After last night’s premiere, we’re down to 17 chefs in Hell’s Kitchen, and another is on the chopping block. Will it be Royce as Tavon predicted? Or someone else? Either way, this is not going to be pretty.
At 6:18 in the morning, Chef Ramsay unleashes a rap group in the dormitory, which involves blurred shots of Clemenza’s wide behind and one chef flashing both middle fingers. Classy. The chefs hurry downstairs and outside to see two giant mounds of ice, each one containing 125 scallops that need to be extracted. Royce promptly hurts himself, with blood dripping down the bridge of his nose.
After that freezing exercise, the chefs are ordered to work in pairs to prepare orders of properly cooked and plated scallops. The first team to prepare six plates that meet Chef Ramsay’s standards is the winning side. Guy has no experience with scallops, so this concerns him. The ladies don’t seem to have any issues, getting five orders out before the men can get a single one…and that first one actually comes from Guy. Go figure.
Anyway, the ladies win in a blowout, and get to take a trip to Catalina on a yacht. They celebrate like they’ve just won the whole show. The unimpressed men are stuck cleaning and prepping, dealing with the ladies rubbing their victory in on their way out the door, and drinking scallop shakes courtesy of Scott. Still, I’d rather be them than Roshni, who doesn’t know how to use a zip line and gets stuck hanging in midair.
Before dinner service, the guys have a chip on theirr collective shoulder, and the women start arguing amongst themselves, which is sadly nothing new to those of us who have seen previous seasons of Hell’s Kitchen. Chef Ramsay tells them tonight is about “redemption” and “pride.”
There’s tableside shrimp scampi on the menu tonight, which falls to Christina for the ladies and Brian for the guys, if he can find the right tables to go to. Don is so intimidated by Chef Ramsay that he sends pizza that is both raw and burnt, which I didn’t think was possible.
And Briana screws up the first risotto of the season…actually, the first three, because they all look different. Guy has much better luck, with Chef Ramsay calling his “delicious.” That’s the spark the men need to get food out…but pity that Brian is getting in trouble for serving both raw and overcooked shrimp.
Meanwhile, math is a problem on both sides: Barbie can’t count the appropriate number of scallops to fill an order, and Chris can’t either (it’s five, if you were wondering). The former infuriates her teammates, while the latter gets everyone kicked out of the kitchen while they have to eat his less-than-outstanding attempts.
“God help anybody if something’s wrong with this next ticket,” Chef Ramsay warns the men, which causes the entire team to think they ought to help Chris with the scallops out of fear. At least that finally gets the scallops out.
Moving on to entrees, the ladies have timing problems, also involving Barbie, and Chris’s failure on the fish station wastes some perfect Beef Wellington. Tiffany’s idea is to start cooking a half-dozen bass in advance, and that infuriates Chef Ramsay enough that he evicts the entire women’s team from the kitchen. Back in the dorms, Tiffany unloads on Barbie, getting bleeped while she slams down a pot in frustration.
It doesn’t get any better for the men: once Clemenza delivers subpar steak, they’re sent packing too, and the kitchen is closed. Post-failed service, Chef Ramsay berates both sides for the poor showing with the scallops, especially considering that’s what the morning chalenge was about. He declares both teams losers, and tells them to each come up with two nominees for elimination.
While Chris falls on his sword and puts himself up for nomination alongside an indignant Royce, Dana declares “we all want Barbie to go home,” and the ladies send Roshni just because they believe they think that will make it easier for Chef Ramsay to choose Barbie. On the chopping block, Roshni tells him why she’s there, and Ramsay finds this ridiculous.
The ladies are waving goodbye to Barbie before they even get downstairs for the elimination, but have to eat their words when she gets to stick around for another week. The unlucky person going home is Chris, who probably doesn’t want to see another scallop for a long, long time.
Maybe it’s just more obvious this season than last, but so far it’s been somewhat easy to pick out the chefs that won’t last too long in Hell’s Kitchen. Royce’s ego coupled with his flubs (mashed potatoes, really?) is a bad combination for him, and Clemenza looks as if he may fall over at any given moment. As for the ladies, no one really stands out yet, but their infighting may drag them all down, as it has with past red teams on the show. So far, they seem to be more memorable for their talk than their actions.
Do you have an early favorite? Or someone you think is next to go? Let me hear your picks below.
For more from Brittany Frederick, visit my BuddyTV writer page, and follow me on Twitter at @tvbrittanyf.
Image courtesy of FOX
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
