Subdued mood among the teams following Ray's elimination. Michael, for one, is sad to see Ray go. In Red, Susan feels the need to reach out to Nedra, who's feeling betrayed by everyone, and Susan's peacemaking attempt doesn't go over pretty well. I mean, if you're actually going to say things like "You're allowed to have your feelings" to another adult, you should stop before you even start. Meanwhile, sauce-sabotagin' Zach is welcomed back to Blue. He seems genuinely chastened after having been up for elimination the last two times, and he announces to us that it's time to bust out his alter ego "Grant Banks" (the chyron of his name changes accordingly), who is, according to Zach, a "fighter beyond a doubt," while a Rocky theme knockoff.
At 4:50 a.m. the morning, chefs Andi and James wake up the surviving cheftestants and hustle them into the dining room, still in their pajamas. Ramsay tells them that he wants chefs who can create as well as cook, so tonight Hell's Kitchen will feature a menu created by them: Each team will come up with four appetizers, four entrees and two desserts. "Nedra! I want to see you on the menu!" he yells at the teams as they, very tiredly, shuffle back off to the dorms to get planning.
The developing storyline appears to be that Zach is too busy yawning and being tired to contribute anything, and apparently Grant Banks is not a morning person. I suppose he's one of those fighters who sleep all day.
Over in Red, Nedra has taken Ramsay's encouragement to heart and appears to be dominating the discussion. "Chef wants me to stand out, and if they don't like it, they can kiss my whole hoo-hah," she tells us. Susan says Nedra's ideas are all over the place, and Nedra eventually gets fed up with having her ideas being shot down for not "saying 'yum'" or being something you can get in any diner, and she walks out. "All y'all bitches is fake," she says, but it's not clear if she said it to them or if it's just a voiceover.
Then she comes back in and suggests a gumbo. "It sounds like a Nedra dish: overindulgent. I really don't think that it makes sense," Susan says. Not that she's the only one; Cyndi doesn't like Nedra's idea to use Cornish game hen in the gumbo, but Nedra is promising to make gumbo "sexy."
Over in Blue, "Grant Banks" has finally woken up and is contributing to the discussion again, and does so enough that he apparently feels the entire menu is basically a Grant Banks creation.
At quarter to 10, the teams head to the kitchens to prepare their menus. Zach is yelling at us again, and at his team. "Zach is trying to help, but he's really just cocky, overconfident, egotistical. I can understand what he's trying to do, but he's not doing it well," Anthony tells us. He's also getting on Jon's nerves.
Speaking of getting on people's nerves, Red appears to feel everyone but Nedra is doing a lot of prep work, while she's just focused on her goddamn gumbo. She doesn't appear to be too chatty, either, when Cyndi asks how long the soup is going to need. "You can teach a monkey to tie a shoe, but you can't teach a monkey to make a shoe. You know what I'm saying?" Nedra asks us. I honestly have no clue what she's saying.
The teams hustle to get their dishes plated, with Susan declaring that Nedra's gumbo better be the best gumbo he's ever tasted. Arguably, Susan, that would be a good standard to hold all your dishes to.
Ramsay asks Blue what message they're sending to customers coming in through the door. "Vegas," says Jon, who must be some kind of genius. To be fair, the idea that they were supposed to have some kind of theme at all appears to be news to them, but they bluff their way through, pretending it's a theme they all came up with. Ramsay says their dishes are visually very appealing, and he gets down to tasting.
Calamari with chipotle cream sauce from Jon. Ramsay says it's a great, simple dish. He also declares Anthony and Michael's fire and ice dish to be absolutely delicious, and likes Zach's salmon (which catches Zach by surprise) and also the filet with butter sauce. Ramsay calls it a great start, and his only question now is if they can execute that.
Over to Red's appetizers, and they're off on the wrong foot already, with Ramsay asking them what's wrong with the picture. One of them can't wait to throw Nedra under the bus and ventures, "The gumbo?" but Ramsay's talking about the fact that of the four appetizers, two of them are salads, both with cheese. He likes the gumbo, but shits on Ja'Nel's salad with grilled peaches. Susan didn't cook her duck right. Everything's the same color. "Your dishes are supposed to knock the crap out of the Blue team," Ramsay informs them, and obviously being compared unfavorably to Blue is the unkindest cut of all.
It's only twenty minutes to service, so Red scrambles to rework the dishes, and then Ramsay gives them the OK, much less enthusiastically than he did for the men. He then reminds both teams that as tonight is a showcase for them, there's no excuse for them not to deliver, and Jean-Philippe opens the restaurant.
Red (grilled New York strip, roasted duck breast, branzino) versus Blue (pan-seared halibut, grilled pork chop, oven-roasted filet), and diners can order off either menu, so the kitchens have to co-ordinate. In the dining room tonight: Someone named "Nikki Soohoo" from something called "Music High." And good god, Ian Ziering, who obviously hasn't done anything worth mentioning since Beverly Hills, ended thirteen years ago, is also there. Well, it's nice to see him getting some work.
Nedra is dragging her ass on scallops, while Blue gets its first ticket out no problem. Jon wonders why it can't always be that easy. You know, like it is in Red, where Cyndi and Nedra aren't communicating with each other. Nedra is looking out only for herself, forgetting, as usual, that if her team goes down, she's at risk.
Hey, if you were wondering what the bassist from OK Go has been up to lately, this episode's for you! But dude, take off your hat, please.
Then Ramsay calls Zach a "fuckface" because when Ramsay calls out the first entrée order, which, again, Red and Blue need to coordinate on, Zach's all, "I'm ready now in one minute!" No, he's not calling Zach a fuckface for his oxymoron but because it doesn't do any good to jump ahead of Red here. "You're fucking them and you're fucking me," Ramsay yells at him, and now Zach is chortling because he's having a conversation with Ramsay "about fucking" even though there is nothing true about that at all.
Red, meanwhile, still needs more time on the first entrée, and Cyndi doesn't even have the fish in the pan yet, and Ramsay gets on her case. She feels bad about dragging her team right now. And then it doesn't help that she serves up raw branzino. Meanwhile, Zach's pork chops are beautifully cooked. Ramsay goes over to Red to point out Zach's beautiful pork chops, and Mary seems particularly put out that they're getting their asses handed to them by Zach, of all people. Ramsay can't let this beautiful food wait any longer, so he sends out Blue's dishes, and then Cyndi manages to cook her branzino this time.
But a beautiful pork chop will only get you so far, and Blue gets slowed down when they serve up some cold sauce, but that seems like a solvable problem to me. There's some dispute over whether Zach or Anthony should have been the one heating it up (obviously the answer is "It was his fault!"). Poor Michael sighs that this is "really pedestrian." Poor Michael! He must hate having to mingle with the commoners.
Meanwhile, Susan's struggling on garnish, so Mary comes in to help, and Susan is of course grateful for the help -- HAHAHA! No, she's complaining that she's not learning anything from Mary that she didn't already know. Pretty cocky for someone who was supposed to sauté onions and served up some kind of onion soup instead. "I'm not an idiot," she says. [Footage not found.]
Then things click a little for Red when they start communicating again, and they've got their part of the order ready, putting the pressure on Blue, but their dishes are fine too. Red's really starting to hum, and starting to pull ahead of Blue, and since we see Michael bragging about what a fish wizard he is, we know there's going to be a problem, and he serves up halibut that's raw in the middle. That's really pedestrian, Michael. He apologizes and refires, Ramsay yelling at him. But his batch isn't better, and Ramsay chews him out for putting only one new one on, and reheating the other one. "You didn't have the balls to cook me two fresh," he says, and then he brings Jean-Philippe over, hands him a timer and tells him to give Michael a five-minute timeout in the back. That doesn't sound so bad! I guess the punishment is he gets stared at by stars like someone named "Lisaraye McCoy" who is on something called "Single Ladies" during his timeout.
Then Zach doesn't cook an order of pork all the way through, and Ramsay's too worn out to yell very much. Meanwhile, Red's on their last ticket, all pretense of coordination long since gone out the window. Michael's timeout is finished, and Blue manages to cook some halibut all the way through, and both sides finish their service.
Ramsay tells Red that they won, and Susan says her prayers have been answered, given that she would have been in big trouble if Red had lost.
Ramsay tells Blue to come to a consensus for one guy for elimination (reminding them to consider the candidates' total performance), and they head back to the dorm to hash it out. Obviously Michael's a prime candidate, and Zach maybe wants to show a little restraint in dumping on Michael, since he wasn't flawless tonight either. Michael says he made mistakes but wasn't alone, and that his good services are better than other peoples' good services. Anthony is also under fire for his cold sauce.
While they debate, Ramsay calls Red and says he needs to see them all in his office. They show up, nervous, and he tells them they need to select someone to join the Blue team and help turn them around. Susan tells us she can't wait to volunteer, so she can show Ramsay that she can take a losing team and turn them into winners. That's hilarious from someone who almost turned a winning team into a losing one tonight.
In the dorms, she tells Red that she wants a challenge and an opportunity to show what a leader she can be. She's such a twit -- obviously when she puts it like that, all the rest of them are going to want to show their own kick-ass leadership skills, and everyone says they want to go. So they end up drawing a name at random, and Cyndi's the one going to Blue.
Blue, meanwhile, are still arguing over who to nominate, with Anthony making Zach really angry by voting for Zach, and not even Anthony's plaintive "Dude!" can placate "Grant Banks" now. "You want to put me up, put me the fuck up, but don't look in my fucking direction." Then he calls Anthony a "coward" for some reason. They head back into the dining room not having come to a consensus, so you can only imagine how well this goes over with Ramsay when Anthony breaks the news to him that they didn't do the one thing he asked them to after losing dinner service.
He's flabbergasted, then asks Jon who the weakest member of the team is, and Jon picks Michael, for fucking them tonight. Michael cites Zach for inconsistencies. Anthony likewise chooses Zach, and Zach picks Michael. So Ramsay orders both Zach and Michael to step forward.
Ramsay asks Zach if he's a better than Michael. Tough one from Ramsay! I mean, I presume Zach thinks he's better than Ramsay, never mind Michael. Ramsay asks Zach if he's got what it takes to step up now that Blue will be down to three after tonight, and Zach brags about how three of Blue's dishes tonight were his creations. Back in line, Jon's all "WTF!" and Anthony tells Ramsay that they were all putting in ideas. Zach starts talking about how it was his blueprint, but he did have input from his team. Ramsay asks Jon flat-out if that's B.S., and Jon confirms it is, indeed, B.S.
On to Michael: At this stage of the competition, they can't be making mistakes. Michael talks about how he was confused by the timing tonight, and in the course of his defense points out cooking means so much to him that he elected to work instead of bringing his newborn son home from the hospital (a revelation -- or perhaps retelling -- that makes a few other chefs roll their eyes).
"My decision is Michael," says Ramsay, and takes Michael's jacket. Michael thanks him, and leaves, but insists to us that his team got rid of him because he was a threat. Well, actually, Ramsay picked you over Zach, guy.
Back in the dining room, Ramsay goes apoplectic when he finds out Red didn't come to a consensus either, but drew a name at random to decide who would go over to Blue. It's hilarious how Red clearly thought Ramsay would be impressed by the fact they all volunteered, and he couldn't be angrier. This isn't "fucking roulette" to see who's going to take over his restaurant, he yells.
"All of you..." he yells -- and it's to be continued, because of course it is.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He really wishes that Hell's Kitchen would [to be continued]. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.