Episode 405 (4/29/08)
Hell’s Kitchen 4, Episode 5: Thirty Minutes or Less or It’s Free by William Ingram -- 04/30/2008 Chef Gordon Ramsay has the chefs making… pizza?! Wait, pizza they can charge $200 for? Is it topped in gold-flaked pepperoni, or just some ham and tomatoes? How do the chef-wannabes do in adding this item to the menu? And if they don’t get it delivered in 30 minutes or less, are they sent packing to permanently work at a Hut instead of in Hell? We join the chefs back in the dorm after Craig’s eviction. Ben is glad that he was not eliminated but he can’t figure out why he was even singled out by Chef Ramsay. Frankly, I agree. Ben didn’t really do much wrong last week. The only thing about him was that he was a bit slow, which is forgivable considering that he is an electrician, not a chef. Vanessa tells the other chefs that she will need plastic surgery to repair her burnt hand but that she plans to press on and cook on this episode. Unfortunately, she is handicapped by the medical staff and will not be able to pick up anything or get her bandaged hand wet. I have this sinking feeling that a one-armed chef is not going to be able to cut the mustard, so to speak. Besides, to keep the teams even, it is the women’s turn to lose a member. But so be it. Chef Ramsay assembles them in the kitchen for the weekly challenge. He politely asks how Vanessa is doing and she says that she is ready to go. Ramsay explains that a great chef can take ordinary ingredients and make something extraordinary from them and charge an extraordinary price for it. As an example, he shows everyone a white truffle pizza that he charges $8,000 for in his London restaurant. Okay, he didn’t say “$8,000,” but does say that it costs over $200 and then brings out four pizza-delivery guys carrying eight regular pizzas each to prove his point. I calculate that he buys cheap pizzas for $8.00 each. I don’t know where he shops but I know that I order the good pizzas for $14.00 and give the guy at least a $2.00 tip. Oh, and Ramsay’s pizza is smaller than a dinner plate. It is what one major chain would call a personal pan pizza. That’s maybe $50 a bite. Frankly, I want my pizza topped with gold for that price. You know, I think this is why you’d never catch me eating in one of Ramsay’s restaurants. I’d rather pay $200 for 32 regular pizzas and eat them for dinner for two months straight. Anyway, enough about me. Ramsay challenges each team to make their own $200 pizza. Behind them are 130 ingredients that the teams can choose from. Each chef will create a pizza and then each team will pick their best creation. They have 45 minutes to decide. He waves his arm and they are off! Jen tells us that this is the challenge that she has been waiting for and she can use her crazy mind. The women start the challenge by comparing ideas and changing their strategy as they go. The men all work in silence as separate islands. Matt is frustrated that no one will talk to him. We know that a lack of communication often dooms a team. At 30 minutes, the chefs are done. Now they have 15 minutes to debate the pizzas and pick one to represent their team. The women have to select among an oyster pizza, grilled shrimp pizza, tenderloin pizza, and an herb prosciutto. They all taste each others’ and they finally select Jen’s herb prosciutto. The men only have two pizzas ready. One is stuffed zucchini with buffalo and the other is green salsa. Ben tastes Matt’s buffalo pizza and almost throws up. Bobby finally presents a surf-n-turf pizza that gets moderate reviews. Ben says that Louross’ pizza tastes like it came from pizza shack. Ben presents a duck pizza. Bobby and Ben finally decide for the team that Ben’s duck pizza is the winner. Petrozza’s pizza never gets tasted and we don’t know what it was. Ramsay calls time and somehow both kitchens have created and cooked another fresh copy of their chosen design. I have strong suspicions that the production team gave them another 30 minutes off the clock to make the final pizza. The teams present their pizzas. The full description of Jen’s pizza is an herb crust, sliced prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, and fried basil. Personally, it sounds tasty but none of those ingredients justify charging $200 for it. I could easily make that at home for less than $10. Ben has used chanterelle mushrooms, caramelized onion, and a cream sauce. I don’t catch any mention of duck like I thought was in it. But the pizza sounds simple and elegant. I couldn’t do that at home. The women are nervous. Ben’s pizza sounds much more fancy than theirs. Chef Ramsay tastes them both, thinks for a moment, and declares that the women are the winners. Jen cheers and shouts that she is here to win this game. Personally I think Chef Ramsay made a big mistake. I’d never pay $200 for a ham and tomato pizza. But he was there to taste the pizzas so I guess I can’t seriously challenge his decision. He says that the men lost because the mushrooms had not been cleaned properly and tasted like dirt. The women’s reward is to go to the restaurant that serves a $90 hamburger. I guess the theme of tonight is to see just how much stupid patrons will pay for simple food. They run off to change and then climb into the waiting helicopter. They women squeal with delight. Most of them have never been in a helicopter before. They land and go over to the restaurant. The women are positively thrilled to have some private time with Chef Ramsay and he looks pretty thrilled about it himself. The $90 hamburgers are only slightly bigger than a White Castle burger, but they are made from Kobe beef, which is quite expensive. Personally I think that it is blasphemy to make hamburger from Kobe beef, but I guess that’s just me. The burgers are served with black truffle fries. Again, that sounds like an insult to deep fry a truffle. The women finally return to the dorms at 1:20 in the morning and some of them are falling-down drunk. That’s not good when they have a 7:00 wake up call. The men’s punishment is that they will have to prep all the pizzas for tomorrow night’s service. For once the punishment doesn’t sound so bad. They just need to make about 40 pizza crusts and slice some ham. The basil will need to be fried fresh when it is ordered and the tomatoes will come out of the box already sun-dried. But the men can’t handle another loss. Louross almost cries and the rest of the men stand around with their heads down. Chef Ramsay tries to give them a pep talk to pump them up. We do know that from past seasons that Chef Ramsay comes down a lot harder on the men than the women because he expects more from them and wants to see just how much pressure they can take before they fall apart. When he figures that out, he backs off and builds them back up to become tough and efficient chefs. On the other hand, I think that he gives the women a free pass week after week because he already assumes that he knows how little it takes to break them. If one of them exceeds his expectations, he is pleasantly surprised and then will try to break that woman just like the men. In the blue kitchen, Matt gets what is going on and keeps telling the other men that Chef Ramsay couldn’t be clearer in that he wants to see communication. Matt suggests that they practice with they prep the pizzas. They other men look at him like he has two heads. But they do start communicating. Louross tells Ben that he was hurt by his earlier comments about the pizza. Ben defends himself by telling Louross to just toughen it up. Hmm. Ben doesn’t seem to know how to communicate such that it helps your teammates rather than hurts them. The next day dawns and all the chefs hit the kitchen and prep the rest of the food for the evening’s dinner service. Vanessa’s bum wing makes her feel useless since she cannot really lift or chop or cook anything with just one hand. She goes up to Chef Ramsay’s office to get his advice. Ramsay tells her that she still has an equal chance of winning this game. He tells her that the decision is up to her. After a commercial break, she tells him that if she is not physically capable of giving 100%, then she doesn’t want to continue the game. He tells her that he respects her decision and that she should go and say goodbye to the other chefs and pack her things. Just for the record, he utters the phrase, “You must leave Hell’s Kitchen.” After a teary goodbye, the women now realize that they have to work a little bit harder. But that is not the only surprise. Chef Ramsay calls all the chefs outside and has them look up at a plane flying overhead. Behind it is a banner that announces that Hell’s Kitchen will be delivering pizzas tonight. I think I know which team will have to do that. Yup. Ramsay tells the men that they will have to do the deliveries in a rickety and unstable three-wheeled vehicle similar to a rickshaw. Haha! Once again Chef Ramsay is tilting the game in the women’s favor by taking one or more of the men out of the kitchen. Of course, the men are taking themselves out of the game by not communicating with each other. And with that, JP flings open the doors to Hell’s Kitchen. Soon the limousines and helicopters begin arriving at the restaurant and depositing the beautiful people of California onto hell’s doorstep. The diners are soon seated and the orders start pouring into the kitchens. The pizzas don’t seem to be very popular with the crowd, who are mostly ordering the regular entrées of Wellington, salmon, and beef. The women are off to a fast start and the appetizers are made to perfection. The women are communicating well. The editing indicates that this will be an easy victory for the women. In the blue kitchen, the phone starts ringing and pizza orders are coming in. I note that the callers can only get one kind of pizza. I have to wonder whether the producers just got 15 or so callers to call and order some pizza and then they are waiting at a house a block or two away. Chef Ramsay picks Ben to be the delivery guy. Matt presents appetizers that fail to pass muster. The eggs are bad. Matt tries again and Bobby gets annoyed and tells Matt to just let him do the eggs instead. That is Bobby’s style, remember, he just lets people fail so that he can come to the rescue and make them look bad. At about a half hour into the service, the blue team has served two tables of appetizers and the red team has served four. All get good reviews. The ladies are ready to send out their first entrées. But the Wellington is raw. That was Shayna’s job to cook them and she flogs herself for screwing up. This delays the whole kitchen. Meanwhile, Ben takes out the first delivery pizzas. He doesn’t know how to drive the odd little vehicle and he doesn’t have directions to get to the house. Somehow he gets there, while driving across someone’s lawn and pushing the cart manually at times. At least the people tip him. The red team tries again for the Wellington. This time Shayna cooks the meat correctly, but Rosann has created watery mashed potatoes. Ramsay rejects it all and makes them start over. Rosann is quickly becoming overwhelmed at the vegetable station. Ramsay, despite swearing his head off, gives the red team a big break when he decides that the vegetables can be sent to the table separate from the meat. He has never allowed this before, that we’ve seen, in four seasons. Wow! With Jen’s help, Rosann get things back on track within a few minutes. Over in the blue kitchen there are similar snags. Louross has undercooked a steak. Luckily this is a problem that can be easily fixed and Louross is horribly embarrassed and starts over. But that is not good enough. They need some more food now. Petrozza has an idea. It is the same idea that has torpedoed chefs every single season. He thinks that they can cut off the burned part of the steak and then serve it. We know that this will send Chef Ramsay into a frenzy when he discovers it. It may be two minutes from now or it may be two hours from now when he watches the tapes. The deception fools Scott, the resident sous chef for the men. Louross calls it the most ghettoist thing he’s ever seen. Two hours into the service and three quarters of the diners have been served their main courses. The kitchens start to work on the desserts. Christina burns four of the soufflés. Oops! That drops the team fifteen minutes behind the curve. She begs and pleads for someone to help her. The other women just look away. Jen says that she is not her mother. Ramsay sees the problem and directs Corey to go and help Christina. He is going to do everything he can to ensure that the ladies win again. This has the desired effect and the desserts begin leaving the red kitchen. Over in the blue kitchen, the men are finally working as a team and they too are getting desserts served. With time running out, both kitchens serve their last ticket and all diners are happy. But which team finished first? Was it too close to call? Chef Ramsay gathers everyone together to give them the results. He tells them that the service was “not brilliant,” but that they got it all done. He is pleased and compliments them all. He declares that there is no losing team tonight. He tells each team to go back and nominate one person for possible elimination. Hey now. That sounds a lot like what happens when both teams do horribly bad and both are declared to be losers. This week is even worse because someone on a winning team will be sent home. Anyway, once again I will point out that the better strategy is to pick your best chef to face off against the other team. I had some disagreement from readers the last time I wrote that and there are many reasons why the readers were correct. I still think, however, that giving your team a one-person advantage next week is worth more than the downside of annoying Chef Ramsay by playing strategy games. And this week is a little bit different since there is no one person on each team picking the nominees. If a good chef is nominated, it will be a team strategy decision. The chefs all return to the dorms and discuss the matter. Bobby, Ben, and Petrozza seem to be the triumvirate of the group and they debate between the two men not in their core group, Matt or Louross. Matt arrives as they are talking and, as a result, Louross seems to be the nomination by default. The women decide as a group. They agree that Rosann did the worst job. She takes it well and admits that she did poorly. Later, Jen confides to Rosann that she actually wanted to get rid of Christina because she talks so much that she drowns out all of the really important stuff that she (Jen) has to say. Back in the kitchen, Ramsay asks for the nominees. The men nominate Louross because he may be the weakest on the team in terms of culinary skills. I can’t disagree. The kid is 22 and doesn’t have the same amount of experience. But I do see that he has the heart and enthusiasm. He will be a better chef than any of the triumvirate when he is their age. The women nominate Christina as the weakest cook. Ramsay is confused. He asks Jen if she is threatened by Christina’s intelligence. She gives an emphatic, “No!” She says that she alone determines her fate in Hell’s Kitchen. Ramsay seemed a bit stunned and informs her that that will be his decision. She looks at him defiantly because she is quite the sassy woman. He turns to Rosann and asks her if she honestly thinks that she is a better cook than Christina. She is also firm in her answer and says that she is. Ramsay disagrees. Ramsay seems rather smitten with Christina and is trying anything he can to save her without being too blatant about it. But it is not working and poor Louross will have to take the fall. Ramsay asks the nominees to step forward and defend themselves. Louross admits that he undercooked one piece of meat and overcooked another. But he points out that he kept going and overcame those goofs. Ramsay asks him if he is the worst cook on the blue team and he says that he is not. He says that Matt is. Christina says that she is detail-oriented and intelligent. She believes that Rosann is actually the weakest chef in the red kitchen. Ramsay mulls it over and decides that the person leaving tonight has already left the building. It is Vanessa. He calls it his gift to the teams for doing well tonight. But he puts them on notice that they still have a long way to go. He warns them that the game will get tougher and sends them back to the dorms.
Hell’s Kitchen 4, Episode 5: Thirty Minutes or Less or It’s Free by William Ingram -- 04/30/2008 Chef Gordon Ramsay has the chefs making… pizza?! Wait, pizza they can charge $200 for? Is it topped in gold-flaked pepperoni, or just some ham and tomatoes? How do the chef-wannabes do in adding this item to the menu? And if they don’t get it delivered in 30 minutes or less, are they sent packing to permanently work at a Hut instead of in Hell? We join the chefs back in the dorm after Craig’s eviction. Ben is glad that he was not eliminated but he can’t figure out why he was even singled out by Chef Ramsay. Frankly, I agree. Ben didn’t really do much wrong last week. The only thing about him was that he was a bit slow, which is forgivable considering that he is an electrician, not a chef. Vanessa tells the other chefs that she will need plastic surgery to repair her burnt hand but that she plans to press on and cook on this episode. Unfortunately, she is handicapped by the medical staff and will not be able to pick up anything or get her bandaged hand wet. I have this sinking feeling that a one-armed chef is not going to be able to cut the mustard, so to speak. Besides, to keep the teams even, it is the women’s turn to lose a member. But so be it. Chef Ramsay assembles them in the kitchen for the weekly challenge. He politely asks how Vanessa is doing and she says that she is ready to go. Ramsay explains that a great chef can take ordinary ingredients and make something extraordinary from them and charge an extraordinary price for it. As an example, he shows everyone a white truffle pizza that he charges $8,000 for in his London restaurant. Okay, he didn’t say “$8,000,” but does say that it costs over $200 and then brings out four pizza-delivery guys carrying eight regular pizzas each to prove his point. I calculate that he buys cheap pizzas for $8.00 each. I don’t know where he shops but I know that I order the good pizzas for $14.00 and give the guy at least a $2.00 tip. Oh, and Ramsay’s pizza is smaller than a dinner plate. It is what one major chain would call a personal pan pizza. That’s maybe $50 a bite. Frankly, I want my pizza topped with gold for that price. You know, I think this is why you’d never catch me eating in one of Ramsay’s restaurants. I’d rather pay $200 for 32 regular pizzas and eat them for dinner for two months straight. Anyway, enough about me. Ramsay challenges each team to make their own $200 pizza. Behind them are 130 ingredients that the teams can choose from. Each chef will create a pizza and then each team will pick their best creation. They have 45 minutes to decide. He waves his arm and they are off! Jen tells us that this is the challenge that she has been waiting for and she can use her crazy mind. The women start the challenge by comparing ideas and changing their strategy as they go. The men all work in silence as separate islands. Matt is frustrated that no one will talk to him. We know that a lack of communication often dooms a team. At 30 minutes, the chefs are done. Now they have 15 minutes to debate the pizzas and pick one to represent their team. The women have to select among an oyster pizza, grilled shrimp pizza, tenderloin pizza, and an herb prosciutto. They all taste each others’ and they finally select Jen’s herb prosciutto. The men only have two pizzas ready. One is stuffed zucchini with buffalo and the other is green salsa. Ben tastes Matt’s buffalo pizza and almost throws up. Bobby finally presents a surf-n-turf pizza that gets moderate reviews. Ben says that Louross’ pizza tastes like it came from pizza shack. Ben presents a duck pizza. Bobby and Ben finally decide for the team that Ben’s duck pizza is the winner. Petrozza’s pizza never gets tasted and we don’t know what it was. Ramsay calls time and somehow both kitchens have created and cooked another fresh copy of their chosen design. I have strong suspicions that the production team gave them another 30 minutes off the clock to make the final pizza. The teams present their pizzas. The full description of Jen’s pizza is an herb crust, sliced prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, and fried basil. Personally, it sounds tasty but none of those ingredients justify charging $200 for it. I could easily make that at home for less than $10. Ben has used chanterelle mushrooms, caramelized onion, and a cream sauce. I don’t catch any mention of duck like I thought was in it. But the pizza sounds simple and elegant. I couldn’t do that at home. The women are nervous. Ben’s pizza sounds much more fancy than theirs. Chef Ramsay tastes them both, thinks for a moment, and declares that the women are the winners. Jen cheers and shouts that she is here to win this game. Personally I think Chef Ramsay made a big mistake. I’d never pay $200 for a ham and tomato pizza. But he was there to taste the pizzas so I guess I can’t seriously challenge his decision. He says that the men lost because the mushrooms had not been cleaned properly and tasted like dirt. The women’s reward is to go to the restaurant that serves a $90 hamburger. I guess the theme of tonight is to see just how much stupid patrons will pay for simple food. They run off to change and then climb into the waiting helicopter. They women squeal with delight. Most of them have never been in a helicopter before. They land and go over to the restaurant. The women are positively thrilled to have some private time with Chef Ramsay and he looks pretty thrilled about it himself. The $90 hamburgers are only slightly bigger than a White Castle burger, but they are made from Kobe beef, which is quite expensive. Personally I think that it is blasphemy to make hamburger from Kobe beef, but I guess that’s just me. The burgers are served with black truffle fries. Again, that sounds like an insult to deep fry a truffle. The women finally return to the dorms at 1:20 in the morning and some of them are falling-down drunk. That’s not good when they have a 7:00 wake up call. The men’s punishment is that they will have to prep all the pizzas for tomorrow night’s service. For once the punishment doesn’t sound so bad. They just need to make about 40 pizza crusts and slice some ham. The basil will need to be fried fresh when it is ordered and the tomatoes will come out of the box already sun-dried. But the men can’t handle another loss. Louross almost cries and the rest of the men stand around with their heads down. Chef Ramsay tries to give them a pep talk to pump them up. We do know that from past seasons that Chef Ramsay comes down a lot harder on the men than the women because he expects more from them and wants to see just how much pressure they can take before they fall apart. When he figures that out, he backs off and builds them back up to become tough and efficient chefs. On the other hand, I think that he gives the women a free pass week after week because he already assumes that he knows how little it takes to break them. If one of them exceeds his expectations, he is pleasantly surprised and then will try to break that woman just like the men. In the blue kitchen, Matt gets what is going on and keeps telling the other men that Chef Ramsay couldn’t be clearer in that he wants to see communication. Matt suggests that they practice with they prep the pizzas. They other men look at him like he has two heads. But they do start communicating. Louross tells Ben that he was hurt by his earlier comments about the pizza. Ben defends himself by telling Louross to just toughen it up. Hmm. Ben doesn’t seem to know how to communicate such that it helps your teammates rather than hurts them. The next day dawns and all the chefs hit the kitchen and prep the rest of the food for the evening’s dinner service. Vanessa’s bum wing makes her feel useless since she cannot really lift or chop or cook anything with just one hand. She goes up to Chef Ramsay’s office to get his advice. Ramsay tells her that she still has an equal chance of winning this game. He tells her that the decision is up to her. After a commercial break, she tells him that if she is not physically capable of giving 100%, then she doesn’t want to continue the game. He tells her that he respects her decision and that she should go and say goodbye to the other chefs and pack her things. Just for the record, he utters the phrase, “You must leave Hell’s Kitchen.” After a teary goodbye, the women now realize that they have to work a little bit harder. But that is not the only surprise. Chef Ramsay calls all the chefs outside and has them look up at a plane flying overhead. Behind it is a banner that announces that Hell’s Kitchen will be delivering pizzas tonight. I think I know which team will have to do that. Yup. Ramsay tells the men that they will have to do the deliveries in a rickety and unstable three-wheeled vehicle similar to a rickshaw. Haha! Once again Chef Ramsay is tilting the game in the women’s favor by taking one or more of the men out of the kitchen. Of course, the men are taking themselves out of the game by not communicating with each other. And with that, JP flings open the doors to Hell’s Kitchen. Soon the limousines and helicopters begin arriving at the restaurant and depositing the beautiful people of California onto hell’s doorstep. The diners are soon seated and the orders start pouring into the kitchens. The pizzas don’t seem to be very popular with the crowd, who are mostly ordering the regular entrées of Wellington, salmon, and beef. The women are off to a fast start and the appetizers are made to perfection. The women are communicating well. The editing indicates that this will be an easy victory for the women. In the blue kitchen, the phone starts ringing and pizza orders are coming in. I note that the callers can only get one kind of pizza. I have to wonder whether the producers just got 15 or so callers to call and order some pizza and then they are waiting at a house a block or two away. Chef Ramsay picks Ben to be the delivery guy. Matt presents appetizers that fail to pass muster. The eggs are bad. Matt tries again and Bobby gets annoyed and tells Matt to just let him do the eggs instead. That is Bobby’s style, remember, he just lets people fail so that he can come to the rescue and make them look bad. At about a half hour into the service, the blue team has served two tables of appetizers and the red team has served four. All get good reviews. The ladies are ready to send out their first entrées. But the Wellington is raw. That was Shayna’s job to cook them and she flogs herself for screwing up. This delays the whole kitchen. Meanwhile, Ben takes out the first delivery pizzas. He doesn’t know how to drive the odd little vehicle and he doesn’t have directions to get to the house. Somehow he gets there, while driving across someone’s lawn and pushing the cart manually at times. At least the people tip him. The red team tries again for the Wellington. This time Shayna cooks the meat correctly, but Rosann has created watery mashed potatoes. Ramsay rejects it all and makes them start over. Rosann is quickly becoming overwhelmed at the vegetable station. Ramsay, despite swearing his head off, gives the red team a big break when he decides that the vegetables can be sent to the table separate from the meat. He has never allowed this before, that we’ve seen, in four seasons. Wow! With Jen’s help, Rosann get things back on track within a few minutes. Over in the blue kitchen there are similar snags. Louross has undercooked a steak. Luckily this is a problem that can be easily fixed and Louross is horribly embarrassed and starts over. But that is not good enough. They need some more food now. Petrozza has an idea. It is the same idea that has torpedoed chefs every single season. He thinks that they can cut off the burned part of the steak and then serve it. We know that this will send Chef Ramsay into a frenzy when he discovers it. It may be two minutes from now or it may be two hours from now when he watches the tapes. The deception fools Scott, the resident sous chef for the men. Louross calls it the most ghettoist thing he’s ever seen. Two hours into the service and three quarters of the diners have been served their main courses. The kitchens start to work on the desserts. Christina burns four of the soufflés. Oops! That drops the team fifteen minutes behind the curve. She begs and pleads for someone to help her. The other women just look away. Jen says that she is not her mother. Ramsay sees the problem and directs Corey to go and help Christina. He is going to do everything he can to ensure that the ladies win again. This has the desired effect and the desserts begin leaving the red kitchen. Over in the blue kitchen, the men are finally working as a team and they too are getting desserts served. With time running out, both kitchens serve their last ticket and all diners are happy. But which team finished first? Was it too close to call? Chef Ramsay gathers everyone together to give them the results. He tells them that the service was “not brilliant,” but that they got it all done. He is pleased and compliments them all. He declares that there is no losing team tonight. He tells each team to go back and nominate one person for possible elimination. Hey now. That sounds a lot like what happens when both teams do horribly bad and both are declared to be losers. This week is even worse because someone on a winning team will be sent home. Anyway, once again I will point out that the better strategy is to pick your best chef to face off against the other team. I had some disagreement from readers the last time I wrote that and there are many reasons why the readers were correct. I still think, however, that giving your team a one-person advantage next week is worth more than the downside of annoying Chef Ramsay by playing strategy games. And this week is a little bit different since there is no one person on each team picking the nominees. If a good chef is nominated, it will be a team strategy decision. The chefs all return to the dorms and discuss the matter. Bobby, Ben, and Petrozza seem to be the triumvirate of the group and they debate between the two men not in their core group, Matt or Louross. Matt arrives as they are talking and, as a result, Louross seems to be the nomination by default. The women decide as a group. They agree that Rosann did the worst job. She takes it well and admits that she did poorly. Later, Jen confides to Rosann that she actually wanted to get rid of Christina because she talks so much that she drowns out all of the really important stuff that she (Jen) has to say. Back in the kitchen, Ramsay asks for the nominees. The men nominate Louross because he may be the weakest on the team in terms of culinary skills. I can’t disagree. The kid is 22 and doesn’t have the same amount of experience. But I do see that he has the heart and enthusiasm. He will be a better chef than any of the triumvirate when he is their age. The women nominate Christina as the weakest cook. Ramsay is confused. He asks Jen if she is threatened by Christina’s intelligence. She gives an emphatic, “No!” She says that she alone determines her fate in Hell’s Kitchen. Ramsay seemed a bit stunned and informs her that that will be his decision. She looks at him defiantly because she is quite the sassy woman. He turns to Rosann and asks her if she honestly thinks that she is a better cook than Christina. She is also firm in her answer and says that she is. Ramsay disagrees. Ramsay seems rather smitten with Christina and is trying anything he can to save her without being too blatant about it. But it is not working and poor Louross will have to take the fall. Ramsay asks the nominees to step forward and defend themselves. Louross admits that he undercooked one piece of meat and overcooked another. But he points out that he kept going and overcame those goofs. Ramsay asks him if he is the worst cook on the blue team and he says that he is not. He says that Matt is. Christina says that she is detail-oriented and intelligent. She believes that Rosann is actually the weakest chef in the red kitchen. Ramsay mulls it over and decides that the person leaving tonight has already left the building. It is Vanessa. He calls it his gift to the teams for doing well tonight. But he puts them on notice that they still have a long way to go. He warns them that the game will get tougher and sends them back to the dorms.