Anthony Bourdains Parts Unknown Will Say Goodbye with One Final Season
This fall is going to be a bittersweet one for Anthony Bourdains devoted fans. According to the Los ..
This fall is going to be a bittersweet one for Anthony Bourdains devoted fans. According to the Los Angeles Times, CNN has enough material to create one last season of Parts Unknown—but only one episode will feel like the program longtime viewers know and love, as it was the only one completed before Bourdain killed himself in June.
That installment, then, will be the only one to feature Bourdains traditional voice-over narration; the rest will include narration from the episodes other participants. And the final two episodes of the season will abandon the usual formula all together, focusing instead on how the show was made and the indelible footprint Bourdain has left behind.
Speaking with the Times, CNNs executive vice president of talent and content, Amy Entelis, stressed the importance of Bourdains legacy—not just at the network he called home for five years, but to his fans. “People said, I was afraid to travel before I watched the show, I followed his route, I was an addict and I connected with Tony and now Im fine,” Entelis said of the responses the network received following Bourdains death. “Others were angry that hes not in the world any more. Its an incredible outpouring. A lot of people are experiencing what we are.”
Unlike previous seasons, which comprised eight to 10 episodes, Parts Unknowns final chapter will run for only seven. The first episode, which finds Bourdain traveling to Kenya with his CNN colleague W. Kamau Bell, was the only one completed before Bourdains death. Four others—set in Manhattans Lower East Side, Indonesia, Spains mountainous Asturias region, and Texass “Big Bend” area, which borders Mexico—completed filming. The directors who filmed those episodes will oversee their completion, using audio Bourdain gathered during filming as well as follow-up interviews with others involved in shooting the episodes.
The final two episodes of the season will abandon the usual format entirely: instead of focusing on a location, they will serve as a retrospective on the series itself. The penultimate episode, the Times reports, will offer fans a behind-the-scenes look at how Parts Unknown was made, complete with outtakes and interviews with Bourdains cast and crew. And the series finale will turn its lens toward, as Entelis put it, “how Tony affected the world”—with reactions from fans, as well as Bourdains friends and travel buddies, some of whom weve met on Parts Unknown over the years. Capturing Bourdains legacy will be quite a feat—but faced with the near insurmountable task, it seems CNN is prepared to honor its star as well as anyone could.
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