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Two holiday hours, a crowded calendar.
Season 44 skips the tournament format entirely, leaning instead on a pair of holiday-themed hours, while its eleven-month run brushes five other seasons at various points.
A rhythm worth tracking.
Thirteen episodes run from September 2019 into August 2020, including two Thanksgiving-themed hours in November rather than any tournament bracket. The season's own calendar is one of the broadest in the batch, overlapping Season 41, Season 42, Season 43, Season 45, and Season 46 at various points across its eleven-month run. None of that touches the format itself — the locked basket, three-round structure, and Ted Allen's hosting play out exactly as designed, holiday episodes included.
The #51 slot.
Slot #51 of 62 in the Chopped Editor's Canon. Season 44 doesn't lean on a tournament to distinguish itself — its one format wrinkle is a pair of Thanksgiving-themed episodes, a lighter touch than any bracket this batch has run. What keeps it below Season 38 despite that lighter wrinkle is breadth: Season 44's own eleven-month stretch touches five other seasons, one more than Season 38's four, even though none of those overlaps runs quite as total as Season 38's own containment. It's a wash between depth and breadth, and this canon has consistently favored width as the somewhat worse problem once a season is touching this many neighbors. The holiday hours are a nice touch; the calendar around them is not.
4 moments, no spoilers.
- Two Thanksgiving hours · a themed pair
A pair of Thanksgiving-titled episodes air back to back in November, built around the holiday's ingredients rather than any returning-cast tournament. Watch how lightly the theme sits on the standard structure.
- The rest of the season · the usual shape
Eleven ordinary hours carry the season everywhere else, the closed-door premise unchanged. Watch them as the tether back to the format this canon measures everywhere else.
- Basket reveal · steady through the holidays
The four-ingredient rule holds in the Thanksgiving hours exactly as it does everywhere else. Watch the reveal for that same constraint, seasonal ingredients or not.
- Season close · August 2020
Season 44 closes out in early August 2020, nearly eleven months after it began, its run touching several neighboring seasons along the way. Watch this run as a long, crowded, holiday-adjacent season.