Last night on Hell’s Kitchen, the show opened up with the Red Team deciding who was going to head over to the men’s team to make the teams even again. Big surprise, they all decided on the much hated Carrie.
The next morning, they were all woken up by a bunch of clowns running through the dorms, blowing their horns and throwing their confetti everywhere. Chef Scott told them that Ramsey said that since they are cooking like clowns, they can be woken up by clowns. Oh, I get it. It seems to me that the older I get, the creepier that clowns get. Thank you, Pennywise!!
Ramsey turned down the Red Team’s nomination of Carrie and went with his own nomination of Natalie, who he thought would do a much better job of pulling the team together.
Their first challenge was to cook lunch for a bunch of hungry kids and their mothers. The first team to feed their side of the dining room wins the challenge. They had to make quesadillas for the kids and panini’s for the mothers.
The funniest part of this challenge was every time Ramsey started yelling, the camera panned over to the dining room where some of the mothers were covering their little tykes’ ears. They should have tried jamming bread in there, because I’m sure their little hand coverings weren’t doing much to block out all that racket. The second funniest part of this challenge was watching some of the children peering over the new balcony type setup into the kitchens, watching Gordon going crazy on the chefs?. I was wondering if any of the little brats had tried to throw anything down into the kitchen.
With Natalie running the show, the Blue Team won with ease. It didn’t help matters much for the Red Team that Carrie and Elise were at each other’s throat the entire meal. For punishment, the women had to clean the entire dining room, which was disgusting after 50 small children of varied ages and their mothers were done in there.
The Blue Team got to enjoy some Medieval fun. While they enjoyed a feast of large chicken legs and meat served to them by fair maidens, they witnessed some sword play and duels.
Back in the dorms, Natalie continued her to show off her leadership skills in guiding the Red Team as they made some solid plans for how the dinner service should run. On the opposite side of the coin, in the Blue Team’s dorm, Carrie and the rest of the girls continued to point fingers at each other, fighting and blaming each other for their poor service at lunch. There were some fascinating dynamics at work here. If I taught a class on leadership, I would use this segment of this episode as a perfect example of how to, and not to lead a team to success from within.
At the dinner service, the Red Team has decided that they can avoid controversy and fighting by not speaking to each other. Yeah, that will last about 2 minutes since the very basic foundation of a successful dinner service is (now everyone say it with me)… COMMUNICATION.
The menu is not a difficult one. Being Family Night, it consists of Chicken Tenders, Margarita Pizza, and Burgers. Plus the regulars of Beef Wellington, lamb, etc…. Chino and Gina assisted maitre de not Jean Philippe-James in taking orders, to help things move along a little faster. Yeah, right. Chino is an idiot and can’t take a simple order. His first ticket was a disaster. He forgot to ask the table if they wanted sides. How do you forget to ask if they want sides?? It’s not like he’s never worked in a restaurant before. Gina did a great job, however the Red kitchen completely screwed up her first ticket so it was all for naught.
In the Red kitchen, Amanda totally fell apart on the fish station. First she messed up two pieces of fish, and then she just went to her happy place, completely forgetting about a cod dish. When Ramsey started yelling at her about it, she seemed to just shut down and give up. She had no fight in her. Her responses were a robotic, “Yes, I’ll do better. I’m sorry,” with very little emotion or feeling.
On the Blue Team, Natalie, who had done so well earlier, could not cook a Beef Wellington now to save her life and was really slowing down her team.
After the Red Team sent a raw rack of lamb to the pass (criminal, in my estimation), Ramsey made them walk around to each of the tables on the Red side and apologize for such a dismal performance. When they got back into the kitchen, he told them that that was the most useful thing they did all night, and then he kicked them all out of the kitchen, sending them up to the dorms.
Once back in the dorms, Carrie and Elise started battling again. Elise asked Carrie if she was on medication, and then told her she needed to be. This was actually more amusing then watching them try to send out an entrée.
The Blue Team managed to get their entrees out and finish their service. Everyone there was happy.
More drama on the Red Team as they tried to select someone besides Carrie for nomination. As they stood in front of Ramsey, he selected Jennifer, who had screwed up a couple of meat orders earlier in the service, Carrie, and Amanda.
He sent Amanda home, saying that she didn’t fight back. When Jennifer said earlier in the show that she was standing there like a deer in headlights, she really hit in on the head. I think she was just in over her head and she was done. I thought he may have chosen Elise because she causes so much tension and drama, but I think he made the right choice this week. And after all, he does have ratings to think about.