I hadn’t watched this show in a while - but during last night’s episodes, Melissa looked like she had given up all forms of personal hygiene while on the show.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reality contestant looking that bad. Especially one that seemingly has access to showers. Glad to see I wasn’t imagining things.
Just a WAG, but I think it’s just that they’re learning what Chef Ramsay expects. A lot of the earlier episodes showed the teams putting items up for service only to find that Chef Ramsay sends them back for some reason. Now, they’re all learning that what works for Bonnie’s employer and in Vinnie’s New York kitchen and in the Waffle House and so on will not work for Chef Ramsay. So, they are adjusting to his standards.
I think that this is what happened. In the prior episodes, Melissa showed hereself as the one with the most skills force of personality on the women’s team. As a result, she decided this episode that she would be team leader, and the other women apparently acquiesed. She saw herself as the Chef, and the others as Sous Chefs or Line Cooks who would have to follow her orders in her kitchen. She thought the team would work smoothly as a hierarchy, rather than by the consensus of all of the skilled chefs. Note that this was the strategy that failed for the men the prior week.
As was shown, she was unable to combine leading the team (including managing the personalities of and inspiring the other three) and doing her own cooking as required by the competition. She became overburdened with her self-imposed “team leader” responsibilities, feeling herself personally responsible for everything that came out of the kitchen and not trusting the others to do anything for themselves. She saw herself as a mini-Gordon, able to terrorize her staff, but she didn’t realize that this doesn’t work when you are simply first among equals. The rest of them were, of course, not happy, and it showed. The thing that killed her, however, was that her whole experiment in leadership distracted her from doing her job in cooking the damn meals.
There was no doubt that she was the candidate to get the boot this week. I expect that Aaron’s premature departure gave them an extra week to play with so they were able to have one contestant spared on an episode. I think her prior competence earned her a week of grace, and I think this was proper. If she learns some humility and teamwork, it will be a good thing. If not, she’ll have to hang up her jacket soon.
I’m looking forward to seeing how she’ll do with the men. None of them seem inclined to take any shit from anyone, much less someone who fucked up and is hanging on by her fingernails. It was a clever move to throw her over to monkey up their now-smoothly running team. I’ll be interested to see if and how the remaining women come together and if and how the men can integrate her. More important will be whether her attitude improves (which it may not if she thinks that she got off because she was so great compared to her “weak” teammates).
Otherwise, I’m interested to see that Gordon seems to think of Jen as the true leader of the women’s team. She’s not particularly edited into the foreground and seems neither to “star” nor to screw up. Both she and Julia appear to have quiet competence, and Bonnie seems to have gotten her shit together from the prior week’s near-breakdown. What I really wonder is whether Julia shows her lack of fine dining experience off-camera, or whether the women are simply stuck on her presumed incompetence based on her inexperience. On the men’s side, I think Rock is effectively becoming their leader, though doing it a bit more “softly” in an effective first among equals way. If he has the cooking chops to back up his leadership (which he appears to), he’ll go far.
Wow, Melissa looked like she’d just stepped off the Survivor beach after 4 weeks of no bathing. My theory is that she’s on medication that she forgot to bring with her or that she’s just completely snapped. Either way, the producers weren’t expecting it all and when she did go bonkers, all their little producer brains went “Cha-ching! $$$” and then they persuaded GR to keep her on instead of eliminating her which was obviously what he really wanted to do. My guess is she’ll stick around for another episode or two until they’ve completely wrung all the craziness out of her. Or until GR gets fed up with the producers, call them all a bunch of fuckin’ donkeys and eliminates her anyway. 
Oopsie. My bad.
Didn’t it sound to you guys like Melissa thought going to the guys’ team would be good because she wouldn’t have to worry about leadership? That’s how I read her last comments; she could just do her job and cook and “kick the Red Team’s ass.”
To discuss something besides Melissa — the little play between Jean- Philippe, Ramsay and the wedding planner, while quite possibly scripted, broke me up.
“So you talked to the chef? And he agreed to speed things up?”
Comedy gold.
You’d have to argue with me long and hard to convince me that most of this show is not scripted.
I’d offer the economic argument. One reason TV executives love reality shows is that they don’t have to pay writers.
I’d also offer the economic argument. It’s cheaper to pay a couple of writers to come up with some drama and then have some actors hit their spots and say their lines and shoot all the footage they need in a couple of days than it is to follow these mopes around for weeks with a whole crew hoping that they do something entertaining.
But it isn’t.
"Reality TV costs about half as much to produce - about $600,000 per hour - as a typical new drama or sitcom."http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/entertainment/tv_and_radio/2827299.stm
(Many other cites easily Googled.)
BrassyPhrase - I’m neither a chef or a cook. That’s kind of my point. I don’t cook, but I know that potatoes and apples will oxidize if left to the air. If I know that, why doesn’t Melissa?
StG
Melissa was stoned.
That’s the only explanation I can figure out. She was stoned out of her gourd. Couldn’t shut up, paranoid, couldn’t focus or rally from mistakes.
Yeah. She was f*cked up on something.
I think Bonnie is going home next week. At least from the preview where Ramsey says something like, “Wait, I’m not finished…you’re nothing but a faker!” I can’t pin that on anyone but Bonnie. She’s the most fake contestant out there. The past couple of weeks she’s been railing against Julie because she “knows more than her”, even though she still screws everything up. then last night she throws Melissa under the bus too. I think Bonnie has gone far in life just on her blond good looks, but there’s no "there’ there. Bonnie is the only one of the remaining contestants who has no chance at all of winning, so therefore Ramsey will send her home.
But Bonnie runs around in her underpants. If she’s gone, is there any (other than Ramsay) sex appeal whatsoever in the show?