Hell's Kitchen

Are these "Previouslies" getting longer every week? Even if they are, they are still easier to sit through than the opening title/credit sequence. I haven’t mentioned it before but I just want to go on the record: I hate the circus theme. Pretty much every contestant looks either insane or forced to act under duress.

Anyway, once those are over, Tennille screams some math at us. She is in the final four, which means she has beaten thirteen contestants. The remaining contestants sit around with WTF faces. In an interview, Kevin lists the weaknesses of each of the other three, saying he can easily beat them. Unless they figure out his weakness. He doesn't say what that is, and I admit I'm hard pressed to come up with one.

At 6:30 the next morning, Dave is up early. He is giving himself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror. When the team arrives at the kitchen for the challenge, they hear Gordon yelling and they can see a shadow stomping back and forth in Gordon’s office. The door opens and out walks, as Ariel says it perfectly, the cutest little mini-me Chef Ramsey. It’s a little kid dressed up in a chef’s coat with crazy blond hair. He berates them in Ramsey-style, calling them donkeys, etc. They laugh, as do I. It is really just too precious. The real Gordon takes over and introduces the challenge du jour: a vegetarian dish, done in one hour in 80 portions for “exacting, difficult, demanding customers.”

Kevin makes an Asian-style mushroom crepe with beet carpaccio. Tennille makes mushroom-stuffed eggplant with brown rice and a creamy mushroom sauce. Ariel makes vegetarian lasagna with grilled eggplant, tofu and mozzarella. Dave makes a polenta tower with goat cheese and roasted peppers

Ariel offers to help Dave but he doesn’t want to show weakness. Then he drops a pepper, reaches to pick it up, and yelps in pain. He ends up in the back room, face in a corner, talking to himself again. That’s a neon sign of something right there, pal.

Time is up and no one has 80 plates prepared. The customers are arriving. Oh, and BTW, they are all kids and they don’t like veggies. Tennille: “I’m screwed. I have stuffed eggplant. I’m 28 and I just started liking eggplant.” Hell, it took me until I was 41!

The kids are screaming for food because all the chefs still have to go load up plates. In an effort to connect with the kids and garner points, Dave calls the towers "sandwiches," calls himself the “One-armed Bandit,” and tells them all they are cute. Kevin starts calling his dish sweet and sour vegetables. Ariel thinks she may have lucked out choosing lasagna.

"Let me think. Anyone can make a fancy, flavorful dish. How can I make my dish look messy and taste nasty? I know! Beets!"

We get gratuitous shots of kids spitting out their food. They are asked to fill out cards that ask which dish was “yummiest” and which was “yuckiest”. While they tabulate the votes, the kids get bags of treats and sweets, including confetti poppers and gum. I have the distinct feeling that the kids are encouraged to be as destructive and messy as possible. Especially after they show MiniGordon dumping a glass of milk on a tray. I can also smell a punishment that involves cleaning this all up.

Biggest loser with 40% yuckiest dish rating: Kevin. Dude: Beets? He claims adults like them. Not this adult. Top 2 are Dave and Tennille. Tennille wins!!! Dave says he saw that coming because he never wins. Well, he did win that one challenge but since he had to share it with Suzanne, then I’ll give him that. I was right on the punishment.

Tennille gets a Beverly Hills day of pampering and dinner with Chef Ramsey at Nobu LA. He asks her if she loves sushi. Every frickin’ dish she’s made has the word “Asian” in it, I’m pretty sure she is at least familiar with it. And she does. This is my kind of reward! Now I want to root for her because of our mutual love of sushi. She leaves right from the kitchen as-is, and gets a ride in a classic car with a chauffeur. She asks if anyone has any grey poupon. Ha!

Backstabbing central: Dave asks how Tennille won. Ariel responds, “if you make elementary food…” They assume she’s not going to like where they are taking her and they will make her feel uncomfortable. I don’t know where they get that idea. Just because she’s not a girly-girl? Tennille gets an 18k gold facial. Oh yeah, she hates that. The staff of the salon dress her like Ellen (unfortunately) and applaud her entrance. Again, her dancing around the room belies the discomfort I’m sure she has buried deep within. She then meets up with Chef who tells her how fantastic she looks, and gets sushi made by owner/executive chef Nobu Matsuhisa himself! Also, sashimi salad and King Crab tempura. And Nobu presents her with a set of handcrafted Henkel sushi knives.

"A lot of people don't realize what happens to the losers on this show. Speaking of which, I can't believe this is all we got out of Robert."

Back at Hell’s Kitchen, Dave is literally raking the dining room. They find gum stuck pretty much everywhere. While Dave cleans he pockets leftover treats from the floor. When Tennille gets back the other chefs are cold and unhelpful. Dave interviews that he, Ariel and Kevin were focused on the service and makeovers  have nothing to do with food. What a crock of bullshit. If it were he that had won, would he turn it down and say he’d rather focus on the food? I think not. Kevin is also delusional and says he’s happy to be prepping because it gives him an advantage at service. Yeah, sure.

Hell’s Kitchen is now open and Kevin is leading the kitchen from the appetizer station, and his food is getting rave reviews. Except when Tennille screws up the scallops. So that high is gone.  Dave now takes the lead as the man on the meat station. He interviews that as long as he doesn't do anything stupid there will be nothing standing in his way. Cut too: Dave picks up a heavy pan with the bad arm and screams, falls to the floor and runs out of the kitchen. When they replay it after the commercial they add a crunching noise at the point where he lifts the pan. He says he felt like he was going to faint. Gordon tells him he looks like crap and sends him to the medic. Dave claims he’s “no quitter” and “not a wuss” and no matter how messed up his wrist gets he won’t quit. Thank God Fox has this all on film so if he tries to sue them for lifelong damage to his arm the judge will see he did this to himself!

We move on to Tennille on the fish station and she has her usual problem: inconsistency. Her sea bass fillets are all alternately raw and overcooked. Also, it looked like there were pans with burnt fish stashed all around, including the top of one of the ovens. The kitchen is at a stand still and diners are bitching. Now her halibut is raw. Dave makes a remark about Tennille not being sophisticated enough for the ingredients they are using. They can’t communicate with her because she isn’t calling her times out right, and that gets her dragged to the Yelling Room. She tries again and gets it right.

"Oh, no, darling. When I get finished with you your heart will be shriveled up much smaller than this."

Ultimately, they finish pretty well. Chef says that even when mistakes were made they still kept the team bond. But he singles out Dave’s arm as an issue. He is concerned. Dave says he’s fine about three times while oddly striking his leg with the good hand to, I’m not sure, prove that? He implores Chef, “Take me out if I’m not good enough but not for my wrist.” Can we take him out for reckless disregard for his own safety? Gordon says he’ll be watching him and lets him stay. Ugh.

He turns to the rest of them and says he won’t send them to deliberate. He doesn’t want to prolong Tennille’s agony and tells her to to just go ahead and take off her jacket. He is so nice to her through it all. He tells her about how proud he is of her, how well she fought back, and that she has a great heart. He also says what a great competitor she is and how she had such an amazing comeback. Nothing about her cooking I notice. The teammates who talked about her so rudely and dismissively all gather around her to give her hugs and my sushi-sister can’t help but let the tears flow as she leaves.

That’s odd, there’s still ten minutes left in the episode. The remaining three go up to have a beer together and pat themselves on the back. But then Chef calls and he wants them back in the kitchen for some unfinished business. They run down and Gordon claims that he has been wondering about whether it was the right thing to keep Dave. After some thought he’s decided that… dramatic pause… he knows he did. This is actually a set up so they could have the regularly scheduled reunion of the Final Three and their loved ones. Dave’s sister and fiancee run out. Ariel’s mom and her fiancee are here as are Kevin’s wife and son. It’s all so incredibly sweet and as mushy as you might expect. Next week: it’s the last team service, and they all get a turn at the pass. Apparently there will be some kind of yelling involved.