Elf On The Shelf Is Getting Its Own Food Competition Show
An Elf on the Shelf cooking show is coming to the Food Network, hosted by Selena Gomez.
Just when you thought the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike couldn’t make things worse, the Food Network has announced a new unscripted series adapting everyone’s least favorite holiday tradition. According to a write-up in ComicBook.com, a new Elf on the Shelf- themed cooking series is brewing under the working title of Elf on the Shelf: Sweet Showdown. The series is set to be hosted by Only Murders in the Building star Selena Gomez and focus on the jolly little holiday narcs as they challenge bakers from all over the world to create stunning holiday-themed foods and desserts.
As we may all know by now, the last Writers Guild strike back in 2007-2008 had a significant impact on the television landscape, forcing many networks to take a sharp pivot into unscripted reality content to avoid paying their writers a fair wage. When it was first announced at the top of the month that the WGA would be striking again for the first time in over a decade, some television fans remained optimistic for a speedy agreement between studios and streamers with their writers, while other fans feared the worst. Well, it looks like the worst is officially upon us, as the Food Network has opted to enlist the help of the Elf on the Shelf to spice up their line of holiday programming.
The Elf on the Shelf is a holiday tradition observed by millions, in which a toy elf is placed in various locations throughout the home, often moved to a new location each evening through means of covert espionage by parents and guardians, with the goal of tricking their children into believing the Elf is an ever-present force of North Pole surveillance, reporting their every move back to Santa Claus himself. The tradition was started in 2005 by then-stay-at-home mom Carol Aebersold, based on a similar Scandinavian tradition that began in the 1970s.
Sweet Showdown is set to be one of two Selena Gomez-hosted series to air this holiday season, with a currently untitled food and travel series ordered at Food Network as well. This is in addition to her previously announced HBO Max original cooking series Selena + Chef, which depicts the pop star as she dives into the cultural origins of a number of exotic dishes. While the announcement of the new Elf on the Shelf series is still quite fresh, early responses from the internet don’t seem to be very welcoming, though fans of the Food Network seem content to eat up as much of Selena Gomez as they can get.
The details regarding the structure of the Elf on the Shelf series are a bit cloudy at this time as well. Will the titular Elf be a communicative force within the series, anthropomorphized by an off-screen voice actor, or will the Elf serve as a glorified set decoration, allowing the production to focus on the food as the impish tattle-tale periodically changes location in the background of the set? For now, we’ll have to wait and find out.
