The air is crisp. The temperatures are dropping. It is Autumn. We look for ways to stay warm. The internet is always there for us, waiting to snuggle with our senses. Sean Evans has content on the internet and likes to entertain the senses, as well. The host of Hot Ones, produced by First We Feast, introduces a variety of sexy mainstream celebrities to the tongue-tingling excitement of 10 levels of hot sauce-coated chicken wings while he interviews them. The sixth entry into the Hot Sauce Challenge can be found here.
Ali Wong
Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning author, actor, and comic, Ali Wong is a delightful mix of mild and saucy. Speaking of saucy, thanks to host Sean Evans, we get to find out how the poised and profane professional deals with ever-increasingly intense sauces slathered on chicken wings. This is a woman who survived accidentally eating a ghost pepper. She’s not afraid of 10 spicy chicken wings. Hell, she’ll eat the cartilage and gristle before sucking the marrow for good measure. I don’t know what the frank talking Vietnamese-Chinese-American multi-talent adds to her pho to jazz it up, but if this 22-minute segment is any indication, she likes it hot. But only if it also has flavor. Evans asks great questions, sometimes surprising Wong with his knowledge about her life. For the record, she does not like white meat, the Brain Wash Café in the Tenderloin was scary, and Ninja Napalm sauce gives her “feelings.” Also, she’s fun and cute and wears big 1980s style eyeglasses.
Ariana Grande
What kind of sadist tortures the tastebuds of Glinda the Good Witch? The kind that is host Sean Evans. Vegan waif and songstress Ariana Grande plays the pastel enchantress in the new movie, Wicked. She also begged to be on Evans’ show. For 23 minutes, she engages in a charming exchange with her host in between nibbles of spicy faux chicken wings and registering a reaction. Despite her tiny bone structure, dainty ways, and claims to be “shivering, weak, and honest,” she has a cast iron stomach. The Grammy Award-winning pop-music nymph’s opinions about the sauces include “delicious,” “beautiful,” “romantic,” “it’s giving me hiccups,” “my body is like, ‘What’s this? Why?”, “my tongue… is aware,” “terrible, disgusting, horrible,” and sometimes worth continued nibbling. “I did not feel confident at all,” she confesses after proving her hot sauce studliness by going all the way and living to tell the tale.
Doja Cat
Watch this delightful 22-minute segment with headphones on or only adults in the room. The first thing Grammy Award-winning and wildly creative, often campy, fashion icon, rapper Doja Cat asks is whether she can curse. She is, she confesses “kind of a pussy,” but willing to do anything once. With her blue framed sunglasses perched on top of her blonde, shaved head, she reveals herself to be a pussy with a voracious appetite for spicy chicken wings and a weepy left eye. Despite the danger to her eye, Doja finds out she’s made of strong stuff. Her first wing results in a “Fantastic. Thank you. I’m hungry.” Her second wing results in a stronger reaction. “That’s fire! I don’t want to be a monster on camera eating these, but I might be. This shit’s good,” she declares while tearing into the meat with her fingers. Fierce, like her not “buttery smooth” raspy voice, which answers a lot of interesting questions when it’s not swearing. “Penis, pussy,” she coughs out after her ninth wing. “That’s good,” she says painfully before diving back in for more. She looks close to puking at one point but fights it off with plenty of ice water and milk. Chocolate milk is the antidote to chicken wing number 10. Declared a winner, she sketches Evans a monster doodle inspired by her Hot Ones sauce experience in between hard coughs. It’s hard to see but looks adorable.
Melissa McCarthy
The first time Academy Award-nominated actor Melissa McCarthy blows her nose on camera and it’s in front of Hot Ones host, Sean Evans, who makes sure we see it twice. When she’s not telling Evans she sympathizes with Ursula in The Little Mermaid or was weak-kneed before playing Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live, she’s eating spicy chicken wings. She’s a champ, too! Over 26 minutes, McCarthy makes it all the way, despite declaring that she has “no threshold for spicy.” With the help of ice water in a glass and in a pitcher, as well as milk in a glass and in a spray bottle, she finds she’s got more spice tolerance than she realized. She’s cute, funny, makes adorable faces, and is chubby in all the right ways. Caution: her lips are “on fire.”
Sabrina Carpenter
“Maybe I’ll come out a changed woman,” sweet-faced and totes adorb pop singer Sabrina Carpenter. She closes out her episode of Hot Ones by telling host Sean Evans that the experience of sampling 10 different chicken wings, each with a unique spice blend, was exactly what she was hoping for. She praises the ability of spicy food to open her sinuses and by minute 25 her sinuses are the clearest they’ve ever been. In between bites or during recovery, the pretty in strapless pink songstress answers questions about lyric methodology and theory. For fun, there is a Beatles Fact or Fiction test. Carpenter’s reactions to her wing sauces include “delightful,” “so good,” “lovely,” “mmmm… these are really good,” and “my tongue, my senses are starting to bubble.” She slams chocolate milkshake, cool milk, and ice water to stave off her inevitable coughing fits, drippy nose, and burning tongue, mouth, and throat. After proving her spicy chicken wing eating survival skills, the good-natured bleach-blonde visibly and audibly suffers as she creates and gifts Evans a sketch of her experience. She growls, it burns so bad. Ice cream makes it better.