I just watched the last episode of Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen. Somebody please tell me why anyone would want to be a contestant on this show? Better question, Why does anyone watch this show? I know I do not normally write about TV shows, but I have heard so many people talk about what a great show Hell’s Kitchen is. By the time it was over I was trying to gouge out my eyeballs with a rusty spoon just to make it stop.
Gordon Ramsey is supposed to be a Master Chef? He is a complete idiot. He is not capable of speaking a single complete sentence without profanity. He is an egomaniac that gets his rocks off berating and belittling the contestants on the show. No matter what they do he calls them vulgar names, disparages their family heritage, and threatens to toss them off the show if they don’t step it up. Is this what it is really like to be a Master Chef?
I will give credit to all of the contestants though. I saw at least two of them that were ready to toss the cursing Prima Donna out a window, but they were able to maintain control and not do it. I would not have been able to keep my cool. Gordo would have done his junior Birdman impression through the nearest plate glass if I were in the kitchen.
That is about the only good thing I can say about the contestants on this show. I have never seen a group like this on any of the other non- reality reality shows I have watched. all of them remind me of a bunch of bitchy little girls (thanks Sam). They whined constantly. They were so jealous of each other. They never missed a chance to stab each other in the back and tattle like little school kids when someone made a mistake.
At the beginning of the show the two teams were combined into one and the first individual competition began. Each contestant had 30 minutes to create a dish using all 14 ingredients given to them. I never did figure out what all of the ingredients were. After the 30 minutes was up The Great Gordo judged each dish. this one was crap because it did not have enough chicken; that one was crap because the chicken was dry.
In the end the dopey-looking jackass with the goatee that at the start of the show was called the weakest member of the team by his team mates won the competition for his stuffed chicken breast with red sauce. I could not understand his mumbling when he told what it actually was, and I know I should know his name, but I would rather just kill the brain cells it would take for me to remember his name than to subject them to the pain of having to remember him at all.
The prize for winning was to go to San Francisco with Gordo. I am not sure why they went to San Francisco, but they showed them wandering around town and doing the tourist thing and then eating in the kitchen of some fancy restaurant. They were so excited to be sitting at this small table in the kitchen of this restaurant and eating some snail dish?
While this was going on the rest of the contestants were given the wonderful task of unloading the supplies for the day. There were deliveries of booze, seafood, and vegetables. All of the contestants whined about having to do this. One of them dropped a full case of booze and then said, “That was not my fault. The box broke.”
Next was the miscounting of the lobster. There were supposed to be 36 lobsters in the delivery, but they only counted 34. The delivery driver was chased down and accused of ripping the restaurant off. The lobsters were recounted and there actually were 36 of them. No apologies to the delivery driver — he was just dismissed. Upon the return of Gordo and Goatee boy to the kitchen, Goatee boy proceeded to piss off all of the contestants by telling over and over in great detail all of the wonderful things they had done in San Francisco with Gordo.
Finally they got around to preparing dinner for the restaurant. I had high hopes at this point that the show would turn interesting. After the third or fourth profanity-laced tirade by Gordo that hope was gone. I do not believe they ever got around to actually serving anything but appetizers to the patrons of the restaurant that night and after it was all over and Gordo sent Gomer back to Dog Patch he decided that his only option was to close the restaurant, thus creating the cliff hanger for next week’s episode.
Clacked by Jeff Love
on Apr 13, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
There are far too many idiotic things in your post to thoroughly go through so let me just address them one by one until I get bored.
1. Somebody please tell me why anyone would want to be a contestant on this show? >>>> Just like any reality show, the contestants are generally only there for publicity or vanity.
2. Why does anyone watch this show? >>>> Entertainment value, just like anything else on television. This is NOT a cooking program, it is a reality tv show and more importantly a fox reality tv show. If you actually expect a show with any sort of morals or entertainment not produced out of the suffering or humiliation of others in the most pointlessly bland and insipid way then you must have been living under a rock for the last 20 years.
3. Gordon Ramsey is supposed to be a Master Chef? >>>> First off, it is RamsAy. Second, he IS at this moment in time one of the best chefs in the World, with numerous accolades across the board. Just as I’m not judging your taste on this one article, do not judge a chef/presenter/judge/person based on one meal/show/judgement/impressiong. Please learn to at least be accurate if you’re going to rant.
4. He is not capable of speaking a single complete sentence without profanity. >>>>> I’m not sure how much reality television or television in general you have watched but there is this thing called editing for effect which fox have employed more and more over the seasons of hell’s kitchen, not to say he wasn’t a big ball of profanity in s1, but they also sometimes peppered it with comments and advice and *shock horror* actual cooking and information for the potential restauranteurs. Also, the format of the show lends itself completely towards confrontation as it’s central theme, anything else and fox don’t know what to do with it.
5. I have never seen a group like this >>>> The reason these contestants were chosen was not for their cooking ability but their “personality” and abhrasiveness. The more likely they are to fight with each other, the longer they stay on.
6. No apologies to the delivery driver — he was just dismissed. >>>> If you paid attention you could see the beginning of an apology but of course the camera cut back to other parts as there is obviously no time to show the apology.
I guess I didn’t get bored. Let me end by saying that if you want to see what a chef is made of, (especially Gordon) watch the shows where he actually gets to cook and talk about food, The F Word & Cookalong Live specifically (clips are on youtube of his recipe recap portions of the show). And if you want to understand the man’s strive for perfection and his business acumen when it comes to restaurants then watch Kitchen Nightmares (if possible, avoid the horrible fox remake set in the u.s. and go for the uk show). If you require links (I didn’t post any as I don’t know what the sites policy is) to youtube clips, just reply and i’ll do my best.