Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Rivalry
By Monty Ashley | Season 4 | Episode 7 | Aired on 05.13.2008
Back to the red team: Rosann's fish is raw. Jen didn't hear an order and can't be bothered to look around or raise her voice, so she sounds fairly disgruntled and uninterested. More shouting. More bleeping. Chef Ramsay says over and over again that he's had enough, pausing only to dump a tray of food over (onto Jen's station, who says in an interview that she won't put up with that). Chef Ramsay gets in Rosann's and Jen's faces.Two and a half hours in (at 8:33), we're told that no food is coming out of either kitchen. But food is being returned to the blue kitchen, which seems ominous. It also seems odd, since we never saw any blue entrees leave the kitchen. However, these beef Wellingtons, which were requested well done, are apparently bloody all over. Shout, shout. Kick, kick. Ben decides to keep his head down and keep cooking, which of course does not please Chef Ramsay, who instructs Ben, "Switch it off. You're not sending any more [bleep] out of here. You've sent enough." Ben tries to brass it out: "Are we done? Because if we're not, I'm gonna complete my station tonight, chef." "SHUT IT DOWN! TURN IT OFF! YOU [BLEEP]!" Matt sniggers.
The customers leave, and the chefs are all lined up in the kitchen. By the way, the kitchen is completely clean at this point. So there must be at least some time between the end of service and this portion of the festivities. That's the sort of thing you notice when you freeze-frame a lot. Chef Ramsay insults both kitchens for awhile and takes a moment to praise Matt. His risotto is now "the best risotto to ever go out of Hell's Kitchen." The losing team, as usual, is the men. Each individual will be selecting a nominee.
Up in the dorms, Matt claims to be very humble about the compliment he won't stop talking about. Ben has a plan: "I'm nominatin' myself, because I ain't sellin' the three of you guys out. Who you puttin' up, Bob?" Okay, let's break that down. It's obvious that Ben is the person that Ramsay really, really wants to fire. But Ben has tried to phrase this so the other men will nominate themselves instead of just all taking a step back and letting Ben hang. He's dropping a lot of "g"s, he's countrifying his dialect, he's using more "ain't"s and "Bob"s than usual, and he's just generally doing everything he can to sound like a friendly, all-for-one, country boy. In an interview, Louross emphasizes that he is not nominating himself. Of course he isn't!
In Ben and Bobby's room, Ben characterizes Louross's reluctance to volunteer to step in front of the bullet meant for Ben as a failure to "man up". Bobby suggests that Ben should nominate Louross, then. Ben loves that idea and calls Petrozza into the room. This is a crazy, stupid idea. Petrozza doesn't even think Ben's serious. Ben tries to build a case based on Louross's failure in challenges (which I can't be bothered to check up on, although Louross did do poorly tonight), but Petrozza points out that Louross didn't do anything wrong in the service. Bobby thinks the safe thing to do is to nominate each other, so all four of them are up there. Ben loves this plan, but Petrozza doesn't seem sold. And why should he be?