You know, I've used a lot of scrap paper marking down how many curse words Gordon and the Dopes have used in each episode. I haven't thrown any of it away because someday the Montykins Library is going to want this stuff.
Gordon Ramsay's Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 35
Contestants' Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 36
Super-Obscure Reference I Decided Not To Make About Six Times: SWITCH! (jimmysmits)
After last episode's elimination, Jay, Jason and Ben whine about Autumn still being around. Autumn figures that all she can do is just keep cooking. I think that's correct. But it's challenge time! Everyone gets whooshed away to a farmer's market, where Gordon lectures them about the importance of budgets and portion control. Each chef gets ten dollars and ten minutes to collect ingredients.
Jay considers himself good at controlling costs. Ben knows the buzzwords about "fresh foods" and "keeping it simple." Holli looks a little lost. About half the items on the shelves are blurred out. Autumn comes in at $9.99, which is pretty impressive.
Back at the kitchen, people are cooking. Jason's strategy is "win." But Autumn is skeptical about his store-bought ravioli. Everything gets plated, and it's time for the guest judges: Joaquim Splichal (a million restaurants), Dana Bowen (editor of Saveur magazine) and Very Lakusta (General Manager of Gordon's LA restaurant). They'll taste each dish and decide how much they'd pay at a restuarant. Okay, go!
Jay has a lamb crusted in fried pita bread. Everyone loves the pita, and they're impressed with how little he spent. The judges say it's a $28.66 dish. That's an average; it's not like they're doing this to the penny. Moving on! Jason has a pan-seared tilapia and has to cop to purchasing the ravioli. He's doomed. The average price is $16.
Ben has a seared lamb chop. He allows Joaquim to lead him into claiming that his dish is about the South of France, but then it turns out that he should have cooked the vegetables together if he was going for ratatouille. The vegetables are a little undercooked. His average price is $25, and he's cranky about it.
Autumn, who is always delighted when Benjamin fails, brings up her take on a New England Boil. It looks good and there's a giant veal chop on the plate. Her average is $27.33. She's not ahead of Jay, but she's happy with beating Benjamin, adding "Suck on these!" Classy.
Holli seared an ahi tuna in bacon grease. And there's parsnips and kumquats in there. No one's sure what to do with it. The judges decide that the flavors are good, and her average price is quite high: $29.66. Holli wins! She's pretty pleased with herself, which I think is understandable.
The losers' punishment is to do the laundry. And Holli's reward is to go to a luxury hotel and hang out at a poolside cabana with JP. Then she gets a thousand dollar shopping spree at a kitchen supply store, which sounds awesome. Twist! She gets to bring one person with her. And she picks Jay, who you might remember from all the sexytalk last episode.
Punishment time. Autumn talks, which enrages Ben and Jason. They don't like her. In the limo, Holli claims that she picked Jay because he was second. They have banter:
Jay: "It was a good dish."
Holli: "So was yours."
Jay: "No, that's what I was talking about."
Holli: "Can we turn around so I can pick someone else?"
Ah, classic japery! Anyway, they get to the peninsula and have classy food. JP makes fun of them for knowing each other so well. There's champagne and more banter, which I don't have it in me to transcribe. Back at the punishment, the losers get to eat Spam sandwiches. They say "Spam" a lot. Bloody Vikings.
Jason complains a lot about Autumn talking. I would like to register a complaint about Jason's complaints. I don't care about any of this. Just cook some food, okay? And in other "Things I don't care about" news, Jay gets Holli to buy him a wooden paddle and a drink dispenser. As soon as they get back, they hit the hot tub. There's some crotch-grinding, then Autumn shows up and spoils the party.
The day, people do prep. Jay complains about how slow Jason is. But I thought Autumn was the worst at prep!
Chef Ramsay comes out to tell everybody about the night's gimmick. They'll all be rotating stations whenever he tells them to. Also, Holli's tuna-kumquat thing is on the menu, but surely they knew that during the prep, right?
The first table suffers from a couple of undercooked scallops from Jason. This prompts Jay to sneer about how Jason is a "homestyle barbecue cook." Jason's replacement scallops are fine. Another table gets called and then... SWITCH! Everyone rotates, and that means everyone has to tell everyone else what's already cooking. Jason inherits some beef wellingtons from Holli and discovers that there's no way they've been cooking for 18 minutes the way she said. He doesn't announce this right away and gets yelled at. But everyone gets back on track.
Ben, on fish, messes up the special tuna dish. It's supposed to be seared on the outside and raw in the middle, but he cooked it almost all the way through. Bad Benjamin! But it's probably pretty quick to fix that, right? SWITCH! This does seem to force people to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, it doesn't let anyone get into a groove, so Jay's got some John Dory that's too dark, due to the use of butter or something. Jay's excuse is that the fish station was a mess when he walked into it. That doesn't explain why he doesn't answer Jason's repeated question about how long the John Dory will be. He eventually gets the fish out to the pass, and it's time for another SWITCH!
Jay starts to shut down, and the fact that he tends to shut out Autumn's voice doesn't help. Now she's on fish and he's on beef, so they need to work together. Some Wellingtons come back for being well-done instead of medium rare, and he tells Holli (on garnish) that the wellingtons will be in 14 minutes. Then he immediately brings up the refires, making her look like a dummy who isn't ready with the garnish. Luckily for Holli, Chef Ramsay has been paying attention and accuses Jay of doing that to make himself look good. SWITCH!
Autumn lands on Jay's meat station and isn't sure what temperature anything's supposed to be. So she just assumes the wellingtons were cooked correctly and brings them up as medium rare. And that turns out to have been the correct option! Holli, on fish, has some good scallops. But Ben's also on her station, for some reason, and makes the batch of scallops. And they get rejected. SWITCH!
Food appears to be going out to customers, and some of it comes back. A six-top's fish comes back overcooked. It's Jason's fault, apparently, and the table doesn't want replacements. They'll just eat the garnish. Ouch! The table is two tuna (from Jason) and two beef (from Ben). Ben falls behind and doesn't talk to anyone about when he's going up. He does get the food up to the pass, though.
Chef Ramsay takes a break, leaving Sous Chef Scott in charge. Ben, as the voiceover puts it, "unwisely decides this would be a good time to become a leader." So Ben sneaks a look at the few tickets and calls them out himself. Scott doesn't like that. At all. His rant ends with "And don't EVER come up to my pass again and try to take my [bleep] place!" Scott is a pretty clear communicator. Then we have a commercial and watch that whole thing again, including the voiceover. But this time, it's totally worth watching twice. I've watched it three times and it's great. Ben's final statement: "That sucked." Yeah, I bet it did.
Holli and Jason are ready with the final entrees and decide to wait until Ben is ready with the garnish. And then he's ready and everything goes up at the same time. Riveting.
Post-service ranting. Chef Ramsay wants to know why they didn't get better. Jason suggests that switching stations was tough. Chef Ramsay asks if that means it was too hard for him, which Jason quickly denies. So who was it too hard for? Well, he has to finger Benjamin and Jay. Chef Ramsay gets back on his script and says that he saw five line cooks tonight. Well, that's what you're telling them to do, right? Anyway, everyone has to go pick two for elimination.
Jay is ticked off that Jason called him out. "Call me out because I didn't talk enough?" Well, yes. Gordon Ramsay wants people who talk a lot. You clammed up. Now it's Ben's turn to whine about how he doesn't think it's fair to be called out for sucking, and Jason does not back down. Both Ben and Jay do that thing where they look into the air and smirk because they think that by annoying Jason they've somehow defended themselves. Ben nominates Autumn again, of course. Autumn blames Jay for any problems she had, because she had to follow him the whole night and the stations were always in disarray. Jay is willing to go up, but takes a moment to tell Autumn that he can't believe she's here and Jason that he's good at doing what he's told. Holli tells us that she wishes Autumn had [bleep]ed up, because then she'd have an excuse to nominate her.
Okay, nomination time. Holli nominates Ben for having "a few bad services lately" and (pause for musical sting long enough that even Gordon gets impatient, then commercials, then a recap of Holli nominating Ben, then more music, then Gordon gets impatient again) Jason because "no one believes he could actually run a restaurant."
Jason and Ben, forward! Jason, why is your team not confident? "It has nothing to do with culinary. I think it's personal!" Benjamin, why can't you cook, talk, and listen at the same time? "I need to just cook." Ben thinks he did a good service, which Gordon finds hard to believe. "The person who is leaving Hell's Kitchen is... Jason." Then everyone stands still to see if we're doing another swerve where the grammar gets tortured, but no. Jason's out.
I'm pretty sick of Ben, Jay and Autumn, so I guess I'm rooting for Holli at this point.
week: Gordon Ramsay does something he's never done in Hell's Kitchen before, which is something he says about every third episode. Also: Showmance!
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see who besides Gordon are the worst human beings on reality TV!
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You can email Monty at montykins@gmail.com if that's your idea of a good time.