OK, just finished watching via my DVR and it stopped recording the episode just before Ramsey made his choice of who he was booting. (AI ran over again - asshats) Anyway, J & Andrea were on the chopping block…
Lil Help!
Each episode this season is like a phucking train wreck…
I’ve never understood how a) any of these people can have a job cooking, and b) how Ramsay can let them into an establishment associated with his name.
His reasoning was that although she was not up for elimination, Colleen had had 5 services in a row with absolute nothing positive to say about them. He did compliment her on her tenacity and her “strength”. But gave his usual “can’t cook” pot shot on her way out.
I swear that Ramsay is tipped off when chefs decide to hide ruined food or throw things away. He always seems to know, no matter how well hidden or how far he has to dig. Two chef’s last night got busted for this, and I know it’s happened a couple other times in the past.
Huh. Here I wondered if he’d seen footage showing that Colleen did leave the oven open (more than once maybe) and that led to the burnt-on-the-bottom-only food issues and such.
However, I can kind of get behind the idea. Too many times on Top Chef I’ve seen a contestant skating by on being “OK enough” to not screw up but almost never stand out either. IIRC Andrea had some standout work and then bam, a real off service.
I’ll give credit to Giovanni too, for not putting Lacey up and admitting she did help the team. I hate Lacey but she might have some skill under the huge chip on her shoulder. She reminds me alot of (last season’s?) Jen, although Jen seemed to be more confident and talented.
Yes, I’m really glad that the blue team was able to bond during the origami session. Lacey really stepped it up, but I have a feeling one big screwup, and she’s gone.
ETA: Had she been on the meat station and had the night J. had, SEE YA!
Their performace that night really doesn’t much matter to him. If they’re good generally, he’ll ignore that they had one bad night. If they were pretty mediocre and they get put up on the block he’ll take them out. But, where possible, he does try to keep one or two trouble-personalities, because he’s looking for leadership. If the cooks can’t handle someone with an attitude, they’re not going to be a leader. If they can bring that person around or even improve them, then that’s entirely a good thing.
He really does seem to be looking for the best. But just because he keeps someone on doesn’t mean that he does so because he expects they’ll improve.
And remember that even though it seems like they’re all screwing up left and right, they’re feeding like a hundred people. Assuming three courses, that’s 300 hundred dishes split between two kitchens. Usually, there’s somewhere between 3-5 mistakes. That’s really not bad. He shuts down the kitchen if they’re too slow or if the mistakes are starting to snowball.
Also, I think that the people are all only given like five hours of sleep a day.
Plus it makes for “good TV”. I.e. it stirs up dissension and drama among the cooks. Otherwise they could mostly ignore each other and just do their own thing cooking and let Ramsay weed people out.
I recall reading that they keep the contestants sleep deprived to ramp up the conflict and they’ve certainly made overt references to that on the show.
I’m always impressed by the people who obviously lost quite a while ago and keep sticking around because there’s someone worse on hand at the moment. They apparently think that Ramsey has the memory of a goldfish and once the episode break occurs he won’t remember a thing about how they acted before. They seem to think the game is “Survivor” rather than “Impress the Judge”.
Considering that the idea of the game is (supposedly) to come up with someone who is actually good enough to be executive chef at a big restaurant, Ramsay would have to be an idiot to just blindly take whoever is offered to him. That’s why it is so stupid when, as has happened several times in the past, one of the contestants puts the person who is generally the best one on the team on the chopping block and and then says – in front of RAMSAY, no less – that they are only doing it to eliminate competition. :smack: