There were many irritating things about the food movement of the 2010s, a movement to which there has now been a backlash and a backlash to the backlash. There was the projection of Berkeley grocery options onto the rest of a very large country with different growing seasons and available ingredients. ‘Eat seasonally’ is fun advice in California but a joke in for example the Northeast, when you’re left with a turnip. There was the xenophobia inherent in the insistence that you should avoid, as if poisonous, any ingredients you weren’t familiar with. All that stuff about what your great-grandmother considered food.
In some pathetic way I think "bad cook" was some kind of substitute for a personality when it came to sitcom writers. There are far more "terrible cook" women than seem plausible (Daphne in Frasier was another one, yet they also somehow expected her to do it, despite being a physical therapist?). A burnt rib roast coming out of the oven is just an easy punchline.
I think the Meldrews were lower middle class, the few knocks against her social aspiration are quite cruel (the episode where they're invited - she thinks - to a dinner party, but it turns out she's been hired as the caterer).
In some pathetic way I think "bad cook" was some kind of substitute for a personality when it came to sitcom writers. There are far more "terrible cook" women than seem plausible (Daphne in Frasier was another one, yet they also somehow expected her to do it, despite being a physical therapist?). A burnt rib roast coming out of the oven is just an easy punchline.
I think the Meldrews were lower middle class, the few knocks against her social aspiration are quite cruel (the episode where they're invited - she thinks - to a dinner party, but it turns out she's been hired as the caterer).