Hell’s Kitchen Episodes 20 & 21: All good things must come to an end, and so too shall Hell’s Kitchen

                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.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode 13: A Whole Lot of Not Much.

                We got to cross off another event from the Hell’s Kitchen checklist with this episode’s “Blind Taste Test” in which the chefs are blindfolded and then have to guess the food that is put in their mouth while Ramsay ridicules them for thinking that Brussels Sprouts is Cauliflower (that actually happened, no joke).  Before we get to that though, Ramsay quizzes the chefs on their senses (kind of as a precursor to the whole taste-test thing) and he picks guy with no nickname and mixed up Cyndi to test their sense of touch.  This involves the chefs putting their hands through a box with holes cut into it and into a bowl of a mystery food.  The foods were eggs, polenta and oysters.  I’m impressed by their tactile ability as I don’t think I would have answered correctly to any except eggs (to be fair, I’ve never touched an oyster before, so there’s that).  The blue team won with a clean sweep, three out of three!  Their prize…

…nothing.

                Yup, Ramsay pulled the old switcheroo on them.  That was all there as a setup for the blind taste-test.  Even when the guys win they can’t win.  It is therefore hilarious to see their reaction when they think they are the victors only to realize that they’ve won nothing.  On to the taste-test, where Ramsay gives them pretty standard fare in terms of food to taste.  The real comedy comes from watching Ramsay have fun at the expense of the chefs.  He’ll say the name of a food and then give a look to the un-blindfolded chefs as if to say “I could get this right with my head underwater and a pit bull (the dog, not the douchey “singer”) clamped on each nipple, and I bet you these fuckers think it’s something stupid like peas”.  Then we also get to people that are force-fed spoonfuls of food and the process they go through to determine what that food is.  Some people eat it normally, some (like loud guy) basically immerse his entire mouth in the food, almost like he’s using it as mouthwash.  It’s equal parts funny and disgusting, like when a baby shits on someone.

                You know what the best part is about the guys winning the not-quite-real challenge?  The fact that they lost the actual challenge…again!  The girls got a nice little day of relaxation and horseback riding (which makes me wonder if Ramsay held off on this reward until fat black girl was gone, for the sake of the horses), while the guys have to prep for the dinner service the following day as well as unload the truck when it comes.  Of course, the guys unload the ice truck a little too much because guy with no nickname just signed the purchase order without actually reading it so Hell’s Kitchen was overrun with unnecessary bags of ice.  The guys then had to put back the bags that were not theirs, making double the work for the beleaguered blue crew.  The other two blue chefs were obviously no longer a fan of guy with no nickname after that.

                So we’ve had the challenge, we’ve had the punishment/reward, now it’s time for dinner service, right?  Not so fast!  Ramsay throws everyone a curveball by offering up a second challenge.  This one is an individual challenge that carries the ultimate prize, immunity from elimination.  The challenge itself is actually fairly simple; just cook a dish, any dish and present it to Ramsay (much like their initial “signature dish” challenge from the first week of competition).  This is to judge the chefs’ growth in the competition.  Some of the remaining chefs put up some truly horrendous meals in that first episode, and Ramsay wants to see who has learned from their time in Hell’s Kitchen.  Everyone that has ever been a chef, or even known a chef, realizes that the profession is a constant learning experience, whether it be new techniques, new dishes or new foods altogether, so this challenge will help Ramsay gauge who is open to and able to learn and grow as a chef.  Ramsay judges it “king of the mountain” style where each subsequent dish has to be good enough to knock the current champion off the throne.  Skinny black girl goes first and maintains her position on top of the throne for quite some time until Mr. Mohawk sneaks in with a well cooked fish dish.  Mr. Mohawk triumphantly sits on the throne until mixed up Cyndi comes up with her dish and…

To be continued.

                While I understand cutting it off at that point, this episode sure felt weird and incomplete without a dinner service in it, hence this week's name.  This week makes up for it though as more celebrity guests show up for dinner, the chefs prove that they are still having trouble cooking even at this stage of the game, and Ramsay loses his cool again.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Nine: The Ravioli King

*Please note that due to the fact that Hell's Kitchen is on Monday this week, you will be treated to the recap a day early (which also means there is no recap tomorrow).  Depending on Fox's summer TV schedule, the recaps may permanently move to Mondays, but we should know that within the next few weeks.

                Episode Eight of Hell’s Kitchen, despite being the annual “Steak Night”, was a little bland.  This episode, being a young Hispanic girls Quinceanera proves to be a little more exciting.  For those of you not up on your Hispanic culture, Quinceanera is basically a sweet sixteen party, it just celebrates the fifteenth birthday and the “transition into womanhood” instead.  This dinner service obviously comes with a bit of pressure then.  There is a bit of pomp and ceremony that goes into this particular party, and as we will see shortly, there’s a slave driver at the helm. 

                The reward challenge this episode therefore revolves around creating a menu for the Quinceanera   This includes one hot and one cold appetizer, a pasta dish, a chicken dish and a steak dish.  The judges were the fifteen year old that was the recipient of the party, her mother, and the party planner which was either an aunt or a family friend (I can’t remember which) but she easily weighed as much as the other two judges combined, which made it even funnier (to me at least) when the chefs asked what they liked to eat and she piped up with things like “big piece of meat” and “steak” and possible something about hearty portions.  Regardless, there were specific instructions that were given by the judges such as “not too spicy” “medium-well to well done” steak (which, really?  Come on!) and the fact that cheese, cream and lemon were integral parts of the menu (they are the honoree’s favorites).  At this point, loud guy (in the “confessional” of course) states that he has no further questions for the judges and they should just let the chefs cook.  How out of touch with reality is this guy that he thinks that the people that will be judging the finished product don’t know what they are talking about.  Seriously.  Even if they asked for the dumbest dish in the world, something that is clearly beneath you to cook, you would cook it, right?  If they are the boss, then you cook for them.  His attitude bugs me big time.  Many of the other chefs are dumbasses, but he may just win out because of his level of disdain for everyone else.  

                The food that was made, from both kitchens, looked great.  Seriously, these chefs are very creative and despite their lack of ability to perform under pressure, they do seem to be able to create stunning dishes from the ground up when they have forty-five minutes to work on them (this is where this week’s title comes from as Old Guy claims to be the Ravioli King or some such nonsense because he finally made a dish that wasn’t beaten by an opponent on the red team).  Much like last episode when the steaks were all equally appealing, it comes down to specifics.  And again, this is where the guys trip over their own feet.  Don’t get me wrong, the girls didn’t run away with this challenge by any means, and yet again it came down to the final dish to determine a winner.  However, I am convinced that the guys could have at least won, if not outright dominated, if they had just listened to the judges and been able to translate that direction to their dishes.  The two most egregious errors were douchey hair grand champion (again) that decided to unload a half bottle of hot sauce into his cheese sauce for the fried mac and cheese hot appetizer.  The poor honoree nearly gagged on his dish when she took a bite, obviously not expecting that much spice when it was specifically stated that she would not eat spicy food.  The haircut from last episode didn’t work, he has officially fallen down and can’t get up.

                The second major screw-up of the challenge came from snooty stringbean two, who cooked his steak much rarer than the judges would have liked (which was fairly obvious by the big pool of blood on the plate under the steak).  This wasn’t a matter of not hearing the direction as much as it was the inability to judge how long it would take to properly cook the steak to the desired specifications (remember, they had forty-five minutes to complete the cooking, way more than enough time to cook a steak to well done).  He misjudged it, gave the judges an underdone steak (which I would have probably enjoyed more than a well done one by the way, but alas I wasn’t one of the judges) and subsequently lost another challenge for the boys.  The record so far in reward challenges is 7-1 in favor of the women.  I don’t think I have ever seen a more lopsided record in the history of this show, and the fact that the last two were there for the taking if the guys had just been a little more vigilant, must sting pretty bad. 

                As a reward, the women get to travel to Knott’s Berry Farm, an amusement park in California (and if you believe the claim on the sign, the very first amusement park in the United States).  The guys, meanwhile, get placed under the watchful eye of the party planner.  Let me tell you, if you think Ramsay is tough, this lady makes him look like Mr. Rogers in comparison. You can tell Ramsay knows that this will be a rough day for them as he leans on the table, almost head in hands as he delivers the news.  I don’t know, maybe this is to hide a smile as he can’t help but laugh at the idea of the guys tying pink bows on chairs, dressing dolls with pink tulle, or unwrapping pink candy by hand to fill up large jars (something like 200 Starbursts, I know your hands will start to hurt just thinking about it).   I get it, you only get one Quinceanera  but she is pushing these guys like a slave-driver.  I fully expected one of the guys to snap, but I have to give them credit, not only were they able to work through it and find humor in the situation, which kept them going, but they actually did a great job. 

                Oh dinner service, how you trouble these chefs so.  This episode, the head table (which included the three judges and their family) was split between the red and blue kitchens (meaning that all of the appetizers and entrees had to go out together between the two kitchens) with the rest of the dining room being split between red and blue as it usually is.  The two kitchens still needed to be relatively coordinated though as there was a special dance that needed to take place after all of the appetizers were served.  Everyone needed to be on their game in order to accomplish this.  The blue team started slow but bounced back with a purpose as the two guys on the appetizer station (two guys that haven’t distinguished themselves up to this point so I don’t even have clever names for them yet) killed it.  The red team…not so much.  Between the whiny girl that was up for elimination last week and fat black girl, they couldn’t pull their heads out of their asses.  It all came down to tuna.  They couldn’t get it seared correctly (it was ice cold in the middle) and when they did, slicing it turned it into a giant mess.  There were still two tables that needed to be served appetizers before the dance could start, and everyone else had finished theirs.  This, of course, prompted the party planner to inquire on the whereabouts of the missing food (which I am sure is just what Ramsay wanted to see at that point) and the eventual completion of the appetizers.

                Entrees were a mess for everyone.  It was not the total catastrophe that other dinner services in the past had been, but at this stage of the game, being unable to cook a steak, or sending up practically raw pasta is something that just shouldn’t happen.  Because of the continued ineptitude of the kitchens, no winner is declared, even though the guys finish well ahead of their counterparts in the red kitchen.  It’s quality over speed this time though, and there was no quality to be had anywhere.  The guys put up loud guy and douchey hair grand champion, while the girls put up whiny girl that got put up last episode and mixed up Cyndi (seriously, that’s how she spells her name, give me a break) because she fucked up the steak order for the last table.  Personally I would have put up fat black girl again, she’s loud, she never takes responsibility and acts sooooo surprised when someone calls her out on something  (and she keeps talking about her hoo-ha). 

                Ramsay sends whiny girl that got put up last episode home after more impassioned pleas where mixed up Cyndi makes sure Ramsay knows that she “gives a big shit” about this competition.  I know what she was trying to say, it doesn’t make it any less funny though.  But wait, there’s more!  Ramsay exclaims how disappointed he was with the dinner service that night and says that he is “not done yet”.  To be continued….

                So what’s it going to be tonight?  Will Ramsay send multiple people home?  Will he flip flop chefs on to different teams for the first time this season?  Will he have an aneurysm when he has to step into the kitchen and help out because the chefs are royally screwing things up in what appears to be a fairly important dinner service (or so the producers want us to believe)?  Find out tonight on Hell’s Kitchen, and come back next week for more fun with yelling!

*Edit* Big thanks to Nik for digging up the proper spelling of Quinceanera for me.

A Sketch-tastic success!

                I am definitely glad that I waited a couple days before I wrote this because even though I was exhausted after sketching all day (it’s tiring even though you’re in a seated position for twelve hours, trust me) I was wired because of the confidence in humanity that was instilled in me.  Trying to get a coherent thought out in the form of a blog post would have been difficult in that condition.  You may not have guessed it, but I’m kind of a cynical S.O.B. when it comes to humanity (and if you didn’t know that then you need to go back and read more of this site).  However sitting at Destiny USA all day long, seeing the good and the bad that crossed my path, I was able to witness firsthand that the positive can, and usually does outweigh the negative.  I want to share a few of my observations and Nik will be doing so as well in a separate piece. 

                First things first, my phone was dead the entire day or else I would have been on social media trying to promote the event like crazy.  It’s convenient that that was the day that my battery decided to crap out, but in a way it was a blessing.  I was able to concentrate more on sketching and interacting with the people that came over instead of having my nose buried in a phone.  Besides, people like Trevor Hobbs and Bee Vang took care of that with their Facebook and Youtube posts.  They were the unofficial social media directors and that effort was greatly appreciated. 

                It’s true that the main goal of this event was to raise money for Autism Speaks (which we did, to the tune of $666.00 - How freaking metal is that!?), but another big part of it, and this became more apparent as the day went along, was raising awareness.  On many an occasion, an individual would approach me and thank me for bringing Autism out into the open, for raising awareness for something that was a lifestyle to them.  If it wasn’t the person themselves it was their parent or a teacher that came up and expressed the same gratitude.  This was far more rewarding than the actual monetary donations (though those were greatly appreciated, don’t get me wrong).  One of the first individuals to approach the table in the morning was an Autistic gentleman that just wanted to offer his thanks and drop $5 in the pot.  In exchange, he scooped up a sketch of Venom and walked off happy.  This was pretty consistent throughout the day and there were plenty of other people that were able to find something that they wanted on the table o’ sketches, and if they weren’t their requests were completed (I drew a pretty kick-ass Cookie Monster for a little girl which may have been one of my favorite pieces of the day).  There were even a couple instances where I was asked to draw people.  People that were standing there in front of me.  Talk about pressure!  I think they came out okay though and it was a treat to draw the little kids for their parents. 

                The high point of the day had to be the gentleman that came up to the table and said that he thought he was Autistic.  He explained some of the trials that he deals with on a daily basis, and it sounded like a valid concern.  My brother, Nik and I tried to point him in the right direction by giving him some of the informational material that Autism Speaks provided and also stressed the importance of talking to his own doctor about his concerns.  The guy didn’t walk away with a sketch, but he hopefully walked away with a greater understanding of his options and a path to follow to hopefully get where he needs to go.  As great as it was to see kids walk off with a drawing of their favorite character, or the girl going to see Iron Man with her mother come over (and leave with) an Iron Man sketch (among others, her and her mother got about four sketches in total), the fact that we may have been able to actually help someone ranks up there with the highlights of the day.  Good luck to you sir, whoever you are.  I hope you get what you need.

                A few quick notes before I get into the thank you’s:

1.       I knew I had a sale on my hands when a woman with a KISS t-shirt and tattoo came over with her husband.  They promptly dropped a twenty dollar bill on the table and walked off with all four of the KISS sketches that I did.

2.       Frank Cammuso stopped by the table.  I think he was just walking around with his son and happened upon it, but he stopped by nonetheless.  If you are not from Syracuse, or you are and live under a rock, Frank is THE cartoonist in Syracuse.  He is the cartoonist for the local newspaper, providing illustrations and political cartoons for the Post Standard and has been doing so for as long as I can remember.  He is also the author of a number of kid-friendly graphic novels.  This is his website, I urge you to check it out.  It didn’t hit me until I got home that he had stopped by the table.  He mentioned his name, and it sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it at the time.  But it was definitely a cool experience to have Frank happen upon the table at that point.  Hi Frank, sorry we didn’t get to chat.  Hit me up if you want a sketch of The Masked Shrimp.

3.       Frank wasn’t the only higher-profile individual to stop by as News Channel 9 (most of you around Syracuse know it as the one not featuring Michael Benny) stopped out and did a quick interview that they ran on that evening’s news as well as their website.  You can watch the video and read the article here. 

4.       The generosity of some people was just ridiculous.  It was obviously appreciated, but one example was a group of about four gentlemen.  One of the guys came over, and threw five dollars in the pot and grabbed a sketch, then it looked like he went over and either showed the sketch to his friends or just asked them to come over and follow suit, which they all did.  Then, to top it all off, the first guy came back over and dropped even more money in the pot.  I don’t know if they had a personal connection to Autism or if they were just feeling generous, but their contributions were much appreciated. 

5.       I learned that, when in doubt, ask your family for sketch ideas.  Nik, Brandon and Raven all threw out ideas when I was starting to hit a wall that sold (except for Albert Einstein riding one of the Aliens from Alien but I’m convinced that just didn’t get out there with enough time left to do it justice).

6.       Never underestimate the power of brand recognition.  As soon as people saw the Autism Speaks blue puzzle piece they came right over and at least looked a little closer at what was going on.  This was similar to the sketches themselves as people would start to walk by the table and then as their eyes caught a drawing of a character they knew they would walk slower and linger.  You could see the wheels turning as to whether they wanted to stop and ask what was going on or not.  Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t.  It was effective nonetheless. 

Now on to the thank you’s:

1.       First things first, I want to thank Destiny USA (Kim Hall in particular who stuck with me through some ups and downs insurance-wise) for providing a great venue to host the event at.  I want to also thank Avalon Document Services, my home away from home, for providing all of the printed materials for the Sketch-A-Thon and Maeve Mackenzie over at Autism Speaks for giving me the go-ahead to do something a little non-traditional in terms of fundraising.

2.       A huge thank you needs to go out to my siblings.  Nik, Brandon and Raven.  When I came up with this idea a couple months back, I had the expectation that I would be flying solo for much of the day as asking anyone to spend twelve hours doing anything is just crazy-talk. Those three came through in a huge way, not only being there as support, but also by pitching in, with Brandon and Raven helping on art and Nik using his natural speaking ability to talk to those that came by as I was usually drawing at the time (naturally).  The combination of the four of us not only made everything run smoother, but it was honestly the quickest twelve hours I have ever experienced in my life, and at least part of that is due to the people I got to spend it with. 

3.       A big thanks goes out to Trevor Hobbs and Bee Vang who not only came out and donated, but stuck around and helped (they were the unofficial social media directors).  Trevor also used his Twitter handle @dailydiscgolf to help promote the event.  Follow him, especially if you like disc golf.

4.       Scott Herman and the entire Open Figure Drawing crew (including the model!) for coming down and creating an attraction which in the early going I am sure helped to bring people over.  Your support and willingness to sacrifice some of your time on a beautiful Saturday afternoon is greatly appreciated. 

5.       Everyone that knows me or my brothers that came out to Destiny USA and donated.  I can’t thank you enough for doing so.

6.       To Danielle Anthony and Jana Gozzi for donating their time and artwork to help support the cause.  You two may not have been there physically but you were there in spirit.

7.       Lindsay Esposito, Logan’s mother for not only watching the boys so that I could do this (though I heard that Hayden was quite miffed that I wasn’t there for bed-time) but also for providing the jewelry that sold incredibly well, and for posting about the Sketch-A-Thon as much as you did (I’m pretty sure it was Lindsay that got Channel 9 out there). 

8.       To my parents for being supportive of this endeavor and for raising my brothers and I with the moral fortitude to want to give instead of take.

The Sketch-A-Thon may be finished, but this is not the end of the line.  In two weeks (May 19) I will be at the Autism Walk at Longbranch Park in Liverpool, selling sketches and basically doing the same thing all over again (just a condensed version as this event is only three hours long from 9-12) so if you missed me at the original Sketch-A-Thon, come on down to Sketch-A-Thon Jr. and I’ll draw you something fun!

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! 

Hell’s Kitchen Episode 5: In Flames

            I was right!  (I don’t get to say this often, so let me gloat), I was right!  Chubby guy was sent packing at the start of this episode.  Whether it was because he couldn’t cut it, or because Ramsay viewed him as a liability when it came to employing a stroke in waiting (which sounds dirtier than it is) I don’t know for sure, but it was probably a combination of the two.  While everyone was surprised that someone from the winning team was going home, no one was really sad to see him go, especially those on his own team.

            To compound all of this madness, there is no actual reward challenge this time around, just a dinner service later in the day.  Before they start prepping, everyone heads up to the dorms to relax and come down from the high-stress morning they just had.  The boys give squeaky voiced girl a hard time, picking on her a little bit, but it seems to be just good natured fun, especially since they start by praising her for sticking up for herself in the face of getting put up for elimination.  She takes this completely the wrong way and goes off whining to the rest of the red team about it, to which fat black girl gets incredibly butt-hurt.  I can understand and appreciate the act of sticking up for one’s teammate, but fat black girl nearly starts a rumble in the dorms because of squeaky voiced girl being a little oversensitive.  It’s just more unnecessary drama that you didn’t see as much of in earlier seasons, especially since this goes absolutely nowhere in terms of an actual plot development.

            Everyone starts to prep for the dinner service in a couple hours and we get our next bit of drama: squeaky voiced girl might be pregnant.  She’s very late and all kinds of worried about it.  Then she takes a test and finds out that she is not.  That’s it.  Drama over.  Seriously, I understand that this makes for good television in theory, but the entire thing, aside from the actual test result was basically shown last week in the promotional spot for this week’s episode.  It feels like the producers know that they have a weak crop of chefs this time around and are trying to manufacture drama to retain viewers because what hooked people in seasons past (chefs cooking and showing their skills in the kitchen) just can’t carry the episodes this year. 

            Dinner service is terrible for both sides.  Not only are they a man down because one individual needs to act as waiter/waitress this evening, the remaining chefs just can’t get their heads out of their collective asses.  The waiter for the guy’s team is douchey sideburn guy that I discussed last week.  He complains upon hearing that he has been chosen to be the waiter because he has to do his hair now (put it up into the spiky Mohawk from the first episode) and it takes a half hour to complete the process.  I’m sorry, but if your hair takes a half hour to prepare, then something is wrong with you and it might be time to choose a different hairstyle.  Tickets are late getting to the kitchen because both members of the wait staff find it difficult to write legibly.  Douchey hair grand champion states that he will have to “write like a bitch” which I guess is supposed to mean write like a girl, which would imply that just because he has a penis (solely an assumption at this point) that he can make illegible marks on a piece of paper and pass it off as writing. 

            On to the cooking!  One of the younger blondes was tasked by Ramsay to “take charge of the kitchen” as she was on the app station and she dictated the movement and the pace from the outset.  Of course, being on the risotto, it was her job to tell lip ring girl when she needed the scallops cooked to complete the dish.  This she failed to do time after time, and even went so far as to say that it wasn’t her job to tell lip ring girl when to drop the scallops.  Uh, yes, yes it is.  Not only because you’re part of the dish has to be started before hers, but because you are tasked with taking charge of the kitchen, which would mean that you have to ensure that everything comes out together.  How are you going to run a kitchen that is larger than this if you can’t even manage to tell one person that your risotto is three minutes out?  Sometimes I just wish for a big grease fire.

            The guys’ kitchen fared no better as old guy was having a bit of trouble with his scallops.  The main problem came from one order of three halibut for an entrée however.  The guy on the meat station that was cooking the Wellingtons for that same table kept sending up perfect food after perfect food, while old guy and his partner snooty stringbean one kept messing up the fish.  First it was the fact that he cooked bass instead of halibut.  Okay, a miscommunication, not your finest hour but if you bounce back it will work out.  Does he bounce back?  Hell no!  Old guy sends up fish two more times, once overdone, once underdone (if memory serves me correctly, regardless they were wrong both times).  Ramsay has had enough at this point and just kicks everyone out.  Now, to be fair, old guy was primarily responsible for the fish station while snooty stringbean one was in a support role, but he did keep getting in the way instead of really making himself useful, so a lot of the blame has to (and did) fall on old guy for the failure.  The best part is, when everything was unraveling, you cut to loud guy in the “confessional” or whatever it is you call the spot where they talk directly to the camera, and he says “We’re going down in flames, the Titanic ain’t got nothing on us.”  Seriously.  First of all, he shouts it at the camera, like he does with everything else, and I guarantee that if you turn your back and play a clip of him and then a clip of Tennielle from two or three seasons ago, you would not be able to tell the difference.  Second, loud guy clearly makes a Titanic and a Hindenburg reference in the same sentence.  He either doesn’t know that the Titanic was a ship that crashed into an iceberg and sunk, is not aware of the Hindenburg at all , or was fed a couple lines by the producers and instead of choosing one, put them both together.  Either way, he comes off looking like a dumbass.

            Over in the ladies’ kitchen, things are going relatively fine (and I say relatively because in the guys’ kitchen it’s apparently the Titanic-burg boat-blimp massacre) until squeaky voiced girl tries to cook porkchops.  Pork, is another meat that needs to be done to be edible.  There’s an extremely hard line between done and not done with chicken, with pork it’s a little less so.  I actually read an article a couple months ago that said that pork, while not as safe as cow when undercooked, is not nearly as dangerous as chicken because of advances in agriculture and chemical additives.  That’s all well and good, but squeaky voiced girl’s porkchops, when cut open, looked like they had just fled from the Big Bad Wolf.  These things were raw!  Not only that but they were raw more than once.  Ramsay is not known for his tolerance, but generally if you make a mistake and then fix it with the refire you are ok, it’s when you continue to make the same (or similar) mistakes that he goes bananas.  After seeing the second set of raw pork (which comes after the colossal failure in the boys’ kitchen by the way), he kicks everyone out of the kitchen.

Minutes later he calls everyone back down to the kitchen.  Before they get there though, he stops them in the stairwell and tells them that he and the other chefs are still cooking but that each team needs to go back to the dorms and nominate two people to go home.  This brings up a couple interesting thoughts in my mind. 

1.                            Ramsay must be incredibly pissed at this point because I have never seen him actually call the teams back and have such an impromptu meeting like that before.  Stopping them in a stairwell?  That is the actions of a guy running hot on emotions. 

2.                            I never realized that when the teams are kicked out that he and the chefs actually finish out the dinner service.  I mean, it makes sense, these people pay good money to come here, and while a lot of it may be just to catch a glimpse of themselves on TV, they also come for a high quality meal and don’t want to leave empty-handed.  No wonder Ramsay gets so pissed when he has to kick people out. 

The girls nominate fat black girl and squeaky voiced girl (who were both involved in Raw Pork-gate) with very little trouble, to everyone’s surprise I’m sure.  The guys on the other hand are just a mess.  Old guy and snooty stringbean one get into an altercation because old guy is calling him out (and keeps calling him a bitch, as if that’s the only insult he can come up with) and snooty stringbean one isn’t going to take that from an old guy that wouldn’t let him help.  I can understand old guy being mad because he’s responsible for the great boat-blimp crash of 2013, and I can also understand snooty stringbean one not wanting to be lumped in with old guy because he didn’t have total control of his own destiny.  That being said, don’t be dumbasses about it.  If you can’t get control of your emotions enough to not start a physical confrontation, you will not be able to run a kitchen.  Surprise, surprise, both old guy and snooty stringbean one were nominated from the guys’ team.  Ramsay then calls all four nominees up one by one and asks them to all take off their jackets.  He says that he is going to do something that he has never done before and then…to be continued.

Now, I have seen him send home multiple people at once, but never four people.  While the producers screwed up again and showed old guy in the promos (so we know he is safe if no one else) the others may be destined for expulsion.  Here’s a couple reasons why Ramsay might go off-model and start tossing two/three/even four people at a time (starting with at least three people here):

1.       I have rarely seen him this angry, and I’ve been watching Hell’s Kitchen for years.  He has never stopped a group in the stairwell to tell them to nominate someone.  It feels like he just wants to get this done and over with, that he doesn’t want to deal with these people one minute more than he has to. 

2.      It is well documented that this season of Hell’s Kitchen had more chefs at the outset than ever before.  I don’t think that it has any more episodes ordered than previous seasons, which would mean that if he was going to stick to the same formula of weeding it down to a final two, he would need to start shedding dead weight more frequently, or in groups.  This would be the perfect time to start.

3.      Each of these offenders is not new to criticism from Ramsay and have done anything but fly under his radar up to this point, so none would really be a surprise to see go home individually.

4.      This would be a great way to send a message to everyone else to quit fucking around and start doing your job.  Nothing says get your heads in the game like extreme terror of being fired at any second.

This week we get to learn who is sent packing and we get more VIPs that come to the restaurant and sit in the always entertaining chef’s tables.  One of them actually walks out on his meal as well, which, if that’s not a death knell for someone you haven’t been paying attention.

See you next week!

Where Have All the Good Serial Killers Gone?

            I have long been a fan of serial killers in general.  Not like a groupie, more like a case study.  This is why I went to school for, and have my Master’s Degree in, Forensic Psychology (not that it’s doing me any good) and I tend to gravitate toward television shows or movies that have a more macabre element to them, especially if they feature a serial killer.  I was an ardent Criminal Minds fan for years until I lost interest in “villain of the week” style television dramas (thanks to shows such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad). 

            Luckily, a new breed of television show has emerged on the networks (I don’t have cable, don’t judge me) that was sure to whet my appetite for an overarching story as well as a look into the minds of the sick and twisted.  Enter Fox’s The Following and NBC’s Hannibal.  We will look at each of these separately as they both bring something a little different to the table.

            First, because it has been on for longer, and is in fact winding down its season, we will start with The Following.  Take a Charles Manson type master manipulator, played very convincingly in his stoic psychopathy by James Purefoy, and add in more of a killer instinct.  Where Manson would rather have others do the killing, Purefoy’s Joe Carroll doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty.  Plus, there’s Kevin Bacon and the guy that played Iceman in the X-Men movies.  I’m not a huge Kevin Bacon fan but he does an admirable job here as Ryan Hardy, the FBI agent that initially put Carroll away (who then proceeded to write a book about it and develop a drinking problem).

            Despite a lukewarm reception by many critics (that I read anyway) The Following has garnered quite the, for lack of a better term, following.  The viewing numbers were exceptional in the beginning of the season and prompted a second season pickup before this one was even halfway through.  I have to say, based on my desire to see a good, cable-quality show on network television, I tuned in as well, hoping this would fill the void.  I know this show got a lot of flak for the amount of violence and overall shock value that it used, but I didn’t mind it as it all felt like part of the plot to some extent. 

            The first few episodes were solid.  Though there were many moments that seemed like they were created just because the writers thought that they had to (Hardy’s drinking problem, his relationship with the ex of the guy he put away, his tough cop attitude, etc.) Bacon sold it pretty well.  As we got further into the series and started to peel more layers off the onion, we got to see that those plot contrivances didn’t stop there.  Now it went from just idiosyncrasies of the characters to downright stupidity of the characters to further a plot that felt too short for a fifteen episode season.  Watching the show, especially now (twelve episodes in) I find myself asking why the characters are so dumb.  Natalie Zea plays Joe Carroll’s ex-wife, and you may remember her as Timothy Olyphant’s ex-wife in Justified.  For all the dumb shit she does in Justified, it’s magnified here.  She is used as a pawn to move things along because she either a) can’t stay put when she is told to, or b) has her own agenda that coincides with screwing up an FBI investigation.  Here’s the kicker, Carroll’s wife, like Carroll, is a college professor!  To be that smart (supposedly) and do such dumb things is an unforgivable sin in terms of the writing.  “She’s just trying to get to her son” you may say.  To which I will point out that she is putting her faith and trust in known killers and criminals to bring her to him, when she can instead work with the FBI.  If she’s going to sacrifice herself like that, at least lead them to the psycho’s compound.  But of course that would end the story after about seven or eight weeks, and we can’t do that. 

            Not only that, but each of the FBI agents seem unable to use common sense.  They think when it is convenient for them to do so, but generally spend their time doing something dumb to move the plot along.  The writers had to get the FBI agents into a house with Carroll but also kill possible informants that would make a big reveal before episode fifteen.  No problem, have the agents get there first and have the informants pinned, then gradually have the agents splinter off to check the basement and find better cell phone reception so that the informants are picked off by Carroll and his henchman.  Upon noticing that someone is in the house with them, instead of waiting with the informant (the last one alive by this point) and shooting whoever comes in the door, they go out into the dark basement and try to hunt the intruder down, not only leaving themselves exposed, but also the informant (who subsequently is killed and Iceman gets captured). 

            The thing that really killed me this last episode was Carroll’s monologue of why he likes being a serial murderer.  I know that he was trying to create a common ground with Hardy over the amount of death each has been exposed to while trying to elevate himself a bit.  However, no serial killer that I have studied likes killing because he likes killing.  For most it is a means of establishing dominance or power, to take control of their own lives, or at least a part of it.  If a serial killer can control when someone else lives or dies, it helps to give them a greater sense of purpose as well as establishing an outlet for any rage or aggression they may have toward someone else (their mothers for example).  The fact that Carroll likes killing and death just because he “likes” it, even if it is a lie, seems like something that would never come out of the mouth of a serial murderer and therefore makes everything else seem fairly unbelievable in comparison.  Any interest I had in the character of Joe Carroll disappeared at that point.  I want a serial killer that kills because he wants revenge or he wants power, someone with an underlying cause.  Shit, Criminal Minds was able to establish that and they rarely ever had the same “villain” for more than one episode.  The Following has one for a full season (at least) and all we get is that he “likes” death?

            I could overlook all of these stupid moves for weeks because I wondered where the story was going to go, I was mildly interested in how it was going to work itself out.  I don’t think I really cared for the characters much, but I was interested in the endgame for at least the two leads.  Now, twelve weeks in, I don’t care anymore.  I’ve had enough of watching a forty-five minute episode (or whatever the runtime is) every week and nothing really happening.  We get a snippet of a plot point, a minor reveal here and there, but nothing substantial enough for me to even care about.  People come in and out and are quickly murdered or severely maimed, used as cattle to further a shell of a plot.  Before this week’s episode, I figured that despite how dumb it was all turning out to be, I would finish out the season, see where everything went, and just avoid any subsequent seasons.  Now I’m not even going to do that.  I’m done.  The fact that the writing is so ridiculous and doesn’t take advantage of actors like Bacon and Purefoy, who really do a great job in their respective roles of turd polishing, has chased me off. 

            Now that I have laid The Following to rest, let’s turn to NBC’s Hannibal.  I have seen a lot of critical acclaim for this show already, even though it is merely one episode old.  I’m not sure if I saw the same show that everyone else did, because unlike The Following that was able to hook me at first before going stupid on me, Hannibal starts out that way.  First of all, the actors are nowhere near the caliber of Bacon and Purefoy.  This is fine, it would be hard to replicate those performances.  The problem is that each actor, the one playing Lecter and the one playing the FBI agent (though he’s not an agent because he can’t be an agent because he has Asperger’s – more on this in a second) both have trouble speaking.  They muddle through their lines which makes them sound at best uninterested as actors, at worst unintelligent as characters.  I realize that the FBI agent is British and Lecter is played by a Danish actor (I believe it’s Danish, it’s European either way), but the main question I have is, why?  Why not get an American actor that could be a convincing Lecter while also being able to adequately deliver the lines?  While the British actor should be able to enunciate clearly, he just can’t as an individual apparently.  Unless that’s how he is playing the character, which if that’s the case, I have no time for that.  That’s the thing, any plot within this show is stunted because I often find myself wondering what these guys are saying and why I’m supposed to care. 

            Okay, the acting is sub-par, but I have a feeling that’s because NBC is bleeding money and they couldn’t afford any actual “star”.  Stars can be made if they have good writing though.  It just so happens that the writing here is some of the worst I have seen in a while.  First off, let’s delve into the FBI Agent with Asperger’s.  He literally tells us that he is a consultant or some such nonsense because he cannot pass the test, being on the spectrum and all, even though he has some sort of weird psychic power that helps him reconstruct crimes.  That is fine in and of itself and would set up for a traditional Cop-Non Cop matchup that is common in television (Castle, The Mentalist, etc.).  This would be an interesting thing to watch, especially if you balance it correctly.  However, the writers forego that completely. 

            Hannibal Lecter is a psychiatrist, not a lawman by any stretch of the imagination.  Yet he is drafted to help catch a serial killer (while being one himself).  This would be a good show if he was matched up with a cop, something that is common in tele…oh wait, we already did that.

            Do you see what I’m getting at?  They took two different premises that may have been passable and put them together into one terrible show.  Here’s the thing that really gets me.  They give the guy with Asperger’s a gun?  He can’t pass the test to become an agent, but they give him a gun anyway?  And he apparently knows how to use it because he shoots someone with it at the end of the first episode (I’d say spoiler alert but if you haven’t seen it yet I’d caution you not to).  This is nothing against individuals on the Autism spectrum, most of them are just as capable, if not more so than anyone else.  However, if the show goes out of its way to tell us that he is on the spectrum and can’t be an agent, don’t just hand him a gun and think we won’t notice.  Not only that, but you have teamed up two individuals that are not FBI agents and sent them out to do the FBI’s bidding.  Do you realize how stupid that is?  There is no way that would ever get through the higher-ups in the Bureau.  At this point it is just vigilante justice.  How do they have any power or jurisdiction?  They go through private records, they enter a house, they shoot a guy!  They are not agents!  It would be different if they did all that with an agent there with them, but there was no one to be seen.  They got paired up and sent off into the world to apparently wreak havoc.

            Then, in the biggest, dumbest fanservice ever, you see slow motion images of Lecter eating.  We are supposed to assume that because it’s Hannibal Lecter, that he is eating people and not pork tenderloin, which is what it looks like.  Okay, I’ll bite, that’s kind of creepy.  I don’t need to see it more than once an episode though.  If I do, then it starts to become a gimmick, and gimmick writing is dumb, much like the rest of the script.

            I am not sure why it is so hard to make a serial killer show that is interesting.  Hell, look at the real lives of serial killers and tell me they aren’t compelling.  If I was on a board at HBO or AMC I would jump at the chance to do a late 1800’s period piece on H. H. Holmes and the Chicago world’s fair.  Shit, if you take the Mad Men time period and put it on the west coast, throw in a couple co-eds, you could easily have an Edmund Kemper story.  Or make it more of a mobile story and you could do the Ted Bundy story.  So many possibilities!   At least, I would as long as it wasn’t written by the same writers that have had a hand in The Following and Hannibal.  Network television needs to do better.  They can’t let all of the good writers go to cable because they can use the word “shit” or show a little side-boob.  It’s time to start making quality television and stop settling for crap.  They could have had two hits that pushed network televisions boundaries to compete with cable, but instead they left a bunch of monkeys alone in a room with a couple typewriters.

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.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Three: Come at me, Stringbean!

            Let’s start right out with an admission.  I missed the first part of the episode, so I have no idea what sage wisdom Ramsay gave chubby guy, but he didn’t send him home so that has to count for something.  Everyone had just been aroused from what was probably a delightful hoo-ha flapping slumber when they were faced with a marathon.  It wasn’t a true marathon, but these are chefs, it’s a good bet that they don’t do a whole lot of running.  For this challenge, one of the chefs from each team had to run the marathon while the others prepared a healthy lunch for the other, non-contestant, runners.  The running chef gets to join their team after the completion of the marathon, but until then said team will be a man (or woman) down. 

            This is good in theory, but Ramsay seems destined to sabotage the chances of the women as he chooses one of the bigger girls (squeaky-voiced girl) to run while the boys lose one of their skinny guys.  True, this may not be a distinct advantage, maybe the skinny guy has asthma, but nope.  Skinny guy coasts through just fine and is back in the kitchen to help his team, while squeaky-voiced girl is struggling to get back.  I have to give her a lot of credit, she ran the whole way and came back ready to work, that takes a lot of guts.  However, she is so winded and worn out when she gets back that she is not too much help.  We then get one of the token pretty girls talking about how she makes smoothies all the time and is awesome at making smoothies, and then she is just massacring the dish.  The execution is fine but she just slops it into the serving glass, prompting a predictable outburst from Ramsay.

            Just as an aside here, I love when someone claims their proficiency in something.  That just means for the next three minutes you will see them screw it up in some way shape or form.

            Token pretty girl didn’t screw things up too badly though, and even being a woman down and having to come from behind, the women won.  The guys suck this year.  They really do.  But the one that really sunk the ship in this particular instance was loud black guy.  Not only did he cook of a shit-ton of fish ahead of the service (basically wasting them because, duh, they don’t just reheat shit in Hell’s Kitchen) but he actually went back and grabbed one of those fish to actually serve to a customer, and then had the audacity to lie about it.  Really?  You are being watched by cameras constantly and Ramsay himself is notorious about being a stickler for that kind of stuff, not to mention the fact that he has assistants that can spot and report that shit as well.  To lie about it is ridiculous.  The guys were so very close to winning too, and they were sunk by a dumbass and a piece of salmon. 

            During the official announcement of the winning team, two of the guys, one of the skinny ones and the old guy, make it a point to ask Ramsay to speak slower when he is calling out the tickets.  This could be one of the most bizarre moments on the show as I don’t think I have ever seen anyone make that kind of a request of Ramsay before, nor does he honor it in any way shape or form other than to mock those two at the start of dinner service.

            So the girls win again and this time they get to go to a vineyard.  The guys get to go outside and clean up the race site and prep the kitchens.  The girls in the vineyard leads to squeaky-voiced girl exclaiming that she has always wanted to squish grapes with her feet when that opportunity is presented to the winning team.  Ummm, okay, if that’s on your bucket list then ok, but you can easily do that without going to a vineyard.

            Now on to dinner service!  This was a risotto mess on both ends.  First, the guys.  All of the good graces that old guy may have garnered last week may have evaporated as he couldn’t cook a damn risotto, burning it or undercooking it, to the point where the VIP table (some unknown guy from the L.A. Clippers – seriously was Chris Paul busy?) was served hard rice.  Risotto can be tricky, but really all you have to do is check it before you send it up to the pass.  I will say that after that, Old Guy rebounded quite nicely and you didn’t hear from him again the whole episode.  (I still like him moving forward, but that’s at least partially because everyone else is terrible.) One of the girls cooked the risotto just fine, except she made five portions of it when she needed one.  It’s not like Ramsay is reusing her risotto either, so there was four wasted portions of risotto. 

            All of the appetizers got out though.  Entrees were a major stumbling block for both teams though.  The guys had trouble as being able to correctly cook the lamb was yet again an issue.  It was either underdone or it was cut horribly.  This obviously screwed up the garnish station as everything had to be done at the same time.  So the meat station guy and the garnish station guy got into a nice little argument because meat guy wouldn’t tell garnish guy how long until the lamb was done.  This led to garnish guy checking it himself and meat guy standing next to him so that garnish guy had to basically walk through him to get back to his station.  At this point we get a “don’t bump me” from meat guy, even though he instigated it, and they start jawing at eachother like a couple of punks.  They both say that they want to beat eachother’s ass but I’d be surprised if they could put up much of a fight.  Ramsay realizes that the emotions in the kitchen are running hot, pulls them aside and quickly douses that flame. 

            The girls have trouble on the meat station as well as girl that always looks sad gave Ramsay waaaaaay overdone Wellington.  This was a purplish brown color, that’s how overdone it was.  Even my roommate, who is not a foodie at all, commented on the sad coloring on that dish. This was before Ramsay flipped his lid on her.  Here’s the catch, she had two other Wellingtons on her board, and gave Ramsay the worst of the three.  We also got the other girl on the meat station sending up raw chicken.  Okay, if you send up underdone beef or lamb, that’s not the worst thing in the world.  It may not be to the customer’s liking but it isn’t necessarily harmful, especially if the meat is a high quality like what you would assume would be used here.  There is no such thing as rare chicken.  It’s either done, or it’s not done, and this chicken was not done.  This is one of the most consistent things that sets Ramsay off between any of the shows that you see him on.  He knows how important it is to not serve raw chicken to someone and flips out when he sees it. 

            Despite all of this, dinner service is completed by both kitchens.  The boys win because trying to sneak raw chicken past the chef is a more grievous error than a bromance feud.  Good job guys, you get to keep one of your increasingly unlikable team members around for at least one more week.  So on the chopping block this week we have girl that always looks sad, and girl that has no idea what one portion of risotto looks like.  Of course, when no one can give an adequate reason why girl who doesn’t know what one portion of risotto looks like is up there, she gets sent back in line and is replaced by undercooked chicken girl.  While sending up undercooked chicken is bad, girl that always looks sad just can’t wrap her head around how to work in a kitchen of that caliber.  She gets sent home, lamenting that she just needed more time to adjust. 

            Tonight we get a blow up by fat black girl and chubby guy, who we didn’t really hear from last week, gets his own starring role as he puts his head down on the counter and kind of gives up.  His health is called into question here, so we will see where this goes.  Other than that, just another normal day in Hell’s Kitchen.

See you next week!