Trailer available here

I do remember season one and two of Barbeque Showdown, or more accurately I remember a few of the competitors in them, and a few very specific moments like The Great Spicy Pepper Incident and the same bit of meat ending up in the fire ashes several times but that is generally where that ends.

Okay, that isn’t completely accurate. There were some absolutely delicious looking sides and I remember some moments they went really hard into the ASMR of getting up close and doing taps on crackling to test out the crunch but for season three that sort of thing seemed to fall by the wayside a bit. It felt like earlier seasons, or more specifically season two of Barbeque Showdown had a lot more creative freedom for the production team and it worked a lot better in my opinion.

Perhaps the consensus was that people just wanted to see the meat, trying to make it into something more was a waste of time, but to your average food lover and food show watcher we actually love that sort of thing *and* finding out more about the contestants. Season three seemed to be missing even that, it briefly touched upon their backgrounds of them being new to barbequing, a certain generation pit master, their heritage but nothing quite like before. Much like when you taste a plate of food somebody has cooked many times before but you can feel that the love just wasn’t in it that time around.

And I’m not sure whether it is the lack of directors direction but even a moment when Kevin Bludso had a really seemingly emotional memory come up for how some food seemed to taste just like he remembered it just didn’t seem to hit home to the audience as much as it had previously. It all felt a little swept under the carpet. And either Melissa Cookston is going a little lack lustre for her meat passion or the way the show was edited missed the mark on getting that across to the audience as well.

Based on season three’s production I would be surprised if there ends up being a season four for the Barbeque Showdown, it is usually where Netflix starts to cut ties with shows, but perhaps there will be a change in team and a new direction for how to give it a bit more mystery coming through the smoke. A very disappointing decline indeed for a show about a method of cooking I can only watch and appreciate, especially as somebody not growing up around that sort of BBQ, and we all know from trying to do certain dishes at home or going to many restaurants it takes a lot to *really do it right*.