I hate to appropriate Melissa’s words, but Jen needs to grow a pair. It was nice to see her be a little more assertive in the kitchen and actually get shit done, but her waffling really irritates me.
What the hell was going on with Melissa? I was just as baffled as Ramsay seemed to be at her decline in performance, but not to the point where I thought she deserved a second chance. Weird. Her voice absolutely grates, too.
The men seemed to do a great job with their dishes, and that ribeye looked amazing. Has anyone ever had a dish with foam? It was a big deal on Top Chef last season and I’ve read a few articles about it, but I’ve never had it.
Something strange is going on with Melissa, something that we’re not being shown or told. In past episodes, her voice and mannerisms bugged, and there were hints that she was a little bossier than the average chef, but nothing remotely resembling the manic, shrill, tone-deaf harpy she became in last night’s episode.
Her eyes were bulging out of her head throughout the episode. She was saying things that were so politically inexpedient (“listen to me; don’t listen to Bonnie”) that they had to have been said without a moment’s thought. In every episode before this one, she demonstrated a marked fastidiousness about her personal appearance - people in the threads here even commented on how much concern she showed for her looks. In this episode, she looked like a freaked out caveperson with a soul patch. There were times when I swear she was reminding me of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman: spastically offering to help Julia twenty-five times in a row; frantically trying to exert some kind of control over the vital operation of assembling wedding favors; constantly interrupting Ramsey’s presentation to the couple with her protests even after he made it clear that he didn’t want to hear from her at that point.
Couple all of this with Ramsey’s willingness to give her another chance and I think there was some exacerbating factor that caused her behavior this episode. Maybe something happened in her personal life, or she has some kind of illness, or hell, maybe she’s in some kind of drug withdrawal - but no one goes from zero to psycho that quickly without there being a reason for it.
Re: Bonnie - I don’t think she’s as much of an idiot as she superficially appears. Her confessionals, to me, often show a level of awareness and good humor that isn’t consistent with true stupidity; even the interactions she had with Julia, when they were both silently expressing exasperation with Melissa, seemed to indicate someone more aware of her situation than a brainless Barbie.
What I do think is that Bonnie: (1) hides whatever intelligence she has; (2) needs desperately to be one of the cool girls. When she was on the outs with the rest of the group, she retreated into weeping and acting like a dizzy moron. Now that she has an outsider (Melissa) to mock, she can do that and bond with the other mockers, and you can see her self-confidence and even her apparently intelligence level increase dramatically in that context.
I also find it hard to believe that someone working in a kitchen for 10 years doesn’t know to put potatoes in water. I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed the soul patch or the crazy hair. During one the confessionals I realized the soul patch looked like a spot where she might have had a piercing but I didn’t remember seeing a piercing before. Perhaps they gave her the loser edit and the crazy hair and told her to be outrageous with the promise that they wouldn’t actually boot her just so they could get some extra drama for the wedding episode. No, they wouldn’t do anything like that, would they?
Well, now we know how they’ll make up for the extra booting from Aaron’s leaving.
The only reason I can think of for such an occurrence is that with Aaron withdrawing for medical reasons, and the producers committing to a certain number of episodes, there was going to be one where somebody would get a free pass. Guess that episode was last night’s, and the somebody was Melissa.
My wife and I had questions as well about the wild hair and the thing on her chin. The hair was all over the place, and we were surprised that nobody sent back a dish because of a long hair. Of course, that may have happened, but was edited out.
Will Melissa drag the guys down? Hard to tell. If she tries to “take the lead” again as she did with the women, I don’t think the guys, especially Rock and Josh, will stand for it. They’ll put her in her place pretty quickly. On the other hand, she can cook (the duck notwithstanding), so if she moves forward as a team player instead of trying to be the star quarterback, she may surprise us.
Hmm…never seen the show, but it is being filmed at my local casino (Green Valley Ranch) two miles from my house - the same casino where they filmed the reality show American Casino.
So last week we went to eat at one of our favorite Italian restaurants there (Il Fornio - a popular west coast franchise) and it was closed! Somewhat surprised, as they always did good business, we asked why they closed. We were told the casino booted them out as they are going to open their own Italian restaurant in the same location, “…and the winner of Hell’s Kitchen will be the head chef”.
Maybe I should catch an episode to see what to expect.
Like JeffB , I’m guessing that there will be two boots next week becasuse of hat “elimination like never before” bit. And then the two teams will be merged.
I spent the entire show staring at Melissa’s hair in horror. If I was eating in a restaurant where the chefs were on display, and one of them had loose, long hair – I’d get up and leave. Seriously.
And not was Melissa’s hair loose, but it was hideous. It looked like a haystack. It must be as stiff and brittle as straw to stick out in that nasty, matted way. The pressure must have totally gotten to her, she’s snapped.
It feels like a perfectionist gone berserk. Everything must be done exactly the way she thinks, no one else can be trusted to do anything right so she has to give orders and nag and carp and try to run everything. Even when the other girls clearly agreed to ignore her as much as humanly possible, she couldn’t stop herself from trying to run everything.
As for winning: right now I’m guessing Josh and Julia as the final two.
None of the women are really ‘good enough’, but Julia is being given a Cinderella story edit. And Rock, though apparently a good cook, is being shown as conniving (with his repeatedly not nominating the worse to go) and arrogant in his confessionals.
Brad’s a possibility, as a come from behind Dark Horse, I guess.
I think Brad’s the more likely possibility since he hasn’t screwed up majorly yet to even be on our radar. I constantly forget about him.
I’m worried about Julia from the previews and I’m hoping that’s just to get us all concerned. I think the producers have to be aware that Julia is the more popular choice right now. Melissa has proven that she can’t really run a kitchen, she micromanaged and ruined the meal and then she couldn’t even fess up and blamed everyone else, so I sure hope her second chance doesn’t get her to the finals. But she has to be savvy enough to have learned that she needs to just shut up and cook now and hope someone else screws up worse.
[culinary hijack]What was the dish Melissa was trying to make and what was the problem? She wasn’t putting them in water soon enough? Because I’ve peeled and sliced potatoes for many dishes and I’ve never seen them turn black. Is is only a problem if the potatoes are sliced very thin?[/ch]
I still don’t really know who any of the guys are. No one seems to stand out at all. Right now I’m rooting for Julia.
It looked like it was supposed to be some sort of potato galette, but I didn’t even remember seeing potatoes with any of the dishes served at the tasting. Maybe I just missed it?
I also thought Melissa’s dish looked cooked and I couldn’t see the supposedly black potatoes but maybe that just didn’t show well on camera?
"Risotto has been featured as one of the most commonly ordered (and botched) appetizers on all three seasons of the reality TV show Hell’s Kitchen."Risotto - Wikipedia
Not to mention the damn wellington. You’d think someone would say to themself…“Self, I’m going to be on Hell’s Kitchen. Perhaps I should practice making risotto and wellingtons since they are in every damn episode.”
I agree and it makes me wonder: Is the problem early on that there are simply too many cooks spoiling the broth? I didn’t see any assistants in there with them (or else I just missed them entirely).
