Why Reddit Is Worried About Alton Brown's Career

The last episode of "Chopped: Alton's Maniacal Baskets" aired a week ago. A bit before that, the last episode of "Good Eats: The Return" aired, and with that, as Alton Brown had previously announced on Facebook, the entire show of "Good Eats" has ended. So, some wonder, what is Alton Brown going to do now?

A conversation on Reddit began with the observation that with these shows ending so close to each other, it seems as if Alton Brown's relationship with the Food Network was over. Some were pretty fine with this. "I'm okay with that," one wrote. "I initially liked him but he just became an arrogant caricature of himself." Others pointed out that he still was filming "Quarantine Quitchen," and that he had a speaking tour lined up. "I've been watching Quarantine Quitchen religiously," chimed in a third, "and he's done with FN now and doesn't seem to like them much, too restricting maybe, but it seems he has something else in the works and he's definitely not done with television. He's alluded to an unrevealed and unnamed project a few times."

However, watching the lost episode "Quarantine Quitchen," which one can find on Daily Motion, it appears that Brown may have been anticipating a career shift. In it, Alton Brown, drink in hand, states, "I'm about to be unemployed." 

That episode of "Quarantine Quitchen" was filmed in November, which is around the time that Alton Brown also began taking to Twitter to rant. The Daily Dot reported on how on the eve of Election Night, Brown spewed a series of chaotic tweets featuring various food takes, like "CANNED FRUIT SALAD AND CHEESE WIZ WITH HERSHEY'S SYRUP AND GIN."

A week later, Eater chronicled how Brown descended into another Twitter rant, beginning with a call on the Republican Party to disavow Donald Trump along with offensive references to World War II and the Holocaust. Alton Brown has since deleted these tweets, calling them "flippant." However, these rants were incredibly public and caused notable backlash online. It's always a potential that Alton Brown's employers at Food Network took note. This could be why, at around the same time, Brown mentioned upcoming unemployment.

As one Reddit user said of Brown's "Quarantine Quitchen" episode that was deleted: "It was pretty funny to me, but I can see why FN would ask him to stop for awhile, when paired with the Twitter thing." For now, it seems you can watch new Alton Brown content on his YouTube channel, where he's still posting episodes of "Quarantine Quitchen."