance to see how my role panned out, I have better perspective as to how the tip of the iceberg that I was a part of plays into the entire process of creating my favorite show. I think it's important to further elaborate and explain a comment that I made on my previous post.

Specifically, I want to address my comment regarding the "low budget" nature of the show. Let me make it clear this was never meant to question the quality of the show, or the skills of those who work on it. I make three follow-up points. First, this show isn't Lost. It's a highly rated television show on the Food Network. That being said, I do know that it is the most expensive show produced for the network, at least according to what I've read.

Second, my experience represents one extra's view of what's going on. The crew at Good Eats didn't invite me to cover their show, and I just wrote about what I saw. If there are any inaccuracies, then you have to remember that my post is an opinion piece written by someone with very little experience in writing and newsmaking, and even less in professional television broadcasting. If there's been anything of a high school level around here, it's my journalism.

Third, and most importantly, we were shooting on location, and not in the Good Eats studio. This makes a huge difference with respect to equipment, lighting and other production issues. The crew was working with limited time, light and other resources. This scene was a setup for the show, and not the main focus for the episode. Keep that in mind.

Bloggers get a bad rap about spewing content (often advertised as fact) on the internet without checking for accuracy or for bias. My posts are editorials and anecdotes from a die-hard fan and food blogger. I think it's important to clarify exactly where I'm coming from so that future readers understand what they're getting.

I think I owe all of you, and the fabulous folks at Good Eats, nothing less.