Hell's Kitchen: You Had a Bad J

After a (relatively) competent dinner service last week, the Gordon Ramsay we know and (are afraid to admit) love came back with a vengeance last night slamming a door so hard on TWO separate occasions that the camera (or was it the world?) shook!

But before we get to that, let’s talk about the rest of the episode, which featured the chefs getting acquainted with tapas — smaller, appetizer-sized portions of meals. The contestants were also told they’d be serving tapas-style plates in dinner service only to have the tapas theme be completely ignored during said service.

Of course, there was plenty of drama within the teams, most of it featuring the usual suspects — Andrea, Carol and Lacey.

The continuation of this “Hell’s Kitchen” recap found Carol positively shocked that her nemesis Andrea had not put her up for elimination. Andrea explained her decision by saying that she did simply did not believe Carol was one of the weaker people in the dinner service and refused to nominate her based on personal reasons. Carol mostly seemed confused by the concept of NOT basing important decisions entirely on personal feelings. Still, Carol was right about one thing — the remaining four women seemed to be split evenly between Team Andrea/Paula and Team CaroLA.

That didn’t last for long because Chef Ramsay moved Giovanni from the blue team to the red team. At first, I was puzzled as to why this was such a major loss for the blue team because I figured Ramsay just picked Giovanni to join the women because he had the girliest hair. Not-Bobby pointed out that Ramsay had given the blue team the worst person from the red team, while taking the best person from the blue team and placing them on the red team. Then again, Not-Bobby also insists on saying Lacey is fat (dude, mirror!) so I wouldn’t say he has the soundest judgment. I mostly remembered Giovanni as the steakhouse guy who couldn’t cook steak and as the Italian chef who didn’t know what polenta was.

It just goes to show how, um, cleverly edited this show is that Giovanni’s cooking skills have mostly been hidden, despite the fact that he’s apparently an amazing chef. Still, I like to think his “let’s squash this beef” attitude was just as important in (temporarily) bridging the divisiveness on the red team.

Then again, his cooking literally won the challenge for the red team. The chefs had to prepare five tapas from leftovers. After Lacey whined, and J presented a dish that Ramsay hilariously remarked was a bit “phallic”, it came down to a showdown between Ben and Giovanni (OF COURSE, it came down to the last dish). Though Ramsay was very impressed by both, he awarded Giovanni and the red team the victory and trip to the racetrack.

Now I know I’ve made lots of cracks about how every single challenge is made to look like it’s incredibly close, but how the heck did the show manage to make the race between Andrea’s horse (Victory’s Lady) and Ramsay’s (Stress Free) come down to the wire? Did they film the race first, and THEN have Andrea and Ramsay place their bets for the first and second place horses? What are the odds that two horses with such appropriate names would even be competing in the same race? Most importantly, is this all just really a coincidence and is every challenge really THAT close and I just really need to let this go?

Back at HK, the blue team had to prep both kitchens as punishment. In a shocking turn of events (not really), Lacey is a lot less chipper when her team doesn’t win, and soon walked away from her team again. This led to an almost shot-by-shot remake of Ben’s speech from a couple of weeks ago about how the team needs Lacey (kudos to the editors for using that footage). My feeling is do they REALLY need her? I know that Lacey’s actually been decent in recent dinner services, but being down 5 to 4 wouldn’t be impossible for the men. Unfortunately, they were about to be forced to work one man down.

The red team had some issues near the start with LA spacing out, and Carol undercooking some pasta before bizarrely blaming Andrea for not sharing in the blame. But they mostly kicked ass last night with Giovanni’s steady presence and Paula’s apparently outstanding Beef Wellington.

The blue team, on the other hand, was a disaster from the start. J had horribly botched the rice for the risotto, setting the appetizer station back 30 minutes right away. We knew it was going to be a terrible night for J because earlier in the episode, he’d referred to himself in the third person, and my unscientific poll has shown that when he does this, he’s just terrible.

Soon, he was overcooking scallops, and drawing the ire of Ramsay who called him a bozo, chewed him out in public and eventually kicked him out of “Hell’s Kitchen”. (Don’t you just love when Ramsay gets SO mad that his voice cracks?) So that was the end of J, who claimed he was at HK for his family (most of whom are undoubtedly ashamed of him).

Ramsay wasn’t done, turning his venom to Ben. I’ve always considered Ben one of the strongest men on the blue team, but he’s just never, EVER delivered during the dinner service (and none of his dishes have won head-to-head challenges). I’m just not sure anymore why I thought he was any good. Ramsay chewed him out in private as well, but what was even scarier was the way, he’d get close to Ben and whisper “I want you out” in his ear (shiver). Maybe the reason I can’t completely bash Ben is because (like Andrea) he owns his mistakes and failures and that buys people a lot of currency with me, as opposed to when they act like deluded fools.

The blue team lost and, after a deliberation that included the funniest declaration of the season (Not-Bobby will become a crack whore if Lacey wins), nominated Lacey for elimination.

Ramsay wasn’t about to let Ben off the hook and asked him to step forward. He soon tested him by asking him who the worst chef was that evening, and Ben passed by admitting he was the worst. Then, in a not surprising-at-all move, Ramsay eliminated no one because the blue team had already lost J. And because having Lacey out of our lives already would’ve been WAY too much to ask.

So what’d you think of this episode? Am I the only one who thinks Beef Wellington looks disgusting? Did anyone bother to tell Carol they actually won easily last night? (The way she kept harping on Andrea about the pasta thing made her seem like an insane person.) Finally, does anybody actually want to see Lacey win, only to see Not-Bobby as a crack whore?