Bravo's Top Chef has proven to be a massive success, with many episodes themed with marketing toward specific brands like fast-food pioneer Chipotle and vacation rental site Vrbo. Season 19 of Top Chef features cross-promotion with Bravo's corporate sibling Universal Pictures for an unlikely -- and unwieldy -- crossover between the reality competition and the upcoming blockbuster Jurassic World Dominion.
Jurassic World Dominion is the long-awaited third installment of the Jurassic Park franchise revival. Jurassic World, serving as a continuation rather than a reboot of the original films, has been a box-office cash cow for Universal since the first movie premiered in 2015. Dominion is particularly anticipated because it reunites original cast members and is following in the footsteps of the first movie. With the film near its release, NBCUniversal is doing a lot of marketing -- including this very odd pairing of properties.
Top Chef Season 19 Episode 7, titled "Swallow the Competition," pits the remaining nine chefs against each other in an elemental dinosaur-themed challenge. Featuring a short video of the film's stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard explaining the upcoming challenge, and other short snippets of pre-released trailer footage for Jurassic World Dominion, the episode feels less like an installment of Top Chef and more like another extended TV ad for the imminent prehistoric blockbuster.
It's after the quickfire challenge that the integrity of the episode suffers under the massive weight of over-the-top dinosaur promotion. Although the setting of the final challenge is super cool -- the chefs served their dishes to the judges in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, surrounded by dinosaur skeletons -- the rest of the hour feels like a desperate reach to give Jurassic World extra screen time before its June 10 release.
Top Chef sprinkles small segments of the Jurassic World Dominion trailer throughout the episode, when it would have been better to show the full trailer at the start of the elimination challenge and move on. The former approach becomes distracting to Top Chef fans looking for the usual high-energy competitive cooking that the series is known for. Instead, viewers received an almost desperate, pandering attempt at marketing. NBCUniversal is probably hoping to increase box office sales as much as possible after the film has been delayed several times, but this wasn't the way to do it.
Jurassic World: Dominion is shaping up to be enormous as the final installment of the franchise. The film has some big shoes to fill but bringing back the original Jurassic Park stars and the appeal of Pratt and Howard, it has plenty for viewers to be excited about without needing to be shoehorned into other properties. Likewise, Top Chef is at its best when it stands on its own -- or if it has to integrate another brand, it's something that actually has to do with food. Putting these two franchises together didn't make either one of them better.
Top Chef airs Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.