Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Four: Have Some More Fried Chicken


             First things first, there are two aspects of this season that have gone without discussion that I think need to be addressed.

            Number one:  The opening credits sequence.  Every season, there is some kind of goofy montage of the different contestants put in a computer-generated situation.  Just off the top of my head, a couple themes have been: a circus, Las Vegas and Gulliver’s Travels.  This season…it’s the Transformers (or at least transforming robots, they aren’t foolish enough to show Bumblebee flipping a hamburger for copyright reasons).  Each credits sequence is goofy and campy, but this is probably the first one where I have really had reason to stand up and take notice, not only of the poor job that was done with this animation (creating cgi robots has got to be incredibly difficult if you want them to look good) but also the fact that they could have probably timed it to be around the release of a Transformers movie to maximize exposure, so they painfully missed the boat on that front.

            Number Two:  We have the douchey hair grand champion.  One of the guys has side burns.  No, side burns aren’t bad, what is bad, is that the interiors of his sideburns are shaved, leaving an outline of sideburns.  A fucking outline!?  Are you kidding me!?  That takes the taco.  As Bugs Bunny would say: “What an ultra-maroon”.

            Okay, now that I got that off my chest, on to the actual episode, which featured a challenge that I don’t remember ever seeing before in Hell’s Kitchen:  Guess the Protein!  A group of two had to taste a dish and determine what the protein was in said dish.  There were five dishes, and while some were difficult (fried swordfish in a batter being the one that would stump me the most I think) the guys got tripped up on the very first dish, turkey meatballs.  I realize that a tomato sauce could mask some of the flavor, but come on.  To accrue that much time to figure out turkey meatballs?  Needless to say, the guys lost again.  They are bad at this.  Though I have to say, the old guy was able to identify a protein by just looking at it.  The individuals that didn’t taste got to stand behind the tasters and either yell encouragement or help out by yelling out ideas.  Old guy guessed one of the proteins (I think it was the duck enchilada) by just looking.  He’s definitely my favorite to win the competition at this point. 

            So the girls won time in a beach house to hang out, drink champagne and soak up the rays.  Oh and they also got volleyball and paddle-board lessons from a couple pros in their respective fields.  It just looked like an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos to see the chubby girls unable to keep their balance on the board.  To be fair, I wouldn’t even attempt that, but they did, they fell, and I laughed.

            The punishment for the guys was probably one of the worst that I have seen in a long time.  They had to make bread.  Not bad in and of itself, but they had to actually mill the grain to make the bread.  By mill the grain, I mean mortar and pestle, grind that shit down kind of milling.  All by hand!  God knows how much sweat dripped off those guys into that flour.  To make matters worse, chubby guy that has shown he is completely incompetent up to this point in the competition, was grinding away and just collapsed, putting his head down on the table, unable to continue.  He complained of dizziness and a headache before hitting us with the news that he is a former stroke victim.  Let me clarify this a bit.  The guy is twenty-two years old.  Twenty-Two!!!  What kind of lifestyle do you have to lead to ensure that you are a former stroke victim at twenty-two?  Not only that, but you are a former stroke victim that has decided to enter a competition that is almost guaranteed to raise your blood-pressure even without a pre-existing condition?  At this point, in my mind at least, he deserves whatever he gets.  Needless to say, he gets taken away to the hospital by the paramedics and does not return until much later.  Once he does return, he doesn’t bother to help finish prep either.  We learn that the reason he collapsed is that he was not eating enough.  Not…eating…enough.  Let that sink in for a moment when you see a 300+ pound guy who is apparently told by the doctor that he should eat more.  Who the fuck is this guy’s doctor?  Even if this was the case, he heads upstairs to the dorms, complaining about still being hungry.  Does he grab a piece of fruit, or make a nice healthy stir-fry, since, you know, at this point he is an hour removed from the hospital?  Nope.  Fried chicken is his meal of choice. 

            Of course, we are then treated to the irony of fat black girl complaining about chubby guy eating all the food.  Yup, that’s the pot calling the kettle…well, you know.

            Just when we thought that the punishment for the guys was over, they are awoken extremely early in the morning to bake all of the bread that they had to make the previous day.  This was a terrible punishment, and I have a feeling if they don’t start winning rewards soon, chubby guy is going to start pan-frying teammates.  The guys finish baking the bread and head up to the dorms to get a couple more hours of shut-eye before they have to get back to work. 

            Of course they are then awoken by Ramsay not half an hour later.  He has a surprise for both teams as their dinner service for that day is now a breakfast service.  They have to serve breakfast to a bunch of nurses, doctors and EMTs.  For all of the horrors that Ramsay puts the contestants through, he is incredibly consistent, on all of his shows, in terms of involving and paying tribute to individuals that deserve it, medical professionals, soldiers, etc.  It would be easy to fill up the restaurant with celebrities and athletes and whatnot, but he goes out of his way to involve those that should be getting a good meal based on what they do for others. 

            So now we have a group of chefs, barely awake, trying to make breakfast.  Hilarity ensues.  We get chubby guy standing around just holding plates of eggs benedict.  Just standing there.  He then takes a dish up to Ramsay that happens to be the sample dish that Ramsay made to show how he wanted the scrambled eggs dish plated.  By this point in the service, that dish is over an hour old.  I think chubby guy is having another stroke as we are watching him.  On the red side of the kitchen, everything is going along ok until fat black girl can’t get out of her own way.  She is having an incredibly hard time making eggs bendict, and when she tries to help unbury the girl on the pancake station, she screws that up too.  I know I gave some of the contestants shit for not being able to cook scallops correctly, but now we are faced with pancakes.  Really?  You can’t cook pancakes without burning the shit out of them?  If this is the level of skill of the contestants that Hell’s Kitchen is getting, I could run away with the competition. 

            The guys win!  It was by a narrow margin, but sleep deprivation apparently trumps a dumbass that can’t make pancakes.  The girls have to choose two for elimination and they naturally choose the girl on the pancake station (the same girl that tried to serve raw chicken last episode) and squeaky voiced girl that didn’t do anything wrong this episode.  The other girl that should have gone up was fat black girl because she was terrible, but she made a huge fuss over the fact that she is a stronger chef than squeaky voiced girl and even though she can’t make eggs benedict, she should stay (and then she tried to blame the spatula for her inability to flip pancakes.  Poor spatula, couldn’t even defend himself).  I think that all of the girls were scared of her so they didn’t put her up for elimination.  She seems like the kind of girl that has a “scorched earth” policy if she gets eliminated. 

            In a twist, Ramsay sends both raw chicken and squeaky voiced girl “back in line” and says that there is someone here that is in over their head.  We then cut to fat black girl crying and…to be continued.

            At this point, my roommate said that she is happy that they are getting rid of her (meaning fat black girl).  Not so fast!  Here is how I know that it’s not fat black girl going home.  1.  For ratings purposes, the producers do everything they can to keep the loud-mouthed sassy bitches around as long as possible.  2.  In the promos for this week, she is seen cooking!  Way to go producers.  It’s not like it’s hard to miss her either.  You could mistake two or three of the guys for one another, but there is only one fat black girl.  I will bet you dollars to donuts that chubby stroke victim gets sent packing, but we won’t know until tonight as we also see old guy get into a fight (at least a verbal one) with someone (I think it’s raw chicken).  They hype it up quite a bit, but it just further illustrates that this crop of chefs is made up of downright terrible people.

            Wooo!  See you next week.

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