Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Revenge of the Downtrodden
By Monty Ashley | Season 5 | Episode 13 | Aired on 04.30.2009
Since all the cooking is done already, the serving is pretty straightforward. The contestants bring their food out and say a few words about what they are. Andrea has a chicken dish, Paula has a poached sturgeon, and Danny has a blackened halibut with a peach salsa. We see the chefs eat. The customer-chefs, I mean. Confusing! They mark off their favorites and least favorites, and 76% mark Danny's dish as "least favorite". Gordon claims that means everyone hated his dish, which I think overstates it a bit. The most popular dish is Paula's. She gets a round of applause and seems quite pleased with herself. As well she might be!
Paula's reward is another of those spa days, with a haircut, manicure, and color. Gordon points out she's from Brazil, so he cheerfully throws a waxing into the reward. Well, great. She'll also get a surprise of some sort. The punishment for the other two is to clean and reset the dining room for the next night's service. And also do a bunch of laundry. Chef Ramsay thanks the customer-chefs and sends them off.
In the dorms, Andrea tells Paula she's going to get a magazine spread. She seems quite happy for her friend. Danny, meanwhile, is a big mopey-pants about losing. He's got dead eyes.
Paula goes off to a beauty salon with Jean-Philippe. He's being sent along as a beauty helper, I guess. Paula seems surprised that he's not married. I'm staying out of this. Beauty montage!
Back in the dining room, Danny and Andrea are ironing the tablecloths while Danny complains a lot. Paula shows back up and she looks about the same to me. She goes off to the dorms and interviews that she is in a pretty good mood and can't wait to see what the next half of her reward is.
Crescent moon. Crescent. I mean, honestly.
The next morning, Paula goes out to the parking lot and joins Gordon Ramsay in a limo. He tells her that they're going to Good Morning, LA to cook live on television. Back at Hell's Kitchen, JP is making Danny and Paula use a steam cleaner on stuff. Specifically, the stuff in the hallway we hardly ever see that's lined by televisions so that they can be coincidentally cleaning the TV screens when Gordon and Andrea appear on them.
Andrea jumps up and down with glee and, in an interview, calls Paula a bitch. But she means it in a nice way. We see the morning show footage, but it's already pretty meaningless, and it's edited into incomprehensibility. I can report that there was some food-chopping and some talking about the future.