The unlikely rise and tacky decline of Hot Ones

The hit YouTube series, in which A-list celebs answer questions while eating preposterously spicy chicken wings, was always more than just its gimmick. Louis Chilton looks at the arc of a modern internet institution

It’s a format as clever as it is stupid. A celebrity sits at a table; in front of them lies a tray of 10 hot wings, each spicier than the last. As they eat their way through the platter, they answer normal interview questions. By the end, they’re sweating, crying, chugging milk – barely able to form sentences. This is the grand humanising spectacle of Hot Ones.

Initially launched on YouTube in 2015, the hot sauce-slathered interview series hosted by Sean Evans has been nothing short of a revelation for the talk show format. While its early episodes often spotlighted obscure C-listers, with the odd big name such as Machine Gun Kelly or DJ Khaled thrown in, the format rapidly found an audience. Within a few years, Hot Ones had become the first promotional port of call for any A-lister on a press tour: everyone from Ariana Grande to Jennifer Lawrence to Will Smith has been filmed taking on the so-called Wings of Death. On the surface, Hot Ones seemed like abject internet-era gimmickry, but in a sense, it was a throwback – well-researched, quietly probing interviews, conducted one-on-one and at relative length. In its strange, sweaty way, it was rehabilitating the format that mainstream US talk shows had spent a decade slowly cheapening. There’s a reason that Netflix is reportedly in talks to release a live version of the series. But pride, like a too-spicy hot wing, usually precedes a pretty nasty fall.

Over the past couple of years, Hot Ones has, sadly, lost some of its heat. It’s not so much a full shark-jumping as a gradual slide into corporatisation. There are bigger guests, sure, but more predictable ones – and the truly memorable interviews are fewer and further between. There’s been an influx too of promotional stunts: earlier this week, Hot Ones released a clip of the CGI Marvel character Venom attempting the challenge. Recent weeks have also seen Donald Duck and Beetlejuice (not just Michael Keaton, but his character) take on the wings challenge. These are amusing ideas in principle, but one that reduces the series to its crudest gimmick, abandoning the canny human interviewing that was, underneath it all, the real reason for the show’s success. Watching Eric Andre chug hot sauce straight from the bottle and spontaneously smash crockery over his head was an experience of surreal comic beauty. There is nothing funny or spectacular about watching a CGI Venom eat CGI wings and pour CGI milk over his CGI head.

Sean Evans and a line-up of hot sauces on ‘Hot Ones' (First We Feast via YouTube)

It may be that Hot Ones is simply running out of road. The eating of hot wings is not a premise that can possibly sustain a Johnny Carson-like longevity, no matter how incisive the questions are. After you’ve watched a few dozen celebrities sweat and dither at the business end of the Scoville scale, you’ve probably seen it all. Rapidly shrinking, too, is the pool of celebrities to pluck from – at a certain point in the not-too-distant future, Evans will have interviewed more or less every A-lister who’s ever likely to agree to appear on the series. (Assuming, for instance, people like Michael Caine or Helen Mirren are a polite “no”.) Already several celebrities have appeared on it twice; the appeal of seeing someone repeat the 10-wing challenge is limited, to say the least.

But there are still pleasures to be found in Hot Ones. In April, talk-show maverick and ex-Simpsons writer Conan O’Brien orchestrated what may be the series’ best and most anarchic episode, a sly and subversive interview that devolved into absurd, grotesque physical comedy. (The episode’s parting image is that of O’Brien, ranting, filthy and with milk spilling from his mouth.)

Many fans suggested that the series should have called it quits there and then: this, surely, cannot be topped. But no. Hot Ones is too big to stop, too heavy to even slow down. The story of its rise is the story of modern entertainment: take something that’s inventive, and fun, and a little offbeat, and start piling money around it. Sooner or later, all you can see is the pile.

‘Hot Ones’ is available to stream on YouTube