Hell's Kitchen: Aw Shucks

After last week’s season premiere, I made ridiculously early snap judgments about which contestants had absolutely no chance of winning and which chefs actually had a chance at the top prize, the “head chef” position in Gordon Ramsay’s Atlantic City Borgada Hotel restaurant. (You can argue amongst yourselves whether Ramsay would ever REALLY let any of these clowns run a bake sale, much less a big money restaurant.)

In the continuation of this “Hell’s Kitchen” recap, I feel very good about those snap judgments and I’m sticking to my story — despite the fact that one of the people I dubbed as a potential winner got sent home!

Still, my biggest regret wasn’t identifying Ji as one of the few people who “Could Possibly Actually Win This Thing” — even Ramsay said as much in his classy farewell after Ji (pictured, left) took herself out of the competition with an injured ankle. No, my biggest regret is identifying J as another one of the people who “Could Possibly Actually Win This Thing.” The fact that he goes by “J” should’ve been a red flag, but the revelation that he likes to refer to himself in the third person made me enjoy him about 80 percent less.

Last night, (narrator voice) for the first time EVER on “Hell’s Kitchen”, the dinner service would feature a “raw bar,” so if Ramsay were to yell out “It’s RAW!” at any point, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

But first, the contestants had to pay for their substandard (but complete!) dinner service from the night before. The show enlisted a marching band (or a marching duo or trio) to wake everyone up at an obscenely early hour and Ramsay showed them all the food they’d wasted the night before. He slammed them for the waste because “everything in ‘Hell’s Kitchen is of the very best quality.” (Me: “Except for the chefs.” Ba-dum-bum.)

However, instead of dumpster diving, the contestants had to go digging for scallops (of course, Coe-llen was the person who fell in) for the week’s challenge, where they’d have to shuck scallops to Ramsay’s high(ish?) standard. An alarming number of contestants had no idea what they were doing, which is scary because those knives looked sharp (and I just assume allegedly professional chefs know how to make almost everything).

Ramsay arbitrarily made Andrea sit out the challenge to make things seven-on-seven. For the women, Lacey was predictably useless, while Coe-lleen actually stepped up. On the men’s side, Ben choked, Seth was terrible, but the rest of the team picked up the slack. In typical “Hell’s Kitchen” fashion, the results were suspiciously close, but the men won in the end by one (sigh of relief from J) and got to go Catalina Island by helicopter.

Well everyone except Robert. Ramsay notified him that, for insurance reasons, the helicopter couldn’t carry anyone over 300lbs (Robert’s pushing 400lbs). Last week, I expressed concern that Robert was just on the show to be a punchline for Ramsay and the producers. So when Ramsay told him that he could still go on the trip (via lonely ferry trip) I was a little relieved. However, when Robert got there just in time to miss all the fun and be forced to get right back on the ferry, I slapped myself for actually thinking this show was being kind. I think I would’ve rather seen Ramsay make a insulting fat jokes than jerk Robert around the way he did last night. It just seemed cruel.

The highlight of the Catalina Island trip was the revelation that Seth/Forrest is a bit of a Ramsay stalker. I’m actually going to sort of go the other way on this. Is it more than a little creepy that he knows all of Ramsay’s children’s names and what the chef drives (and, presumably, what kind of underwear he wears)? Sure, it’s creepy. But it also proves that Seth somewhat did his homework for the show, which is more than I can say for most of the contestants. (Really, Charlie? NO idea at all how to make a risotto?!)

Back at HK, the women had to prep the raw bar. Well, all the women except for Lacey, who had a mini-meltdown and decided to temporarily quit on her team and catch up on her beauty rest (it’s hard work being the allegedly “pretty girl,” right?) Obviously, her teammates didn’t respond well. The one person who tried talking her down from the ledge was Ji, which confirmed that Ji was a kind person. Unfortunately, we were reminded of what happens to kind people in HK later on.

Eventually, Lacey joined the rest of her team (the beauty rest didn’t help — she’s still not very pretty), but soon thereafter, Ji slipped and injured her ankle. Ji was in obvious pain, but decided to give the dinner service a go. Paula (which one is she again?) and Robert got assigned to their respective team’s raw bar. I don’t recall seeing Paula again, but we were shown Robert having some success despite being really sweaty at the start and after Jean Philippe eyeballed him with mild disgust.

I’ll interrupt the severe sarcasm for a sentence to praise the contestants on both teams for completing their first two dinner services (a “Hell’s Kitchen” first!) Imagine that: professional cooks actually completing two dinner services in a row. (Sarcasm back.)

The service wasn’t without its speed bumps. As I mentioned before Charlie messed up the risotto, Seth and Charlie forget the lobster part of spaghetti lobster, but self-appointed leader Ben rallied the troops. On the red team, Carol sorta bummed her first dinner service (she was a waitress last week), while Coe-lleen was predictably bad. How bad? Lacey had to save her! Fortunately, Coe-lleen’s struggles also led to the funniest lines of the night with Ramsay hilariously accusing her of being a thief for stealing her cooking students’ money.

In the end, the men won again in another suspiciously close race, and the women (shockingly fairly) nominated Lacey and Colleen for elimination. Ji was also present at the elimination, sitting in a wheelchair and hurting her ankle a bit when the wheelchair hit a small bump (it’s so wrong that I laughed that). Ramsay debated between the two useless chefs and I actually allowed myself that he was going to get rid of one of these two jokers (who admittedly make for interesting TV). Of course, we know what happened next.

Ji shot her hand up at the exact moment that Ramsay was going to make his decision and bowed out of the competition. Damn. It. The one good thing about all this is that Andrea may have become my favorite person this season by saying what we were all thinking — Ji on one leg is twice as good as Lacey and Coe-lleen put together.

So what’d you think of this episode? Why did Ramsay make Andrea sit out instead of the terminally lazy Lacey or the brutally incompetent Coe-lleen? Is it because the women would’ve won easily? Was the show unnecessarily cruel to Robert? Finally, who do you think Ramsay would’ve booted if Ji hadn’t raised her hand? (The answer is “nobody” because there was no way the show was going to lose either of its best punching bags so early on.)