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‘Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef’: Netflix’s Hot Dog-Eating Contest Special Was an Only-in-America Spectacle
Joey Chestnut ate 83 hot dogs to set a new record.
Netflix ’s “Unfinished Beef,” a live competitive-eating special follows in the plodding footsteps set forth by the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, the July 4 spectacular on Coney Island. But what it recalled even more vividly were the human-interest freakouts Fox aired around the turn of the century, like “Man vs. Beast” and “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” Broadcast live on Labor Day from Las Vegas, the competition between pro hot-dog eaters Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi had more than a whiff of only-in-America decadence and excess. Wings, requiring the eater to denude a bone, have a certain grotesque quality that hot dogs lack; more soothing was watching the other opening act, Leah Shutkever, aim for and succeed in a new Guinness World Record by eating mass quantities of watermelon, which she devoured like Ms. Pac-Man munching dots, cleanly and with a certain elegance.
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