Gordon Ramsay's Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 30 (including one in front of children, if you need something to clutch your pearls over)
Best Ramsay Food Insult of the Night: "We cook spaghetti to order. Even the fucking dirtiest, scummiest Italian restaurant in Venice Beach cooks spaghetti to order."
Best Contestant Quote of the Night: "Oh my God, that cleanses your booty." -- Jen, on discovering the bidet
Amount of Keckler's shtick stolen by LTG: Lots
We open with the chefs returning to the dorm, all pretty shocked that Brad got the boot while Bonnie was allowed to stay. Rock continues his gamesmanship when he interviews about how glad he was to get rid of a strong competitor and then tries to play mind games with Josh. Bonnie has the line of the scene when she asks everyone, "Do you think I'm entertaining? Is that why I'm still here?"
The morning, Chef Ramsay welcomes the remaining chefs to final five, and combines them on to one team. It's a rare feel-good moment as all of the chefs toast their success with a glass of champagne. And then Chef Ramsay douses them with champagne as the celebration continues. He actually aims the stream of champagne at Josh's gaping maw and tells him, "You have a new talent. You can catch champagne." Doesn't "new" suggest that there was some other talent to begin with? Because I haven't seen it.
The good feelings continue as the champagne-soaked chefs hit the dorms to get the new jackets for their united team. The red and blue stripes have been replaced with black, and they are pretty spiffy looking. And people are still being nice to each other. I'd complain, but I know it won't last long.
And now it's time for the first truly individual challenge. Chef Ramsay tells the chefs that they'll be cooking for trendsetters, but he doesn't give them any more info than that as the chefs are blindfolded and lead off to the car. Josh thinks they must be cooking for movie stars, and Julia thinks it might be doctors or nurses (because of a comment Ramsay made about cooking for people with their finger on the pulse of tomorrow). But Jen has the best (and worst) line of the scene when she interviews, "We're cooking for trendsetters. If it's Mariah, or if it's the Rock, I will pee my pants." I'd pee my pants too, but only because I'd be excited about using a time machine to travel back to 1996, the last time either of those people might have been considered "trendsetters." Although, if Jen has spent the last ten years locked in a windowless kitchen with no access to the media, that would explain a lot of things.
The trendsetters they'll be cooking for are actually teenagers at a local school. And if you saw my niece and her friends still trying to work the Uggs in 2007, you might be pretty doubtful that teenagers are really trendsetters. (I love you Jaime, but I've told you those shoes have got to go.) In any case, the chefs have 60 minutes to produce lunch for 100 teenagers, whose votes will decide the winner. Although we're shown a kid criticizing her grilled chicken and cheese sandwich, it's Julia who pulls out a commanding victory, with 51% of the votes. For the record, Rock made a Kobe meatloaf on a ciabatta roll, Josh came up with a baked salmon with pineapple salsa, Bonnie served up some dubious breaded, fried goat cheese on a bed of greens, and Jen went straight for the kid palate with a baked chicken fettuccine with lemon chive butter sauce. Jen also was the most notorious in sucking up for votes, telling one teen, "I like your sweater. It's great, it's great." The kid does not look convinced.
Julia's prize is a trip to Las Vegas with Gordon. She also gets to pick one lucky chef to join her, and she pretty quickly chooses Jen. They fly off to Vegas in a private jet, which blows them both away. (Julia: "Wow. We just sit anywhere?") Once they arrive in Vegas, the girls are blown away by their guest suite at the Green Valley Resort. It's harder to tell whether they are more excited about the pool table or the bidet. (I'm more excited at hearing Jen call Julia "Jules." While they have occasional blowups, I really get the sense that all three of these women really like each other.) The two women get massaged, scrubbed, and otherwise pampered. And the day, they have a chance to meet Heather, last year's winner, at "her" restaurant. She shows off some food and gives them a few generic tips about wanting to win.
While Jen and Julia are in Las Vegas, the three losers have to spend a long night cleaning the front of the house. Josh demonstrates that champagne catching really is his only talent as he proceeds to fuck up the vacuuming, and Bonnie gets a demonstration of Rock's temper as he blows up at her for not wholeheartedly supporting his plan to iron the tablecloths on top of a table. (He seems to think she should be a housework genius since she's a nanny, but she calmly tells him, "I'm a chef. I cook dinner for them every night, dumbass.") The day, the three of them are still alone as they do all of the prep for that night's service. Bonnie makes the colossally dumb move of binning a tray of monkfish after deciding that it smelled bad, without asking a single other person to confirm her feeling that it had turned. This catches up with her when Mary Ann looks for the missing fish, and it gets even worse for Bonnie when neither of the sous chefs think anything was wrong with the fish.
1 2 3
After prep, Bonnie and Rock are settling in to complain about Julia's victory just as she and Jen return from Vegas. They have some pictures and can't stop going on about how glorious life would be at GVR. I'm wondering if they realize that staff doesn't actually live in those suites? It's a nice paying job, but the winner is still going to have to get an apartment. Julia is delightful as she tells everyone about the bidet: "It goes right to the spot." There are hand gestures that accompany this description.
And now it's time for service. Josh starts on apps, and he fucks up immediately by trying to stay two or three (or four or five) orders ahead of what has actually been ordered. Despite the fact that Ramsay yells at him for it immediately (when he notices what looks like five pans of risotto going despite the fact that no risotto has been ordered), Josh can't seem to stop himself. After discovering what seems to be the third pot of unordered spaghetti cooking away, and after a plate of undercooked risotto is returned, Ramsay orders Josh to take off his jacket and leave the kitchen. He throws a spoon after Josh for good measure, and then follows him out of the kitchen to scream some more and demand that the jacket be handed back immediately. And that's the end of Josh.
As service continues, Rock has a couple of screwups, overcooking some scallops and losing track of some turbot. Julia, who is on garnish for the first time (in eight services, which seems a little crazy to me), is having a tough time with the new station, and eventually shuts down and starts crying while she tries to pull it together. Rock's troubles continue, as he has trouble matching timing with Bonnie and Jen. He and Jen start sniping at each other, and it goes downhill, with a lot of words being bleeped out, some of them (I fear) much worse than "fuck." Bonnie pleads with them to calm down, and Gordon screams at them to calm down, but they keep at it until service is complete. Ramsay decides that Bonnie had the best service, and he tells her to nominate two people for elimination.
Bonnie agonizes, and eventually nominates Rock (which was a no-brainer, even for Bonnie) and Julia, who did have a worse service than Jen, so I can't complain. And then a million hearts are broken, as Ramsay eliminates Julia. But he does so with a lot of love, even offering to put her through culinary school so she can develop what is clearly a fantastic talent. With a kiss on the cheek and a long blue-tinted montage of Julia's greatest moments, he sends her out of Hell's Kitchen. I'm sad for her, but I also know she has a fantastic career ahead of her, and I look forward to eating in a restaurant of hers before too very long.
1 2 3