There have been a million cooking competition shows, in all sorts of formats. Baking, making comfort food, cooking high-end meals… we’ve seen it all. But we can’t remember when we’ve seen a competition revolving around cocktails. After watching a new series on Netflix, we may have an idea why that is.
Opening Shot: On a lit-up bar, the camera pushes in on a drink with vapor emanating from it.
The Gist: Drink Masters is a reality competition where a dozen bartenders and mixologists compete to create memorable and unique drinks. The grand prize is $100,000. Hosted by comedian Tone Bell, he and mixology experts Julie Reiner and Frankie Solarik judge the mixologists’ creations on level of creativity, and how well they stick to the challenge. Of course, the drink also has to taste good.
Most of the contestants are true mixologists, who create artistic cocktails out of fresh ingredients, and spend as much time in kitchens developing their recipes as they do behind the bar. But there are a few home mixologists and creative bartenders among the contestants. The first challenge is to create a margarita that reflects their own style and creativity, but should also still remind the judges of the basic margarita. The contestants have 90 minutes, and they need all of it given some of the ingredients and methods they use.
The winner of the main competition gets an advantage in the next episode’s competition. The bottom three contestants participate in a 15-minute “Mix-Off”; in the first episode, it’s to make their favorite cocktail that involves an element of smoke, and each contestant gets a different smoking method to use. From there, one contestant has to “call it a night” and go home.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Drink Masters very obviously follows the competition format made popular by Top Chef. Right now, there is a main challenge and the “Mix-Off,” and it does seem like the subsequent challenges does mix things up a bit; there’s an episode where the group breaks into teams of three, for instance.
Our Take: Drink Masters suffers from a volume problem. You can understand how a cooking challenge might take up 90 minutes or a couple of hours. There’s prep, there’s things that have to be made before other things are made, there’s a matter of timing to make sure things are done in the proper order and aren’t sitting around. With cocktails, it seems as if these contestants should just be measuring liquids and pouring them in a glass.
But the process these mixologists use is much more involved than that, and that certainly comes out during that initial challenge. But the problem is that it’s hard to really get into the effort the contestants put out to create these drinks. Given how complicated and involved some of these efforts are — upscale Jello shots, deconstructed three-part drinks, use of dry ice — it would be better to hear about how these contestants came up with such complex recipes instead of watching them make them.
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Bell brings some humor to the proceedings, and the show needs someone who doesn’t take this seriously; after all, we’re talking about imbibing at a swanky bar, not studying constitutional law. Reiner and Solarik are fine as judges, but their banter is stiff and what you’d expect from people who aren’t on TV all the time. Guest judges that will be used in different episodes should help that situation.
It’s not the judges’ fault, however, that the first episode drags. There needed to be something quick at the top to show just what the contest is about, or the main challenge had to be shortened in the final cut. But with twelve contestants all having to make, present and explain their drinks, it felt like the main competition was never going to end.
Sex and Skin: Sexy shots of cocktails, but that’s about it.
Parting Shot: The eliminated contestant says goodbye, and the two that are saved join the rest of the contestants as they walk off the set and close the big doors behind them.
Sleeper Star: We’ll put Lauren “LP” Paylor in this category because she sports an awesome pair of glasses.
Most Pilot-y Line: One of the contestants puts dry ice in their drink in order to give it a bubbling effect. Did this person realize that if there was any speck of it left in the glass, it could completely kill the judges?
Our Call: SKIP IT. It may take some time for viewers to get into Drink Masters; we get the feeling the show will get better once about half the contestants are eliminated. But there are too many reality competition shows out there to wait for this one to get better, and it’s not a particularly easy show to binge.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
