Hell's Kitchen: The (Lettuce) Butt of the Joke

The previews for last night’s “Hell’s Kitchen” promised the most “controversial episode EVER!!”

Of course, that turned out to be a total lie, unless you count a double loss during dinner service (not a first or a shocker on this show) or serving the butt of a lettuce (gross, but not exactly shocking for these clowns) as “controversial.” In fact, the biggest controversy for me was that, by the end of the hour, I actually felt bad for Lacey. (Talk about a shocking twist!) I’ll even ignore how she slipped and fell after the week’s challenge and refrain from calling her “Fat Hathaway” for this week — except for just then, of course.

The continuation of this “Hell’s Kitchen” recap wanted to applaud Giovanni for calling out Seth (pictured, left) on his sissy “eliminating the best people” strategy. Then I realized that Steakhouse Chef Giovanni probably deserved to be in the bottom two for his poor performance on steaks last week, so he’d lost a good chunk of his credibility.

This week’s challenge had the chefs making breakfast for youth football and cheerleading squads. Predictably, the blue team cooked for the boys and the red team cooked for the girls. Even more predictably, the challenge was (once again!) freakishly close and (if we’re to believe the editing) came down to the last ticket with the women triumphing. The red team was slowed by a suddenly shaky Coi on pancakes and a typically spacey Coe-lleen, who’d decided to work on her cheerleading routine. However, the men were even more slowed down by Seth, who promised to make scrambled eggs ala Ramsay, but unsurprisingly fell behind since scrambled eggs was the most popular food.

The challenge made me realize the subtle difference between Seth and Coe-lleen: there’s a good chance Seth is actually mentally challenged, while Coe-lleen is likely a 12 year old trapped in an adult body. They’re both incompetent, but for slightly different reasons.

The men did NOT take their first challenge loss well at all.

Ben, who has arguably been the best chef on the blue team but has DEFINITELY been the most intense, lashed out at his team, particularly Danny, who’d claimed he was the strongest cook earlier. This led to a confrontation between the two, featuring the most bizarre and misguided trash talk I’ve ever heard with Ben saying Danny couldn’t “cook his (beep)!” and repeatedly yelling “let’s see you on garnish!” (This wasn’t exactly a showdown on the streets.)

The outburst by Ben appeared to prompt a mini-revolution and an increase in Seth’s line of thinking. Sure, Robert justified his decision to try to get rid of Ben by saying that he had a problem with his intense attitude, but we all know the real reason was that Ben is obviously one of the bigger threats on the blue team.

The red team was rewarded with a mostly uneventful spa outing that was billed as a camping trip. I did like Ramsay faking them out by saying they were going “camping.” The women looked like they were being punished until Ramsay said “camping — Beverly Hills style!” (I KNEW I wasn’t the only city slicker who feels like camping is a punishment.) It was also curious that only the, um, more “bikini-friendly” bodies were featured on camera during the women’s reward. (Thank God the men didn’t win this thing!)

The dinner service didn’t have any special wrinkles, so I really don’t understand why both teams bombed so badly. From what we saw, I thought the men team bombed slightly harder than the women. Of course, the women weren’t without faults with Coi completely forgetting how to cook spaghetti and Coe-lleen being Coe-lleen.

However, EVERYBODY on the men was abysmal. It would’ve been nice to see Ben back up his trash talk, but he failed in almost every aspect, forgetting to prep sauce for the women and butchering a lamb chop. His nemesis Danny didn’t do any better as he failed on the garnish station (I guess Ben was kinda right). J, who performs a lot worse when he refers to himself in the third person, allowed the butt of a head of lettuce to be served (ick). Finally, Seth wiped the pan with the same rag he used to wipe his face (double ick).

Ramsay (with a wonderful look of disgust on his face) declared both teams losers, told them to nominate two people each and yelled at Ben to get out when he tried to clean up one last time.

The men put up Seth (obviously) and Ben (groan) for elimination, while the women put up Coe-lleen (obviously) and Lacey (huh!) It appears Lacey volunteered to put herself up there because the women didn’t want to risk losing Coi, who IS a good cook, but just had a terribly off week. That would make Lacey selfless, wouldn’t it?

Chef Ramsay called Ben’s name, temporarily raising Danny’s hopes, before sending him back to the line and firing Seth, one of his favorite punching bags. I honestly believe if J had been put up for elimination, Ramsay would’ve fired him and kept Seth to kick around for another week. Ramsay even went out of his way to point out what a disgrace it was to serve that butt of lettuce (BUTTHEAD!)

So goodbye Seth. The show will be considerably more competent and sanitary and a lot less (probably) retarded with you gone. Now the blue team will have to deal with Lacey, who was moved there from red. This led Robert to say “now we have to deal with 250lbs of dead weight.” Ouch. Lacey didn't deserve the hate this week. She even shared a high five with Andrea, her nemesis from last week, for a job well done. Also, Robert, look at yourself - pot meet kettle.

So what’d you think of this episode? What’d you think of Robert’s Chef Ramsay impersonation? (I give it a 7 out of 10 — he had the mannerisms and speech pattern down, but sounded NOTHING like him.) Why would a child want Chef Ramsay’s autograph? (If I had young children, I don’t know that I’d let them know who Ramsay is!) Finally, why would you ever eat at “Hell’s Kitchen” unless you WANT to wait two hours for food and maybe be poisoned?