Episode 404 (4/22/08)
Hell’s Kitchen 4, Episode 4: Shoveling a Load by William Ingram -- 04/23/2008 Since the chef wannabes haven’t been able to successfully cook for adults, maybe they can do it for kids! It’s a special family service, but what happens to Vanessa that causes her to leave the kitchen? Will she return or will it cost her the game? Welcome another scrumptious episode of Hell’s Kitchen. We join the chefs on the way back to the dorm after Jason’s eviction. Everyone agrees that he was useless despite having a fairly decent knowledge of how to cook. Somehow Jason just couldn’t put all their pieces together and make it work. Vanessa, despite surviving the elimination, thinks that she has failed and wonders whether she is even worthy of carrying on in this game. Before that question can be answered, Chef Ramsay’s voice booms over the intercom. He tells them that the kitchen is disgusting and that they need to get down there and clean it up. The chefs aren’t happy and trudge downstairs to begin cleaning up. And that does bring up an interesting point. Who does normally clean the kitchen after each episode? We always see the chefs trudge back to the dorms after each elimination and fall into bed exhausted. You’d think that if the chefs had to clean up that they’d discuss strategy or the other players and we’d occasionally see footage from that. But we never do unless cleaning up is a specific punishment. So maybe the producers have a special crew that cleans up between episodes. I suppose that is why tonight’s task of cleaning up is unusual. Corey finishes her task in the red kitchen and goes upstairs to hit the sack. The rest of the ladies are quite upset. They feel that she was not finished and did not do a good job. But nothing comes of it that we see at this point. A new day dawns and Ramsay assembles the chefs in the kitchen. Chef Ramsay has obviously been reviewing the tapes because he digs right into Corey. He asks who on the red team feels that they are strong. Only Corey and Jen raise their hands (which is pretty telling in of itself that only two ladies think that they are strong) and the other ladies all agree that Jen is stronger. Ramsay asks Corey why the ladies think that and she says that they just hate her. Christina points out that Corey left the cleaning task early. Corey bows her head. Ramsay asks the men who is strongest and they all immediately agree on Ben. No further comments are made by anyone. Ramsay says that he is disappointed with their progress so far and therefore is creating a special family friendly menu. I’m not quite sure what the connection between those two is. I will also point out that by this point in every season both kitchens have gotten just about as far as this crew has. They are not worse at all. Ramsay says that the new menu will include pasta that will be made fresh. He shows them how to take a ball of dough, flatten it with rollers, cut it into strips and then hang it up to dry. Amusingly this involves hanging it on Bobby’s outstretched arms. He tells them that their next challenge will be to make pasta. He waves his arms and they’re off! They have 20 minutes to make as much perfect pasta as they can. Jen is worried that the men have more brute strength. The women intend to win the challenge by paying more attention to detail. We see a montage of both teams rolling and cutting and drying. Ramsay calls the time and everybody stops. It looks like the men have more pasta. But will it all pass inspection? My guess is that it will because it is the men’s turn to win. He begins the inspection. He throws out a lot of the men’s pasta, I assume so that the contest can be close. The scale reads “1.39” pounds. The women get “2.39” and start cheering. But they fail to notice that Ramsay hasn’t even measured half of the pasta yet. He returns to the men and they now have “5.48” pounds. He returns to the women, totals it up and they have “4.82” pounds. But wait. The women have some more left. Ramsay adds it and they have “6.57” pounds. The ladies win. I don’t quite understand how that happened. As Jen says a few moments later, when the ladies took the lead the men still had pasta all over one of Matt’s arms and his shoulders while the ladies just had one arm left. We never saw Chef Ramsay throw out any more of the men’s pasta. The men should have been clear winners. But so be it. The men’s punishment will to be to prep all of the food for tomorrow night’s entire menu for both kitchens. Holy crap! That’s got to be one of the most brutal penalties I’ve seen in four seasons now. It doesn’t sound too awful until you consider that when the men prep all of the women’s food, the women’s job is reduced to zero. So while the men are worked doubly hard, the women get to rest. The men think that this is all Craig’s fault, although no footage is shown to support the men’s conclusion. The men begin their work and comment how darn exhausted they are and how all this extra work is going to kill them in the end. I agree. But, as we all knew was coming, the punishment gets even worse. Sous chef Scott calls for Ben to come outside with him. Since it is family night, they have a mini-circus set up outside and all the animals have been crapping all over the place for a few hours. Scott tells Ben to shovel it all up. Ben just shakes his head and gets to work. The women win a day at the Santa Monica pier amusement park. They go back to the dorms, doll themselves up, and get into the waiting Hummer limousine. After a few rounds of champagne, they arrive at the pier. We get a nice montage of the women riding the rides, feeding the seagulls, and knocking over stuffed dolls. Anyway, we fast forward to a point one hour before dinner service. The school busses and soccer moms soon begin arriving at the restaurant and depositing the beautiful children of California onto Hell’s doorstep. The kids merrily play with the animals and jump in the funhouse until dinner is served. The kids are soon seated and the orders start pouring into the kitchens. Now the funny thing here is that the red kitchen is pretty clueless as to what is on the menu and how to cook it. Remember that they spent the whole day at the amusement park while the men literally touched every morsel of food to be served. The men know the menu and the women are scrambling to keep up. Jen is not worried. She says that it is burgers, pasta, and onion rings. She notes that if they can’t cook that simple food, there is something very wrong with her team. Meanwhile the blue team is still ragging on Craig. He is working the pasta station and tells everyone to just leave him alone, he knows how to cook pasta. Out in the dining area, there is a little bit of made-for-TV drama. Ramsay calls the maitre d’ JP over and tells him that since this is a family service, he must take his tie off so that it is a more casual atmosphere. JP refuses. Chef Ramsay gives him a mild chewing out but lets him wear the tie. The red team gets the first orders. The men quickly follow. Vanessa gets out the first appetizers and gets high praise from Chef Ramsay. On the blue side, Ben presents limp and under-seasoned onion rings. Ramsay rejects them. Forty-five minutes pass and the men are getting out plenty of appetizers. The onion rings are now a big hit. Unfortunately, a dinner sends back the chicken wings. They are undercooked. We know from past seasons that raw chicken is a severe sore point with Chef Ramsay. He calls Matt over and chews him out good. Matt has choked on the chicken. Matt stands there and proudly takes the abuse and promises that it will never happen again. The red team takes advantage of the work stoppage in the blue kitchen to zoom ahead. They are starting to serve some entrées. Things are looking good. But good things never last too long. Vanessa sets one of her pans on fire. She grabs it with a towel and throws it away from the open flame. I suppose the grease hit something because two or three pans of food go up in flames. Rosann comes over to help and puts out the fire. But Vanessa has burned her hand very badly in the melee when the oil splashed. She rushes off to find some ice or the staff medic. The medic applies ointment to her hand and then guides her to the emergency vehicle. She is now on her way to the hospital. But the show must go on. Ramsay tells the ladies to work harder to make up for the loss. Two hours into the service the red kitchen has 12 tickets left and the blue team has 10. Who can finish first? Both kitchens are running smoothly and things look good. But remember what I said earlier? Ramsay finds that the blue team is cooking their burgers too early and they are turning into hockey pucks (speaking of that, “Go Avalanche!”). He tosses them around the kitchen to prove his point. Bobby blocks the net and makes an amazing save. The men start over on the burgers. Meanwhile the women are sputtering. They have no real leader until Jen steps up. In the blue kitchen Bobby steps up for the final push. With just a few tickets left, both teams rush to finish. Rushing is not good. Craig screws up the pasta and presents meatballs instead of clams. When he fixes the problem, the pasta is undercooked. He has to start over and will need two minutes. But will that be enough time? The ladies are on their final order. They will be done in thirty seconds. With about a minute or two to spare, they finish. Ramsay sends the girls over to help them men. This is more to embarrass the men than to help them since they are just a couple of minutes from finishing. The extra cooks in the kitchen slow everybody down (remember what the old wives say about too many cooks?). Craig is not taking this all very well. He knows that his head is on the chopping block tonight and he is starting to have a nervous breakdown. The men do finish their service despite the unwanted and unwelcome help. Both teams have now completed a dinner service. Chef Ramsay gathers them all around. He praises them for their accomplishment. He declares Jen to be the best chef of them all. He tells the men that he is embarrassed for them. They finished the service but they didn’t do it well. He gripes to Craig about how he can’t seem to cook or communicate. Ramsay further says that Ben surprised him, and Ben thanks him for the compliment. Ramsay glares at him and says that he was not surprised in the good way. He expected far more from Ben than he got. Ben looks crestfallen. He calls Bobby the best of the worst and tells him to pick two players for elimination. Since Ramsay already called out Ben and Craig, I think we know who Bobby will (or at least should) select. Back in the dorms, Vanessa has returned. The damage to her hand is bad enough that she will have to see a plastic surgeon in the next couple of days. She can’t move her hand and shows that it is heavily wrapped in bandages. It appears that she will keep going. Bobby and the team return to the kitchen and Ramsay asks for the nominated players. As we should have expected, Craig and Ben are nominated. No wait! It is Craig and Matt. Bobby explains that Matt is just too nervous. In a confessional to the cameras, we hear Ben tells us that he and Bobby are good friends. That’s probably how he escaped nomination. But that is no big deal. Ramsay shouldn’t say anything about that since one of his targets for the week is available to be sent home. Ramsay asks them to step forward. But then he stops everything and says that one more person needs to be heard from first. He says that the person knows who he is and should step forward. Ben knows a cue when he hears it and steps forward. Ramsay says that he is disappointed in Ben and Ben vows to do better. Craig admits that he didn’t do well either and vows to do better. Matt feels ashamed that he served raw chicken. Ramsay mulls it over and finally decides to send Craig home. He says that Craig was just one big headache and had a bad attitude. Ramsay then grabs him by the scruff of the neck and tosses him out the back door onto the huge pile of horse poop, raw chicken, and a big floppy chef’s hat.
Hell’s Kitchen 4, Episode 4: Shoveling a Load by William Ingram -- 04/23/2008 Since the chef wannabes haven’t been able to successfully cook for adults, maybe they can do it for kids! It’s a special family service, but what happens to Vanessa that causes her to leave the kitchen? Will she return or will it cost her the game? Welcome another scrumptious episode of Hell’s Kitchen. We join the chefs on the way back to the dorm after Jason’s eviction. Everyone agrees that he was useless despite having a fairly decent knowledge of how to cook. Somehow Jason just couldn’t put all their pieces together and make it work. Vanessa, despite surviving the elimination, thinks that she has failed and wonders whether she is even worthy of carrying on in this game. Before that question can be answered, Chef Ramsay’s voice booms over the intercom. He tells them that the kitchen is disgusting and that they need to get down there and clean it up. The chefs aren’t happy and trudge downstairs to begin cleaning up. And that does bring up an interesting point. Who does normally clean the kitchen after each episode? We always see the chefs trudge back to the dorms after each elimination and fall into bed exhausted. You’d think that if the chefs had to clean up that they’d discuss strategy or the other players and we’d occasionally see footage from that. But we never do unless cleaning up is a specific punishment. So maybe the producers have a special crew that cleans up between episodes. I suppose that is why tonight’s task of cleaning up is unusual. Corey finishes her task in the red kitchen and goes upstairs to hit the sack. The rest of the ladies are quite upset. They feel that she was not finished and did not do a good job. But nothing comes of it that we see at this point. A new day dawns and Ramsay assembles the chefs in the kitchen. Chef Ramsay has obviously been reviewing the tapes because he digs right into Corey. He asks who on the red team feels that they are strong. Only Corey and Jen raise their hands (which is pretty telling in of itself that only two ladies think that they are strong) and the other ladies all agree that Jen is stronger. Ramsay asks Corey why the ladies think that and she says that they just hate her. Christina points out that Corey left the cleaning task early. Corey bows her head. Ramsay asks the men who is strongest and they all immediately agree on Ben. No further comments are made by anyone. Ramsay says that he is disappointed with their progress so far and therefore is creating a special family friendly menu. I’m not quite sure what the connection between those two is. I will also point out that by this point in every season both kitchens have gotten just about as far as this crew has. They are not worse at all. Ramsay says that the new menu will include pasta that will be made fresh. He shows them how to take a ball of dough, flatten it with rollers, cut it into strips and then hang it up to dry. Amusingly this involves hanging it on Bobby’s outstretched arms. He tells them that their next challenge will be to make pasta. He waves his arms and they’re off! They have 20 minutes to make as much perfect pasta as they can. Jen is worried that the men have more brute strength. The women intend to win the challenge by paying more attention to detail. We see a montage of both teams rolling and cutting and drying. Ramsay calls the time and everybody stops. It looks like the men have more pasta. But will it all pass inspection? My guess is that it will because it is the men’s turn to win. He begins the inspection. He throws out a lot of the men’s pasta, I assume so that the contest can be close. The scale reads “1.39” pounds. The women get “2.39” and start cheering. But they fail to notice that Ramsay hasn’t even measured half of the pasta yet. He returns to the men and they now have “5.48” pounds. He returns to the women, totals it up and they have “4.82” pounds. But wait. The women have some more left. Ramsay adds it and they have “6.57” pounds. The ladies win. I don’t quite understand how that happened. As Jen says a few moments later, when the ladies took the lead the men still had pasta all over one of Matt’s arms and his shoulders while the ladies just had one arm left. We never saw Chef Ramsay throw out any more of the men’s pasta. The men should have been clear winners. But so be it. The men’s punishment will to be to prep all of the food for tomorrow night’s entire menu for both kitchens. Holy crap! That’s got to be one of the most brutal penalties I’ve seen in four seasons now. It doesn’t sound too awful until you consider that when the men prep all of the women’s food, the women’s job is reduced to zero. So while the men are worked doubly hard, the women get to rest. The men think that this is all Craig’s fault, although no footage is shown to support the men’s conclusion. The men begin their work and comment how darn exhausted they are and how all this extra work is going to kill them in the end. I agree. But, as we all knew was coming, the punishment gets even worse. Sous chef Scott calls for Ben to come outside with him. Since it is family night, they have a mini-circus set up outside and all the animals have been crapping all over the place for a few hours. Scott tells Ben to shovel it all up. Ben just shakes his head and gets to work. The women win a day at the Santa Monica pier amusement park. They go back to the dorms, doll themselves up, and get into the waiting Hummer limousine. After a few rounds of champagne, they arrive at the pier. We get a nice montage of the women riding the rides, feeding the seagulls, and knocking over stuffed dolls. Anyway, we fast forward to a point one hour before dinner service. The school busses and soccer moms soon begin arriving at the restaurant and depositing the beautiful children of California onto Hell’s doorstep. The kids merrily play with the animals and jump in the funhouse until dinner is served. The kids are soon seated and the orders start pouring into the kitchens. Now the funny thing here is that the red kitchen is pretty clueless as to what is on the menu and how to cook it. Remember that they spent the whole day at the amusement park while the men literally touched every morsel of food to be served. The men know the menu and the women are scrambling to keep up. Jen is not worried. She says that it is burgers, pasta, and onion rings. She notes that if they can’t cook that simple food, there is something very wrong with her team. Meanwhile the blue team is still ragging on Craig. He is working the pasta station and tells everyone to just leave him alone, he knows how to cook pasta. Out in the dining area, there is a little bit of made-for-TV drama. Ramsay calls the maitre d’ JP over and tells him that since this is a family service, he must take his tie off so that it is a more casual atmosphere. JP refuses. Chef Ramsay gives him a mild chewing out but lets him wear the tie. The red team gets the first orders. The men quickly follow. Vanessa gets out the first appetizers and gets high praise from Chef Ramsay. On the blue side, Ben presents limp and under-seasoned onion rings. Ramsay rejects them. Forty-five minutes pass and the men are getting out plenty of appetizers. The onion rings are now a big hit. Unfortunately, a dinner sends back the chicken wings. They are undercooked. We know from past seasons that raw chicken is a severe sore point with Chef Ramsay. He calls Matt over and chews him out good. Matt has choked on the chicken. Matt stands there and proudly takes the abuse and promises that it will never happen again. The red team takes advantage of the work stoppage in the blue kitchen to zoom ahead. They are starting to serve some entrées. Things are looking good. But good things never last too long. Vanessa sets one of her pans on fire. She grabs it with a towel and throws it away from the open flame. I suppose the grease hit something because two or three pans of food go up in flames. Rosann comes over to help and puts out the fire. But Vanessa has burned her hand very badly in the melee when the oil splashed. She rushes off to find some ice or the staff medic. The medic applies ointment to her hand and then guides her to the emergency vehicle. She is now on her way to the hospital. But the show must go on. Ramsay tells the ladies to work harder to make up for the loss. Two hours into the service the red kitchen has 12 tickets left and the blue team has 10. Who can finish first? Both kitchens are running smoothly and things look good. But remember what I said earlier? Ramsay finds that the blue team is cooking their burgers too early and they are turning into hockey pucks (speaking of that, “Go Avalanche!”). He tosses them around the kitchen to prove his point. Bobby blocks the net and makes an amazing save. The men start over on the burgers. Meanwhile the women are sputtering. They have no real leader until Jen steps up. In the blue kitchen Bobby steps up for the final push. With just a few tickets left, both teams rush to finish. Rushing is not good. Craig screws up the pasta and presents meatballs instead of clams. When he fixes the problem, the pasta is undercooked. He has to start over and will need two minutes. But will that be enough time? The ladies are on their final order. They will be done in thirty seconds. With about a minute or two to spare, they finish. Ramsay sends the girls over to help them men. This is more to embarrass the men than to help them since they are just a couple of minutes from finishing. The extra cooks in the kitchen slow everybody down (remember what the old wives say about too many cooks?). Craig is not taking this all very well. He knows that his head is on the chopping block tonight and he is starting to have a nervous breakdown. The men do finish their service despite the unwanted and unwelcome help. Both teams have now completed a dinner service. Chef Ramsay gathers them all around. He praises them for their accomplishment. He declares Jen to be the best chef of them all. He tells the men that he is embarrassed for them. They finished the service but they didn’t do it well. He gripes to Craig about how he can’t seem to cook or communicate. Ramsay further says that Ben surprised him, and Ben thanks him for the compliment. Ramsay glares at him and says that he was not surprised in the good way. He expected far more from Ben than he got. Ben looks crestfallen. He calls Bobby the best of the worst and tells him to pick two players for elimination. Since Ramsay already called out Ben and Craig, I think we know who Bobby will (or at least should) select. Back in the dorms, Vanessa has returned. The damage to her hand is bad enough that she will have to see a plastic surgeon in the next couple of days. She can’t move her hand and shows that it is heavily wrapped in bandages. It appears that she will keep going. Bobby and the team return to the kitchen and Ramsay asks for the nominated players. As we should have expected, Craig and Ben are nominated. No wait! It is Craig and Matt. Bobby explains that Matt is just too nervous. In a confessional to the cameras, we hear Ben tells us that he and Bobby are good friends. That’s probably how he escaped nomination. But that is no big deal. Ramsay shouldn’t say anything about that since one of his targets for the week is available to be sent home. Ramsay asks them to step forward. But then he stops everything and says that one more person needs to be heard from first. He says that the person knows who he is and should step forward. Ben knows a cue when he hears it and steps forward. Ramsay says that he is disappointed in Ben and Ben vows to do better. Craig admits that he didn’t do well either and vows to do better. Matt feels ashamed that he served raw chicken. Ramsay mulls it over and finally decides to send Craig home. He says that Craig was just one big headache and had a bad attitude. Ramsay then grabs him by the scruff of the neck and tosses him out the back door onto the huge pile of horse poop, raw chicken, and a big floppy chef’s hat.