Is Hot Ones, dare I say it, losing its sauce?
On Thursday, Jennifer Lawrence made a press stop at First We Feast’s popular YouTube series, to promote her new sex comedy No Hard Feelings. The sitdown/supper with host Sean Evans felt like it was years in the making, given that a show about junk food—which Lawrence has infamously discussed ad nauseum—is ideally suited for her. Yet over the course of its 23 minutes, I couldn’t help but wonder why this episode, despite the actress’ down-to-clown energy, was ultimately disappointing.
Let me start by saying that this conversation, like in most Hot Ones episodes, is perfectly well-produced and occasionally funny. Among other topics, Lawrence talks about the time she had to act next to Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep in the 2021 film Don’t Look Up with a missing tooth. She starts quasi-sobbing in a way that makes Evans and the off-screen audience burst into giggles. She’s also wearing a very cute, Blair Waldorf-esque ensemble.
As he does with Lawrence, Evans is routinely great at asking actors about their artistic processes—questions that they aren’t going to hear from, say, Jimmy Fallon, who’s too busy cackling at the air. (It says a lot that the late-night host hijacked Hot Ones for his own show.) Evans, on the other hand, loves to bombard his guests with years-old factoids and on-set stories that you remember having read 10 years ago. And he’s almost always complimented for doing his research (if he’s even the one doing it) or posing unique questions.
But I realized, while watching Lawrence’s episode, that this show has a built-in dilemma with its premise that it can’t really do anything to fix—unless they start making celebrities eat bugs or something (which Nicole Kidman is down to do). The problem is that the actual eating of spicy wings will always be the most crucial part of Hot Ones, hence the title.
This means the show has become all too predictable and even tedious to watch. Despite how inherently charming some of its guests are, the novelty of watching celebrities a) eat junk food on-camera and b) lose all control of their physically perfected, expensively dressed bodies is slowly starting to wear off. Besides, there are only two routes for guests to go: remain calm and collected or completely lose it around the fourth or fifth taste test. At this point, I spend most of each episode waiting for them to arrive at the hottest wing, hoping for a tearful reaction or, God willing, a large burp.
In the current era of Hot Ones, eight years after the show premiered, the guests are also way too primed for these moments. In the latest episode, Lawrence casually mentions that she watches the show regularly. She also mimics Lorde during her Hot Ones episode, where she remained eerily chill and was mostly preoccupied with the flavor of the wings. Generally, Lawrence seems aware of where Evans is taking her on every stop—not that it’s that particularly hard to follow along. But she’s clearly memorized the drill and doesn’t need Evans to guide or support her. The same occurred with Very Online foodie Florence Pugh, who said she was a fan in her recent episode. And when Jake Gyllenhaal, who’s never not doing the most in interviews, sat down across from Evans in April, he came ready to put on a show.
Before Hot Ones started booking Oscar-winning thespians, celebrities seemed a lot more skeptical and genuinely nervous about appearing on a low-budget web show, constantly looking off-screen at their team in a panic. One of the best examples of this is the episode with Tyra Banks, who mentions that she watched Kevin Hart’s famously dramatic episode but still wasn’t sure whether he was just putting on a performance as a comedian or actually in pain.
The former-supermodel’s episode, from 2018, is mostly funny and chaotic because she’s funny and chaotic. During “The Last Dab,” she breaks out into one of her terrible raps. At one point, she walks offstage and even stands behind the camera, to ask Evans and his producer questions (about herself, of course). But overall, she seems genuinely surprised and hilariously terrified by the experience. In his 2018 episode, Shaquille O’Neal, whose body has obviously been through worse, is similarly shaken and astonished by the intensity of the wings. (He also has a gallon of milk beside him, which is the funniest part.)
In the show’s early stages, guests didn’t even have to be suffering in agony to deliver a good episode—maybe because there were fewer expectations of where the episodes would land beyond YouTube. Mac DeMarco approached his episode like another one of his daredevil activities onstage and managed to be casually funny. In his first appearance, Eric Andre also handled his wings pretty well but, of course, added his grumpy-old-man commentary. The feeling that you were watching two compelling strangers go on a surreal, potentially dangerous blind date was enough to make an episode entertaining.
Now, the intimidation factor and quirkiness of Hot Ones is almost completely gone. And everyone on the show is, first and foremost, giving a performance. Guests know that, even if they end the interview covered in tears and snot, there’s a good chance they’ll be turned into a funny meme on Twitter. The stakes need to be raised somehow. Or maybe Evans should start interviewing people who are less experienced in front of a camera. All I know is, right now, the show is losing its unorthodox charm.
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