Report: WWE Stars on Food Network’s Dinner: Impossible 11.11.09

Posted by Ari Berenstein on 11.12.2009

World Wrestling Entertainment Superstars The Miz and Santino Marella, WWE Diva Gail Kim and announcer “Good Ol’ J.R.” Jim Ross were guests on this past week’s Dinner: Impossible cooking show that runs on Food Network. Check out the full report...

Dinner Impossible: "A Mission on the Mat"
November 11th, 2009

World Wrestling Entertainment Superstars The Miz and Santino Marella, WWE Diva Gail Kim and announcer "Good Ol' J.R." Jim Ross were guests on this past week's Dinner: Impossible cooking show that runs on Food Network.

The concept of Dinner: Impossible is really quite simple (unlike, say, a reverse battle royal). A chef de cuisine, usually Robert Irvine, is given a task to create a number of dishes to serve for a gala function. He has time limits and certain restrictions (in this case, a specific theme) to deal with as he creates the multi-course meal. Havoc usually ensues, but ultimately, dinner does get done in time.

This WWE edition of the show was taped during Summer Slam 2009 weekend in Los Angeles, California. It starts out with Chef Irvine walking into the middle of the ring that was set up for the outdoor fan access events. There he meets Stephanie McMahon (in a power blue business suit) and her special ringside enforcer for this mission briefing-The Big Show. Irvine is agog at Big Show's size and Stephanie talks up how Show is "the world's largest athlete at seven feet-four hundred pounds." Hmmm.

Stephanie instructs Robert that he has nine hours to create a full-menu for a dinner for three-hundred VIPs. As an added twist, the dishes must all be inspired by a WWE signature move or finisher. Of course, Big Show throws in a bit of intimidation thanks to his fists, and we're off and running.

Irvine meets with his trusted sous-chefs along with the aforementioned Jim Ross and The Miz, who is immediately playing up his character and is playing the arrogant, know-it-all card, albeit simplified for the cross-over audience. He is talking a mile a minute and running around all over the kitchen. He even calls himself "Chef Boy-Ar-Miz". Irvine will be trying throughout the evening to keep The Miz on track, like pulling a dog by its leash to get it to stop from running away. One of the best moments is when they are shopping for food supplies and The Miz commandeers a motorized shopping cart and drives it up and down the shopping aisles.

Irvine sets up fourteen dishes connected to moves like the Chop Block, Claw Hold and Frog Splash. Those all sound easy enough to think of connecting food items—chopped salad, a crab dish and frogs legs. However, Irvine is stumped at moves like The Pedigree, RKO and Sweet Chin Music. This leads to an awesome series of clips where The Miz and Jim Ross have to explain what these moves are and The Miz even puts Irvine into some of the move positions, including The Pedigree! This is great because it's clear that Irvine has no idea what to make of any of this, but he quickly and decisively figures out whatever dish he wants to create and tries to BS a reason it fits into the concept of a WWE finisher. What a worker!

Oh and JR makes...what else? BARBECUE SAUCE! BARBECUE SAUCE! BARBECUE SAUCE!

Meanwhile, The Miz continues to run amuck. He can't even cut a chicken into parts properly, so Irvine has to dumb down his tasks even more, slicing fish and cutting puff pastry. He does impress later on making ice cream bon-bons. This is a dish named after his move "The Skull Crushing Finale", which he smoothly suggested when Irvine needed one more dish. The Miz also cuts a promo on George the sous-chef. He discovers that George's son's favorite wrestler is Rey Mysterio. In response, he tells George to tell his son that "I'm The Miz and I'm Awesome!" You know what, for this episode, he was absolutely that.

Not soon after getting yelled at by Chef Irvine, we get a close up of The Miz cutting a promo about how he shouldn't be treated that way and that Irvine better get with the program, etcetera. Then the camera pans and we see he's talking to a baked potato with a smiley face. Yes, during this show THE MIZ CUTS A PROMO ON A BAKED POTATO. He should be voted in as 411Mania's Wrestler of the Week in a shoo-in, because if a wrestler can get votes for wrestling an inanimate object, then one should also qualify by cutting a promo on an inanimate object. This was a money promo, too.

Gail Kim arrives on the scene to service the chef. I'm sorry, to help the chef with the service.

It's more than half-way through and only two dishes have been semi-completed and the rest are either not done at all or in varying stages of construction. Not to fear though, that's always how the show goes—we are now firmly in the "heat" section and building up the tension to the comeback and the finish. Jim Ross has to leave to go do…Jim Ross things I guess. It's a bit of a downer because J.R. actually knows what he's doing. J.R.'s role here was criminally small, clearly running into the glass ceiling of the Culinary world. Quite frankly, I blame his lack of push on Chef Irvine not knowing what kind of talent he had in the kitchen. The man owns a restaurant for godsakes, use him appropriately!

Minutes later (in television time anyway), Irvine has completely forgotten about J.R.'s chicken. It's all burnt and ruined, which means if they can't find more, then he will have failed the mission.

More WWE madness as Santino Marella is in for the hot tag. He immediately steals the show by cracking eggs with an elbow. No joke, he elbow dropped the eggs. Irvine is less than enthused. However, Santino nearly marks like a school girl as Robert shows him his 24-inch Pythons. He's pretty jakked for a chef, that's for sure. Is there any room on the roster for a wrestling chef character?

Santino is given the task of braising scallops and he goes to work pretty well on them. Santino: "I am faster than fire!"

However, all is not peace and love with the WWE Superstars, as Santino mocks The Miz about sucking in the kitchen. To be fair, The Miz has worked very hard on the show so far, even if he wasn't the greatest at hacking chickens. Santino throws puff pastries and the tin into The Miz's face and IT'S ON LIKE NECK BONE (which unfortunately isn't on the menu). A chase is averted as Irvine plays peacemaker and gets all Mr. McMahon by laying down the law and telling them to get serious.

A lot of the dishes are coming together. They even manage to find more chicken and will have enough for that dish, but Irvine gets thrown a SWERVE!!!!!!!! He had an hour left, but now thirty minutes have been chopped off his time limit as V.I.P.s have arrived in advance. He is told that there are about seventy-five guests coming. He stops everyone and organizes five plates he can serve for these guests while they complete the remaining dishes. This includes the liquid Nitrogen-enabled Asian Mist drink (earlier on J.R. explained was done by "evil wrestlers", which I think means he believes all Asians are evil) and the Triple H inspired "Pedigree" dish—uh-oh, Triple H is jerking the curtain and NOT in the main event. That's gonna get Chef Irvine some heat with the wrong people!

Finally we get the big comeback as Chef Irvine's crew completes all the dishes in time. He is all smiles with The Miz, Santino and Gail Kim as the program displays the food they created. Santino shmoozes his way on the floor (a wrestler never turns down a free meal). Sampling the food, he says with a straight face: "It was an explosion of flavor in my mouth!" We also gets rave reviews from a female who was knocked out by the RKO dish (no comment), someone who looked like Mike Knox, and in one hell of a random appearance, former SNL comic DAVID KOECHNER! Or it could be Waylon Mercy, I'm not sure.

The mission has been completed successfully and the fans are going home happy. We get a wacky post script with Big Show and Chef Irvine in the ring dueling it out in a thumb war to end the show! Excellent!

This was a very entertaining hour that passed by quickly. While at times it was weird to see WWE is such an out-of-context environment, they also flourished. The Miz in particular was the star of the show. Maybe one day soon WWE will return the favor and let Chef Irvine guest-host WWE Raw. Then again, hopefully not.