Who puts potatoes in pasta!?

Apparently anyone can have a cooking show these days. I turned to The Cooking Channel to find David Rocco and his Dolce Vita. The premise is that he lives in the Italian countryside to discover rustic Italian food. My questions is, if he moved all the way to Italy to discover food why is he living as a recluse? I can't imagine you can gain much culinary knowledge about a culture by living in the woods...

He was making soups. Outside. Yes, I'll take dirt and bird poop with my broth thank you. I hate cooking shows that have such a ridiculous set. He cooks outside on a beautiful stove top but to contrast, his pots looked like someone dropped them down the stairs and then shit in them. This type of hippie/rich kid fusion boggles my mind. His set was screaming "I want to be a hipster". He was dressed in expensive clothing that made him look homeless (which I guess makes him a hipster). Now on to the food.

The soups were not appetizing. All of them were made with water and not completed broth. I'm not a huge fan of that. He also had the knife skills of a drugged housewife. He chopped in all directions and nothing was the same size. If you're on television showing people how to cook you should at least have a grasp on the basics. The last time I saw an onion so mangled was when my fiance chopped his first salad veggies with a steak knife. The likes of Robert Irvine would be disgusted. In one of his soups he put in potatoes AND pasta. Disapprove. When he was done with his final soup he decided it was so delicious he flipped the fork like a football star that just scored a touchdown. If there are potatoes and pasta in the same soup it is decidedly not a touchdown. This was all a little dramatic and arrogant for my taste. Plus, you're not supposed to be arrogant living in the Italian countryside cooking in a fancy yet rustic tent...

My rant is all done. I just can't wrap my mind around what producer thought this show was gold. I'll give it another chance due to pure curiosity.

Final unrelated thought: Carrots in a quesadillas are awful. I'm not sure why a restaurant would include just one slice of carrot in a veggie quesadilla. Another disappointing and perplexing situation.