Netflix’s “Unfinished Beef,” a live competitive eating special, follows in the plodding footsteps of the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, Coney Island’s Fourth of July extravaganza. But what brought it to mind even more vividly were the human-interest freakouts that Fox aired at the turn of the century, like “Man vs. Beast’ and ‘Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?’ The competition between professional hot dog eaters Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi was broadcast live on Labor Day from Las Vegas and had more than a touch of decadence and excess that can only be found in America.
The special, which lasted just over an hour, built upon the 10-minute confrontation between Chestnut and Kobayashi, including short, produced packages introducing both sides to the viewer. “I like having an obscene amount of food stuffed into me. That’s what I like to do,” Chestnut told viewers as he demonstrated the exercises he performs to keep his jaw strong. (This is no small matter; Kobayashi’s career, we were told, was derailed by a jaw injury in 2007.)
Chestnut and Kobayashi have been career-long rivals in competitive eating, in which newcomers are judged on how much they can consume within a closed period; by the time they put sausages in their mouths, their mutual enmity seemed clear (if vague in origin), as did their differences in style. Chestnut, whose former style of dipping his hot dog buns in water to spread them was expressly prohibited under Netflix’s rules, seemed cheerful and unaffected — a machine, on a mission from which nothing could deter him. Kobayashi, who ultimately fell short of 17 dogs behind Chestnut, brought a defiant humanity to the match, a sense of struggle, as he rocked back and forth, urging the food to go down.
This is the latest in Netflix’s ongoing attempt to make itself a destination for live events, and – much like the recent Joe Rogan comedy special they aired, albeit for different reasons – there was something that couldn’t be ignored. watching was. That Kobayashi lost, and by a wide margin, may even somewhat overshadow the surreality of his own achievement: in 10 minutes he ate 66 hot dogs. (It was originally marked 67, but the judges, in a show of officiousness that should point to Netflix’s ridiculous, straightforward approach to the whole endeavor, subtracted a dog based on the weight of the food it left on the floor had spilled. Chestnut, meanwhile, at 83.) Both men excel at something that not only has no practical use but, if you think about it for more than five seconds, is quite obscene in a world where hunger is second to none. Both are also milking it for all it’s worth; This year, Chestnut was excluded from the Nathan’s competition, which he has won 16 times before, after accepting a sponsorship from meat-free brand Impossible Foods. On stage, he stuffed meat into his maw and wore patches on his sleeves advertising a personal wipe marketed for men to use in the bathroom. There was a certain bleak cause-and-effect logic to the ad placement.
Their excellence, such as it is, was put into context by an earlier segment, in which three Olympians, competing as a team, couldn’t eat as many chicken wings as pro eater Matt Stonie. Wings, which require the eater to bare a bone, have a certain grotesque quality that hot dogs lack; more soothing was watching the other opening act, Leah Shutkever, pursue and succeed in a new Guinness World Record by eating copious amounts of watermelon, which she devoured like Ms. Pac-Man chewed dots, neatly and with a certain elegance.
The Netflix special is lively, professional and to the point, using its fundamental professionalism to ironically emphasize how strange a chase it was. There was no real nod to the audience, no signal that those producing or presenting (Rob Riggle and Nikki Garcia, both in earnest) thought this was an odd way to spend a national holiday. At one point, deep into the 10-minute hot dog marathon, the viewer wondered: Is it the diners, or the Vegas crowd passionately cheering them on, who doesn’t get it? Or is it me?
