Did anyone who watched this year’s Hell’s Kitchen premiere plan on watching the rest of the season? I tried, o lordy how I tried to get into this show. My wife loves it. I could never get over how overdramatic this dude is, but tonight he crossed the line from improbably hostile to **unbelievably **so.
Most of these shows are pretty terrible. I don’t really get why “Hell’s Kitchen” is popular either, bnut then I also don’t for the life of me grasp how anyone can watch “Survivor,” and it’s wildly popular.
One thing that seems to be true, though, is that people like watching people being mean. Nobody remembers the business challenges they used in “The Apprentice,” but everyone remembers “You’re fired!” and that sociopathic Omarosa woman.
I don’t like watching people be mean. I have enough real assholes in my life without watching a bunch of contrived ones on television. Different strokes I guess.
I just saw this show and I just saw the pretend vomit incident. What I don’t get at this point is why any person with any credibility as a chef or sous chef would want to have any part of this slow motion car crash. Ok, so they tell me Ramsey is a talented chef and this is over the top for Fox. But why would you put yourself in a situation where you KNOW he will humiliate you? How lame are these people? I have a hard time believing any person with talent in the kitchen would agree to be subjected to this, particularly this many seasons into it.
If I were a chef, I’d fall all over myself to get a chance to spend 5 minutes with Gordon Ramsay, national humiliation or not. For one thing, the dude is brilliant. For another thing, he’s a really nice guy. He screams and blusters a lot in Hell’s Kitchen and Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares, but a lot of it seems to just be an act for the camera. He cares about finding talented chefs, and he cares about helping people develop their talent. It’s more obvious on the British Kitchen Nightmares, I think, but it seems like the British program puts less of an emphasis on how mean/angry Ramsay can be.
Just watch how excited he gets over good food, or over the people he really likes, or the chefs he really respects. He’s also free with the compliments when he thinks somebody deserves them. I think he’s involved with both Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares because he genuinely wants people to be successful.
People agree to be subjected to it because they want the exposure, and they want the big prize, and they want to say they cooked with Chef Ramsay.
Now if you’ll excuse me, Hell’s Kitchen is starting…
These competition shows encourage dickery. Ramsay on his BBC “Kitchen Nightmares” is quite good. He does some “tough love,” but he realizes he has to figure out a way to make all of the people in the failing restaurant regain their enthusiasm and pull together. Hell’s Kitchen, he’s a fucking nut, and just unattractive. I’m sorry, but I would NEVER talk that way to a crowd of people who all have knives in their hands.
But even Alton Brown, who is charming as hell on Iron Chef and his own two shows, was a grade-A dick on the “Find the Next Food Network Star” show.
The New Yorker did a profile piece on Ramsey maybe last year or the year before–he’s not all that nice in RL, apparently. He used to be much worse but then he either had a road to Damascus moment or went to anger management class, I don’t recall which (if either). Anyway, most of the bile is now show.
I also don’t understand the entertainment value of someone being insulted and run down. I’m not into humiliation in any way. I’m not a foodie, though, so I can’t even ignore the screaming and focus on the food prep.
I miss Sarah Moulter (Moulten?).
I think it taps into an unquestioned American cultural assumption—that the way to excellence and success is paved with gratuitous emotional mistreatment, because Standards must be upheld, and This Is What It Takes.
I didn’t think the vomiting was faked - did you hear the ingredients??? Even if it was, absolutely disgusting dish.
I try to get past the screaming, and watch for up-and-comers on the show. That misogynist dick Jason needs to go soon. I wanted it to be tonight.
30 scallops? Looked like 6 orders, just frickin’ wasted. He needed to go - whatever his name was. And he’s wearing a toupee!
I have never watched it but have heard about all the shouting and so on.
However, it seems, Wheeljack that you have more power and influence than you know, as Gordon Ramsay has now decided that bad language is, well, bad. From your mouth to Gordon’s ear! 
Article from the “Independent” newspaper.
But, of course, it could just be a finely-cooked poisson d’avril.
NO entrées went out??? Fire them all, and start over. That was ridiculous.
I cannot stand that prick. If once he called me a donkey, he’d enjoy the better part of a skillet up his ass, then buried in his forehead.
What were the ingredients or the dish? I like the British version but refuse to watch the American one, but am still interested.
The first time I saw it I was really put off by the swearing and the way the contestants were treated but I like cooking shows of just about any sort so I kept watching and then I realized it was pretty much for show and it started to get funny. Not because I enjoy seeing people abused, I don’t, but it’s just so melodramatic and over the top it’s actually funny at times. The contestants keep doing the same dumb things every season (how many times have we seen them not bother to season the risotto?) and the things some of them say are just so over the top stupid they have to be encouraged to say it (“the only way I’d lose to a woman is in an ironing contest”). As I understand it actual restaurant kitchens can get pretty crazy and HK is probably a good trial by fire in that respect.
So who got eliminated tonight? I tried watching at work and as usual I got to see most of the show up until the end when all the diners left and he shut down the kitchen.
I was put off at first, too, but then I realized he has a reason for shouting at these idiots. I don’t know about you guys, but I expect at least some professionalism out of people who are aspiring to become head chefs of a multimillion dollar hotel/casino restaurant!
I don’t know how many shows I’ve watched where one person will screw up day after day after day. They won’t get entrees out. They’ll burn eggs. They’ll undercook meat (which is hazardous in itself). The list goes on forever. And the worst thing is, some of them were supposedly quite well experienced at kitchen management and cooking.
For what it’s worth, I like both the American and the British versions.
Although, in the American version it is quite annoying how he tends to favor the attractive women. Has anyone else noticed that?
It was/is made by Channel 4, not the BBC.
The stay at home dad, whatever his name was. He couldn’t make any scallops. He was put up for elimination against ‘the black Ramsey’.
While there may be a couple of gems in the contestants, most of them come across as incredible tools and horribly incompetent. I have a tough time believing Gordon would give them anything beyond sous chef rather than risk his new restaurant.
Still, while the men truly were fuckups in not learning the menu, is it even realistic to have people who have never worked together before put together menus that they had no input in nor had any ‘warm up nights’ to practice making? I am not surprised that they failed, and if I was a diner planning to go to Hell’s Kitchen on opening night, I’d go ahead and bring a couple of burgers in with me while I expect the unavoidable.
Yeah, last night’s show seemed more edited and scripted than ever. My daughter was outraged by Jason’s remarks, I just laughed and said, “They always have one of those.” And am I really supposed to believe none of the men could remember a single entrée?
Why’d they bother gluing all that shit on to Gordon’s face? It hardly changed him at all.
I’m trying to figure out what the criteria are for going on the show. I think they’re looking for people with obnoxious personalities, big boobs, hideous accents, or any combination of the three.
‘Le Lapin Enorme’. The huge bunny?
Fantastically convincing. I wonder if any cryptic crosswordists can find any April Fool references or anagrams in there.
ETA: while I do think there’s a hell of a lot of mugging for camera, I did hear in an interview (IIRC before the US shows started) that he has a very low nausea threshold where it comes to bad food, and retches/pukes quite regularly.
I’m not a big fan of most “reality shows,” but I do love my Hell’s Kitchen (and Kitchen Nightmares, too). I ordinarily wouldn’t enjoy some obnoxious blowhard abusing the shit out of people, and I am generally not sadistic, but what makes the show entertaining for me is the simple fact that these people self-selected for abuse. The joke is that the vast majority of the contestants haven’t got a chance in hell, and they’re the only ones that don’t seem to know it. Perhaps I should have more sympathy for people who are willing to go out on a limb to pursue their dreams, and I do feel genuinely sorry for some of them, but when some blowhard idiot (like The Black Ramsay) gets cut down to size, I enjoy it. I guess that makes me a terrible person.
I do have my limits, though. Even though the people who go on that “lie detector show,” (sorry, I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it) also voluntarily choose to humiliate themselves for a chance at a little bling, I won’t watch it – not even one episode. Those people are taking a chance at genuinely destroying their lives, and that’s too much of a train wreck for me.