Episode Report Card Daniel: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT You Come at the Queen, You Best Not Miss
By Daniel | Season 9 | Episode 4 | Aired on 07.26.2011
Jonathon's grilling the chicken with Monterray, but Monterray accidentally swipes some onto the floor as he's slicing it. They do their best to recover. Meanwhile, Carrie's showing off how good her chicken looks, only it's a surprise to no one when, a minute before the 30-minute time limit is up, she and Gina discover the chicken is raw in the middle. They keep it cooking until the very last second. "Gina, I did everything I was supposed to do," says Carrie, forgetting the fact that she didn't actually cook the chicken. I mean, it's not like the chicken's defective. Is Hell's Kitchen doing a thing this year where one of the contestants isn't actually a cook but just a moron put on the team to cause havoc and gastro-intestinal distress? "You don't know what you're doing if you're cooking chicken and it's that raw in the center," Gina tells us.
Before inspecting the dishes, Ramsay asks if everyone is satisfied with their concoctions. Gina shakes her head. It looks more like she's doing it for her own benefit, but Ramsay picks up on it and asks her what it's about. "Our chicken's raw," says Gina. This cracks Tommy up. Ramsay? Not so amused. He wants to know how this happened, and Carrie starts in with the explanation that implies the chicken itself resisted all her attempts to cook it properly, but Gina just snaps, "I'm talking," and then explains that it wasn't cooked long enough while Carrie smiles weirdly and shakes her head.
Elise tells Ramsay, "I don't have anything against anybody [not true -- Krupa and Jamie in particular seem to find that part amusing], but it seems like the common denominator is always Carrie [true]."
Anyway, rather than ripping Carrie's face off, Ramsay tells them all to hold it together, because there are a couple of special guests, and then a couple of writers from People and Entertainment Weekly walk in, and the chefs clap and smile like they know who these people are. Ramsay explains that the chef whose dish is determined to be the best will be featured with him in People. I assume they used clips of the cooks' reactions to that for the reaction shots from when the journalists walked in. I think it's also funny that it almost comes off like a bad sitcom plot: "Everyone play it cool! We don't want the journalists to notice the raw chicken!"
Jennifer in particular is excited, because she loooooooves People. "I get it every week!" she tells us. Jennifer seems nice and all, but it's not like we all expected to hear she reads The Economist cover to cover every week.