See that? That’s me, on the Fox version of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurateur take-down, “Kitchen Nightmares,” from 2008.

I should preface this by saying that I’m no fan of reality television, particularly as applied by Fox, whose programmers seem hell bent on reducing humanity to their base impulses by any means possible. Just compare the humanist and involved shows Ramsay made for the BBC versus the point and laugh American versions. Anyway, what drew me out was a friend of mine (Jim) whose sister had attended the previous night’s taping. And what drew me out most of all, sad to say, was that on the night she attended, Ramsay came out in an angry huff, threw down a large pot of refried beans and said that everything was free, but the kitchen was now closed for the evening. So everyone there that night got a free meal.

While reality television depresses me, fewer things get me more excited than the idea of a free meal.

Jim’s sister was at the first night of taping, and we went on the second, at her prodding and with the idea of getting a free meal. The show films three nights at each establishment, which I’m guessing is to impose some kind of three-act structure on reality where none exists. Lord knows, it’s not enough time to turn around a business in any real sense. Judging by the story shown in the broadcast episode,

The story literally begins with the line, ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’ My wife chose to stay at home, because a) it really WAS dark and stormy – an actual blizzard – and b) we’d been to the restaurant when it first opened and the food was sub-par while the service was memorably lousy. I should note here that I usually have more patience than anyone else I know with slow service, but the entire meal took something like two hours from when we first sat at the table to when we got the check, and we weren’t exactly taking our time mulling over the menu.

So, anyway: I’d been before and decided not to go back, and also dislike reality TV and vowed at some point to never appear on one if the opportunity arose. But, hey: free dinner! I brushed my hair down in front to hide the giant zit on my forehead and headed out into the storm.

Upon arrival – driving a few miles through seriously deep snow – the production team put us in a tent outside in the parking lot (heated, thankfully) and kept us out there for about half an hour while they did whatever it was they needed to do in the restaurant, and also gave us some preparatory things to watch and fill out, including, no doubt, a non-disclosure agreement that I’m sure I’m in violation of.

Eventually, we filed in and sat down, a table of about six of us, including Jim and his wife (both fans of the show) and a colleague from his school (theater director) and his colleague’s partner. The partner may have been the most dyspeptic human being I’ve ever met, and if I were editing the show, it would have just starred him. The entire arc of drama was right there – customer in bad mood has evening that goes from bad to worse. He ordered a steak which arrived much after the other food and wasn’t cooked as he ordered, then sent it back only to decide when it finally came that he didn’t want it at all.

Take it from me: silent, resentful middle-aged suburban gay man versus wrongly prepared steak is fucking genius television. Quality entertainment by any standard.

On top of that, he wouldn’t play ball with the camera team, not saying a word when them came over. It was clear he’d been dragged to the thing against his will and was determined to make it as miserable for himself as possible, which, ironically, was the most entertaining thing he could possibly do. Of course, if the director had actually decided to have customers talk directly to the camera, they could have peppered him with questions, which would have just upped the hilarity, but having been directed to pretend that we were not being filmed, he clammed up and alternated looking out the window and looking at his non-present food.

I guess the producers were more fans of the Maysles Brothers school of ‘naturalistic’ documentary filmmaking than the Errol Morris talking head.

I ended up feeling bad for the serving girl, who clearly was stressed out by the whole Ramsay Affair in the first place. Every time she went to a table to deliver or receive some bit of bad news – I overheard her tell another table in her heavily accented English that they were out of steak (turns out that steak that my tablemate had such travails with was the last in stock) – her shoulders sunk a little lower.

After all that, though, Ramsay never made an appearance in the dining room.

A few months passed, and then one week, Jim’s students kept coming up to him and telling him they’d seen him on a commercial (probably during ‘Family Guy’), which is how we knew the episode was going to air. Jim did end up in the commercials, pulling a face edited in response to Ramsay coming out of the kitchen and throwing down that pot of nasty-looking frijoles refritos and telling everyone dinner was free – which, again, happened on the night we weren’t there. But when the final episode aired, I was the only one at the table to be in the broadcast.

My claim to fame? “I’ll have the beef enchiladas.”

Oh, and guess what? Dinner was not free. Dinner was actually more expensive than the usual middle-of-the-road Mexican place, and I think I paid $35 altogether for the privilege of eating food that remained mediocre and still took way too long to arrive, while being filmed doing it. For those keeping score, that means that I violated two mildly-held principles – appearing on reality TV and eating at that particular restaurant again – and got to pay for it, too.

The restaurant itself limped along until the episode aired, lingered for a few more months, then finally closed. Not sure what that says about the Ramsay method in action. Apparently yelling at someone for a couple of days and buying them a new sign and awning doesn’t magically make a business come alive.

Who knew?