Hell's Kitchen: Joe the Dumber

I don’t know about you, but to me the latest episode of “Hell’s Kitchen” was the epitome of “sound and fury signifying nothing.” (Probably the first and last time Shakespeare will – or should – be invoked to describe this show.)

Everything about the whole Joseph saga turned out to be a waste of time, so let’s get it over with as quickly as the show did in the anticlimactic opening few minutes.

In fact, the first five or so minutes of this week’s episode were a literal rehash of last week’s cliffhanger, in which Joseph whipped off his jacket and got in Chef Ramsay’s face, repeatedly yelling, “I ain’t no bitch.” As two producers ran on camera to pretend to break up this fake confrontation, Ramsay kept his cool and eventually asked Joseph to leave, amusingly imploring him to “watch his step” on the way out.

I’m not sure if you can tell, but I’m not entirely convinced Joseph was for real. He was either an actor hired by the show to specifically create this confrontation or the producers intentionally cast an unstable person in hopes that something like this would happen. (I’ll let you decide which scenario is worse.) Either way, I’m not too offended. This show CLEARLY casts people who are woefully unqualified for Ramsay’s boot camp kitchen approach for our amusement, so why should we get upset if they cast someone to pick a fight with Ramsay?

With Joseph being kicked out, it seems like the “fight” was nothing more than a ploy to make Ramsay look good (I DID like the calm, collected, incredulous Ramsay) and to set up his (punch)line at the end of the episode: “I’m nobody’s bitch.” (Ha ha ha, NO!)

I was actually more entertained by Tony’s quotes after Ramsay went ahead and decided to eliminate another blue team member following Joseph’s walkout. First, he put up one of the more feeble defenses to the question, “Why should you stay in ‘Hell’s Kitchen?’” (“I love to make things taste really good.”) After he was kicked out, he boasted that he had the “palate of a god” – a god that couldn’t cook fish!

Fresh off the disappointment from the Joseph (non)fight, we got an even bigger letdown. It turns out those fire trucks from last week’s previews weren’t rushing a contestant to the hospital or putting out a fire in the kitchen – they were there for the week’s challenge. (If I’d been expecting something good, I might’ve been disappointed.)

Each team had to prepare an Italian meal for a group of firefighters. Lovely and Andy hampered their respective teams by botching garlic bread. Andy wasn’t using enough ovens, while Lovely was still half-asleep thanks to the chefs’ 2 a.m. call time. I said it before, and I’ll say it again – Lovely sucks!

After probably being edited to look closer than it was, the result was the women winning the first challenge. The men would stay behind and help clean the fire truck equipment, while the women would take a helicopter ride for a spa day. Robert, who'd switched over to the blue team, complained about yet another challenge loss, but it’s just as well – he probably would’ve been too heavy for the helicopter. (Don’t look at me like I’m a jerk, that’s what happened last season!)

The men’s punishment was pretty meh. I mean, they were helping out firefighters, so it was nice to see the bitching kept to a minimum. The real punishment turned out to be the two injuries the blue team incurred. Dave hurt his hand during the challenge, and Kevin hurt both ankles on the way back into the restaurant shortly after the challenge was over. I'm sure I wasn'tthe only one who had a flashback to Ji, the talented chef who hurt her ankle in the second episode last season and had to drop out. Here was Kevin, one of the more promising contestants, hurting BOTH ankles in the second episode of this season. It was like a bad sequel.

Both men got X-rays and decided to grind through the pain.

Dave got a bit of a reprieve because he served as a waiter during the dinner service. (I’m guessing he did great because we didn’t see him at all after the beginning.) Lovely, on the other hand, proved to be almost as incompetent a waitress as she is a cook by taking WAY too long to get people’s orders. Oh well, at least she didn’t try to fight Jean-Philippe.

In the kitchen, the guy who DID try to fight J-P last week (that’d be Van) impressed Ramsay with his risotto. However, the blue team ran into trouble when Robert and Andy couldn’t combine to cook a decent scallop. We were also led to believe that Robert forgetting to fire up a salmon caused the team to finish second.

That seemed to open the door for a red team victory. Tennille struggled mightily on appetizers. She used WAY too much oil on her scallop pan, despite the fact that Suzanne warned her not to. (Note to Suzanne: You seem to know what you’re doing, but maybe if you didn’t have a stank face 100% of the time people would be more open to listening to you. If you don’t know what a “stank face” is, look at her reaction when Ramsay names Ariel as the Best of the Worst.) Amanda had her second brain fart in as many weeks. This time Ramsay yelled at her for not being able to do simple arithmetic (though calling her a “stupid thick bitch” was a bit much, no?)

Fortunately, Ariel took control of the red kitchen and the women finished first – which ended up meaning nothing since Ramsay went to the comment cards. The men squeaked by with an 83% approval rating to the women’s 81% and Ariel was tasked with nominating two people for elimination.

Unlike Joseph, she had no problems with this and put Tennille and Lovely on the chopping block, the two proper choices. In the episode’s only genuine surprise, Ramsay eliminated no one. Yes, I realize we had already lost two people in the hour and that Fox wants to keep this show going for as long as humanly possible, but this was NOT a case where it was really close and a promising contestant would’ve gone home. They were both bad. Especially Lovely. She sucks.

So what’d you think of this episode? Why is Robert considered such a hot commodity? (He was ok at best last year, and this year he’s been flat-out BAD.) What was the bigger letdown: the fire truck thing or the Joseph confrontation? Finally, is there any way Kevin doesn’t win? (He was a capital M “Man” on the kitchen last night running around on that bad foot.)