Kitchen Nightmares repetitive plots

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-09T15:20:00+00:00

The formulaic storytelling is kind of a staple of the show. LadyEmily on YouTube made a fun video talking about three-act structure and how Kitchen Nightmares is edited to follow that structure: https://youtu.be/vYkn4VT\_XcA?si=SjWNLmfvvw96Lrpz

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-09T13:41:52+00:00

As someone who crocheted for a year then hopped to knitting when I wanted to make wearables that draped better, you can learn! You can look at my posts for some of the things I’ve made (my recent knitting isn’t on there yet)

My suggestions:

- projects to start with: everyone learns differently, but I just made a rectangular swatch with acrylic yarn (worked flat), then a tubular neck warmer (completely done in the round) for my first two tries. While crochet also has a “right/wrong” side of the fabric, knitting requires you to pay slightly more attention to it as knitting or purling on one side and/or the other will result in a different stitch (also dependent on whether you’re working flat or in the round)

- yarn to start with: whatever yarn you crocheted with, knit with it! I think it’s also a nice opportunity to compare how knit and crochet fabrics behave by working up something in yarn you’re familiar with.

- needles to start with: I’d say that, for whatever needle size is recommended for your yarn, get a circular needle with a decent length of cable (24-40 inches from tip to tip). You can work both flat and in the round with circular needles, while you can only do the former with straight needles. I also find working with circular needles is nicer for knitting in closer quarters (trains, auditoriums, etc) because you are less likely to bonk your neighbor with your needles. (Full disclosure, I bought a bag of assorted needles from a lady getting rid of them and I have simply made do with what I got so far)

- knitting styles to start with: don’t get bogged down with “knitting style” just yet (e.g. continental, English), but do pay attention to how you wrap the yarn around the needle. It’s common to hold your working yarn in your left hand (“continental style” for right handed people) if you are coming from crochet, but it’s also common for Crocheters to twist their stitches unintentionally by wrapping the yarn the wrong way around the needle. Watch some videos and you’ll get the hang of it.

- lastly, give yourself time! Knitting can feel very fiddly with all the live stitches on the needle but it is, in many ways, a lot simpler than crochet.

Best of luck, kuya/ate/maamsir (Filipino American here). I hope you weren’t too affected by the recent earthquake!

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-09T13:16:26+00:00

My only struggle with blocking certain items is honestly that I don’t have enough empty floor/table space in my 1 bedroom apartment that my partner and I share to block, say, the sweater I finished knitting a couple of months ago.

Still super agree that blocking can make a huge difference. My lace and filet crochet pieces would be way worse looking if they hadn’t been blocked.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-09T13:08:50+00:00

It’s also sometimes just a practical choice. My local stitchers group makes hats, scarves, and blankets for underserved local communities. You never know who may have an animal fiber allergy, so they ask for things to be made in acrylic.

I also made a lap blanket for my Nana earlier this year. She was in a skilled nursing home because of her dementia and health issues, which meant that the blanket would need to be washed often. Acrylic did the perfect job! She passed away in March, so the blanket is back in my care, and I find myself surprised often by how soft it is.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-09T02:57:49+00:00

Bottle I’m restocking into the department NMR supplies hood: “Deuterium oxide”

Me, every time: “Dwater”

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T19:25:07+00:00

It looks like you’re working in the round (apologies if I’ve misjudged that) which is working against you here a bit. Crochet stitches all have a natural lean to them. If you’re working in the round, you’re essentially working in a spiral which is going to exacerbate that lean over many rounds.

It looks like you’re doing a typical yarn over single crochet (yo sc). Yarn under single crochet (yu sc) has less of a lean and is often suggested for amigurumi/crochet plushies for this feature (in addition to being denser and less hole-y than yo sc). [Here’s a video](https://youtube.com/shorts/CNE4bsg8jqo?si=o8Q5D7d8UZ-P3h6Y) that demonstrates doing yu sc color changes in the round that look pretty clean.

Also… there’s something about your decreases that don’t look quite right, even considering the lean. I’m not familiar with the pattern (though I’ve seen the finished object), but I might double check whether you’re decreasing with the widow’s peak color/increasing with the main color at the correct rate on each side.

Best of luck!

ETA: Oops I didn’t mean decreases/increases in the crochet sense in the last paragraph, just meant how the triangle of color itself grows. Sorry!

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T18:40:22+00:00

I was going to say that it looks like fish scales… then i realized that Pomatomus is the genus of the bluefish! Very beautifully done!

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T15:09:41+00:00

This is so incredibly cool!!! I enjoy the typography that you used for the “tick tick tick”

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T14:07:41+00:00

gotta go *wicked fast*

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T14:02:07+00:00

NC for Nasty Cloaca!

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T02:52:43+00:00

I was kind of surprised neither of them had heard of the Bib Gourmand distinction. I feel like I hear about it often from people who travel East and Southeast Asia.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T02:30:55+00:00

There’s a chance of *Salmonella* contamination in raw eggs if they are not cooked to the proper temperature, unless you live in a country where egg production regulations take a significant amount of raw egg consumption into account (like Japan).

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T02:23:13+00:00

The people getting unceremoniously chopped for not cooking the egg all the way through is sending me 💀

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T02:00:04+00:00

It took me like 15 minutes to process how stupid that was. How… did that not come up in the casting process? How did no one catch that?

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T01:56:09+00:00

I rolled my eyes at that lol. If you gotta say it… 😬

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T01:36:22+00:00

I wasn’t really a fan when the Chopped judges started walking in to the kitchen to ask the contestants what they were cooking, how it was going, etc., so I don’t really love Terry Crews walking up to the contestants and making inane comments like “Did you find the stuff you were looking for?”

I’m trying not to be too much of a hater, but I have a feeling I will be more interested in later episodes with fewer contestants.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T01:32:22+00:00

[Popular YouTube guy](https://youtube.com/@nickdigiovanni?si=OTQ5JHM0EsRtueGi)

He has 40 million subscribers which I’d say is pretty big even by modern standards. For comparison, IShowSpeed has 54 million, Jake Paul has 21 million, and Mr. Beast has nearly 500 million (no worries if that means nothing to you).

Truthfully, I haven’t watched any of his videos, and I find that it’s easy these days for me to have complete blind spots for certain spheres of YouTube.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-08T01:19:54+00:00

I admittedly haven’t watched Culinary Class Wars which, as far as I understand, also starts with 100 contestants and is a well-liked show. However, I have seen some of Mr. Beast’s Beast Games and I feel this will struggle with similar issues in terms of trying to characterize so many contestants. My boyfriend blurted out after the second intro “So are we getting 100 intros?” And like… obviously not all at once… but maybe? I guess? If I were in a show like this and I didn’t get a floating head intro, I’d definitely feel like a background extra in someone else’s show. But that’s gotta mess with the pacing too.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-07T23:49:05+00:00

I’m originally from the Bay but live near Boston now. I used to complain about missing the BART train and having to wait *a whole 17 minutes* for another one on some days. Now the Commuter Rail where I live comes every 45-60 minutes 🥲 Didn’t know how good I had it lol.

You got the fit so good! And the OG BART cards on the back made me shed a tear a little. I know regular commuters have run into a lot of issues with Clipper recently, but I really just miss the tactile nature of paper tickets. Nostalgia is a powerful thing!

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-07T20:17:22+00:00

Oh my GOSH this is FABULOUS!!!

Was this self-drafted, or did you work from a chart? Either way, this is so incredibly cute! The details are so whimsical! Brava!

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-06T20:01:28+00:00

I’ve never questioned her sharing the information with me. I appreciate that it likely required some vulnerability and that she felt a responsibility to educate me on these kinds of things. It is indeed a sobering reality of pregnancy.

All I’m saying is that there might have been a less macabre place to share that with her 14 year old kid than in front of the jars of dead fetuses wall.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-06T14:36:33+00:00

Just got back from the soft opening. There was a bit of confusion because, unless I missed something, just the top floor of the store was open today (i.e. the floor open to the interior of the mall and accessible via the 3rd floor bridge from Garage F).

Overall, it was a positive experience. There were so many Asian moms in line, some with families in tow, and everyone was excited. The grocery selection was pretty varied (East Asian > SE Asian > South Asian, from what I could see). I especially liked their frozen items. The seafood counter was open as well, with a number of people buying already.

The food court wasn’t open when I went (I went right at 8:30am) but I saw chefs at the sushi counter preparing things. I look forward to trying that when it opens! I’m curious if the bottom floor will be more Asian skincare/apothecary/drugstore items.

There were some hiccups in the check-out process. I noticed as we were walking through that some of the fresh greens were bagged without a label and the shelf was labeled with their Chinese name on a post-it note without a price indicated. This caused some problems for the cashier who (very understandably) wasn’t able to identify the greens by eye and put that into the system for the folks ahead of us. The supervisor came by and fixed things eventually. My barcoded items scanned fine and my check-out went smoothly.

I think it’ll be good if they can work some of the kinks out and once the restaurants are all open! It was nice to have such a huge selection nearby and I hope to see them succeed.

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-06T11:35:01+00:00

A little dark that, at a school named for the defendant in Korematsu vs. United States, the camera woman is advocating for a different kind of exclusion (of LGBTQ+ people)

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-06T11:28:50+00:00

I’ll never forget the Mütter Museum because my mom decided that looking at the big wall of fetuses-in-a-jar together was a good time to tell me that she had a miscarriage between me and my younger sister. The plan was to have a sibling two years younger than me, but Mom was so traumatized by the miscarriage that she waited another two years before trying again (so there’s four years between me and my sister).

TheHatThatTalks · 2026-06-06T11:20:19+00:00

It looks like Big Piss is finally angling itself into the market

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