Feed the Beast (2016)

But Schwimmer does his best TV work yet in Feed the Beast, breaking viewers’ hearts just as Tommy’s has been broken. His pain reaches out and grabs us, and we root for him to find a way to go on.

Jacob's performance as TJ may be line-free, but it's also subtle in a way that much of Feed the Beast isn't. He and Doman turn out to have a curious chemistry, and their scenes together were among the few that left me hungry for more.

Where Bourdain and Melville go to painstaking lengths to describe the addictions, hardships, and unending effort that went into the toils at the center of their tales, Feed the Beast only expresses a basic admiration for the process and love for the end product, which makes [creator Clyde] Phillips's perspective feel more like that of a hungry customer than of a relentless artist in the kitchen.

The most frustrating part of Feed the Beast is that it feels like there's a promising show buried underneath all the superficial aping of other series.

Tommy and Dion want so much for their lives and for their dreams of Thirio, but making it happen is a messy and scattered process. The same is true of Feed the Beast.

Its attempts to explore the motivations of a trouble-prone, hot-shot chef while mixing in observations about the persistence of organized crime in New York, and meditations on the grief process, all lack originality and bite.

It turns out that having your teeth pulled is a better metaphor for what it’s like to watch Feed the Beast than anything to do with fine food.