Well,
here we are, at the end of the road.
It’s been a long, interesting journey that has gone from eager
anticipation of each new episode to kind of a hate-watch relationship (this
season’s cast was the worst) to a quiet acceptance that cataloguing this season
of madness was my solemn duty. How did
it all end? Let’s find out.
The
first thing we need to do is determine who is joining squeaky voice in the
finals. Mr. Mohawk and skinny black girl
were the last two chefs awaiting their fate.
And the chef that will be going up against squeaky voice is…skinny black
girl! Okay, a couple things about this
selection. First of all, Mr. Mohawk got
screwed, I know it and he knows it.
Ramsay does let him down easy by telling him to keep his jacket and to
keep his ears open as something will come up soon for him, but he should have
absolutely been in the final. Also, it
took me all damn season to figure out what I hate the most about skinny black
girl, but I did. She speaks in sound
bites. That’s it. She obviously knows that she’s on camera and figures
that the more blatant she speaks in sound bites, the greater her chance of
landing in the recaps. I can’t stand
that because not only does she speak in that way, but the volume is always
elevated. I will say though, that as
much as I don’t like the final two, it is fitting that it’s an all female
finale as the guys were dogshit this year (even Ramsay made a remark to that
effect).
Anyway,
if I was to handicap the competition at this point I would put squeaky voice
ahead slightly, but it’s way too close to call right now, especially when I
haven’t seen each finalist’s brigade for the final service. The next stop, as in pretty much every
season, is Las Vegas. The chefs get to
their massive hotel room and begin to devise their menu. Quite a few things happen next, and I
honestly do not remember the exact order so I’ll give you a short rundown. Ramsay’s Sous Chefs come in to help them
refine their menus, they meet the president of the hotel in Las Vegas where
Ramsay’s new restaurant will be, and they sit down with Christina, the winner of
last season’s competition for a little one-on-two question and answer period.
They
then get back to Los Angeles and settle in to work on their menus some more,
thinking that they will have some quiet time to do so. You girls are so silly. The best part is that every time something
like this happens, they both act so surprised, like they’d never seen a Hell’s
Kitchen finale before. Give me a
break. They are told to pack for another
trip and they are taken to a train station.
Here they meet their families, which is surprise number one. Skinny black girl’s mother and sister come
out to see her, while squeaky voice gets a visit from her mother and
husband. The second surprise is that
they are not there to go on a trip, they are there for their final challenge in
Hell’s Kitchen, the menu presentation.
They have to each create a hot appetizer, cold appetizer, beef, chicken
and fish dish. Each dish will be judged
head to head and then whoever has the most points at the end of the competition
will get the coveted “first pick” of the chefs.
Does
this competition ever not go down to the last dish? At this point, you rarely see a dish that is
poorly executed between the two chefs so I wouldn’t be surprised if Ramsay
requires the chefs doing the judging to draw out the process as long as possible. Either way, the result comes down to the
final dish (duh) and skinny black girl wins (to which she replies with some
sound bite). Usually at this point in
the competition, the chefs retire to Hell’s Kitchen and choose their teams,
well not this time! They have to pick
their teams in front of the audience that gathered to watch the
cooking/judging. Because skinny black
girl had first pick, she went with mixed up Cyndi, with squeaky voice picking
Mr. Mohawk with her first pick. The
picks went pretty much as you would expect with snooty stringbean one being the
last picked. I didn’t think it was
possible for his attitude to get worse, but it has. Where many chefs on here are raising their
profile considerably by showing up and working hard, I can’t see that guy as
employable at all based on his attitude.
There is even a secret surprise that Ramsay gives the finalists; the
opportunity to trade one person from their team with the other. Of course squeaky voice tries to use this on
snooty stringbean one to no avail. At
this point, I would give the odds to skinny black girl because she has the
stronger brigade, but it’s still close.
They
get to cooking and all the little hiccups you assume would be there when you
place chefs that couldn’t cut it in the opening rounds of the competition into
something much more difficult are there in spades. The finalists do a decent job of keeping
their brigades on track and they don’t get too bogged down. There was a major issue for each chef though
as skinny black girl’s team was getting behind and not responding to her
leadership. Instead of wilting, she
started barking out orders like a shorter, slightly less tan Gordon
Ramsay. Her team got back on track and finished their
service. Squeaky voice was getting shit
from snooty stringbean one (surprise, surprise) over in her kitchen and instead
of taking it, she kicked him out. I
personally think she put up with his shit longer than she should have, but the
fact that she would rather go through dinner service a man down than deal with
his shit showed me that she has the instinct to lead a kitchen. Where that good faith came in, it quickly
started to evaporate when she started losing her mind on the pass. She would keep asking for food that was
already in front of her face, or that she had just plated. That lack of organization, even with the
ability to send your weakest link packing, will not be looked upon very highly
by Ramsay when he makes his decision.
After this, it was incredibly close, and I would give the slight edge to
squeaky voice, but that might be because I don’t like skinny black girl and her
damn sound bites.
And the
winner is…skinny black girl, because of course it is, they had to get a couple
more sound bites in there before the end of the season.
Well
this was an interesting experiment. If
you have any shows on “regular” television that will be starting soon that you
want to see a recap of, let me know.
I’ll take them into consideration.
Thanks for reading and joining me on this strange adventure.
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