Netflix’s “Unfinished Beef,” a live eating competition, follows the slow pace of Nathan’s annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest on Coney Island. But what the show most vividly recalls are the early 20th-century Fox scandals, like “Man vs. Beast” and “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” The contest between professional hot dog eaters Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi, broadcast live on Labor Day from Las Vegas, was more than just a whiff of decadence and overindulgence in America.
The special, which ran just over an hour, featured a 10-minute confrontation between Chestnut and Kobayashi, including short, produced videos introducing the two to the viewer. “I like to eat a lot of food. That’s what I like to do,” Chestnut told viewers, as he demonstrated the exercises he does to keep his jaw strong. (No small feat; we’re told Kobayashi’s career was derailed by a jaw injury in 2007.)
Chestnut and Kobayashi have long been rivals in the competitive eating game, where participants are judged on how much they can eat in a closed time period; by the time they’re stuffing hot dogs into their mouths, their mutual animosity is clear (if murky in origin), as are their differences in style. Chestnut, whose previous method of dipping hot dog buns in water to lubricate them was expressly forbidden by Netflix’s rules, seemed cheerful and unaffected—a machine, on a mission that nothing could dissuade him from. Kobayashi, who finished 17 dogs behind Chestnut, brought a hard humanity to the contest, a sense of struggle as he rocked back and forth, prodding the food down.
This is the latest in Netflix’s ongoing efforts to position itself as a live-action destination, and as with Joe Rogan’s recent comedy special, albeit for different reasons, there’s an unmistakeable quality to it all. That Kobayashi lost, and by a wide margin, may somewhat overshadow the surrealism of even his own accomplishment—in 10 minutes, he ate 66 hot dogs. (It was originally rated 67, but the judges, in a show of swagger that should indicate Netflix’s naive approach to the whole endeavor, disqualified one dog based on the weight of the food he dropped on the floor. Chestnut, meanwhile, ate 83.) Both men excel at something that is not only of practical use, but, if you stop and think about it for more than five seconds, is somewhat obscene in a world where hunger is unquenchable. They also exploit it for all it’s worth; This year, Chestnut was banned from the Nathan’s competition, which he had won 16 times before, after accepting a sponsorship from the meat-free brand Impossible Foods. On stage, he stuffed his mouth with meat, and wore a patch on his sleeve advertising a personal tissue marketed to men for bathroom use. There was a certain dark logic to the placement of the ad.
Their excellence was put into context by an earlier clip, in which three Olympic athletes, competing as a team, could not eat as many chicken wings as professional Matt Stoney. Wings, which require the eater to remove the bones, have a certain quirkiness that hot dogs lack; it was even more chilling to watch the other opening act, Leah Shutkefer, attempt to set a new Guinness World Record by eating a huge amount of watermelon, which she devoured like a Pac-Man chewing dots, cleanly and with a certain elegance.
The Netflix special, which was fast, professional, and straightforward, used its basic professionalism to playfully underscore how bizarre the endeavor it depicted was. There was no real indication of the audience, nor any indication that the producers or hosts (Rob Riggle and Nikki Garcia, both seriously) thought this was a weird way to spend a national holiday. The viewer was left, at one point during the 10-minute hot dog marathon, wondering—were they the hot dog eaters, or the Las Vegas crowd cheering them on, who doesn’t get it? Or me?
