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Cooking With Steve is an American Comedy Cooking television series created by writer and director Antonios Brackston, under his LM Industries Productions label. Brackston served as an executive producer, along with Baird Redwash. The series is set in the year 2017, and centers on the various recipes created by the eponymous character, Steve. Unusually for a cooking show, Steve is not a particularly excellent cook or actor, and often finds himself in bizarre situations during the show.

Throughout the season, Steve attempts to cook a variety of meals from different cultures, usually with varying success. The show breaks conventions by allowing Steve to directly address the cameraman and crew, as well as the audience, on topics not necessarily related to cooking. Steve's most dangerous actions are mitigated by the presence of Gabe, a young man living in the house whom Steve believes to be his son. Gabe rarely speaks except to better understand the circumstances he is needed to avert.

Cooking With Steve premiered in the U.S. on the Silver Swan network on September 20, 2002. By mid-December, Cooking With Steve had averaged 4.7 million viewers per episode and was 98th in Psych ratings. It was canceled after eleven of the fourteen produced episodes were aired. The immediate outburst from fans led to the creation of a feature-length film, The Legend of Steve's Team, which began the creation of a cinematic universe widely referred to as the VCU (Viola Cinematic Universe).

Unusually for such a popular show, few DVDs were ever released, and it remains difficult to find an edition of the original 14 episodes.

Backstory
As is later discussed in other parts of the VCU, the world Steve is living and cooking in is actually embroiled in a vast political conspiracy. There is also an ancient prophecy referring to the idea of a "Great Destroyer", a role which Steve appears to have unexpectedly filled. The presence of Gabe, secretly a millennia-old vampire sent to stop the Great Destroyer, is thus explained.

Synopsis
The show takes its name from the main character, Steve. He proceeds to cook a variety of recipes, of which only a few are successful. Throughout each episode he distractedly converses with the audience and film crew, frequently performing a cooking faux pas due to his distraction. Some examples include storing fresh milk in an oven rather than the refrigerator, using non-heatproof plastic spatulas on hot pans, putting tinfoil in the microwave, and turning on a teakettle with no water in it. Every five to ten minutes Gabe appears in the kitchen to avert whichever impending disaster is present in the room. At times he appears with a hose or fire extinguisher.

Despite the series being considered a cooking show, Steve is rarely successful in making something edible. His meals usually end up scorched, smoking, full of carcinogens and melted silicon, and sometimes inexplicably uncooked. Furthermore, though the stated runtime of the show is 44 minutes, it frequently ends early or has extended pauses due to damage the kitchen has undergone. At times Steve or one of the crew members has to be taken to the hospital midshow. As a result, the kitchen and shooting space slowly deteriorates as the season continues, until by the end of the thirteenth episode the kitchen has, in fact, burned down. The final episode is shot in the burnt husk of the kitchen, which somehow yet manages to function and possess access to electricity and heat.

Steve professes to be a former professional musician, and frequently sings operatically during the show. This rumor has not been substantiated by any source within the VCU. He also believes Gabe to be his son, raising questions about his marital life (and sanity), but that is later disproved by The Prophecy of Steven.

At times, Steve has guest hosts. These hosts are usually young chefs or actors who have little to no idea why they are involved with the show and rarely finish the episode without some form of bodily harm, though it is usually less severe than that which Steve and the crew undergoes.

The show is sponsored by several companies, including CelloThongTM and Cooking With Floyd.

Signature show elements
The show blends elements from a wide variety of genres, making referential use of comedy, cooking shows, and reality television. The unique concept of a cooking show where the main character is thoroughly unable to cook, or even to function in human society, has never fully been explained, but it gives Cooking With Steve an entirely unique niche in popular culture.

It is also fairly unique in the category of non-competitive cooking shows for making use of cutaway interviews, a technique that was carried over to The Legend of Steve's Team. This, combined with the ambiguity surrounding time and location, lead to a show with a strange timeline that blurs the line between reality and fiction. The show features a variety of expressions and slang, such as "snarkphone", that are not used in common parlance or contemporary culture. Though some phrases have been extended to the rest of the VCU, it is unclear whether or not they are an accepted part of the canon culture or simply a result of Steve's inconsistencies. It also makes use of a strange kind of direct address in which Steve has one-sided dialogues with the ever-silent Cameraman and crew. This is particularly remarkable because, no matter what disaster is currently occurring, the Cameraman never actually speaks to alert Steve to the danger.

Though they are not present in the original series, later additions to the VCU also incorporate elements of adventure, science fiction, horror, fantasy, disaster, action, and magical realism, some of which can be retroactively applied to certain elements of Cooking With Steve. Critics have argued strenuously about whether or not these elements were, in fact, hinted at during Cooking With Steve, but the original creators (who remain unknown) have not put forth an answer.

The director once pointed out a scene that articulated the strange, "too-true-to-be-real" vibe of the show exceptionally well. He references a moment in the pilot where Gabe enters the room while Steve is giving incomprehensible life advice to the Cameraman. He proceeds to turn a fire extinguisher on the stove, where the steak Steve was sautéing has burst into flames, and then leave. When Steve finishes his life advice, he returns to cooking the extinguished steak without appearing to notice what has happened.

Main characters
Cooking With Steve had a very small cast, consisting only of the visible Steve and Gabe and the invisible, or potentially nonexistent, Cameraman. There is no ensemble, aside from the occasional crewmembers or EMTs called to the scene when a real-life danger has occurred. Several times during the season he had guest hosts, but they were not recurring characters, nor are they referenced in future episodes.

Both Steve and Gabe are present in every episode, with Steve present on-screen for most of the run-time (except when he forgets that he is cooking and on-air). Gabe appears more sparsely, entering somewhere between four and ten times per episode to salvage the situation. Guest hosts are usually visible for the entire show, even when Steve leaves, until they are endangered or scared off.


 * Steve No-Last-Name as Steve – the main character of the show and a semi-professional chef or musician, depending on the day and what he claims. He seems to be completely unable to cook or function in normal society. He spends much of his time arguing with the invisible Cameraman and offering thoroughly incomprehensible life advice to all and sundry. He believes Gabe to be his son. He appears to possess either incredible luck or bizarre supernatural abilities, as he remains completely unharmed despite repeatedly causing explosions and consuming carcinogenic or poisonous substances he has unintentionally cooked into his meals.
 * Gabriel the Ancient as Gabe – a millennia-old vampire (though this is never mentioned or explained in the show) who was sent to keep the Great Destroyer from ending the world. In the show, he is only known as Steve's son, though one of the few times he speaks he disavows this fact. He is generally silent and appears to have an uncanny knack for knowing when something is going to go terribly wrong. He appears in the kitchen with whatever equipment he needs to avert the oncoming crisis. On several occasions, Steve has opened the wrong cabinet to find Gabe curled up inside, shaking his head at him. Gabe has also appeared outside the kitchen window, and at times leaned in with a hose to put out a fire.
 * The Cameraman as The Cameraman – a character who is controversial due to some ambiguity about his actual existence. Steve frequently addresses him, but due to the fact that the camera does not, in fact, move, and that the Cameraman never actually replies to or acknowledges Steve or Gabe, might suggest that he is not actually real.
 * Becca B. as Becca – one of Steve's three guest hosts, apparently a child spelling bee prodigy who cannot understand where she is or what she is doing there. She does not seem to understand Steve and, as a kind of defense mechanism, begins listing a series of words that begin with B about ten minutes into the episode, though she runs out a few minutes later and begins reading off a list on her phone. Later on in that episode she flees the kitchen pursued by a wave of boiling oil.
 * Emily L. as Emily – a fairly young refrigerator technician who was sent to the house to repair Steve's semi-functional kitchen appliances. She quickly pronounces them broken, yet somehow perfectly fine, and in the process is swept into guest hosting. She and Steve jointly get somewhat electrocuted, though they are rushed to the hospital and Emily later returns in The Legend of Steve's Team. The electrocution also gives her a genius-level IQ when it comes to technology, which is revealed in The Legend of Steve's Team.

Recurring characters
Despite the series' short run, at least one recurring character emerged from the inhabitants of the Cooking With Steve universe:
 * Some Dude as The EMT – a local EMT who unintentionally finds himself on the show repeatedly, as he is usually the first responder in an emergency.

Episodes
The Legend of Steve's Team is a 2005 American comedy adventure film written and directed by Antonios Brackston. It is a continuation of Brackston's short-lived 2002 Silver Swan television series Cooking With Steve and stars a significantly expanded version of the same cast, taking place after the events of the final episode. Set in 2018, The Legend of Steve's Team is the story of Steve and his makeshift exploration team as they delve into the jungle in search of treasure, unwittingly reawakening a dormant political intrigue and discovering an ongoing threat to the world's safety.

The film stars Steve, Reid, Jackson, Phil, and Jon. It was released in North America on September 30, 2005 by Silver Swan Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews and won several awards, including the Oguh Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, the Iapetus Special Award and the Bolas Award for Best Script, but underperformed at the box office.

Plot
Since his final appearance on Cooking With Steve, Steve has traveled around seeking out an eccentric group of people to form his "team" in search of a mysterious treasure. The team contains Sam the Other Bassist (who mostly provides comic relief), Naomi (who is later revealed to be a sleeper agent sent by Phil, but who has a change of heart and helps Steve), Emily (an IT genius thanks to being partially electrocuted by Steve who questions the intelligence of the rest of the team), Reid (a highly trained former spy or operative whose past is unclear, but who generally leads the team forward), and Jackson (Reid's sidekick, who appears to have been from the same shadow organization before it was disbanded). They face off against multiple other "teams", including the masked allies of the fearsome and revenge-obsessed cyborg Phil.

The film opens as Steve's team touches down in an undisclosed location, a town surrounded by jungle. Upon landing, Naomi (their local contact) appears to take them to an exploration base camp just outside of town. Through a series of flashbacks, we see each member join the team, for reasons ranging from Steve's contacting the refrigerator repair company and tracking down Emily to his posting a newspaper ad with sheet music that reads like nonsense in a special code, thus attracting the attention of the two former Violists.

At base camp, they encounter Nathan's team for the first time. Reid and the others are surprised to find that multiple other groups have arrived in search of the same mysterious treasure. Nathan's team, which consists primarily of scholars speaking in a range of bizarre accents, view the entire thing like a sporting event. Shortly afterward, Jon's team arrives, bringing with them a sort of bumbling good humor. None of them seem remotely equipped to handle harsh exploration, and Reid is confident that they will be able to earn victory. The team sets out early the next morning on the first part of their quest, and narrowly survives a series of complex traps throughout the jungle until they reach the ruins where a "key" is supposed to hide. Upon reaching their destination, however, they are beset by a group of attackers in masks. Reid and Jackson reveal their combat prowess as they fight off the masked men, only to find that the key has been snatched by a strangely familiar hooded figure. Nathan's team arrives soon after, with Jon's bumbling along behind. To the surprise of Steve's Team, there have been no casualties in any of the groups. Each team makes a separate camp and awaits the next day, discouraged. Gabe's team, hitherto unnoticed, appears several times to perform elaborate techniques that stop Steve from successfully cooking anything for dinner. Steve examines the onion more carefully, accidentally convincing his team that he is depressed as he cries in a corner. Reid and Jackson express concern at the familiarity of their fight earlier that day, and resolve to consider using lethal force in the future.

The second key, as expressed by the map, is located underground. Steve's team once again arrives first, narrowly escaping the traps, and encounters the masked men and their hooded tracker. The team's actual leader makes himself known as his soldiers surround the intrepid members of Steve's team. He is a cyborg named Phil, who has previously fought and lost to Reid and Jackson. Furious, they attempt to attack him, but are nearly overpowered and forced to flee. Sam the Other Bassist sacrifices himself to set off a trap, thus stalling Phil's team and allowing Reid and Jackson to take their remaining teammates to safety. Jon's team takes care of the injured and traumatized teams, earning him the nickname "The Angel". Nathan's team stumbles back, their numbers halved after a remarkably unsuccessful run at "the lock". Gabe's team appears again, once again only to stop Steve from cooking.

The next day, Reid and Jackson arm themselves and attempt to go alone back into the woods. The rest of the team awakens after and pursues, but without their trackers they have a difficult time of it. Gabe's team appears repeatedly to stop Steve accidentally killing them all. Meanwhile, at the lock, Reid and Jackson confront Phil again. They defeat a large group of his minions, but his hooded tracker reveals herself to be Leap, a former ally of the two who is now working for Phil. They fight her, but are so distraught at her betrayal that they are unable to beat her. Meanwhile, the traumatized remnants of Nathan's team band together with Steve and his crew to traverse the traps, but are ultimately unable to go on and Steve's team must continue alone. They come up with a bizarre and excessively complex plan to save Reid and Jackson from Leap and Phil and succeed, though Phil steals the key from Jackson and manages to get through the lock, leading his team through the last swath of jungle towards the treasure. Steve's team reunites and pursues them.

At the final set of ruins, Steve's team arrives to discover Jon's team waiting for them. They reveal that they are working for Phil and that Jon's real nickname is "The Angel of Death". Jon claims that they have completely tricked them as Naomi reveals herself to be a sleeper agent for Phil, capturing Steve and the map and bringing him to Phil. However, she has had a change of heart since meeting Steve and instead betrays Jon, killing him and distracting the rest of his team so that Steve's team can enter the ruins and stop Phil. Emily stays behind to help, putting her intellect to use out-strategizing the enemies. Steve, confused, follows Reid and Jackson into the ruins.

Inside, Reid and Jackson are able to defeat Phil's remaining masked minions and once again join battle with Leap, ultimately defeating her and collapsing a roof on her. They find the treasure and Phil, pursuing him to the edge of a cliff where they fight him at last. He incapacitates them and nearly kills them but they are saved by Naomi and Emily. Phil's team gets reinforcements air-dropped in, but Steve accidentally sets off an earthquake, knocking Phil off the cliff and saving the treasure and his teammates.

The treasure is split between the remaining members of both surviving teams, and they return happily home. Steve finds new meaning in his life and returns to cooking, while Reid and Jackson feel at last safe from Phil's threat to the world. Emily starts her own refrigerator-repair business, creating refrigerators with new quantum sources of power, and Naomi vanishes into the night.