History YMMV / TheNextFoodNetworkStar

**** She was just as full of herself as she was on NFNS. [[spoiler: At one point, she actually suggested that Michael Symon and Marcus Samuelsson were intimidated by HER. She also made the ridiculous statement that she was going to conquer Food Network. There isn't much call for 7th place finishers on this show. Eventually, when Michael Symon was eliminated because he'd forgotten to plate some okra chips,]] Penny was ecstatic and starts crowing "The bragging rights alone! I took down an IronChef!" Uh, [[{{FlatNo}} ''no'']], Penny. You didn't. He just forgot an ingredient, so unless you somehow slipped him a drug that disoriented his memory, then ''no'', you ''didn't'' "take down an Iron Chef." In the next round, however, Penny ends up being a victim of her own arrogance as usual...

**** She was just as full of herself as she was on NFNS. [[spoiler: At one point, she actually suggested that Michael Symon and Marcus Samuelsson were intimidated by HER. She also made the ridiculous statement that she was going to conquer Food Network. There isn't much call for 7th place finishers on this show. ]]

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: In one episode, Penny and Mary Beth are having a verbal catfight in front of the judges, arguing over Penny's behavior. Mary Beth is mid-sentence when out of nowhere Penny literally starts making cat noises, makes her hands into a claw-like shape, and starts pawing at the air in front of Mary Beth's face. Mary Beth (and the judges) weren't really sure how to respond to that.

*** And for all we know, perhaps Jeff did something {{Jerkass}} to ''her'' at some earlier point, but the footage was never allowed to air because whatever it was was perhaps so bad that the execs might have been afraid that it would turn viewers against Jeff, who by the time the show aired on TV would already have been declared the show's winner. Just a theory, but it's plausible.

*** Actually, in Jeffrey's case, it is subverted. He ''does'' have his own cooking show, albeit [[http://www.foodnetwork.com/spice-smuggler/video/index.html a webseries on foodnetwork.com]] that ran for a year. It can be argued to be a spin-off of TheNextFoodNetworkStar because his pilot turned into a webseries.

**** She was just as full of herself as she was on NFNS. [[spoiler: At one point, she actually suggested that Michael Symon and Marcus Samuelsson were intimidated by HER.]]

*** TheBadGuyWins: Penny was featured on an episode of Chopped All-Stars... and won. One can only imagine that anyone who has to work with or live with her will find her several orders of magnitude more insufferable than before.
**** [[spoiler: Subverted that she lost in the second round of the finals.]]

*** Unfortunately she raised the ire of many again when she was brought back for the Iron Chef challenge and tried very hard to sabotage Mary Beth as much as possible with what was possibly the slowest chopping in the history of American television. So slow that normal home cooks would've run circles around her speed-wise. When AltonBrown asked her why she was chopping so slowly, Penny smirked and in a very sarcastic tone of voice replied "You know, I'm very methodical." The smirk on her face gives the impression that she was "very methodically" trying to sabotage Mary Beth.

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Season 7: Jyll got possibly the biggest [=CMoA=] when she finally had enough of Penny's nonsense and called her out on her bitchy behavior in front of the judges, giving her a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. AndTheFandomRejoiced. One of the most well-remembered lines from Jyll's verbal smackdown of Penny was when she declared "You are the most entitled person I have ever met!"
* EnsembleDarkhorse: Season 7: Jeff Mauro. For the first leg of the competition the spotlight was mostly off him, as the show focused more on the drama that Penny was generating. However, he seemed likeable and every so often we got a glimpse of him being the DeadpanSnarker of the group. Gradually, he got to be featured more, as the more over-the-top contenders fell away, and got even more DeadpanSnarker moments (famously included the food truck ad where he tells Susie "You know what you need in your life? ''Balls!'' to sell some ball-shaped food). In general, Jeff seemed like the more down-to-earth but funny contender in the background for most of the competition. And in this case the dark horse won.

** On the other hand, Jeffrey Saad from an earlier season could ALSO have brought Middle Eastern flavor to the network (he does have a show on CookingChannel now, but it's a TravelogueShow, and thus doesn't feature any of his own recipes).

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: There was nothing wrong with Penny's ''food.'' In fact, the judges consistently loved her cooking. The problem was her over-the-top {{Jerkass}} personality rendering her unlikable. Her recipes actually looked quite tasty. If only Penny hadn't been such a [[{{TheBully}} bully]], she might have actually won and brought a Middle Eastern point of view to the Food Network.

** On the other hand, Jeffrey Saad from an earlier season could ALSO have done the same (he does have a show on CookingChannel now, but it's a TravelogueShow, and thus doesn't feature any of his own recipes).

*** Unfortunately she raised the ire of many again when she was brought back for the Iron Chef challenge and tried very hard to sabotage Mary Beth as much as possible with what was possibly the slowest chopping in the history of American television. So slow that normal home cooks would've run circles around her speed-wise. When AltonBrown asked her why she was chopping so slowly, Penny smirked and in a very sarcastic tone of voice replied "You know, I'm very methodical." The smirk on her face gives the impression that she was very "methodically" trying to sabotage Mary Beth.

*** Unfortunately she raised the ire of many again when she was brought back for the Iron Chef challenge and tried very hard to sabotage Mary Beth as much as possible with what was possibly the slowest chopping in the history of American television. So slow that normal home cooks would've run circles around her speed-wise. When AltonBrown asked her why she was chopping so slowly, Penny smirked and in a very sarcastic tone of voice replied "You know, I'm very methodical."

*** Unfortunately she raised the ire of many again when she was brought back for the Iron Chef challenge and tried very hard to sabotage Mary Beth as much as possible with what was possibly the slowest chopping in the history of American television. So slow that normal home cooks would've run circles around her speed-wise.

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Season 7: Jyll got possibly the biggest CMoA when she finally had enough of Penny's nonsense and called her out on her bitchy behavior in front of the judges, giving her a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. AndTheFandomRejoiced. One of the most well-remembered lines from Jyll's verbal smackdown of Penny was when she declared "You are the most entitled person I have ever met!"

** ItGotWorse: In the seventh season, one Mexican-American cook (Susie Jimenez) initially rebels against this, and prepares French food for the judges and expresses the view that just because she's of Mexican descent, that doesn't mean that it's the ''only'' thing she knows how to cook, and in fact she says that she loves to prepare ''French'' cuisine. [[{{Unfortunate Implications}} Cue the judges expressing their displeasure and telling her that they'd actually prefer that she play up her ethnic heritage more.]] As of the mid-season, Susie decided to fully conform to the judges' stereotypical expectations, and began to play up her ethnicity to an annoying degree. This caused the judges to express complete delight, rave about how the Mexican food she prepared for them "is the embodiment of her soul", and begin gushing about how pleased with her they suddenly are, and in the second to last episode, Giada seemed almost orgasmic by the "transformation"[[hottip:*:A certain amount of this may have been projection, since Giada is an Italian-American who started out doing a show about Italian cuisine and later branched out into other cuisines after proving that she had staying power, Giada probably views the whole "let your heritage inspire your cooking" thing as a natural first step. She probably felt that if Susie was good enough to not only win the competition but good enough to last long enough on the network, that Susie would eventually be able to do the same thing. Of course, Susie ended up losing, so we'll never know whether that would have happened.]]

** ItGotWorse: As of the mid-season, Susie has decided to fully play along with the judges' stereotypical expectations, and began to play up her ethnicity to an annoying degree. This caused the judges to express complete delight, rave about how the Mexican food she prepared for them "is the embodiment of her soul", and begin gushing about how pleased with her they are.
*** Its a bit jarring when the season has Whitney Chen and yet her ethnicity is barely mentioned. One wonders if its the accent Susie has. But yes. In the second to last episode, Giada almost went orgasmic when she talked about Susie going back to her roots. Yes, they want certain styles of cooking on their network but talk about putting people in boxes.
**** It might be because Whitney is only half Asian, and doesn't exactly look it.

*** And for all we know, perhaps Jeff did something {{Jerkass}} to ''her'' at some point, but the footage was never allowed to air because whatever it was was perhaps so bad that the execs might have been afraid that it would turn viewers against the show's winner. Just a theory, but it's plausible.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: This one came as a bit of a shock for a lot of people, but ''Mary Beth'' from Season 7 appeared this way in the Reunion Special ClipShow. Previously cut footage revealed that when she was eliminated and Jeff was allowed to move on in the competition, Jeff moved to give her a comforting hug and Mary Beth shoved him away. Then, at the actual reunion, she declared that she wouldn't watch his show. This came as a shock to a lot of people because up till that point Mary Beth had seemed like a plucky, likeable foil against the universally-loathed Penny (who doesn't count as this trope because she was a bitch who ''never bothered'' wearing sheep's clothing). Mary Beth's sudden and last-minute [[{{TookALevelInJerkass}} transformation]] from a plucky underdog into an IceQueen seems to have annoyed a lot of people, if the online reaction is anything to go by. It also put an entirely different spin on her antagonistic relationship with Penny, and made it come off less as Penny one-sidedly going after her as mutual antagonism between two similar people.

* {{Manipulative Bastard}}s: Many, particularly on Food Network Humor, have argued that judges Bob Tuschman and Susie Fogleson are this trope. A lot of the online commentary seems to have settled on the opinion that these two are heartless corporate types (Tuschman is the General Manager of Food Network while Fogleson is in charge of the network's marketing and "brand strategy"). In particular people complain that they pressure the contestants to become one-dimensional [[{{Flanderization}} Flanderized]] versions of themselves and that they will often harshly criticize contestants for following the advice that ''they themselves gave them the previous week.'' Fogleson in particular takes flak for appearing to be very much a [[{{CorruptCorporateExecutive}} stereotypical greedy corporate exec]] (or at least she gets accused of ''coming across'' this way). In one Season 7 episode one contestant starts reminiscing about her life story and breaks down into tears talking about a family tragedy...meanwhile Susie Fogleson's face practically lights up as she begins cooing about how "I see star potential in you," or something to that effect, completely ignoring the seriousness of the woman's memories and focusing completely on making money. [[{{YourMileageMayVary}} YMMV]], as perhaps she was just being supportive, but she certainly didn't come across that way to a lot of people, if the online reaction is anything to go by.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Season 7: Jeff Mauro. For the first leg of the competition the spotlight was mostly off him, as the show focused more on the drama that Penny was generating. However, he seemed likeable and every so often we got a glimpse of him being the DeadpanSnarker of the group. Gradually, he got to be featured more, as the more over-the-top contenders fell away, and got even more DeadpanSnarker moments (famously included the food truck ad where he tells Susie "You know what you need in your life? ''Balls!'' to sell some ball-shaped food). In general, Jeff seemed like the more down-to-earth but funny contender in the background for most of the competition. And in this case, [[spoiler: the dark horse won]].

* {{Manipulative Bastard}}s: YMMV very much, but many, particularly on Food Network Humor, have argued that judges Bob Tuschman and Susie Fogleson are this trope. A lot of the online commentary seems to have settled on the opinion that these two are heartless corporate types (Tuschman is the General Manager of Food Network while Fogleson is in charge of the network's marketing and "brand strategy"). In particular people complain that they pressure the contestants to become one-dimensional [[{{Flanderization}} Flanderized]] versions of themselves and that they will often harshly criticize contestants for following the advice that ''they themselves gave them the previous week.'' Fogleson in particular takes flak for appearing to be very much a [[{{CorruptCorporateExecutive}} stereotypical greedy corporate exec]] (or at least she gets accused of ''coming across'' this way). In one Season 7 episode one contestant starts reminiscing about her life story and breaks down into tears talking about a family tragedy...meanwhile Susie Fogleson's face practically lights up as she begins cooing about how "I see star potential in you," or something to that effect, completely ignoring the seriousness of the woman's memories and focusing completely on making money. [[{{YourMileageMayVary}} YMMV]], as perhaps she was just being supportive, but she certainly didn't come across that way to a lot of people, if the online reaction is anything to go by.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Season 7: Jeff Mauro. For the first leg of the competition the spotlight was mostly off him, as the show focused more on the drama that Penny was generating. However, he seemed likeable and every so often we got a glimpse of him being the DeadpanSnarker of the group. Gradually, he got to be featured more, as the more over-the-top contenders fell away, and got even more DeadpanSnarker moments (famously included the food truck ad where he tells Susie [[{{IfYouKnowWhatIMean}} "You know what you need in your life? ''Balls!'']] to sell some ball-shaped food). In general, Jeff seemed like the more down-to-earth but funny contender in the background for most of the competition. And in this case, [[spoiler: the dark horse won]].