Oh my, meat pie indeed. I'm not sure what to say about last night's episode. There are two separate topics in my mind, entertainment and cooking, with two different opinions.
On the entertainment factor this show was excellent. Alton Brown is, after all, primarily interested in film more than cooking. The Sweeney Todd theme was well done with costume, great acting, and we got to see Alton Brown with long hair! Actually, Sweeney Chuck trumped Alton in the character department. It may have worked better if cast in modern times with regular ol' Alton in the encounter. This spoof ranks up there with the Jaws/scallops episode, but on a different level. The scallop show had plenty of retro shark thriller mixed into the plot, but the campy way in which it was done rendered it harmless and incidental to the viewer. Meat pies, however, was a bit too focused on the movie themes and not enough on the cooking/science part of the show. In fact, the main ingredient breaks this one for me.
So, the cooking part of the show was uh.....was it there? Thankfully I was eating carrots and dip while watching this episode and not anything meat-based. Even if you have not read/seen Sweeney Todd, you could figure out exactly what was going into the meat pies. The tray of ground 'meat', the close up of the dried fruit going through the grinder, and the hunk of suet were plenty enough to turn me off of wanting to make any sort of pot pie anytime soon. It was perfect material for Halloween week, but not really something you'd want to see in a cooking show. Also, there was so much going on that wasn't related to cooking that the pie theme seemed lost.
Was it entertaining? Yes. Was it Good Eats? I'd say no.
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