Hell's Kitchen is one of those shows that I watch and understand that there are very few redeeming qualities. As I mentioned last week, the chefs are typically chosen more for their entertainment value than for their cooking ability, and so you end up with a show primarily comprised of two types of people: mediocre chefs desperately trying to impress Chef Ramsay in an attempt to escape their shitty lives, and actors masquerading as chefs who are only on the show to get their 15 minutes of fame and who don't really care whether they win or not. It gets pretty easy to spot the contestants who actually care about whether or not they succeed as chefs, as they tend to actually apply Ramsay's advice.
The show isn't quite at Big Brother levels of inanity (and don't you worry, I'll be bringing that inanity to this blog soon enough), but there's something about watching idiotic people pretend to be chefs that is innately fascinating. This week's episode was no different from usual, providing us with a healthy dose of drama combined with more than a fair share of stupidity, and rounded off nicely with Gordon Ramsay's patented brand of rage. Read on for the full recap.
Following the elimination ceremony from last week's episode, Autumn decided that she needed to take control of her team, and promptly told the other women this. Of course, no one agreed with her, because Autumn has quickly established herself as a bossy individual who won't actually do anything in the kitchen, but will definitely take credit for any of her team's successes (although the Red Team is having trouble in the success department--more on that later). On the Blue Team, Andrew griped about Ramsay's tirades, saying that he wasn't intimidated by Ramsay and that the food in Hell's Kitchen wasn't actually that good.
Early the next morning, Hell's Kitchen sous chefs Scott and Andi woke the contestants and sent them to the kitchen, where they began their next challenge. In teams of two, they had to prepare four different types of eggs: poached, soft-boiled, sunny side up, and scrambled. As the women were short one member following Stacey's elimination, Chef Ramsay instructed Siobhan to complete the challenge on her own. Unfortunately for Siobhan, Autumn apparently saw this as an opportunity to take control yet again, and decided to help Siobhan by cooking some of her eggs. Siobhan returned the favour by poaching the egg for Autumn and Fran. Predictably, Ramsay flipped out when he discovered this, stating that he had been testing Siobhan to see whether or not she could complete a challenge on her own, and she broke down and started crying. The men ended up winning the challenge (barely), and as a reward were taken on a helicopter tour of LA before having a rooftop dinner with Chef Ramsay. In the helicopter, Andrew stated that he felt "like a high-class sumbitch," before going on to speculate about the helicopter crashing, prompting Salvatore to ask him "what are you smoking this morning?" As punishment for losing the challenge, the women were forced to unload a huge shipment of tuna, and then clean, gut, and fillet the fish for the next dinner service. The fish were enormous, and it took the entire team to bring one fish into the kitchen at a time. As they prepared the fish, Autumn attempted to unload all of the blame for losing the egg challenge onto Siobhan, who was having none of it.
Before dinner service, Ramsay added tableside tuna tartar to the menu, and assigned Fran (who had never made tuna tartar) and Scott to work the floor. He then quizzed Salvatore on the dessert menu, and when Salvatore couldn't remember a single one (of only four desserts), he was sent back to the dorms to study the menu. Ramsay flipped out when he discovered that someone had over-salted the water in the Red Kitchen, and we were shown a flashback of Autumn dumping approximately half a box of salt into the water. She insisted that someone else must have added more salt, but Ramsay dismissed her protests with a traditional "Fuck off."
Salvatore returned to the Blue Kitchen, and although Ramsay had to help him a bit, was eventually able to recite all four of the desserts on the menu. Right off the bat, the Blue Team started fucking things up, with Mikey disagreeing with Ramsay about how to cook the risotto (Mikey wanted to cook it longer, but Ramsay said he was burning it). Unfortunately for Mikey, he then sent undercooked risotto to a customer, and Ramsay flipped out again. In the Red Kitchen Autumn continued to be useless, hovering over Siobhan's shoulder, until Ramsay yelled at Siobhan for not telling Autumn to get lost. Nilka froze up on the garnish station, causing the Red Team to fall behind, although they still had a huge lead over the Blue Team. Jason couldn't cook a piece of chicken, while Salvatore redeemed himself by presenting Ramsay with a perfectly cooked Beef Wellington.
Out of nowhere, Andrew seemed to lose his mind. He had been doing fine, until suddenly he started talking to himself and freaking out about being in the weeds, and eventually he started screwing up his station. Ramsay shouted at him, and Andrew started talking back--a huge mistake, as Ramsay calmly told him that he was "a joke to the industry" and kicked him out of the kitchen. Here things took an odd turn. Although Ramsay had simply told Andrew to get out of the kitchen, instead of leaving through the back and going to the dorms (as we would have expected), Andrew walked out the front of the kitchen, towards the front doors of the restaurant. Jean-Philippe (the maitre d') attempted to convince Andrew to stay, saying that this was Ramsay's way of testing the chefs (indeed, in past seasons we've seen chefs get kicked out like this and then rally and come back to the kitchen). Andrew felt insulted, however, and commented that many people would like to be in his shoes. He took off his shoes and said that "they can have them," then left Hell's Kitchen for good. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but Andrew has been insane since Day 1, so it's not really surprising.
After Andrew's departure, the men rallied and both teams finished dinner service, but Ramsay declared that there was no winner, and that both teams would have to nominate someone for elimination. Jay and Ben told Jason that they wanted to eliminate him, and rather than rationally discussing his qualifications, Jason started yelling and cursing, saying that Salvatore deserved to go home. Mikey agreed that Salvatore should go, although in the confessional he admitted being surprised that no one had nominated him, as his performance had been awful so far.
At the elimination ceremony, the women nominated Autumn, saying that she wasn't a team player, while the men nominated Jason for the same reason. Autumn explained that her nomination was for personal reasons, and not because she was the worst chef on the team. When Ramsay questioned the team about this, Maria admitted that Jamie was the worst chef on their team. Ramsay sent Autumn back to her team, and called Jamie forward. Just as it seemed that Ramsay would eliminate either Jason or Jamie, he stopped, then called Mikey forward and eliminated him (guess it was a bad idea to get a giant goddamn "Hell's Kitchen" tattoo on your side there buddy. Ramsay's snarky end-of-episode comment was that "Mikey was all about appearances. Unfortunately for him, it didn't appear he could cook."
Overall, a decent episode, although I would have liked to see Autumn go home. She seems to be coasting by on her supposed leadership abilities, and while leadership is an important quality in a head chef, it can't be the only one, and sooner or later the way she's conducting herself is going to come back and bite her in the ass.
One final note: I think it's interesting that 90% of the chefs on this show smoke. I understand that a lot of restaurant workers (servers, chefs, etc.) smoke just for the breaks, but considering the fact that Ramsay himself has said that he thinks it's ridiculous for a chef to smoke as it ruins the palate, you'd think more of these people would refrain from smoking, at least while they're on the show.
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