Last fall, I lived in a hotel in the small college town where I teach, an admittedly strange arrangement that came with a serendipitous perk: cable TV. At the end of most days, after stocking up on ice from the machine down the hall, I would get beneath the sheets and click on QVC. If I was lucky, I got to watch the incomparable David Venable, whose most distinct trait — aside from his striking height (6 feet 6 inches) and the dulcet tones of his North Carolina drawl — is his “happy dance”: a hands-over-head, 360-degree twirl that he executes when a product especially delights him. In seemingly every moment of his cooking and housewares show, “In the Kitchen With David,” he radiates joie de vivre.
I don’t think I’m part of Venable’s target demographic. I can’t cook. I don’t like accumulating things. I appreciate when a living space feels homey, but I’m just as content in a spare room as I am in a curated one. Still, I’ve become one the many David Venable faithful. Regardless of what he’s selling, I’m watching.
Venable avoids falling into the wolfish smarm that typifies the shopping-show genre. There’s a forthrightness of approach that tells us he’s interested in more than just selling things to us. When he’s talking up a portable power station, warning us that we won’t know we’ll need it until it’s too late, he’s not being a doomer; he’s being honest. He comes off like a mindful parent cautioning a naïve child, much like my folks, who, when I was in high school, always made sure I had an extra coat and blanket in the car during Minnesota’s brutal winters, just in case my car broke down.
Like any salesperson, Venable uses scarcity as a tactic. But he doesn’t promise that any particular item will solve all your problems. Rather, he imagines a life for the viewer already brimming with warmth. Whatever he’s selling could make that full life a bit less unwieldy. You might feel compelled to buy those airtight, spillproof LocknLock storage containers, not just because they’re selling out fast, and this deal will only last tonight, but also because with Venable’s encouragement you can imagine walking to your parents’ home, holding your child’s hand, juggling a stack of gifts and laughing so hard you might drop your homemade hot-dish on your way to the front door. With LocknLock’s proprietary technology, however, you can be confident that your casserole won’t spill!
For me, “In the Kitchen With David” functions as therapeutic entertainment. Venable’s screen presence never activates anything in the realm of stress or embarrassment. Just like us, we learn, he drops dishes at home, and his kitchen goes through various states of disarray. “There’s no shame in your game if you go to the store bakery and you buy something store-bought and put it in there,” Venable will say while holding a pie-carrier with handle-lid. His nonjudgmental energy transforms solo TV-watching into a communal experience, inviting us to marvel alongside him at the quotidian: a nonstick pan or a vegetable wedger or sugar-free caramels. And he is never desperate to make a sale. Look closely as a jittery brand ambassador fumbles over his or her pitch, and you’ll see Venable’s eyes soften and a smile spread across his face. He seems to enjoy it when things don’t go as planned. For him, spills and mispronunciations are not reasons to panic but opportunities for play.
Perhaps Venable’s most impressive attribute is his sheer endurance. Tune in to the opening or final moments of a show, and Venable’s cadence and enthusiasm are identically amped despite the fact that there are no commercial breaks. For the uninitiated, the suspense of any given episode of “In the Kitchen With David” is minimal. The seasoned viewer, however, watches eagerly to see if Venable will reward the vendor with his happy dance, which has been shown to actually increase sales — QVC’s equivalent of a big play in live sports.
His nonjudgmental energy transforms solo TV-watching into a communal experience, inviting us to marvel alongside him at the quotidian.
Lately, I’ve been most entertained by the show’s quieter moments, when an everyday item or otherwise throwaway banter elicits an unexpected response from Venable. One Wednesday night in January, I tuned in to “In the Kitchen With David” and happened upon a big night: the 25th anniversary of LocknLock’s selling its storage containers on the network. “I say this not to pressure you,” Venable apprised the audience of the rate at which LocknLock was selling out. “It’s just good information.” Earlier in the broadcast, a representative from the Wisconsin wholesale food distributor Family Farms was promoting 14-ounce bacon-wrapped stuffed chicken breasts. The rep demonstrated the chicken’s succulence by squishing it with a knife until melted cheese oozed out and juices streamed down the tender white meat. Venable struggled to find the word to describe what all that juiciness meant for the viewer. He tried “renders,” as in “as the fat renders down, where does that juiciness go? Into the chicken.” But the description didn’t quite fit. The rep chimed in: “It just gets absorbed all in there.” “Absorbed … !” Venable echoed, clenching his fist as he grasped the word’s sublimity.
Sixteen minutes into a two-hour show and with still much to sell, Venable paused to revel in that word, perfect in its clarity and precision. He gave the Family Farms rep four gracious taps of approval on the shoulder, then looked past the camera, repeating softly, as if just for himself, “ ‘Absorbed’ is a good word.”
Hal Sundt is a writer from Minnesota. His first book is “Warplane: How the Military Reformers Birthed the A-10 Warthog” (Lyons Press, 2023).
