Gordon Ramsay's Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 30
Best Food Insult of the Night: "Did you pull the skin off with your teeth?"
Best Contestant Quote: "I'm sorry, I said a curse word whimper. --Aaron
Back in their rooms after the first night's dinner service, the contestants are exhausted, and while Bonnie bitches to Melissa about Ramsay calling them "Hell's Bitches," Aaron tells his teammates that he has eaten nothing all day but an apple. He tells his team, "I want to be light because I want to be running for you guys. I don't want to be fat and slow." Because starving yourself when you're sweating pounds in a hot kitchen is the healthy thing to do. Clearly.
Mere hours after the contestants fall asleep, the sous chefs come in and bang them awake with stockpots and wooden spoons. The contestants drag their pajama-clad butts before Ramsay, who dings them for all the food they let go to waste the night before. To teach them a lesson, Ramsay sends them to catch their own fish. Before the contestants can get too excited by the prospect, however, they step out into the Hell's Kitchen parking lot and line up behind a big truck. Ramsay shoots the door up to reveal...BIG COLD FISH! I'm not quite sure what the contestants thought they were going to be doing in the Hell's Kitchen parking lot -- actually fishing? -- but their goggling reactions rival the fish. Two fishmongers hurl fish at the contestants, who have to dart forward, catch the slippery suckers, and drop in them in tubs. Ramsay makes a few small fish jokes at Eddie's kidney's expense and sends the contestants back inside, lugging their fishy tubs. On the way in, Aaron, whose system is probably screaming at him, "One fucking apple? What the HELL were you thinking?" hunches over, breathless with cramps and lets Eddie, who is half his size and probably a quarter of his weight, drag the rest of their fish in.
Back in the kitchen, Ramsay demonstrates how to properly prepare Dover sole by carefully pulling its skin away from the flesh and then squeezing the pasty orange roe out of its...roe hole. Before Ramsay can even announce what the actual prep challenge is, Aaron swears. Ramsay, clearly not shy of painting the air blue himself, still asks him what's up. Aaron apologizes and starts whimpering. The weird thing is, it's the EXACT SAME whimpering noise they had him making last week and this time it doesn't even to match his mouth and breath! I don't get it. I mean, it's not like they are inventing Aaron's complete wimptitude, so why do they feel the need to patch in sound effects? After Aaron admits to feeling confused and dizzy, Ramsay tells him to take time out for ten to fifteen minutes while the rest of the contestants dive into the prep challenge. They have thirty minutes to prep as many sole as possible. I'm not really sure why Ramsay is letting Aaron off so easily all these times. I was expecting him to lose it with him at any moment tonight but he really didn't. Maybe he's worried that if he yells too loudly, Aaron really will have a heart attack.
Anyway, skin and roe fly everywhere and thirty minutes later, the Boys have eight sole that Ramsay finds acceptable and the Girls nine. The best part about the Girls' win is when, after Overly Dramatic Announcer Man reminds us that "Dover sole isn't on the menu at the Waffle House," Julia (of Ye Olde Waffle House) pulls off two very acceptable sole. Melissa contributes four and Joanna manages three. Neither Bonnie nor Jen get any credit for their soles because they sucked. The Girls are rewarded with a fishing and lunch excursion with Ramsay, and the Boys are punished by having to prep all the Dover sole in the kitchen. And still without Aaron, who, more than thirty minutes later, still hasn't returned to his team.
As the Girls get ready for their date with Ramsay, Melissa, who I've decided sounds like Annie Potts in Ghostbusters, does take great care to prep her boobs by plumping them up in her shirt. Well, she's a chef, she would know how to properly handle the melons. The girls squeal and laugh with Ramsay. Well, they squeal and laugh, Ramsay mostly stays away from them. At lunch, he gives them advice about teamwork.
Four hours into their punfishment, Aaron finally joins the Boys and tells them all he's going to call it quits and leave the competition. His team takes two approaches to talking him out of it: Brad tries to shame him into staying by saying he's leaving them high and dry, while Rock just encourages him to stay. Aaron decides to stay.
Then we get the weirdest set of scenes that is never really explained. It would appear that the Girls have returned from their excursion and have either been sleeping or just lying around their place in various states of undress. Joanna carefully brushes her hair and trots out to the living room in her bra and panties, presumably in front of the guys, who are all captured ogling her. Bonnie, similarly unattired in a tank top and panties, follows. The boys are loving it as Josh gets her to look for potatoes for him, giving everyone a nice look at her ass as she bends over to reach for them, and Eddie asks her to reach canister of cookies for him. I'm not really sure what to make of that. I mean, as a woman, I am officially offended, but if she's stupid enough to walk around these guys with both her cheeks hanging out and not even get what they are doing to her? Yeah, she's on her own. Plus, it's FOX, so I don't really expect class from any of these people. Except Jean-Philippe, who probably sleeps in gloves and a hairnet.
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Before opening the restaurant for service that night, Ramsay picks Aaron to serve the night's special -- pan-fried Dover sole -- tableside to the guests. Oh god, I can see it now -- it's going to be sweaty Jimmy, "Stop toushing yourself!" all over again. This is going to be a mess.
The Girls and Boys busy themselves with prep, and we get more scenes of Aaron's...issues. As Ramsay and Jean-Philippe are explaining tableside deboning to Aaron in the dining room, his eyes to glaze over and he appears to go catatonic slightly. Can you be slightly catatonic? Aaron sways on his feet and Jean-Philippe notes, "He's not here." And then, Aaron falls down. Into a chair. In a sitting position. When Ramsay leans over and asks if he's okay, Aaron smiles and says, "I just passed out for awhile, sorry!" Hey, do you know anyone who can pass out with their eyes open? Because I sure don't. This whole Aaron thing is getting weirder and weirder. Is he related to one of the producers or something? Because otherwise I can't understand how he manages to stay as long as he has with very little of Ramsay's wrath coming down on him.
If we thought Aaron could save himself by being some sort of master deboner in the dining room, we were wrong. But really, did any of you really think that? Yeah, me either. First off, to Ramsay and Jean-Philippe's great chagrin, Aaron goes around dorkily and awkwardly introducing himself to all the customers. Even ones he won't be serving. It gets even worse when Aaron takes a full fifteen minutes to debone fish for two customers. By the time they finally eat their fish, it's cold. Finally, as Jean-Philippe learns from every single customer who ordered fish, Aaron is leaving a bunch of bones in the wake of his deboning. I honestly can't believe Aaron is lasting longer than Dewberry, who was kicked out in the second week!
The Girls, apparently led by Jen, get through their service with very little problem. Bonnie does almost screw up a scallop order and has Ramsay calling her, "Fucking Barbie," and Joanna forgets to cook her lettuce for a garnish but beyond that they do much better than the Boys. Melissa tries to take over again and starts cooking the garnish for Joanna -- without Joanna's consent, it would seem -- but Ramsay sees what's going on and tells her to mind her own station.
On the Boys side, Eddie royally screws up the spaghetti, Vinnie burns fish after telling Ramsay it was fine, and then Eddie then ruins the risotto and is pulled off his station. , Josh overcooks the Beef Wellington, which I really can't believe because every season of Hell's Kitchen has had the same damn Beef Wellington on the menu -- why aren't these people practicing it to death before they arrive on the show? Brad is the one to ruin the risotto, but it's Josh's desert-dry chicken that sends Ramsay over the edge. After Josh swears the chicken isn't dry, Ramsay storms over, prods the chicken himself, and smashes his fist on the plate, sending the desiccated breast skittering for cover. (I think there's a Janis Dickinson joke in there.) At this point, Ramsay's is completely beside himself and, after lining all the Boys up and giving each of them their own expletive-accented diatribe, he throws them out of the kitchen and tells the Girls to take over their service. Even though Brad irritably comments to his team, "We're all chefs, they're not even cooks," the Girls ably complete the Boys' service. Suck on that, Brad!
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Since the Boys' obviously lost, they will be losing a team member. Rock is chosen as the best of the worst of his losing team and needs to choose two sacrificial lambs. After talking to most of his team, Rock selects Eddie and Josh. Given Aaron's total uselessness, I was sort of surprised by his choice of Josh. However, there was a moment during prep when Rock was clearly irritated by Josh bossily shooting off his mouth, and he even commented that Josh "is trying to be so much more than what he really is." In the end, it's not that big of a surprise that Ramsay takes Eddie's jacket and tells him to "Fuck off." Oh, that Ramsay, always the sensitive lug!
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