I just realized that the warnings at the beginning of Hell's Kitchen include one for "sexual situations." Someone please keep an eye on Barrett and the Wellingtons, please.
Oh, right, ANOTHER CLIFFHANGER. That certainly isn't diluted from overuse! Ramsay sends Cyndi back in line after she promises she's not on the decline. Then Ramsay asks the Blue team to rate Zach's performance, and the answers are either two or three. Ramsay gives him ten seconds to defend himself, and Zach babbles about passion. Barrett gets the same ten seconds, and Barrett kisses Ramsay's ass, but it's not good enough: Ramsay sends him home anyway (so never mind about the Wellingtons, I suppose). And now Zach is pissed at his teammates for crossing him, and is promising to even piss on any of them if they're on fire. It's not the Blue team anymore, but Team Zach. It's a team where everyone is yelling all the time for some reason! Ray doesn't care that Zach's pissed, but Ray's too busy sorting out his pills into his little compartments anyway.
Meanwhile in Red, Susan has a pimple. The good news is that we don't spend very much time on this before moving on to tomorrow morning, when the cheftestants reconvene in the dinning room, where a curtained-off area reveals Jean-Philippe in a glass booth, papers swirling around him. These are papers with ingredients, and a chef from each team needs to pull them out. It's a time-waster, notable only because Nedra notes that she should have gone and could have pinned every friggin' piece of paper in there against the glass with her massive breasts. Ah, there's your "sexual situations"! Anthony's breasts aren't huge either, but he manages to pull some ingredients out of the booth.
The teams get to cooking based on the ingredients -- presentation is also important -- pulled by their representatives, while Ramsay reminds them that he might not even taste a dish if it's not "visually stunning."
The dishes are plated, and then Ramsay announces that helping him judge is a senior writer for People magazine, and its long history of culinary criticism. Well, Jennifer Garcia, are these dishes going to make the 50 Most Beautiful list? Ramsay announces they'll only be tasting the three most visually stunning dishes. Not only that, the chef with the best dish from the winning team will be featured in the magazine itself.
Let the superficial judging begin! Nedra, why'd you stuff the salmon? Susan, why didn't you slice your meat? In the end, Ja'Nel, Mary and Cyndi represent Red, while Anthony, Zach and Jon step up for Blue. Michael's quail doesn't look appetizing, and Ray's lobster looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. And a low-budget one at that.
Time for the tasting! Ramsay and Jennifer will score each dish out of fifty. Jon's up first, with a duck confit and pan-seared breast. He nails the seasoning, and earns a 92 total (45 from Jennifer, 47 from Ramsay). Ja'Nel brings up her basil-marinated grilled prawns, finished with black garlic vinaigrette. Jennifer pronounces it delicious, but she gets a total of 89.
Anthony has pan-seared halibut, crusted with coriander and pink peppercorn. It sounds delicious, but it gets an assessment of "good, not great," and he gets 82 points. Cyndi, meanwhile, gets 90 points for her fennel-crusted sea bass with honey sherry vinaigrette. So the women have a five-point lead going into the final round. Zach's steak (roasted red pepper coulis with garlic and shallots) gets 83 points, meaning the women need only 79 points -- lower than any dish has received so far -- to win the challenge. Mary brings up her grilled flank steak, lightly dusted with wasabi and lemongrass. I want it in my mouth RIGHT NOW, but Jennifer says it just misses the mark "with the way that the meat is cooked" but it still tasted wonderful. Her score -- after the commercial break --- is 45. No wonder they left both scores after the cliffhanger. That means Ramsay would have to give it only 34 or better, and he matches Jennifer's 45, meaning the women have won their eighth out of nine challenges. But there's a tie between Mary's steak and Cyndi's bass, and the People magazine lady picks Mary, and she's all "Yay!"
Jon's pissed because he had the best dish of both teams, but his team sucks and so instead of being in People they'll be cleaning the dorms. Ramsay informs Red that in addition to Mary's honor, they'll all be photographed for "Star Watch," whatever that is. Or maybe he said "Style Watch" -- that's a People thing, right? -- and his accent sounded like "Star Watch"? At any rate, the women all seem to know what it is, and react with enthusiasm. Plus there's a surprise waiting for them in the dorms. They get all screechy as they get back to the dorms and find their fancy new blenders from Vitamix. Big deal! I won a nice Cuisinart from a week-long radio-station contest and I didn't lose my shit like this! They do look nice, though...
The women change and head out to their limos, while the men get to work cleaning, with the subtext being that the cheftestants are fucking pigs, leaving Q-tips on the floor and eating cookies in bed.
The women head to makeup and hair for their photo shoot, and then Blue gets a phone call to let them know that Zach and Jon need to deliver some champagne to Red. Zach wonders how much more humiliating it can be, and then he and Zach discover that their delivery vehicles are tricycles. Jon seems a little more adept at operating his than Zach is. Jon is commendably restrained; given his top dish, he wants to complain, but Red team earned their victory.
Ramsay shows up to the photo shoot, and the women act like it's a big deal to see Chef Ramsay of all people. The women all look great, and Anthony tells them so when they return, and then Ramsay calls the dorms to summon everyone to his office.
He announces that Hell's Kitchen is closed to the public tonight, but he's opening it to "distinguished members of the U.S. Army" who have returned home. Ray in particular is honored because he spent several years in the marines or something.
The women change. Nedra is nervous because she's got "the B.G.s -- the bubble guts." Blue preps, with Zach appearing to drag his ass, although he tells us that he loves the armed forces or whatever.
Ramsay tells the teams that he wants to serve each table (of twelve) at the same time because he loves the military too. Some of the guests are introduced -- and thankfully we forgo the ridiculous "national security is at stake!" breathlessness from last week's promos.
The teams get to cooking, with Ja'Nel and Jon cooking the first course, butter-poached spot prawns. Jon seems to be doing OK, while Ray is "his usual [bleep] bumbling self," according to Jon. Still, Blue's prawn dishes are fine, and then -- after a moment -- Red is likewise fine.
It's on to the lobster linguine, and Cyndi is pissed at Nedra's rookie mistake of pouring cool water into the pasta pot. Ray seems to be useless in Blue as well, so Nedra's got a little slack here. But her pasta pot is simmering, not boiling, and the linguine is in jeopardy. Ramsay has to show them how to boil water for pasta, which is obviously embarrassing. Meanwhile, Ray is plating the linguine for Blue by himself because he doesn't trust anyone else to do it. When his team does muscle in, Zach can't portion properly. And Red gets their linguine out ahead of Blue (who isn't that far behind, really). But one of the officers sends his pasta back to Blue for being undercooked.
Then there is a whole deal where Ramsay insinuates that Susan is stupid because she is blonde (Susan defends herself by pointing out she's a bottle blonde, which really only implies she's stupid all on her own). After all that, the risotto course is served by both kitchens simultaneously. But the lobster linguine that needs to be redone is undercooked again, with Zach really appearing to not give half a shit about it.
The loup de mer course goes off without incident, and then finally Ray's lobster linguine gets out, two courses late, as Anthony points out.
The New York steak is the final course, and Zach and Susan are leading those dishes in their respective kitchens. Susan's not ready to go, and she's holding up the Blue team. "Bitch, you better get it together. You better cook these steaks right," says ... oh, you know who said that.
Since they don't show her fucking up before the commercial break, you know hers are going to be fine. Meanwhile, Blue's not got their steaks seasoned and sliced properly, but this seems a little ginned up to make it seem like more of a Blue screw-up than it actually turned out to be.
The diners are served, the stoves are turned off, and when the dining room is closed, Ramsay tells him that he thinks the chefs did the military an injustice, and they're both losers, so they both have to nominate people for elimination, but they only have to nominate one person per team.
In the dorms, Zach announces that if they put him up for elimination, it's because he's a good chef, not a bad one. Ray also doesn't think he deserves to be eliminated, mainly because of his own time in the marines, it appears.
Meanwhile, Red is leaning toward Susan and Nedra. You'll find this hard to believe, but neither of them thinks she deserves to be eliminated. And at some point, the closed captioning on my screen reads "[crickets chirping]".
The teams file back into the dining room, and eventually we find out that Red went with Nedra. Ramsay asks Susan if she's a better chef than Nedra. Susan is, according to Susan because Nedra doesn't have that "oomph." Man, Nedra is nothing but oomph! Blue nominates Ray, but it was close between him and Zach. Ramsay asks Ray if he's better than Zach, and Ray suggests Zach screwed up a lobster tail on purpose.
Ramsay makes Nedra, Ray and Zach step forward. Zach rates his own performance as a seven, much to Ramsay's incredulity, while Ray and Nedra offer the usual bullshit defenses.
Ramsay fakes out Nedra, ordering her to give him the service or her life time, and then intimates he can send both Ray and Zach home before demanding Ray's jacket. "I respect you," Ramsay tells him, allowing Ray to feel like he's leaving with his pride.
"Ray's age wasn't the issue. It was his cooking. And I wasn't getting any younger waiting for him to improve," Ramsay tells us, which is a little at odds with his "I respect you" comment to Ray. Well, no more grandpa jokes, at least.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He thinks Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces" might be his best record. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.