'Hell's Kitchen': The return of the fish fillet
Somehow, Hell's Kitchen manages to do the same exact things season after season, same challenges, same rants by Gordon Ramsay, and yet remain fresh and exciting. Tonight's episode was no exception.
Following the standard fallout from the elimination, our chefs were rudely awakened by Gloria and Scott at 5:43 in the morning. It was the usual bullhorn and yelling that the show does every year. That was followed by Gordon's predictable tirade against waste in the kitchen. The contestants were then commanded, as has happened in previous seasons, to go through the trash from the previous night's dinner service and measure the amount of waste from their inefficient cooking.
Sure, we've seen the contestants do this before, but it's always fun to see folks dig into their own filth. Oddly, it's kind of a pleasure to watch. It didn't even disturb me that you could probably intercut tonight's episode with one from last season and another from the season before without really noticing a difference in the narrative.
After going through their kitchen waste it was time for the challenge. This week, the chefs had to fillet halibut. I think this was actually a different fish for filleting from last season, which was a nice change to see. As for the task, to get the most perfect fillets in a specific amount of time, it does seem to test the contestants' ability to wield a knife and cut a fish well.
The men finished with plenty of time left, and, despite destroying some pieces of halibut pretty badly, ended up with the same number of fillets as the women. As a tiebreaker, each team had to select one person to choose the fillet that was closest to six ounces. Ben, on the blue side, picked a 5.9 ounce fillet. Corey, on the red team, didn't come nearly as close, ending up with a 4.8 ounce piece of halibut.
Consequently, the women were tasked with prepping all the halibut and fish stock for the upcoming service and the men got to take a trip on a 100 foot yacht. Maybe it's because I haven't eaten all day, but the lobster lunch the guys got to have on the boat looked really, really good.
Interestingly, Jen tried to complain about Corey's fish selection to the rest of the team, but one of Corey's teammates defended her, explaining that they were a team and they were all responsible for the loss. That was certainly something we haven't seen much of on the show. Usually both sides are very quick to assign blame and thin the herd.
Before the dinner service started, Ramsay quizzed Petrozza on the appetizers for the night. Unbelievably, incredibly, ridiculously, he couldn't name them (didn't he learn from last week?). Ramsay sent Petrozza upstairs to learn the menu and left Petrozza's station unmanned while he studied. Petrozza tried to memorize what he was supposed to be cooking, but failed another of Ramsay's quizzes, not being able to list the desserts (the first thing asked of him). Petrozza was all ready to quit, he had unbuttoned his jacket and begun to cry when Bobby ("The Black Gordon Ramsay") pulled him back together.
During tonight's service each team had one person from their side helping out Jean-Phillipe in the front of the house. Craig seemed to do a decent job, but it took Rosann 45 minutes to get the first ticket to Ramsay.
After a few misfires, the men managed to get all their appetizers out before Jason and Petrozza fell down on the entrees. Neither man seemed remotely interested in cooking. After some raw fish was sent back from one of their tables, Jason claimed it wasn't his even though he was the only one on their side cooking fish. Maybe there was a phantom cook at the fish station tonight.
Meanwhile, in the front of the house, Craig was rearranging chairs in the dining room and clocked a woman in the back of the head with one of the chair legs. Okay, so that was bad, but was that worse than Rosann trying to not bombard Chef Ramsay by giving him too many orders at once? She, inexplicably, opted to hold some orders for over an hour because she didn't want to, I don't know, burden Ramsay with too much work. Clearly she is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
It is true that it really wouldn't have made any sort of difference though if she had given him the orders as Sharon and Christina couldn't iron out the cooking of the entrees anyway. It seemed like it was mostly Sharon's fault, but Christina certainly ended up looking bad because of it. In fact, most of the women's team looked poor during service.
When Ramsay shut down the kitchen it was the women's not being able to get food out and not the men's raw fish that lost the day. The women were declared the losers, Corey was deemed best of the worst and was put in charge of nominating two women for elimination.
Corey opted to nominate Christina and Jen tonight, leaving the truly incompetent Sharon still in the contest. Ramsay was not amused. Jen hasn't shown herself to be worthy of winning over the last two episodes, but she didn't deserve to end up on the chopping block this week.
Christina let loose with some tears when explaining why she should stay. Jen decided to inundate Ramsay with a huge list of the things she has done thus far. It went on and on, and pissed Ramsay off. It didn't piss him off enough to can her though. Ramsay wanted to get rid of Sharon from the beginning, and he explained that he had no faith in her and would never allow her to run his restaurant. Despite the fact that she wasn't nominated, Ramsay eliminated Sharon tonight.
Possibly it was a good decision, but it will certainly have terrible repercussions for Corey, who now has two people she tried to eliminate gunning for her.
A couple of observations and a question or three:
- After last week's elimination, Jason stated that he didn't know what he was getting into with the show. Really? Well, he is clearly an idiot as he stated that the women were useless in their kitchen without a man to lead them.
- Are they doing lamb wellington this year instead of beef? That sounds just fantastic.
- What do you think? Should Ramsay have eliminated Sharon? Does the fact that she stood out as an impossible choice mean that he should have gotten rid of her despite the fact that she wasn't nominated? Where does Corey stand now?
Enquiring minds, which are now headed over to The TV and Film Guy's Reviews want to know.
I just started watching this show this season (my parents bought me an antenna that mostly plays Fox: see first comment on AI blog) and I was really happy with Ramsay for picking Sharon. I've always hated the "strategic playing" of reality shows, and since he has a real stake in it, he squashed that very quickly. I'm hoping that tonight set the idea in everyone's heads that if you suck you have no way of escaping elimination.
I liked the episode even if he borrowed the challenge from seasons past. I love when they have to dig through garbage. Jen annoys me to no end and she needs to be gone!! I did agree with getting rid of the chick who stuck her tongue out all the freaking time. She looked like an idiot. Next week is going to be good with 2 girls hating another one. Honestly though, it is a game, do they really think they won't get eliminated or put up for it at some point? Only one winner. It is awesome when he throws out the nominations---this is his kitchen and he makes that clear.
Contestents have to remember this show is not Survivor. The best player can't throw out strong players to move ahead. Ramsay won't allow it. And don't tell me that any of those other chef wannabees could have pick out a 6 oz hunk of fish.
The thing I love the most about HK is how serious the narrator is and how preposterous the actions are in the kitchen. Every season I laugh so hard at this. This show is all about people getting beaten down by Ramsay so how do you not know what you are getting into to?
In past seasons Gordon has eliminated others who weren't nominated but I see that as part of the game. The nomination process is another HK challenge - if you can't ID the worst chef(s) then you're not competent to run a kitchen. So, Corey flunked the management test. However, if Gordon's rationale is that he eliminated "somebody that he can't trust to run his restaurant" then he should have eliminated at least half of the contestants.
Is it me or are they editing the show to make them all look like a pack of losers this season? (unlike last year when I think we ALL knew who won by midseason by the way the show was presented)
I know most people watch the show for the tirades (if we wanted excellence in the kitchen we watch Top Chef)but sometimes (as in this case) it gets a little old....fast. Although,I had to giggle with the editing around Jen's speech. that was great!
jen's speech probably only lasted like 30 sec. hk is horrible for editing.
I'm so over this show. It's the same old, same old for me and I disagree about how it's still fresh and exciting. That's not happening for me. In the words of that idiot who couldn't memorize the menu..."I'm done."
Love HK!
one question: are the past winners still running the restaurants they played for?