The Next Food Network Star/YMMV

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• Non Sequitur Scene: 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.
  • Call Back: When Penny competes on Chopped All-Stars the following year, she does the cat thing again during her introduction, this time directly facing the camera and clawing at the audience.
  • Season 6: Dzintra, who already had a reputation as a hot mess and Cloudcuckoolander excitedly informed the Confession Cam that "Dzintra loves to dance! Dzintra loves to twirl!" Even without the Third Person Person, she still would have come across as a little bit...odd...
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: 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 Clip Show. 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, growling "No!". 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 transformation from a plucky underdog into an Ice Queen 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, especially since there's no evidence that Jeff did anything to deserve it.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: 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 (who squirmed around awkwardly during the whole exchange), giving Penny a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. And the Fandom Rejoiced. 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!"
• Ensemble Darkhorse: 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 Deadpan Snarker of the group. Gradually, he got to be featured more, as the more over-the-top contenders fell away, and got even more Deadpan Snarker 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.
• Manipulative Bastards: 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 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 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. 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.
• Narm: Season 7: During the later rounds, the judges are grilling the introverted Whitney about being more extroverted. The night of the comedy roast was a particularly bad night for Whitney, and the judges are telling her that she should have been funnier. A desperate Whitney, out of nowhere, earnestly says "I'm funny, Giada!" in the most unconvincing way possible. It actually was funny, just unintentionally.
  • Season 6: During the Iron Chef challenge, Aria—pressed for time—runs through the studio shrieking "POTATOES, POTATOES, POTATOES!!!" (Alton Brown was left hiding his face in his hands and groaning). Doubles as a Non Sequitur Scene, and quite possibly as a Never Live It Down moment that made Aria look like a basket case who couldn't keep her cool under pressure, which is likely why she was eliminated at the end of the episode, unfortunately.
    • Also from Season 6, Italian immigrant Serena is being pressured by the judges to bring her Italianness Up to Eleven (much like what they did with Susie and her Mexican heritage the following season), and she's currently feeling desperate about her place in the competition. During that weeks' camera challenge, as soon as the camera starts rolling Serena holds her arms up in a V-shape over her head and loudly belts out "OH SOLE MIIIIIIIIIIOOOOO!!!" while standing over a bowl of pasta she's prepared. It was hilarious, and it ended up being featured heavily in commercials that week purely for the Narm value.
• The Scrappy: Penny, both in show and out. It really says something that she managed to make all of the other female contestants hate her guts to the point that they were all on another team during one challenge.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: It seems quite a few people on the show and off were very happy when she was eliminated. See also "The Reason You Suck" Speech that Jyll delivered to her.
    • 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 Alton Brown 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.
      • The intentional sabotage was pretty much confirmed in the reunion show where they showed a never before seen clip of her saying that she just didn't care. One wonders if this will end bringing back the last X eliminated to help out for the Iron Chef Challenge.
    • During the reunion special she also said that she wouldn't change any of her behavior, even with all the grief if caused and the fact that it was a big part of why she was kicked off. Yeeeaah...
    • The Bad Guy Wins: 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. However, it becomes Subverted when she lost in the second round of the finals. All together now, fans.
      • She was just as full of herself as she was on NFNS. 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 Iron Chef!" Uh, 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...
      • Oh and the best part? When Penny gets eliminated because she put so much saffron that it tasted bad to the judges, and Judge Amanda Freitag delivers the decision, Penny whines to the Confession Cam: "Who's really the saffron expert? Me, or Amanda?!" She then vows that this won't stop her from conquering Food Network......
• Unfortunate Implications: In the seventh season, one Mexican-American cook, Susie Jimenez, 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. Cue the judges expressing their displeasure and telling her that they'd actually prefer that she play up her ethnic heritage more.
  • It Got Worse: 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"
    • It's also a bit jarring when the season has Whitney Chen and yet her ethnicity is barely mentioned, which may be because Whitney is only half Asian, and doesn't exactly look it, or if it's the accent Susie has. In the second to last episode, Giada almost went orgasmic when she talked about Susie going back to her roots. They want certain styles of cooking on their network but talk about putting people in boxes.
  • It was even worse for Herb in season 6. Susie at least occasionally mentioned being Hispanic, and it was important to her, so asking her to draw inspiration from it wasn't a big stretch. Herb came in as a personal trainer with a love for healthy cooking, who never mentioned his Cuban/Puerto Rican ancestry until asked. The judges pressured him more and more to focus on Hispanic food until his pilot had a freaking Spanish title.
  • It's particularly unfortunate given the Double Standard by which white Anglo chefs are treated. No one bats an eye if a white competitor from the Midwest decides to cook, say, Asian-inspired food (unless the person royally screws up), or gets told to stick to the food that's "in your soul."
• Unpleasable Fanbase: Food Network really can't win with some fans in regards to ethnic cuisine on this show (and in a more general sense overall). If they push the chefs to play up the ethnic aspects of their cooking, they're accused of trying to force stereotypes, strangle creativity, and being racist. If they allow the chefs to be generalized and cook anything and everything, they're accused of lacking diversity, whitewashing, and you guessed it, being racist. As is often the case with certain types, Everything Is Racist and Failure Is the Only Option in attempting to avoid being racist.
• What Could Have Been: There was nothing wrong with Penny's food. In fact, the judges consistently loved her cooking. The problem was her over-the-top Jerkass/AlphaBitch personality rendering her unlikable. Her recipes actually looked quite tasty. If only Penny hadn't been such a 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 brought Middle Eastern flavor to the network. The best part is that—unlike Penny—Jeffrey has an extremely likable and friendly personality. He does have a show on Cooking Channel now and a webseries on foodnetwork.com that ran for a year, but he doesn't get nearly the exposure he would have if he had won.
  • Also a lot of the competitors had perfectly fine camera manner, great food, good personalities... but often had difficulty with things like timed challenges and mystery ingredient challenges. In other words, the reality show competition aspects of the show that would have little to no impact on an actual cooking show. Also often the last two or three competitors are often equally good and worthy of pilots... but because it's a competition show, only one actually gets a pilot (while the others may or may not be quietly given different "auditions" on the network at a later date). Any chef eliminated because of the "contest" part of the show feels like a lost opportunity.
• The Woobie: Alicia of Season 7.