Oh, hello! Daniel is on assignment (whatever that means) so I'll be your Hell's Kitchen recapper this week. I'm Montykins. You might remember me from that time I recapped this show for four seasons. And this last weekend, I met Keckler, who was the recapper before me. That's not really relevant, but I thought it was neat. Look, we'll have plenty of time to talk about dummies undercooking the risotto once the show starts. That's still what Hell's Kitchen is mostly about, right? That and Gordon Ramsay pretending to be surprised that the awful people still can't cook?
Let's see... I see we're no longer doing the Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter, where we track everyone's cursing to see whether Ramsay out-bleeps the cooks. I realize I have the power to reinstate it while I'm here, but I'm kind of glad it's gone. It required more bookkeeping than this show really merits.
Okay, enough stalling. Let's get to work.
According to the Previouslies, two women dislike each other and one of the guys successfully recognized the taste of scallops. Then there was a bunch of other stuff that I kind of zoned out on. Those episodes were recapped. If you're so curious about what happened in them, go read about them. I'm not going to live in the past. Seriously, though, these Previouslies are taking forever. This is allegedly going to be the "most intense dinner service yet," which seems unlikely.
Right. It's red menu vs. blue menu. We start in the middle of Chef Ramsay not liking the blue team's quail because it has bones in it. He's mad at Clemenza, but not quite mad enough to throw him out at the beginning of the episode. So he tells the blue team to start over. Justin magnanimously announces that he will personally be inspecting the quails to make sure they're bone-free.
Over in the red kitchen (hey! My "Over in the red kitchen" macro still works!) the women are pretty confident. Gordon has everybody line up for the usual anti-pep talk. He tells them, "Your menu, your stations, my standards." I think that means the chefs get to decide for themselves what station they'll be working. They don't play it up much, but normally the stations are assigned by Ramsay or the producers or something.
Sous Chef James is instructed to open up the doors. The red menu has Christina's flatbread and Kimmie's ribeye with Tiffany's potato gratin. I think there should be an "au" in there, but I'm just telling you what the announcer says. The blue team has Justin's scallop-stuffed squash blossoms, Justin's steak and fried onions, and Brian's sea bass. The correct answer here is the steak and fried onions. Why would you order anything else?
Ramsay shouts several orders at the red team, and he is unhappy with the lack of response. Christina seems a little overwhelmed with the way absolutely everybody is ordering flatbread, but I guess she's pleased that her dish is popular. Also she gets to use the cool pizza over in the back of the kitchen. That's probably fun. Chef Ramsay is angry with her for not having her flatbreads ready when he wants them, but I don't know what she's supposed to do about it. They're in the oven; they're not cooking any faster. She eventually delivers them and they are acceptable to the head chef.
Blue kitchen. Robin is making Justin's squash-blossom things, and Chef Ramsay hates it. He makes everybody stop what they're doing and come over and touch it. Then he yells at them a bit more before they're allowed to get back to work. Robin complains (to the camera in an interview, not to Ramsay's face) that it's a weird little appetizer that's basically a flower filled with fish paste. When they go back to work, Justin's got some words of advice: "Cook it all the way through." She says she gave it five minutes like he said. What? Lady, you're supposed to be a professional chef. Serve it when it's cooked, not when the timer goes "Ding!" Justin asks if she's blaming him. She is! And she's calling him "Bro," which is even worse. Her set of squashes is overcooked, so everybody has to come touch them again. Now she's out of squashes, but Justin's on the meat station and has no time to stuff more for her. Chef Ramsay wails about how it's the first table.
The red team has served out over half of their appetizers and moves on to the entrees. The first halibut is deemed "beautifully cooked." Barbie asks Kimmie if she needs help. She does not! Although Kimmie does ask, in passing, if Barbie can pull some ribeyes out of a thing. Just then! Chef Ramsay makes the red team stop so he can demonstrate the "stunning beautiful duck" by making them all taste it. Everyone tells Kimmie it's overcooked. In an interview, Kimmie shrugs, "Shut the [BLEEP] up. You don't need to be eatin' my food and tellin' me what's wrong with it." Well, you may have come on the wrong show. Ramsay shouts at them about how it's their menu. Barbie smirks in an interview about how she offered to help. Shut up, lady.
The blue kitchen is out of squash blossoms and can't fulfill their last order. Robyn tells us that Justin didn't prep enough. Well, he probably didn't count on you having to throw away that many. That's Justin's (bleep-filled) defense. Chef Ramsay makes Robyn go out into the crowd and apologize to the table. That's fun! Brian thinks she sucks.
The blue team moves to entrees.
Kimmie brings up some replacement duck on the red side, and it's "lovely." She delivers an interview that includes the phrase "on point" several times. But then she has some overcooked ribeye, which results in the usual round of angry Chef Ramsay and smug competition. This is where Ramsay claims that he doesn't care if the whole red team goes home. He also asks Kimmie if she's given up. She denies it. The replacement meat is acceptable, and now everyone's happy again. That seemed like fake drama.
Blue kitchen. Justin's on meat and Clemenza's on fish. I don't know why they told us that, because the real problem comes from Brian, whose garnish is missing the onions. Remember those fried onions that come with the steak? Yeah, he forgot to make those. He hustles them up and they are limp and floppity. Chef Ramsay makes everybody fondle them. Then he tells Brian he clearly doesn't care. Clemenza accurately points out that it's not rocket science. Seriously. If you can't operate a deep-fryer, you're not qualified to work at Burger King, let alone whatever restaurant is this year's fake prize. The onions are fine and the dishes hit the dining room.
The red kitchen does okay for a bit until some diners spot that their lobster is raw in the center. Dana (on the fish station) sees the dishes come back and is distressed to learn that she messed it up. She tells us that she thought that the lobster claws at her station were already fully cooked and that all she had to do was heat them up in the water.
Okay. Digression. You've seen Kitchen Nightmares, right? Like, at least one or two episodes? What does Gordon Ramsay hate more than anything? The answer is "restaurants that serve precooked food." He's not going to have precooked lobster that all you have to do is reheat it! Come on, Dana. Head in the game.
Blue kitchen. Justin is yelling a lot of things and Clemenza does not answer him. Some of Clemenza's bass is acceptable to Chef Ramsay.
Red kitchen. Chef Ramsay spots Tiffany dumping food out of a pan and putting garnish in it without cleaning it. Chef Ramsay does not like her using a dirty pan. Barbie informs us that there are two million sauté pans in there, so there's no excuse for not grabbing a clean one.
Chef Ramsay calls out two orders to the blue kitchen, and they both include two sea bass. But Clemenza doesn't hear them quite right and (he claims) gets confused by Justin yapping at him and the result is that he thinks the first order has only one sea bass. There's the usual round of confusion, and when Clemenza claims to have the other sea bass, Chef Ramsay calls him a lying bastard. He concludes his tirade with, "I will [BLEEP] nail you to the [BLEEP] post!" Every well-stocked kitchen has a [BLEEP] post.
The red team, meanwhile, is almost done with their entrees. But some raw potatoes get sent back so everybody has to come poke them for Chef Ramsay's entertainment. He claims that Kimmie's given up and that Tiffany doesn't care. I think it's more likely that they're not competent to work in a kitchen at this level, but I guess Ramsay could be right. Dana smugly informs us that she warned Tiffany five hours earlier that the potatoes were crunchy. We do see a flashback in which she says they're not done. Then we see them sniping at each other in the kitchen, because that's always an exciting change of pace on this show.
Blue team. Justin has some meat. They're slightly overcooked, which makes Robyn very happy. He tells Chef Ramsay that it's going to be another six minutes, which does not make him happy. People in the dining room complain about not getting their food promptly, which can't come as a surprising development.
Kimmie snipes at Tiffany. The female sous-chef tells Tiffany she's the sloppiest chef she's ever seen and throws her out of the kitchen. Dana works on the potatoes, which are still crunchy. She adds cream and puts them in the oven. She does it again and again but they won't be done. It's the last table! Dana's final word: "I told her they were mad crunchy, dude." Man, who talks like that?
Blue kitchen. Chef Ramsay gets bored while waiting for some fish so he makes everybody line up for abuse. Brian admits in an interview that his fish wasn't cooked. The blue team gets thrown out as a group. And only one day before retirement. I mean, um, one table before the finish.
Up in the dorm, Justin and Clemenza snarl at each other about that time Clemenza missed a fish order.
Chef Ramsay has Sous Chef Scott finish out the blue team's service. This mostly takes the form of Scott pointing to the New York Strips that are already out and resting.
The red kitchen also gets its final table out of the way. Chef Ramsay tells them, "Switch off, clear down, and [BLEEP] off." The red team's spirits lift when they discover that the blue team got kicked out, because they figure they probably won't be the losing team this time.
Post-dinner shouting. Chef Ramsay tears up the comment cards, which means they won't affect the result. Not that they ever do. He says it was the most shocking dinner service yet. I've said this before, but I think Gordon Ramsay has a dangerously low shock threshold. He accuses the blue team of not caring, then dwells on the red team's raw potatoes and lobster. There's no winning team. Dana wails in an interview that she's confused and wants someone to tell her what's going on. She should have watched this show before, because this is not exactly an unprecedented result.
Anyway, both teams are sent off to pick two candidates each. They're probably going to be Justin and Clemenza from the blue team and Kimmie and Tiffany from the red team. But we're only 39 minutes in, so let's watch the negotiations!
Back to the dorms. Justin nominates Robyn for the squash blossoms. Robyn says they were his dish, and he didn't help her. She says he set her up for failure by not making all the blossoms the same size. Clemenza tells us that he wants to send Justin home because of some half-baked (ha! Cooking term!) idea of strategy.
So the final tally on the blue team is that Justin and Brian voted for Robyn, Robyn voted for Justin, and Clemenza wasn't going to vote for himself, so the final two are Justin and Robyn.
Dana votes for Tiffany because of the potatoes and Barbie for no clear reason. Kimmie's reason for voting for Barbie is that she was slow during prep. And she had an attitude. Dana blames the "looks" Barbie gives people. Barbie objects to this in an interview in which she gives some hilarious faces. Tiffany says she doesn't care, but she votes for Kimmie and Barbie. Christina votes for Tiffany and then falls into a bunch of bleeping.
Oh, we're back to the blue team. I thought they were done, but Justin still has a vote to give and decides on Clemenza. Clemenza starts babbling excuses.
That was confusing and accomplished nothing. Now everyone's down in the kitchen for the elimination. Gordon asks Brian for the first nominee. It's Robyn for having trouble in appetizers. Robyn complains that she asked for help before service and Justin wouldn't help her. Justin says he doesn't want to deal with turmoil and interrupts her a lot. Brian's second nominee is Clemenza for having "a few hiccups on fish." Clemenza makes that popping noise you get by pulling your finger out of your mouth and says, "Whoopee-[BLEEP]ing-doo!" Right in the middle of Brian's explanation! This guy's classy. He waves his hands and bugs out his eyes and objects to everything.
Gordon: "Oh, blue team. Oh, it hurts."
Christina presents Tiffany because the potatoes made them stop. Sure. The second nominee is Barbie, which seems to surprise Gordon. Because he does not care what someone does during prep. He has never cared about that. He specifically asks if Barbie was chosen over Kimmie. She was. See, Gordon was expecting the people I listed. I can't prove it, of course, but I'm pretty sure.
Gordon has Tiffany, Barbie, Robyn, and Clemenza step forward to defend themselves. Tiffany says she's a valuable team player and she doesn't mind going into the kitchen every day. Then she cries. Barbie says she's been a team player. Gordon points out that the rest of her team wants her out. Clemenza is in trouble for lying about the fish. He claims he didn't understand the question. He feels he had the least of the problems on the team. Robyn also claims to be a team player, even though everyone on both teams hates her. She says she can come in tomorrow and work with the blue team. She looks around for support, and Justin shakes his head.
Anyway, Tiffany's out because Gordon can't see a leader in her. She's sad that she's out this early. Early? This is the thirteenth episode!
Everyone gets sent back to their teams. Gordon claims he'll start eliminating them faster, but I don't believe him.
Kimmie vows to get rid of Barbie. Barbie tells us that she's not here to make friends. Mission accomplished!
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.