The Unfiltered Ramblings of a DVR Addict

My recap of this week’s episode is late because I went to a Chick-Fil-A grand opening in Dallas to be part of the “1st 100″ promotion to get free Chick-Fil-A for a year.  I had to camp out in the parking lot for 25 hours.  Its worth it.

So the show starts out with the entire Joseph bleeping episode where he thinks he is still in the Marines where they take care of their problems on their own without involving the commanders. Joseph using his poor grammar actually call himself a bitch with a double negative.  Then he calls Ramsay one.  Ramsay never steps down to Joseph’s high school-like aggression.  Ramsay kicks him out to a series of bleeps from both Joseph and Ramsay and I think even one of the bouncers.

Someone is still getting booted off, so Chef then kicks Tony off for his lack of experience, even though he has potential.  Right??  After that the guys are down by 2 so Chef moves Robert over to the guys.  Robert interviews that he doesn’t care if he is on the red team, blue team, black team, pink team or the team with no shirts (… dear God, please don’t show it) that he is here to win Hell’s Kitchen.   While I liked Robert last season, so far all he has done this season is talk a big game and screw up.

The contestants go to bed only to be woken up soon after by the fire alarm.  Scott runs in to wake the guys up and either he sleeps in his chef’s coat or stopped to take the time to put it on.  I am already calling BS.  We see lots of fire engine and fire fighters jumping off the truck, then all of contestants run outside and Chef tells them its a fire drill.  At 2 o’clock in the morning.  Nice.  Now the contestants have to cook lots of pasta and garlic bread for the fire fighters.  I hope there isn’t a fire anywhere near there.  These guys will be waiting a long time for their food.

The team that serves all of their food first wins the challenge.  So they put the slowest people on the first item out of the kitchen.   Lovely and Andy can’t spread garlic butter and put the bread in the ovens fast enough.  It takes them both so long to get any bread out that the firemen cheer once it finally does.  Poor guys.  They get a special treat of carbo-loading at 2am and they are forced to wait an hour for it.  Andy is only using 2 out of 5 available ovens to toast the bread.   All of the other guys are constantly on him to get the bread out and Van even labor coaches him to “Push, Andy, Push”.  Its finally done and since the guys spent the whole time prepping the entrees, they almost catch up with the girls who have built a 4 table lead.  The girls are on their last table and looks like a sure win when Tek sends out a raw-ish meatball.  She would feel horrible if that caused her to lose.  I would still blame Lovely who complained earlier that she didn’t get to pee or put on her makeup before having to work.

The women end up winning by half a table.  Dave and Ariel looked good in the challenge.  Robert complains about always being on the losing team.  Coincidence?  We’ll see.  Chef thanks the fire fighters for being awesome.

The ladies get what the ladies teams always get when they win.  The spa treatment.   They will be traveling by helicopter, so it wouldn’t have mattered if Robert was still on the ladies team because he wouldn’t get to ride in it anyway due to insurance reasons.

Lovely takes this opportunity to gloat over having beaten the guys even though she had nothing to do with it.

The men have to clean the fire trucks.  I thought the fire men did that while posing for their calendars.  Well, I guess they will have to mow the fire yard this time.  The girls are leaving and whooping it up.  Jim says “Don’t be afraid to ask them to peel that hair off your upper lip, either.”  Then Sabrina with freshly peeled upper lip  (I can tell because it is still red) interviews that “It is so fantastic to be the winners finally for a change.”

Dave hurts himself when cleaning the truck but hides it from the guys.  That can’t be good.

The women are getting the scrub treatment while the men are finishing up the scrub treatment on the fire trucks.  JP walks out in his fancy cardigan and ask the guys to follow him inside.  Kevin does a little hop up to the top step and rolls both ankles.  The medic checks it out and he has to go to the hospital.  Dave takes this opportunity to finally get his wrist looked at, too.  Both injuries look bad and might cause them to both leave the show.  They are going to get x-rays while the rest of the guys clean and bleep up the whole place.

Dave and Kevin return in splints and braces.  Both of them decide to tough it out.  Kevin is really tough if he can do this with casts on both feet.  I don’t believe I am seeing this next part.  One of the contestants actually recognizes the skills of another one.  Van is concerned because he thinks Dave and Kevin are each one of the best cooks on the guys team.

Service is about to begin.  Chef starts his pep talk and begins to decide who should be a server on the floor tonight.  Dave immediately volunteers which throws Chef off, but has a good explanation that he doesn’t want to pull his team down by not being 100%.  Chef picks Lovely to be the waitress for the red team.  Dave looks funny with his hair all brushed.  Hee hee!

The service starts and Van starts yelling commands and getting everyone pumped and Chef is all like I do the shouting around here.  I was surprised.  I thought that is what Chef looks for in a leader.  He does think Van’s risotto is excellent, though.

Tenille is cooking scallops in an oil soup it looks like, and Suzanne tells her it is too much.  Tenille blows her off and then Chef notices it and tells her to drain some of the oil.

Robert is running around and almost slips and Chef tells him that isn’t a good idea.  Robert then yells at Andy that he shouldn’t be putting so many scallops in one pan together.  He claims it is 14 but thanks to my pause button I only count 12.  Robert talks a lot, but doesn’t help much.  He then gets in a shouting match with Chef.  I think its because he knows that Chef is just trying to bring the best out of him.

We go back to Tenille and her swimming scallops.  She sends them up, but Chef immediately rejects them.  Suzanne says its because she is using too much oil, which is right.  Tenille thinks Suzanne just wants to hear herself talk.  Then Tenille almost burns the place down.  Tenille blames her inadequacy on too many people telling her that she is doing something wrong.   She apparently pulls through.

Announcer guy, who isn’t so funny this week, says that food is flying out of the kitchen.  I am supposed to believe this, why?

Lovely is taking her time in some back room when JP asks her to get a fancy bottle of wine from Chef’s office/wine
“loft”.  Chef gets on her about it taking 45 minutes to get the order in, but she says it was because she had to go get the bottle of wine, which is just up a flight of stairs.

Amanda doesn’t bring enough lamb chops to the pass, so Chef gives her an elementary math quiz, which she fails miserably.

Kevin’s lamb is cooked perfectly.

The men are almost done and the women are nowhere near so the producers pull a “We need to make it look closer” card and Robert forgot to cook a salmon.  It takes 12 minutes, so they get behind and the women finish first.  It doesn’t matter, though, because Chef chooses how teams win at his own whim.  This time it was based on comment cards and the guys won because they beat the girls in Above Average votes by 2%.

Chef picks Ariel as The Best of the Worst to pick 2 team members for elimination.  Lets hope she can do the job unlike the Hothead Joey.

Ariel picks Lovely based on her lack of experience and Tenille because she sucks.  At least that is what I am guessing, because like always we have to wait for the commercial break.  Its actually because she hasn’t lived up to her potential.  Isn’t this the same 2 that were on the chopping block last time?  Neither one of them gives any actual good reason for not being booted.  Chef plays with them both making them think they are gone, but thanks to Joseph’s gift of immaturity, no self control and rage they are safe for one more time.   He did tell them that he doesn’t think either one could win.  Well, why don’t we just cut the season short by 2 episodes and save us all some time?  Its not like there won’t be another season of Hell’s Kitchen starting back up in a couple of months.

Chef ends it by saying he has one more thing to say to them, in fact to all the contestants which makes a few of the guys perk up.  Chef snarks, “I’m nobody’s bitch!”  Take that Joseph!  They all share a belly laugh.  Lovely delusions herself into thinking that she is still there because Chef wants her there.  Tenille doesn’t like being up for elimination twice.  She’s going to pray about it.  Chef pop quizzes Amanda who fails again.

Next time, Van yells some more, they need more communication but don’t have any communication, then Robert over communicates in Kevin’s face and Dave must make the toughest decision of his life.  That’s not saying much since the previous toughest decision was probably which flavor of Mountain Dew to drink.