The first time I heard RuPaul’s voice introduce the Tiny Chef cooking show, starring a Gumbi-like green fur-ball that slobbers over his words like a St. Bernard chewing baseballs, I knew it was going to be something special. Less than three years and 41 episodes later it’s been unexpectedly canceled by Nickelodeon, and one of the most emotionally gut-punching viral pieces of animation I’ve ever seen is not how I expected to find out.
I know Tiny Chef mostly through my kids who watch older episodes streaming online. A riff on both cooking shows and late night talk show hosts, it’s a bit like foodie’s equivalent of Reading Rainbow presented in a stop-motion style with a Wes Anderson-like sensibility. It educates kids on the basics of how the food they put in their bodies is grown and prepared. Maybe they learn a greater appreciation for cooking. At the very least they aren’t rotting their brains on algorithmic YouTube garbage.
So like most people, including those who watch Tiny Chef, I stumbled upon its cancellation announcement completely by accident when a now-viral short of the titular character getting the bad news directly from the execs at Nickelodeon popped into one of my social feeds. “Tiny Chef needs your help,” reads the title of a YouTube video uploaded on June 24. In it, Tiny Chef is humming to himself and dusting his room when the news gets broken to him that the show is finished. “But I have ideas that will blow your mind,” he adorably lisps into the phone.
Instead of getting angry and blowing up he finally says, “I understand,” and tries to go back to cleaning before breaking down and sitting on his bed with his head in his hands. It’s crushing. “That little attempt to straighten himself out and then get back to what he was doing only to immediately break down...that’s REAL grief right there,” reads one of the top YouTube comments. “I didn’t know about this show until 10 minutes ago,” reads another. “But the depiction of the chef trying to be strong while this clearly gets to him is something I can relate to a lot and that clearly the creators understand very well.”
“Tiny Chef and the team need your help now more than ever!” reads a call for donations on the show’s website. “Many of you have said that you would die for Tiny Chef, we don’t need all that (!!!) but we do need crowd funding to keep going.” The creators have asked people to subscribe to the YouTube channel as well. It’s unclear at this point if the plan is to keep producing new episodes independently or try to demonstrate enough support so that one of the streaming services orders new episodes.
The show was created by animator Rachel Larsen, co-creators Adam Reid and Ozlem Akturk, and counts Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars fame as one of its producers and most frequent guest star. It’s the kind of kids’ programming that seems like a perfect fit for Disney or Apple. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment took an equity stake in Tiny Chef back in 2019, so I’m sure it will find its feet.
.