Selena Gomez’s ‘Selena + Chef’ is the quarantine comedy you’ve been dying for

Forty seconds into Selena Gomez’s quarantine cooking show,Selena + Chef(debuting on HBO Max today), she opens the door to her house, finds two perfect trendy burlap and canvas grocery bags of food, and as she picks them up to bring them inside, deadpans, “So this is what I’m burning today.”

So begins what may be the most delightful series of the quarantine—and I am as surprised as anyone.

请记住您将如何使用这次被困在家里learn a new skill？好吧，当您是明星时，您可以将这个想法卖给流网络。这消息戈麦斯（Gomez）的烹饪表演早在五月，感觉就像是娱乐业未来一些挑战的日子的预兆。生产已经关闭，恢复可能是不安全的。我们要回到1930年代的乐趣：“嘿，让我们演出！是时候修复那个旧谷仓并登台了！”考虑到大流行的抑郁症的氛围，这似乎是合适的，但谷仓的超现代扭曲是恒星的新的490万美元房屋in Encino, California, that was formerly owned by the rocker Tom Petty.

当喜剧演员Amy Schumer debuted her quarantine cooking showa week after Gomez announced her series, the fact that it was a bit of a dog’s breakfast didn’t exactly inspire confidence that Gomez could transcend the inherent limitations of both home-based production and a format that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation in its 80 years on television.

Gomez, then, was starting in a bit of a hole.

Butwhat she and her team figured out was thatSelena + Chefshould not merely be just a cooking show but also a comedy.(Curious that Schumer, a professional comedian who normally makes tens of millions a year touring and has played Madison Square Garden, did not crack this egg, but let’s leave that aside for now.) Gomez is playing the role of every enthusiastic but unskilled chef who decided to try to up their game during the last several months, and her practiced vulnerability—of the sort that helped her build her 186-million-strongInstagram following—allows her to be silly in a way that produces some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments throughout the three episodes made available to reviewers.

Gomez definitely knows it, too, as at one point in the first episode she says, “Then again, I signed up to look like a fool on HBO Max.”

Selena + Chef,then, is likeNailed It!if the host were also the only contestant (and actually more skilled in the kitchen than she lets on).

HBO Max and Gomez did several things right to makeSelena + Chef成功。首先，生产价值令人惊讶。如此之多，以至于每集开始时，戈麦斯在她的厨房里打开了4K摄像机。然后，将戈麦斯与一位大型洛杉矶厨师配对，后者正在帮助她远程提供自己的氛围，并添加了另一个可以设置戈麦斯的喜剧时刻或创造自己的人。这在厨师的第一集中变得很清楚Ludo Lefebvreappears to be aghast at Gomez’s knife set (the blades are rainbow-colored), and when Gomez actually bests him in the making of a dish.

Gomez also appears to be quarantining with her grandparents and several friends, giving her additional comic foils. When Chef Ludo instructs Gomez to test the stiffness of her whipped egg whites by turning the bowl upside down over her head, she tests it out on her grandfather. In the second episode, when she has to wrangle with a whole octopus, her girlfriends amplify the squeamishness. Finally, Gomez wisely has arranged to have the show donate $10,000 to each chef’s favorite charity, which adds a nice grace note to the whole enterprise.

Selena + Chefis not going to replace some big-budget fantasy epic that’s currently on hold in perpetuity. But for a bit of late-night comfort food—and Gomez as your game avatar in the kitchen learning how to make a French omelet or ramen—it’s delicious.