Yum-oh no (don't let the idiots get you down)

After 30-Minute Meals, $40 a Day, Tasty Travels, the Rachael Ray talk show, the Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine, and her face plastered on Triscuit boxes, does her latest special, Rachael Ray Feeds Your Pets, mark the moment that Rachael Ray has officially jumped the shark?

Trick question. The shark was jumped back with her ill-fated first attempt at combining cooking and interviews: Inside Dish.

This cooking show for pets merely proves that producers (and magazine publishers and snack food companies...) consider giving her yet another show to be a good idea. I have no idea if Rachael Ray simply doesn't know how to say no, or if she grasps the importance of taking advantage of her 30 minutes of fame (clearly she's stretched past 15) while the number of people who find her tolerable must theoretically outnumber the people who despise her, or if she's become so egomaniacal that she can coerce the R-whipped producers into doing this.

Frankly, having sat through most of the Pet show (only for the purpose of being fair for this post), it's not as bad as her other shows, because there's a number of expose pieces (where we don't actually see Rachael, merely hear her do the voiceover) to break up the cooking sequences. There's no pathetic attempts at conducting interviews. And much as part of me does scoff at the notion of spending that much effort preparing gourmet food for animals, the part of me that has fond memories of pets I've had can understand wanting to do special things for them. I wouldn't cook for pets (if I had any at this time), but I can't entirely dismiss the notion.

It is far from the worst thing I've seen on television recently. I'm not saying I'd recommend anyone else actually watch it (if you can't find anything worthwhile on, I'd still say turn off the TV rather than watch it), but it's not the end of Western civilization.

Probably.

I won't expend any energy being vitriolic toward her persona. Her ubiquity is no longer tolerable, but that's why I don't buy her books or watch her shows (any more). In the words of Gary Anthony Williams' character in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, "The universe tends to unfold as it should." The novelty of Rachael has already worn off, yes, but eventually that will be realized by those who keep giving her airtime. In the meantime, complaining won't be as effective as ignoring her.

~

Speaking of less-than-worthwhile TV: We got around to watching The Return of Jezebel James.

I choose to believe Fox strong-armed it into being so bad, and that before they got their hands on it, the Amy Sherman-Palladino created series was tolerable. (If they took the laugh-track out it might be only bad.) However, the actual program... well, let's just say: my fiancée, a big Gilmore Girls fan, adorer of Parker Posey, devotee of Six Feet Under, and who really wanted to like the show, had to force herself to watch the second episode. (A "trifecta of disappointment," as she called it.)

Eh, at least Rachel Ray wasn't in it.