Fight or Flight for the Chefs of Hell’s Kitchen

Fight or Flight for the Chefs of Hell’s Kitchen by Roxanne McDonald

Attempts to proudly serve those who serve us segue into fights over leadership, more underestimation calls, and one fallen linesman.

And Chef Ramsey barking out and over those orders all the way.

You always suspect, but you know it’s gonna be good when the episode starts with a fight. Josh and Rock are arguing over who wants to be and who is better fit for being Blue Team leader.

Julia, on the flip side, is talking about how she feels like she is the underdog, and while she wants to win, she knows she has a lot to learn.

After only a few hours of sleep, evidently, the teams are awakened by a special reveille, a wake-up call by the army and navy—those who will be getting the breakfast the chefs have to serve.

Believing in never leaving anyone behind, Rock and Brad help Aaron get dressed…literally. This is a quick foreshadowing, folks, if we didn’t catch that of last week’s.

Ramsey sets the theme/tone for the day, saying that he was utterly disappointed by the previous service performances. Nothing was consistent, and none of them worked together. This is why, he says, for the first time, Hell’s Kitchen will serve breakfast…to some of “America’s finest.” Pause for misty moment.

Julia appropriately responds by getting teary eyed and saying she is honored; and Joanna gets excited in another cliché way…gushing how she just loves men in uniform.

Cluck.

Red will cook for Army; Blue will cook for Navy.

We already suspect that the Red team will rock this service, and Julia comes through, not only establishing that oft-missing leadership but showing her finesse as one who does this for a living. They are 20 plates up into the first 17 minutes, serving up the mess while the Blue are fumbling badly and serving number zero.

You hear someone from the Navy say if he had known he would get to eat, he would have joined the Army instead.

Aaron had said he had confidence; Bonnie had said she was glad her team had finally bonded, finally communicating, etc.. But woops, the girls are moving “too” fast, and the hash browns start coming back. Yeah, those babies are a beeyatch, hard to make yummy crunchy but fast at the same time…unless they maybe deep fry them ala McDonald’s. Oh, wouldn’t Ramsay love that.

Joanna, apparently still dealing with residual giddiness, gets all spacey and goofy and doesn’t know what…. Ramsay yells at her first, then yells at them all, after forcing them to touch food that is cold, Missy, as well as salty and raw.

The Blue team have had a quick spurt of success, then also get jammed for cold food. Ramsay can be heard barking single word orders at Aaron: Bacon! Sausages!

Red team finishes, and Chef R compliments Julia, telling her she has done an exceptional job. [Here is where I start wishing for an immunity pass for the best.] She is also told, however, that she is needed on the Blue team. She goes over and officiously and effectively tells them what to do, which you know is humiliating the hell out of the “I wanna be no I wanna be the leader” whiners.

Josh speaks for all them in the confession room, saying how disheartening it was not to be able to serve the people who serve them.

Ramsay announces that he is still disappointed there is no togetherness, and no one is emerging as a leader. For punishment: KP duty, peeling over 2,000 pounds of potatoes and onions for dinner. (That’s a half ton, btw.)

Here is Aaron’s chance…. No, I won’t be mean. He is, as I diagnosed last week, sick. He actually passes out in the kitchen, is taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and will be, when Ramsay returns from his helicopter reward for the Red Team, dismissed from the competition. It turns out to be pitiful, really, when Aaron says he has worked in a kitchen for 40 years for what?

The girls were nasty, btw, as they left for their reward, telling the boys to have a good time peeling; and Rock looks forward to the day they are walking past the girls….

The military theme continues with the helicopter ride and then a luncheon aboard the U.S.S. Midaway—the longest serving carrier in US history. I don’t know what that means as far as how we are supposed to be impressed, but the girls take it as Melissa tells us, as the prime time to talk with Ramsay.

Ramsey carries through with a lecture on not showing off but on being consistent. True, there is no interactivity with Hell’s Kitchen, but if we are forcing a Pee-Wee Herman scream or anyman’s drinking game, here, now would be the time to let that buzzword trigger whatever pleasure.

Back in Hell’s Kitchen…Josh and Rock are still jockeying for head spot, but a wise old “too many cooks” adage and group vote later, and it is decided the leader shall be Brad.

Rock is so not okay with this, and somebody (either Josh or Vinnie) assesses that decision as a clearly strategic one.

Blue is now confident and Red is feeling the pressures of having to keep up their performance.

Ramsay breaks the bad news about Aaron, checks in about leadership, and adds one more part to the boys’ punishment: having to schlep the water when it comes in—of course—at dinner.

Dinner is on, and Rock gets called a donkey, Joanna is again serving salty crap, Rock talks about himself in the third person, and Josh confesses to being wiped out after having prepped 2,400 pounds of produce.

Blue team is on a rail, but Red is still fussing and fizzling, as Joanna is not getting the appetizers out…AND as Ramsay catches a whiff of something “high”, something “off”: the crab is rancid and he screams that she could have killed someone.

Also homicidal is Jen, surprisingly. While I had first thought Jen was going to be the relentless crybaby whiner, she has been quite quiet. Of course she has, for she has been

keeping her furtive tricks to herself: tonight, she needs some spaghetti she tossed out, so she “carefully” scoops it from the “top of” the garbage, runs it under 212 (“to kill anything”) water, and plops that new baby right on the plates. Julia, however, is still on top of the game and prevents her from serving it—saying she would surely be throttled if Chef Ramsay were to find out.

Well, he does find out, though not, again, as we might expect.

The Red team is the weaker. They all discuss who should be up for possibly going home. Up is Julia—only because Melissa is threatened by how well she has done, but of course what we hear is how Melissa belittles and berates, saying if Julia had a four-star restaurant she would be lost. And also up is Joanna, who though she has tried to defend Julia somehow softens when it comes to the reality that she was the weakest at dinner.

But once these two speak to Ramsay during Elimination Time, suddenly the hushed-mouth Jen speaks up and says she should be on the chopping block—confessing her spaghetti debacle. Ramsay asks Julia if she feels out of her league. Absolutely not. He agrees and tells her to get back in line.

He suggests both Jen and Joanna should go home, but settles on Joanna this week.

There is no satisfaction in this decision…, but I am exhausted from all the drama, and will just wish Jo the best.

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