Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Seven: The Blue Team Blues


                We learned a lot about certain chefs in this episode.  Not enough to really determine who was better, per se, but enough to keep me busy mocking them.  This was a fairly plain and uneventful episode, where mistakes were made (the same mistakes we have seen many times before) and yet, to everyone’s surprise, a dinner service was completed.  Let’s jump right in.

                We start with the chefs having to wrangle a protein.  The protein was then placed into a cage that had a sign for a starch on top (potatoes, pasta, etc).  This is what the chef was tasked with cooking for that challenge.  This meant that not only did you have to try and usher your desired protein to the cage marked with your desired starch, but, as the chefs were only allowed in one at a time, you also had to hope that both your protein and starch weren’t taken by the chef ahead of you.  The blue team made quick work of getting their proteins caged and ready to go, while the red team got tripped up because apparently fat black girl is afraid of barnyard animals.  We are talking petting zoo quality animals here, pigs, goats, turkeys, chickens and ducks.  There wasn’t a large or vicious animal amongst the herd (though how awesome would that be if they had to wrangle a lion or something like that?  Hell, even a deer would have been interesting.  I would have loved to have seen a deer stand on its back legs and smack loud guy in the face with a hoof.)  I get it, some people are just irrationally scared of stuff that most people find “normal”, but that irrational fear can be rationally mocked by me if it makes you go apeshit when you watch Charlotte’s Web. 

                Despite fat black girl’s best efforts to screw everything up for her team, everyone gets their protein and heads back to the kitchen to start the cooking process.  Here, we learn that snooty stringbean two is good at giving everyone else “helpful suggestions” but apparently can’t cook goat.  Here’s one thing that I don’t understand: you are on a competition, trying to win a job based largely on your ability to cook, and yet you are cooking with ingredients you have never touched in your life?  How intelligent is that?  This is exactly what happens to snooty stringbean two, who freely admits that he has never prepared goat before, and this costs his team a victory In the challenge.  We also learn that loud guy is a total douche who thinks very highly of himself (okay, this wasn’t really news either).  The kicker in this challenge is that each team was only able to select one of each protein to go head to head.  This meant that it came down to snooty stringbean two’s goat dish against snooty stringbean one’s.  The blue team chose wrong apparently (something that snooty stringbean one had no problem reminding them of on multiple occasions). 

                So the blue team loses again, and their punishment this time is to take care of the animals in a petting zoo for the Hell’s Kitchen “family night” that will be taking place at the next dinner service.  The best part about this is that while Ramsay is telling the blue team about their punishment, he can’t keep a straight face.  It’s obviously as funny for him as it is for us.  He obviously knows that these guys are terrible and has no problem torturing them at every turn.  The blue team also takes this time to pick on snooty stringbean one a bit more.  I would almost feel sorry for the guy if it wasn’t for the fact that he is a giant douchey baby about everything.  The guy can cook, don’t get me wrong, but his attitude is just terrible, and that was even before he became the target of the blue team’s ire.

                As I mentioned, the dinner service consisted of a “family night” which meant some kid-themed entrees along with the standard fare.  The kicker tonight was that Ramsay’s family along with his assistant’s family (I’m going to call him ‘not Chef Scott’ because he is filling in for the absent chef this season) are in attendance, and are being served by the blue team (talk about rolling the dice, jeez).  The food for the kids is relatively easy stuff (burgers, pizza, etc.) it is just a matter of coordinating it so that that food comes out with the parent’s appetizers.  Both kitchens actually do a halfway decent job of this until old guy for the blue kitchen bites a big one and sends up a cold burger for (you guessed it) Ramsay’s kids.  This sends Ramsay off the deep end and I am surprised that old guy made it through the service.  While he was my favorite to win the whole thing a couple weeks ago, the fact that he can’t get through a dinner service without screwing something up makes me think that he won’t be around once the time comes to hand out the black jackets. 

The red team, led by squeaky voiced girl on the meat station does a great job and actually finishes well ahead of the blue team.  They then go over to help the blue team because, to be frank, the blue team is terrible.  Between an inability to do their damn job, and snooty stringbean one delighting in each screwup everyone else makes (seriously, he looks like a kid on Christmas morning, it’s terrible) the guys can’t do anything right.  It’s no surprise they have won only one reward and one dinner service.  This is magnified by the fact that douchey haircut grand champion tried to serve raw chicken to ‘not Chef Scott’s’ pregnant wife.  I’m not going to go into how dumb it is to serve raw chicken (it feels like I have to have that exchange every damn week) but needless to say, Ramsay is not a happy camper yet again.
  
The red team wins (obviously) so the blue team is tasked with coming up with two members for elimination.  The first choice is easy, douchey haircut grand champion goes up for trying to serve raw chicken, and generally being a mess on the meat station all night long.  He’s actually a pretty competent chef overall, but this episode he took a severe nose-dive.  This is definitely one of the worst performances I have seen from a chef that didn’t result in his immediate expulsion from the kitchen.  The second chef up for elimination is snooty stringbean one.  He has a terrible attitude in general, didn’t do much to help his team with that day’s prep, and he burned a pizza for a kid (which was his only real culinary screw-up this episode, but coupled with everything else it was magnified).  Ramsay is a little surprised by this, probably thinking that they would put old guy up for sending out a cold burger, but after contemplating it for a bit, Ramsay agrees with the blue team that snooty stringbean one is a cancer and needs to be removed.  This is a bit of a surprise only because raw chicken is usually a one-way ticket home, but there was no way that snooty stringbean one was going to change his attitude enough to stick around, much less thrive in the kitchen. 

This week, douchey haircut grand champion goes crazy and shaves his head.  This is actually not a terrible course of action in order to get a fresh start, and hopefully it helps him regain the mental aspect he needs to actually survive, but right now, the guy looks like he is spiraling out of control.  Plus, someone loses a hair in the food (which is, of course, found by a patron).  Should be fun and educational (and only mildly stomach turning – make sure you don’t eat while watching)!

See you next week! 

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