Gordon Ramsay's Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 53
Well, I suppose it's only fitting that the final episode of Kitchen Nightmares has some of the most swearing. There was a certain segment that garnered no less than twenty bleeps!
On tonight's season finale, we go back to California (Moorpark, to be precise) where vineyards, golf courses, and McMansions supposedly abound. The chef in charge of Secret Garden is French -- accent and all -- and is shown to have a temper and a fair amount of arrogance. One of the servers, a fish 'n' chippy named Jane, says that Chef Michel can be difficult to work with. One of the cooks -- in an effort to substantiate Ramsay's later opinion of the place -- says that the restaurant is not hip or happening and that it's more a place you take your grandma for a meal. (Cut to a wrinkled blue-hair forking up an early-bird special.) As is the way with this show, Chef Michel is losing money and he's depressed about it.
After getting off an Amtrak train, Ramsay is shown to have extreme difficulty in finding the entrance to the restaurant. Several doors are locked, and he only gains entrance via the door to the outside marked "Restrooms." Ramsay then quietly calls out in the deserted dining room, "Hello? Is anybody here?" Oh, and the décor is all lace and painted teacups and fussy lamps and "French" "antiques," like the giant Mr. Toad wearing a suit and holding a menu blackboard that will give me nightmares until the end of my days. Ramsay meets Chef Michel, bitches about the hard-to-find entrance, and sits down to have lunch. He snarks that the place feels like Buckingham Palace, and it's decidedly NOT a compliment. (Don't tell the Queen!) He decides the menu is overblown, and won't order the crab dish when he learns it's canned. Ramsay does reluctantly order a salad that has egg, asparagus, grilled garlic shrimp, and strawberries, but sends it back, saying the shrimp is stone cold and undercooked. , Ramsay tucks into a signature Secret Garden dish of Roquefort-stuffed beef fillet with shoestring potatoes. Ramsay hates it: the beef is tough, the carrots are undercooked, and the shoestrings are "like a big, overgrown ball of hair, deep fat-fried." Hoark. Ramsay gets up from his seat saying, "Nightmare at Grandma's house. Fuck me. Thank God she's dead." For so many reasons. Ramsay then visits Chef Michel and tells him how awful his food is. Chef Michel tells him, "That's a matter of opinion," which Ramsay does not take kindly to, blasting him with profanity and insults. Outside the restaurant, Ramsay notes, "He's so far up his own ass, he can't even breathe any more."
We get a kitchen inspection in this episode, and Ramsay finds grease, lots of mold, and what he says are maggoty potatoes. They're so maggoty, in fact, that he dashes off to vomit loudly in the bathroom. Were the potatoes really maggoty? The (intentionally) shifty camera work made it impossible to focus and see anything other than bits of potato flaking off. While Ramsay vomits, they have Chef Michel calmly walking up to his restaurant, humming. Yes. Humming. Like, a very Sesame Street-y, "Grover is nonchalantly walking down the street before slipping on a banana peel" type of humming. How do you know he's nonchalant? Because he's HUMMING! It's weird and fake and fricking hysterical if they expect us to believe it. Chef Michel joins Ramsay in the walk-in where Ramsay points out all the mold and grossosities. Chef Michel retorts, "Is everything perfect in your kitchen? I don't think so!" Ramsay responds, "It's fucking clean!" Chef Michel tells the camera that he doesn't like Ramsay's attitude and insults. I'm weary, so weary. Why...you? This show? Participate? Insults! Ramsay insults! ALL INSULTS AND INSULTS! Ramsay and Chef Michel keep arguing. Chef Michel says that he worked for Thomas Keller and Gary Clauson and also that he can't remember how much money he's lost over the years. Ramsay tells him he better wise up and cooperate if he wants help.
The kitchen is cleaned up by the entire staff, and Ramsay says that Chef Michel was beginning to show some skills in the kitchen when he started mopping. Ramsay observes the dinner service and first reams Michel out for serving tiny-ass "canapés" with unripe (very, very white) strawberries, and also for his complicated, overly rich menu where everything is either crusted or stuffed. Sort of like a taxidermist's! Chef Michel really doesn't see the problem with his food, and Ramsay boggles at this. Another problem is that Chef Michel won't let Sous Chef Devon do anything because, as Devon says, Michel wants to be the star of the show. However, when Michel goes out to schmooze with his customers, Devon snaps into action and starts whipping the dishes out, and food finally goes out on time. After watching Michel hobnob for a bit, Ramsay decides that no one in the restaurant has passion. Later, Ramsay tells Michel just that. He gesticulates that Michel cares only about himself and that, starting tomorrow, he needs to see passion from Michel.
The day, Ramsay decides that Michel needs a bit of a shakeup, so he plasters "Closed for Business" and "Foreclosed by Bank" signs all over the restaurant. Okay, having lived in a post-dot-com San Francisco, I have to ask -- outside of Bedford Falls, does anyone ever post "Foreclosed by Bank" anymore? That FOX, so Capra-esque. Ramsay explains to the cameras that he is putting up these signs because he wants Michel to realize that this is exactly what will happen if he doesn't take Ramsay's advice to heart. Meanwhile, Ramsay paces around because Michel is late to work. When Michel does show up, he's pissed about the signs and not amused in the least. Ramsay explains the point of the board scare and then helps Michel to remove them. Dude, something I didn't realize initially: Ramsay also had false boards leaned against the restaurant. You know, so it looked "boarded up"? And those boards had greenery sticking out of them! Classic. It's the attention to detail that's quite wonderful, especially considering that the greenery is probably plastic.
Inside the restaurant, we have managed to just miss Ramsay putting on his chef's coat as he tells us that he plans to overhaul the menu in order to get customers coming back once a week, not once a year. In the kitchen, Ramsay teaches the staff and Michel some of his "money-making" dishes. They include onion soup, roast chicken breast (it's nestled on sauced shelling beans and looks amazing), tuna niçoise, and a fresh asparagus tart. Michel tells the camera that Ramsay is not a good chef while he, HE! was voted best chef in all of Ventura Valley. Crap, man, someone better tell those Michelin peeps that in giving Ramsay a star, they clearly don't know their ass from asparagus.
Service for the Saturday night dinner opens up, and the diners groove on all of Ramsay's specials. But, as is always the way, things quickly go south because the kitchen gets in the weeds. There's mass confusion, the servers don't know where the food is going, don't know where their food is, and some diners wait an hour and a half for their food. Ramsay tells us that the specials sold out already and now, because Michel isn't communicating with his kitchen (if you watch Hell's, you know how Ramsay hates a quiet kitchen), orders are coming up for food they don't have. When the servers question this, Michel tells them to let him worry about it. Fine, he can worry about it. He can also march his French ass out of the kitchen and explain it to the guests so the poor servers can stay out of the line of fire. But he doesn't, and the servers are left trying to make separate peaces with the diners. Michel compensates by comping everything. (Question: Isn't everything comped on this show anyway?) We get a scene of Michel going off on Jane, yelling that she has no guts, and finally Jane walks off in tears and/or abject frustration. More chaos and tears from another server.
Finally, service is over. Ramsay lines up the staff and rants about the lack of communication. He blames Michel, and when Michel tries to defend himself, Ramsay explains to him how he really must shut up and listen. The day, Ramsay proceeds to ditch the "funeral parlor" decorations. He spins a spinning candelabra and demands, "What does this even do?" Michel thinks it adds charm, Ramsay points out that it adds wax. It does; there's a mess of wax all over the floor and table leg. Ramsay gets rid of the decorative teacups, stupid occasional tables, and other extraneous decorations that Samantha's mom undoubtedly has in excess. Michel is not happy. He does not like the new look. "Bye, Grandma!" Ramsay yells at the van carting the fusty stuff away. , Ramsay's "design team" comes in to tart the place up with stuff from IKEA, Pottery Barn, and perhaps a Crate or a Barrel. The staff arrives to look the place over, and everyone loves it but Michel. He feels that his restaurant is no longer his restaurant. He doesn't want to destroy what he has, he wants to improve it. Ramsay and Michel have a private moment where Ramsay tells Michel to give him a "fucking chance."
, Ramsay goes over the new menu, and again, the staff loves it, but Michel is sulking about his old crusty dishes. Ramsay gives the staff a quick pep talk about that night's service and tells them a food critic is coming. Michel is nervous because he's not in his comfort zone. Dinner gets underway, and Miss California suddenly shows up. I wouldn't worry. I'm sure she doesn't eat much. Michel continues to be nervous, especially when a busload of (presumably) drunk wine tasters shows up for dinner. Ramsay keeps exhorting the kitchen not to panic. Oh, but they will. There will be panicking tonight.
Things move along fairly competently, but then the FOOD CRITIC shows up. Jane spots her, tags her, and serves her. The FOOD CRITIC -- who is subjected to highly unflattering angles from an overhead camera that make her jaw and nose look lantern and hook, respectively -- samples the tuna niçoise and coughs at how overseasoned it is. To be fair, she actually looks like she inhaled her water or that something went down the wrong way. I can't think how overseasoning -- unless it's an excess of pepper, like in Mrs. Doubtfire -- would make someone cough in that way. The overseasoning comment that the server gets out of the FOOD CRITIC is that the tuna was too salty. The server passes this info back to the kitchen, and the news makes Ramsay swear but it elicits quite a different response from Michel. Instead of admitting that it was his sodium hand that profaned the tuna, he snaps into his old mode and offers the FOOD CRITIC his blue cheese-stuffed beef by way of reparation. See, Michel blames Ramsay for the salt-heavy dish, saying, "Come on -- that's his food, he's the one sending it out!" However, just in case we have any suspicions, the show gives us a flashback within the episode to show Michel (over-)salting the tuna. As soon as Michel trots out the dreaded doilies, Ramsay starts to squawk. They argue a bit, and Michel tells the cameras again that Ramsay is not a chef. Ramsay trudges out of the kitchen, and we finally get some beefcake. Ramsay strips off his coat, gets into his civvies, and walks back to Michel's kitchen where they get into a HUGE fight. In about twenty seconds, Ramsay incurs about fifteen bleeps. Michel orders Ramsay out of his kitchen, and Ramsay tells him that if it's his fucking kitchen, he should fucking clean it.
However, Ramsay doesn't get much past the commercial break before he decides that he can't leave the rest of the staff -- the servers, the cooks -- in the lurch. He goes back to the restaurant (already back in his chef's coat, no less) and tells Michel they're going to make it work. Michel agrees. Ramsay insists, "I just want everything be fucking perfect." Michel agrees. Ramsay tells Jane to dump the old, doilied beef in the trash, and they send out rack of lamb from the new menu. The food critic proclaims it perfect, and that happy news reaches the kitchen. However, Michel is still skeptical, so he roams around the dining room to listen in on how his diners are reacting. They all love the new menu, which means Michel has no more excuses to disagree that Ramsay is and will always be the king of cuisine. However, Michel still cross-examines the hostess about what the customers told her -- they told her they loved the food -- but then sees that he made buckets of cash that night. NOW he's convinced.
Ramsay and Michel have another tête-à-tête, and while Michel maintains that change is hard for him, he admits how wrong he's been with his approach to food. Ramsay is surprised by this turnaround from such a stubborn chef, and sort of makes him reaffirm his faith again and again that Ramsay knows all. In the wrap-up, we learn that the Secret Garden continued to flourish, Michel became committed to kitchen hygiene, and the put-upon Jane was promoted to restaurant manager. "Now I'm the manager, I am the bitch of the place," Jane tells the camera. Ramsay hands out his approval to the staff, kisses Jane, shakes hands, and takes his final leave. He bangs wrists with Michel and asks, "Still hate me?" "Oh, yes I do," Michel laughs back. Ramsay steps out the door, saying, "The secret is out," and we are done with the first season of Kitchen Nightmares.