Hell’s Kitchen Finale

August 15th, 2007

The winner: Sanjaya. No, Just kidding. It was Rock.

Final donkey count: 11

Hell’s Kitchen - Final Two

July 31st, 2007

Congrats to Bonnie and Rock for making the final two. There’s some catching up to do, so here goes:

Last week we saw the elimination of two chefs: Josh and Julia. I was really bummed to see Julia go, but I agree with Chef Ramsay’s decision to let her go. She has raw talent, but not a lot of knowledge of fine dining dishes. Josh, on the other hand, was kicked out of the kitchen in mid-service for screwing up too many entrees. And these weren’t little screw-ups either. For some reason, he kept disobeying Chef Ramsay’s orders and made at least two of the dishes — risotto and spaghetti — before they were ordered. This is a big no-no because all of the dishes are supposed to be made to order. And when it finally came time to send the dishes out, they were poorly done. Chef Ramsay reached the end of his rope and threw Josh out on the spot.

Julia was sad to go, and Chef Ramsay was sad to let her go, because of her incredible intuition. But Chef gave her a little surprise: he told her that he will personally send her to culinary school to learn the ins and outs of fine dining. How awesome is that? I’m not a cook in the slightest. Hell, I burn cereal. But even I would jump at the chance to go to some free culinary school. I would probably suck at it, but free is free.

Two weeks ago we saw the loss of Brad. No big deal there. Normal screw-ups for a so-so chef. Out he went. It really wasn’t a blog-worthy episode.

So now we are down to the final two. Bonnie surprised everyone with her assertiveness in the pass, and both chefs caught the sous chef’s intentional quality discrepancies. It would have been a difficult decision to let Jen go, but her confidence just isn’t there yet. She’s just not ready to run her own restaurant.

Next week will bring the separation of the restaurants into two separate restaurants. Interior designers will be brought in, and each finalist will get a chance to design his or her own custom restaurant. Then, all of the contestants will be brought back in, and each of the finalists will pick their team from the eliminated chefs. I hope Julia gets picked first. She’s awesome.

Donkey Count: 11

Hell’s Kitchen - Bye Bye Melissa

July 10th, 2007

Ding Dong the witch is dead!

After getting thrown over onto the blue team at the end of last week’s episode, Melissa is finally out of Hell’s Kitchen. And none too soon, too. Because that girl was a frightening nightmare.

The challenge this week was a simple one: grab three live lobsters from the aquarium, make three lobster dishes that are both good and creative, and serve them to Chef Ramsay in hopes that he won’t throw it back in your face. The team with the most approvals from the chef gets an exciting prize. The losing team gets a major let down. It ended up being neck and neck on this one, with a lobster bisque being a common dish between the two teams. Chef Ramsay hummed and hawed for a while, finally giving the prize to the red team.

Rock was not happy. Oh, was Rock not happy. His team’s punishment: Not as bad as other punishments, they had to separate plastic, glass, papers, etc. out of the trash bin and clean them up for recycling. Rock threw a number of childish fits about this, screaming that the bisque… the bisque! He hated the bisque! The blue team should have won!!! ARGHHH!!! And on and on it went.

In the mean time, the girls got to go over to a hoity toity magazine and pose with the chef for a photo shoot. They were all glammed-up for the event, and had a really good time with the chef. In the middle, Rock got sent over to the photo shoot. When he got there, Chef Ramsay pointed at the garbage can on the set and told him that he missed that one. As can be expected, this did not make Rock happier. No, no. This made Rock angrier. Much angrier.

After tempers cooled down, it was time for everyone to reconvene at the kitchen and prepare for the dinner service. Melissa fits in much better with the guys than with the girls, but personality alone isn’t going to save her. She starts screwing up right from the start.

The red team starts out well. They push out more than half of their appetizers before running into some bumps. The chef is having a good time screaming at both teams. However, unfortunately, and I say this with great sadness in my heart, there are no donkeys in this episode, nor the previous one. So we are still at:

Donkey Count: 7

Bonnie nearly sets the kitchen on fire with a giant flame. She decides that the best thing to do would be to pick up the burning pan, walk with it a bit, then set it on the floor. Huh? Chef Ramsay runs over and scolds her for that, telling her that you should just step back form the flame and hope the whole place doesn’t burn down. From there, it all just goes downhill for both teams.

The losers: the Blue team. They are to choose two people to put up on the chopping block. Chef Ramsay doesn’t really even want to hear who they are. He has Melissa step forward and turn in her jacket. Then, in a small surprise, he has Josh and Brad to step forward, asking both of them why they think they should stay in the competition. Huh? Is he going to eliminate two people this week? It would make sense, since he didn’t eliminate anyone last week, he just sent Melissa to the other team. But no, he sends both chefs back in line with a quick slap on the wrist. Until next week.

The Taste Test in Hell’s Kitchen

June 26th, 2007

This episode defines the reason that I like Hell’s Kitchen so much. I tell you more about that in a minute.

Tonight was the infamous Taste Test episode. Each chef is blindfolded and given headphones, then asked to identify three basic foods based on taste alone. Although the girls were suspected of cheating, they came out as the victors yet again. At this point, the guys have yet to win a single challenge.

There wasn’t a whole lot of unusual HK drama this time, just more of the usual. People over/undercooked various foods and got plates shoved/thrown back at them to do over. And, as a rule of Hell’s Kitchen, if a single dish doesn’t get Chef Ramsay’s approval when it is about to be sent to the table, all of the food for that table is scrapped and the chefs must start over again. This make for a serious amount of wasted food, and one really pissed off Head Chef.

Tonight was the night that the customers decided which team was the losing team. Each table had score cards where the customers could write down and rate the teams on individual categories such as whether or not they were satisfied with the length of time it took to get their food. This, of course, would be the biggest problem for the chefs, as it always takes forever to get food out in Hell’s Kitchen.

In the end, Chef Ramsay decided that both teams were losers, and made each team pick one person for elimination. Rock got to choose for the Blue team, and Jen got to pick for the Red team.

Now this is what it’s all about. This is the reason that I like Hell’s Kitchen so much more than other “reality” shows. Rock and Jen, instead of choosing the worst performer on their team, each chose a person (Melissa and Josh, respectively) that they considered to be the greatest threat to them. It’s kind of like the crap you see on Survivor where the team members vote off the BEST people so that they have less competition down the road. Well, Chef Ramsay won’t go for that. If someone is nominated that the chef feels doesn’t deserve to be, he will override the nominations. And in this case he did. If fact, he overrode both nominations and told the nominators that they were idiots for not choosing the worst performers on the team. So Chef Ramsay chose the two he thought should go: Bonnie and Vinnie.

After a lot of tongue-lashing, Chef Ramsay decided who should go: Vinnie.

Donkey count: 7

Hell in Hell’s Kitchen

June 19th, 2007

Aaron, the resident overweight cowboy oriental, passed out and smacked his head good on a counter. He was sent to the hospital and declared unfit to continue Hell’s Kitchen. Good riddance. He really sucked anyway, although his crying fits did make for some entertaining television.

Donkey count: 5

Chef Ramsay did his usual this night: threw food at people, called them names, and was bleeped out by the censors for more than half his words. There were a lot of screw ups, mostly by the girls. In the end, it was Joanna who got kicked by Chef Ramsay for trying to serve spoiled crab. There was an honorable mention, too. Jen, having just thrown a batch of spaghetti into the garbage can, realized that her action came too soon. Not five seconds after she threw the excess pasta into the bin, Chef Ramsay yelled out an order that called for spaghetti. Rather than waiting for new spaghetti to cook, Jen decided she would fetch the old stuff out of the garbage bin, wash it off, throw it into boiling water for a few seconds to “kill the bacteria” and serve it as normal. Luckily, short-order cook Julia was there to straighten her out, making her throw the spaghetti back in the trash. In the end, Jen nominated herself to go home, although two nominees had already been chosen (Joanna and Julia). Chef Ramsay overrode the decision to put Julia on the chopping block because her teammates came up with a very weak excuse to throw her out: namely, they said that she was too ‘inexperienced’ to run a restaurant, although she knocked out breakfasts at break-neck speed during the morning challenge. Ramsay spared ‘Bacteria Girl’ by a hair and concluded that Joanna’s culinary crime was much more severe.

Goodbye Joanna and Aaron. It’s all for the best.

Hell’s Kitchen Premier

June 7th, 2007

Hell’s Kitchen

Finally, the show I’ve been waiting for!

Chef Gordon Ramsay is back to breathe fire onto a gaggle of suspecting wannabe chefs. Although he shall smite them all (but one), they sure deserve it.
He will yell. He will throw things. He will call his chefs donkeys. I’m predicting, and I write this just before the premier episode, that there will be at least five “donkeys”. Of course, there is one “donkey” in the preview commercials, but I know he has a lot more in him. After all, his people are donkeys, and they should be treated as such. At least until they prove themselves, which most of them will not do. You just wait and see.

This year’s prize:
A $250K salary as the head chef at Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas.

Here are the contestants:

Tiffany
Rock
Jen
Josh
Melissa
Eddie
Joanna
Brad
Julia
Aaron
Jen
Bonnie
Vinnie

Into the kitchen they go to make their signature dishes. This is the “train wreck” part of the show. I love it.

Chef Gordon doesn’t like many of the dishes at all, save for Melissa’s steak. This is going to get brutal. I will keep a running ‘Donkey!’ tally.

The fat guy, Aaron, keeps breaking down into sobbing fits. Whaddup, dude? Chefs don’t cry! I can’t see this guy lasting long. I mean, crying is one thing, but
it doesn’t seem he really knows how to cook. Of course, none of them do at the moment.

The girls keep fighting amongst themselves. This kind of fighting is typical in Hell’s Kitchen, but the girls seem to be putting forth an extra effort to bicker. I can only
see things going south from here.

The food service goes poorly. Only a few appetizers get out and the food really looks lackluster in all. In the end, Chef Ramsay must decide who is the losing team. In this
account, he’s not going to assign a ‘winner’, just the worst ‘loser’. It’s the girls. Since Melissa seems to have her act together a little more than the others, she is
chosen as team leader and must select two chefs to go onto the chopping block. After consulting in private with her teammates, and assuring Tiffany that she is safe, she selects
Joanna and (surprise!) Tiffany for elimination.

Chef Ramsay decides to give the ax to Tiffany. An ugly beginning, and just what I had in mind!

American Idol — Final Two

May 22nd, 2007

Melinda is gone. I no longer care who wins.

Bye Bye Lakisha

May 10th, 2007

I missed American Idol this week. My cable was out. Of all the time for cable to be out, it was during my two favorite shows,
House and American Idol. Comcast, you suck.

So here’s the critique of the results show:

Blake obviously did some beat boxing again, which he’s only so-so at, so I’m hoping he gets chopped this week.

Lakisha got medoicre ravings from the judges.

Jordin did very well, as is to be expected of her, on her first song. She sort of bombed on the second song.

Melinda did similarly. Not-so-great first song, much better second.

The reviews were mixed all over the place. It could go anywhere tonight. But I’m really hoping for Blake to go bye bye.

From the beginning of this competition, it’s been the girls’ competition. The guys have always struggled to keep up, and I
believe it’s time to get rid of the punk.
And for those of you who don’t believe me when I say that Blake is a yawn of a beatboxer, just go to youtube and check out
some of the other beatboxers that have tried out for other countries’ Idol shows. There are some amazing people out there, and
sorry to say, Blake isn’t one of them.

And the results:

Jordin is safe. Not a huge shocker. I’m assuming Blake or Lakisha is going home tonight.

Melinda is safe.

Simon agrees with my wife. He thinks Lakisha is going home.

And the loser is: Lakisha.

My wife is proven right again. No comment on this.

Blake, you’re next!

American Idol — Two For the Road

May 3rd, 2007

Two people to hit the road this week: Phil and Chris.

There won’t be a final five. Good. In my experience, somewhere around the final five, there’s some kind of weird upset,
and someone gets sent home that isn’t expected. Last year it was Chris Daughtry.

Bon Jovi rocked the house with an awesome performance. That guy has some pipes. Catch his tour starting January.

Blake butchered a Bon Jovi song by turning it into a beat-box laden oddity. As a beat boxer, he is mediocre, and
I think it should have tanked him. But the judges loved it. It was a roulette wheel spin, and it payed off.

Jordin gave a sub-par performance, and the judges let her know it. And jeez, the hair! I know it’s a singing competition, but
damn.

Phil surprised me. I usually give him about a 7.5, but this week I give him a solid 8.446. He gave a better-than-usual performance,
the judges agreed.

Lakisha rocked! Literally. Her performance was much better than she usually does, which surprised me, because she is pretty good.
Half way through her performance, I was starting to get a little worried about my main girl, Melinda.

Chris gave his usual average-enough-that-I-don’t-know-who-he-is performance. Yawn.

But alas, Melinda pulled it out again! I’ve only ever heard one negative critique about her (by Simon, of course), and that fact
is absolutely astounding. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again (making a total of twice): they should just end the show now
and give the title to Melinda. If she doesn’t win, my faith in the decision making ability of the average American will drop to an
all-time low of 18%.

The results:

Melinda is safe. Duh.

Phil is gone. Not a huge surprise. He’s been in the bottom three a few times. He was already hanging by a thread. And with
a combined total of two voting weeks, a single stellar performance just wasn’t enough to save him. His last song, “Down in a Blaze
of Glory”, was all too fitting.

Lakisha is safe.

Jordin is safe. Last week’s performance saved her, becuase her totals were added to this week. If that weren’t the case,
I’m not entirely sure she would have made it through. Count your blessings, Jordin.

Blake is safe.

Chris is going home. No big boo-hoo.

Incidentally, this is the final-four that my wife, Holly, predicted the moment the top twelve were announced.

Here is her prediction of the order that they will go out:

Lakisha, Blake, Melinda. Making Jordin the winner!

I don’t like that outcome too much. I want Melinda!

We shall see who is victorious.

Mac Commercial — PC Gets a Virus — What they DON’T Show You

May 1st, 2007

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