Feed the Beast (2016)

Feed the Beast is ultimately a study of characters caught up in not-so-quiet desperation, struggling for survival in an irrationally and implacably hostile universe, and it's the bobbing, weaving mutual orbit of Schwimmer and Sturgess that make the show an absorbing experience.

[Schwimmer's] the great strength of the series, along with Mr. Sturgess, whose Dion is a commanding portrait of endless faith in his dream, to say nothing of endless resilience. ... [A] beguiling tale whose kitchen scenes and gourmet dish preparations provide the ultimate sizzle.

Schwimmer and Sturgess are so darn good in their roles you forgive the writers. Schwimmer, for instance, uses those sad, puppy dog eyes of his to play up his grief, and Sturgess really has the charming cad thing down. They really cook up some chemistry in the scenes with just them.

The show’s solid, the Bronx-appropriate brutality is believable, the characters are endearing, and the food is pornographic. But it’s just not different or special or particularly memorable.

Jacob's performance as TJ may be line-free, but it's also subtle in a way that much of Feed the Beast isn't. He and Doman turn out to have a curious chemistry, and their scenes together were among the few that left me hungry for more.

Feed the Beast manages to be both overheated and undercooked. Stock up on antacid.

While Beast runs these best buddies through the obvious scrappy start-up hurdles, it never tries to pretend that not opening the restaurant is a potential outcome. The threats facing Dion and Tommy are much broader and more colorful, but they take the show in tonal directions that compromise its integrity.

The performances are fine, but the poorly mixed tone, cliche strategies for complex characterization (grief, addiction, obsession), and zesty conflict (psycho mobsters, corrupt cops) make for a flavorless dish. [3 Jun 2016, p.102]

The series feels like it was made for a different era--like the old guy who still shows up at the club, even when everyone knows he needs to move on--and these days, there’s simply no time to stick around and wait for it to realize who and what it is.

Feed the Beast feels like a broadcast network crime underworld show circa 2002--it feels like same old, same old TV.

Where Bourdain and Melville go to painstaking lengths to describe the addictions, hardships, and unending effort that went into the toils at the center of their tales, Feed the Beast only expresses a basic admiration for the process and love for the end product, which makes [creator Clyde] Phillips's perspective feel more like that of a hungry customer than of a relentless artist in the kitchen.

The show’s biggest problem, though, is it’s hard to like either of its main characters.

The food looks pretty good. But that’s not enough to keep this drama from rising above basic cafeteria fare.

Just to keep our restaurant metaphors straight, this newcomer does a competent job of setting the table, but when the plates arrive, there’s nothing on them.

In its attempt to mash together several genres, AMC's new drama will frequently leave viewers unsatisfied, much like a fast food taco. However, when it hits the right mark, this series is engaging and entertaining.

The most frustrating part of Feed the Beast is that it feels like there's a promising show buried underneath all the superficial aping of other series.

The combo platter of drama, crime, family and lots of food porn doesn’t quite gel. Everything feels predictable, the downbeat tone spreads across the plate to infect performances and, ultimately, the audience.

While it drives the plot, the restaurant is a garnish for the more prominent, and equally unconvincing, parts of the story: Dion’s involvement with a gourmandising Polish mobster (Michael Gladis) and Tommy’s attempt to break out of his funk, be a competent single father and relate to his own dad (John Doman).

Dion’s character is written in such a clumsy and obvious way that Sturgess’s only option is to drench a lot of acting sauce on his scenes and then proceed to chew ’em all up. Schwimmer, on the other hand, seems to be drawing from an authentic well of nuance, even when the writing is doing him no favors at all.

Feed the Beast has one huge narrative flaw. The storylines center on the tension that arises keeping the fledgling restaurant going. But there is no tension.

Tommy and Dion want so much for their lives and for their dreams of Thirio, but making it happen is a messy and scattered process. The same is true of Feed the Beast.

Feed the Beast often traffics in clichés, including some of Tommy’s grief as he talks to his wife’s headstone, much of his drinking problem, and almost all of the somewhat silly mob material. The acting, too, is exceedingly amped, with Schwimmer and Sturgess overdoing it to the point of irritation.

The series only truly comes alive when Dion is concocting one of this sumptuous meals in a fiery frenzy of inspiration. [23 May-3 Jun 2016, p.15]

Answers are sacrificed in Feed the Beast’s quest to be 18 different things at once: a Bourdain-esque tale of bad-boy chefs made good, a gritty crime drama, a superhero show, a touching tale of familial reception.

[Feed the Beast] is such a mess that you have to wonder what on Earth is going on at AMC (besides the whole if-it’s-a-white-guy-who-bleeds-it-leads thing).

The series is elaborately plated, with elaborate backstory and perhaps one too many past traumas for its characters. But its main ingredient--the story of two men putting their passions for food and drink to use on a restaurant--is unsalvageably stale.

Its attempts to explore the motivations of a trouble-prone, hot-shot chef while mixing in observations about the persistence of organized crime in New York, and meditations on the grief process, all lack originality and bite.

Feed the Beast vacillates from being something we’ve seen often to something that’s just not believable, and the dialogue sounds produced by a computer designed to write melodrama. Schwimmer (and co-star Lorenza Izzo) sometimes pierce through the predictability, but everyone else gets lost in a messy show that just can’t compete in today’s TV market.

It's a tossup as to what exactly about Beast you may find least bearable. For some, it will be the mix of crime-show melodrama, cheap cynicism and soap-opera theatrics. For others, it will be the sad fact that no one involved seems to have ever heard an actual human being speak.

It is a perfect example of why bad writing kills TV.

I was bored senseless within the aforementioned 15 minutes. I got through the first episode but could not tolerate the effort it was taking to slog through the second.