Hell's Kitchen: You Gotta Have Heart

Ok, “Hell’s Kitchen”, you got me.

Don’t get me wrong, I never thought the whole “Hell’s Kitchen closes!” thing was any kind of permanent development. However, I DID think the show would try to get at least some mileage out of the faux-storyline.

Then again, since we all knew there was no way “Hell’s Kitchen” was closing, I was happy to see the show do away with the farce in the opening minutes of the episode. It turns out the reason Chef Ramsay was closing “Hell’s Kitchen” was because he was taking the five finalists to the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.

So the chefs got all clean and proper (did anyone else get a little scared when Andrea joyfully jumped on Ben while he was shaving) and traveled via Borgata Airlines to Atlantic City. Unfortunately, the first portion of the episode – with the chefs getting a tour of the Borgata Hotel, the adjacent restaurants and the empty space that the Borgata restaurant will occupy – was incredibly BO-RING.

Here’s my issue. In theory, it SHOULD be inspiring (and a little touching) to see how much this competition has meant to the chefs and to see them in awe of the incredible prize that they’re working for. The problem is that this particular reality show spends the OVERWHELMING majority of its time (and actually seems to delight in) showing us that these “chefs” are buffoonish, incompetent, crude clowns that shouldn’t be trusted to run a Wendy’s. Now we’re supposed to feel happy for them and believe they actually deserve to be handed the keys to such a prestigious position? It’s not working for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually have any ill-feelings towards any of these fools (ok, maybe Lazy Lacey). It’s just that none of these people (not the contestants, not Ramsay) are shown in a particularly flattering light. All of that is by design, of course, since “Hell’s Kitchen” is pretty much humiliation porn. (And I’m ok with that.)

All that being said, it’s a damn shame about Robert (pictured, left).

Not-Bobby had to leave a dinner with a Borgata big-wig due to chest pains, and eventually was forced to drop out of the competition. While, I didn’t like his chances to win it all, it’s always unfortunate to see someone drop out early. I hope the guy gets himself in better shape so that he can reduce the chances of any future health scares. It was nice to see his fellow chefs (and Ramsay) treat him with such kindness and express genuine disappointment that their guy was gone. Goodbye Robert. I won’t miss your mediocre-at-best Chef Ramsay impersonation, but I’ll miss your self-deprecating sense of humor.

However, it was back to business for everyone else. The final four were tasked with creating signature dishes. All four seemed to do a good job, until Ben presented his dish, which was light on prawns and heavy on prawn tail. The winner turned out to be Andrea, who didn’t so much COOK her raw rice and tuna-in-tea-leave dish (much to the chagrin of Ben and Danny) but still earned immunity from being fired.

After that, Ben did a lot of freaking out because, apparently, everyone assumed that Andrea would DEFINITELY be the next person to go and now she had immunity. It’s not that I disagree with the thesis that Andrea is the weakest (she is), but I don’t see why everyone else seemed to lump Ben in with Danny and Paula as the CLEAR top three. To me Danny and Paula are in a class of their own. Meanwhile, based on what we’ve seen on TV, Ben is only slightly better than Andrea (and the case could probably be made that they’re equal or that Andrea is slightly better.)

With Andrea having immunity, we kind of knew how dinner service was going to go right? It was disastrous for Andrea. I’m not sure that this makes things better, but I don’t think there’s any way she was dogging it or trying to sabotage her teammates – she’s just majorly incompetent during dinner service.

Just as predictably, Ben was no better. Sure, part of the reason he fell behind on the garnish station was because Andrea was screwing up. Still, Ben’s brain did the meltdown thing that Lacey and Andrea’s has done in past dinner services that renders contestants unable to comprehend dinner orders from Chef Ramsay. To his credit, Ben somewhat rallied after being thrown out by Ramsay and was able to finish the dinner service. I think Ben’s cluelessness and delusional behavior actually help him bounce back from harsh criticism.

In front-runner news, we hardly got a peep out of Danny during the dinner service for the second week in a row (except for when he jumped in to help Andrea on the fish station), while Paula kicked ass on the meat station again, and ended up reluctantly throwing Andrea under the bus. (The fact that she hesitated showed that she’s a good person.)

Each chef had to nominate two people for elimination and none of the chefs eligible to be fired wanted to put themselves on the chopping block Since she had immunity, Andrea had the tiebreaker vote and announced Ben and Paula (who laughed when she heard her name). Predictably, Ramsay sent Paula back in line and called Andrea forward. (Did you catch the way her lower lip quivered?)

Since Ramsay plays fast and loose with his elimination procedures, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him fire Andrea anyway, despite having immunity. However, given the fact that the show had lost Robert earlier in the hour, it wasn’t at all surprising when Ramsay decided to fire no one. As a result, Lucky Ben and Fortunate Andrea live to fight another day – until one of them gets eliminated next week.

So what’d you think of this episode? Do you miss Robert? How great was the look on Ben’s face when Danny joked that he needed ALL the basil during the signature dish challenge? Finally, should Ramsay had waived the immunity and fired Andrea or should he have just fired Ben (because he kinda sucks)?