Hell’s Kitchen Episodes Ten and Eleven: Mass Exodus

                If you’re a fan of Hell’s Kitchen, last week was a treat.  A double dose of love, Gordon Ramsay style.  If you like watching good chefs cook and genuine, good people in front of the TV camera, last week was excruciating.  This recap may be a bit longer because of the inclusion of both episodes, but bear with me, it’s a fun time had by all (except for Ramsay…naturally).

                When last we left off, Ramsay was “not done” in terms of sending people home.  He made good on his promise this week as douchey hair grand champion was sent packing.  This is tantamount to a mercy killing in my book though as that poor bastard was just floundering for the last few weeks.  I believe it all got to be too much for him and with a fresh start, in a place without the kind of intense pressure/scrutiny of a Gordon Ramsay operation, douchey hair grand champion will thrive.  I give him a lot of credit for trying to turn things around, for taking a drastic step like shaving off something that had been his trademark, just to kickstart his abilities.  It didn’t work and he got sent home…c’est la vie.

                The reward challenge this episode included making a dish that is not only delicious, but visually appealing as well.  To judge the dish, Ramsay invited back a big cheese from People Magazine.  The winning team would be featured in the magazine and the best overall dish from the winning team would also find its way into the magazine along with a spotlight on the chef who made it.  The catch here is that Ramsay was only going to choose the three best looking dishes from each team (out of five) to evaluate their taste.  The dishes all look visually appealing, except for old guy’s stuffed lobster.  I have to agree with Ramsay here, it looked like an alien, like it was going to jump up off the plate and attach to your face.  I understand what he was trying to do, and maybe that looks good in Boston, but everywhere else, it’s just silly.  In my opinion, if it’s not edible, something that large should not be on the plate.  It’s one thing to have a lobster tail with the meat attached, it’s another to serve a lobster dish in the hollowed out lobster carcass.  You’re better than that old guy; get your head in the game.

                Surprise, surprise, the girls win again.  It’s not even the guys shooting themselves in the foot this time, they straight up got out-cooked.  The only one that didn’t was Mr. Mohawk, who had the highest rated dish of the entire competition, but didn’t make it into the magazine because his team lost.  Mr. Mohawk is setting himself up as a frontrunner right now.  No one else, in either kitchen, seems to be as consistent as he is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is the last guy standing on a team full of girls.  The ultimate winner is squeaky voice as her dish is deemed the best of the three that gets put up.  She is also someone that I can see making it to the end, and if the final showdown is between her and Mr. Mohawk, I would be okay with that.  The girls head off to their reward while the guys get the “pleasure” of doing the annual dorm cleanup.  This is one of the worst punishments, and at this point I have a feeling that the chefs on this show just do stupid shit in the dorms in the hopes that their team doesn’t get stuck with the cleanup punishment.

                Speaking of that, when the guys were stripping the beds of their linens, they found half eaten cookies in one of the beds.  I’ll give you three guesses as to which of the women sleep eats…yup, you guessed it right on the first try!  They even showed a video of fat black girl doing it.  She is just everything that is wrong with humanity.  The guys finish their dirty job, and the girls come back, all made up from their photo shoot.  They look good and you can tell that the guys are paying a bit more attention to them than they normally would.  Everyone settles in to a relaxing night out of the kitchen when they get a phone call from Ramsay, telling them to come to his office as he has an announcement to make.  While Hell’s Kitchen is closed in terms of regular dinner service that night, Ramsay is opening it up for a special dinner for two tables of twelve.  They are honoring returning members of the Army and their families.  Should be easy, right?  One table of twelve for each kitchen, five total courses, with each chef taking the reins on a course.  What could go wrong?

                The dinner service is actually pretty well done, with the main issues being the fact that loud guy and old guy do not work well together, to the point that loud guy actually purposefully sabotages old guy with cold lobster for his lobster spaghetti.  That is the only real problem all night in the blue kitchen.  Over in the red kitchen however, the night starts out poorly when fat black girl decides to add more water to her pasta pot.  That’s okay in theory, but she adds cold water to the pot and then places the pasta in.  Anyone that knows anything about cooking knows that that just doesn’t work.  Not only does cold water not cook anything, but leaving pasta in there as it heats up is not good for the pasta either.  The red kitchen is falling behind (both tables of twelve need to be served together, prompting the two kitchens to need to talk to each other) and Ramsay actually has to step in and show the girls how to boil water quickly (tightly wrapping the top of the pot in aluminum foil) just so they can get the dish out on time.  Of course the fact that loud guy is a moron and is doing more harm than good to old guy’s pasta dish helps the red kitchen get their dishes out slightly ahead of the blue kitchen.  And, of course, one of the plates in the blue kitchen comes back with way underdone spaghetti.  Old guy gets on it quickly, but then loud guy sabotages him, which means that the remaining lobster spaghetti exits the kitchen around three courses too late (it does exit though, small victory!)

                The other courses go up without incident, which is nice to see, for once.  The final course is steak, which if you’ve been paying attention is no slam dunk for these chefs.  The blue kitchen handles the steak just fine, but the red kitchen, led by blonde dumbass on the steak entrée, is having even more trouble.  She needs more time, asking the blue kitchen for an additional seven minutes of time, which the blue kitchen grants her.  She then realizes the steak still won’t be done and asks the blue kitchen for five more minutes, something the guys can’t do without sending up overdone meat.  Ramsay lays into her with the usual “get your head out of your ass” speak and she eventually gets her steak out.

                Ramsay is not happy with the service though (even though by these chefs’ standards this was a success) and so each team has to nominate one person to go up.  The red team chooses fat black girl because asking for more time on steak is not nearly as rookie of a mistake as trying to boil pasta in cold water.  The best part is, fat black girl gets all upset about being put up, like she didn’t do anything wrong!  This girl is delusional, and how she is even still in the competition I don’t know.  The guys choose to put old guy up, though it was really close between him and loud guy.  Of course when loud guy hears his name come up as a possibility he flies off the handle.  I fucking hate that guy.  At elimination, when Ramsay hears of loud guy’s sabotage, he invites him up with old guy and fat black girl.  Ramsay then sends old guy home.  This sucks, and you can see that Ramsay respects old guy because we see our first handshake of the season upon elimination.  Old guy was not the best chef there, and just about every dinner service he made at least one mistake, but he was not the worst, and better yet, aside from that one blow up a couple weeks ago, he played the game with integrity and class.  You will be missed, old guy.  Please join me in pouring one out for him.  May he come back and kick ass when it’s time for the final two to choose their brigades.

                Wait, I’m at over 1400 words and that’s just the first hour?  Christ.  I told you this would take awhile.  Strap in for hour two!

                The remaining chefs head back up to the dorms to get some sleep after the elimination of old guy (pour one out!) and are rudely awoke at around 430am by Ramsay’s two assistants blaring air horns and banging on pots.  It’s fun to see people aroused from their slumber in the meanest way possible.  The only thing that was missing was having a large bucket of ice water dumped on them…maybe next week.  Everyone is summoned downstairs because it is time for the annual tradition of having the teams create their own menus.  They have a short amount of time to actually come up with the ideas for four appetizers, four entrees and two desserts, then they need to utilize all the prep time to not only prep all of the ingredients for the dishes but make samples for Ramsay to taste and judge.   This goes great for the blue team as their menu is incredibly well received by Ramsay (to the point of being a surprise to everyone).  The red team just does a piss-poor job of devising a diverse and appetizing menu.  It doesn’t help that fat black girl decided to devote all of her time to her gumbo dish and didn’t help out her teammates, but still, the blue team put together a good menu with four people, the red team should be able to as well.  Ramsay asks them to alter their dishes a bit, to make them more appealing in the short time before dinner service (he doesn’t really ask so much as demand, but to him that’s kind of like asking). 

                Because the menus are their own, there is a heightened sense of responsibility, that they should be able to get the work done quickly and up to Ramsay’s standards because they aren’t cooking someone else’s dishes this time.  Each kitchen has minor issues to deal with during service, issues that should be corrected by now but aren’t like raw food going up, cold sauces, etc.  The blue team fails miserably though.  Their entire service is fraught with raw food.  Loud guy sends up raw pork, snooty stringbean two sends up raw fish, it’s sad, and contributes to Ramsay labeling them the losing team.  It should also be noted that snooty stringbean two, after failing on multiple attempts to correctly cook fish, is sent on a timeout at the bar.  An actual timeout, with a timer and everything!  This begs the question, why have they not tried to shoehorn Ramsay’s talents into a show about a struggling daycare?  I would watch the shit out of Ramsay calling a four year old a “fucking donkey”.  The blue team is tasked with coming to a consensus as to the one person that should be going home.  While they are deliberating this, the red team is called into Ramsay’s office and is given the assignment of finding one person to switch to the blue team (as that team will be down to three members as opposed to the five on the red). 

                Everyone on the red team wants to look like a leader, so they all volunteer for this assignment.  After drawing names out of a hat it’s mixed up Cyndi that gets the boot over to the sinking blue ship.  Of course when Ramsay asks the red team if they came to a consensus, something that he required for this decision, they say no and explain that they drew a name out of a hat.  Just say yes!  Damn.  Don’t make things harder on yourself by everyone trying to look like the hero.  This pisses Ramsay off to no end because it’s clear that they cannot take direction.  This is even worse because right before that, the blue team proved that they were also incapable of the simple task of coming to a consensus.  The votes were split down the middle, two for loud guy because he is a terrible person and two for snooty stringbean two because he kept sending up crap fish.  Ramsay is pissed at this turn of events, and sends snooty stringbean two home.  At this point it is incredibly apparent that loud guy is being kept around because he is an instigator.  He is the Elise for this season (the mouthy bitch that loved to cause trouble a few years ago that somehow stayed around until nearly the end). That is the only way that he can be put up for elimination three straight times, be reviled by his teammates, lie to Ramsay about all the dishes on the menu being his idea, and still come out unscathed.  That’s not even counting the stupid alter ego he came up with for himself (which I do not care enough to remember, to tell you the truth).  Loud guy is like a cockroach, he just won’t die. 

                This week fat black girl loses her cool and someone from the past may be let back in the competition.  I don’t know what’s going on, all I do know is that reaction shots of the current chefs show them all with wide eyes, so this has to be good…right?  Please? 

                See you next week!

*Edit - If you are following along at home, please note that Hell's Kitchen looks to have moved to Thursdays at 8pm on Fox for at least the next two weeks.  I'll still update on Tuesdays just in case it moves back, but if you want to watch it yourself, please note the time change.