I guess it was a foregone conclusion, but am I the only one that wanted to see it played out? Of course,
(mouse-
over-
spoiler-
alert-
Rock won.
Did anyone ever think he wouldn’t? Would they have shown the whole family-man tear-jerker montage if it had gone the other way?
I was disappointed in Julie. A lot of the Waffle House Goodwill she had built up was tossed into the bin with tonight’s episode, a disturbing foreshadowing of which was shown last week. Does she really not realize how well she did in this show? And does she have any idea how petty and childish she came off in the finale? I have to wonder what the editors are trying to show us. They made her the heoric underdog all through the show, only to completely trash her image in the finale. Of course, there’s the old “can’t show what wasn’t there” reply to the complaint of manipulative editing of reality shows, but did she really spin 180° at the last minute? Color me confused.
Now Josh has been a buffoon from the start and didn’t fail to screw up in his usual manner, even to the point where Rock gave him a verbal bitch-slap when Ramsey questioned him at the end. But his edit was consistent from start to finish. And Jen’s pathetic “he liked meeeeeeeeeeee” confessional was really embarrasing to watch.
Hopefully, Rock will do well and stop referring to himself in the 3rd person. The right person won, I guess, but I don’t feel very good about it. Of course, I wouldn’t have felt good about any other outcome either, so there ya go.
I watched. Forgone conclusion, IMHO. And I lost a lot of respect for Julia on the last ep. Although to be fair to her, she seemed to handle her station well last night, even though you could tell she didn’t want to be bossed around by Bonnie. Josh’s “I can cook!” at the end was pathetic, because he showed how poorly he actually cook stand up to the pressures of the kitchen in almost every ep.
I too lost all respect for Julia. What’s up with this petty not-answering shit? And then Bonnie did the same thing in return.
I also remembered why I disliked Josh…he is never wrong. Even if you saw him do something wrong, it means nothing, because he is actually always right.
I suppose I’m glad Rock won. That reminds me, my satellite feed (or whatever) froze up at the precise moment when they were going to open the doors. I had to laugh at that, since it provided at least a speck of suspense.
My husband stopped the recording. (Grr!) Could someone recap it for me? I did see the part where Bonnie laying was laying on the couch, not planning much, while Rock had everything mapped out.
Basically, the boys screwed up on cooking stuff and the girls squabbled. Josh was overcooking crab cakes time and again, until he was removed from the station. Bonnie couldn’t get Julia to acknowledge her, and at one point she asked Julia to do something and Julia turned around and asked Jen to do it. When Bonnie protested, Julia told her she was already doing something. Well, duh, I should hope so!
I liked Bonnie’s restaurant décor better, but I’d rather have had Rock’s menu.
Did anyone else have a fleeting suspicion that Julia was throwing away the ingredients of Bonnie’s signature dish? Bonnie’s kitchen mysteriously ran out of linguine and had to substitute spaghetti, but then ran out of prawns. Jean-Phillipe had to have the customers order something else.
It was Melissa on the prawn station. Remember how she kept overcooking them?
I absolutely figured Melissa was screwin’ Bonnie. For someone that thinks she is as good a cook as she isn’t, there really wasn’t any excuse for her not being able to cook the prawns.
Josh was consistent, he is exactly like he looks, pompous, arrogant and stupid.
I’m very glad that Rock won. Call me a sympathetic old windbag (Sympathetic Old Windbag!) but hey, he has a family. Bonnie is just a pup.
Two fingers crossed to never look at Jen again. What an annoying twit she was, IMHO.
I was disappointed in Julia too, I also see her has having had the most to lose, so even though she wasn’t there with the enthusiasm, at least she did her job.
We didn’t see the entire menu, just a sample of dishes Bonnie and Rock gave to Ramsay for tasting.
Bonnie had her goat cheese salad with roasted peppers, egg fettucine with Thai spicy prawns (her signature dish), and a dessert plate with a chocolate-covered strawberry and truffles (which Ramsay thought looked like ass). Rock had his surf-and-turf signature dish (the fried chicken and crab cake), the seared ribeye, and chocolate chip cookies and a milkshake.
The finale really highlighted Bonnie’s lack of restaurant experience and leadership. I don’t think she should have even been in the F2. I think it should have been Jen and if it hadn’t been for the garbage picking incident, it would have been.
There was really no other choice between these two. In the real world, Bonnie wouldn’t even get through the door as an applicant to run a high end kitchen. Rock is someone who clearly knows what he’s doing on a line, has natural leadership skills and is enough of a control freak that you know he’s going to make sure things function smoothly. Like Ramsay said, there’s a “safety” factor with Rock. You know you can trust him.
I kind of sensed that Julia might have been different if she was on Rock’s (or even Jen’s) team instead of Bonnie’s. I don’t think the women respected Bonnie much as a finalist.
I have to say that Bonnie was one of the best losers ever, though. She was so nice to Rock and I think she was genuinely happy for him. I suspect that she might have been secretly a litle relieved that she wasn’t going to have to go run that restaurant.
Nah, even Bonnie didn’t have any suspicions of sabotage and wasn’t surprised when they ran out of stuff. She just under-prepped – a typical “rookie mistake” for an inexperienced cook. You always make more than you think you’re going to need. If there was any sabotage it was that everyne on her team would have known they were under-prepped but none of them told Bonnie.
I was disappointed in Julia, too. I think her attitude may have been that of all the other people there, Bonnie had the least restaurant experience of them and didn’t deserve to be there at all. Heck, look at all the times she was up for elimination. They all ragged on Julia for being a “Waffle House cook” but she was a cook in a restaurant and Bonnie wasn’t but Bonnie had culinary training and Julia didn’t so Bonnie got put a notch above Julia for that. Yeah, it was petty of Julia to act the way she did but I can see her annoyance.
I think Julia did do her job though and I think most of the squabbles between Bonnie and Julia were because Bonnie was making power plays to remind Julia that she was in charge. The last incident with Bonnie asking Julia to do something and Julia refused, Julia was prepping the dessert, Jen was walking by doing nothing. Bonnie asks Julia to stop what she was doing, when Julia was attempting to finish the service, and wrap up some old goat cheese that had been sitting out at least since appetizers! That was a power play, there was no point to it. Stop one of your people from finishing dessert so they can do something else just so you can prove to them that you’re in charge? WTF! The most important job in the kitchen that night was to complete the service and she was asking Julia to stop that and put away left overs that didn’t matter in the long run and both Jen and Melissa weren’t really doing anything at that point, they looked like they were just cleaning up. I don’t blame Julia for that incident at all she recognized it for what it was and refused to play along. I probably would have too, or I would have done it and sarcastically remarked that “sure, I’ll wrap up your old leftovers that don’t matter a whit and stop your service which this whole game is riding on, doofus! Just so you can make your little power play. Just don’t scream at me when your desserts are late to the window, bitch!”
I don’t think it was Bonnie’s lack of prep that lost it for her, but I think Ramsay noted her troubles running the kitchen, she came off as a screeching harpy. Rock was pretty nice to his team even after so many screw-ups by Josh … but why in the world put Josh on appetizers, he never did well there?
Rock really had to be the winner. I still think Bonnie is just an actress.
Anyway, I’m glad I don’t have to hear Bonnie scream “OH MY GOD!” one more time even her boyfriends must get sick of that.
I think this is it. Julia sounded like she had a lot of respect for Rock in her one-on-one speech with the camera, but implied that she had very little for Bonnie. It also must have been a bit of a kick in the teeth for Julia to be picked pretty much last, even though she didn’t finish last out of the six. At any rate, they all got through it, and it looked as though Bonnie and Julia had made up in the end.
I was pleased to see Rock win. He could and did motivate his team, he made the tough decisions when he had to (taking Josh off appetizers), and he prepared his team beforehand (when Bonnie was stretched out on the sofa).
Props to Bonnie for being one of the best losers I’ve ever seen in a competition. I’m another who thinks she may have been secretly relieved she did not win. I’ll look forward to hearing how Rock handles the Green Valley Ranch assignment.
There was no way Bonnie was going to win this and I think she knew it going into the finale so she was emotionally prepared for the outcome, which is why she reacted so well. I think she was really happy for Rock and she never really wanted to run that restaurant anyway.
Was Julia purposefully ignoring Bonnie? It seemed hard not to believe that, given the footage, but it also seems incredible since Ramsey was right there, as well as cameras.
And was Bonnie ignoring Julia? Again, it really seemed like she was but it’s also hard to believe she’d be stupid enough to perform like that in front of Ramsey.
Bonnie did better than I thought she was going to do. If she hadn’t underprepped and if she’d caught the under-cooked prawns, her loss wouldn’t have been so obvious.
Julia was working her ass off at the time and it’s possible she was ignoring her because she was already working her ass off and didn’t need Bonnie to tell her to do that, it’s also possible she didn’t hear her because there were other instances of Julia not hearing someone when she was really concentrating on what she was doing. I think Bonnie was purposely ignoring Julia though because she was just standing there wiping off plates and I doubt that’s that engrossing.
That’s kind of the point. Julia was shown crying (like last week) a number of times this season, mostly because she was working around people who ignored her, talked down to her, and treated her as an incompetent. They were flabbergasted that she: hadn’t made creme brulee, hadn’t cooked lobster (as I recall Ramsay said hers was “perfectly cooked”) and might not know what to order in her own restaurant (you know, 'cuz the woman who accepted an order of fish skeletons and the served-food-from-the-trash girl and the one who kept screwing up the potatoes and overcooking the prawns and the one who couldn’t smell rotting crab were all so much better qualified).
Every member of the women’s team was given time on screen at some point in the early shows to declare “she’s just a waffle-house cook!” and no matter how well she did in the episode she was guaranteed to be nominated by her teammates for elimination. Jen was the first one to break the cycle because of the spaghetti-trash incident, possibly because Julia was the one who caught her and refused to serve the spaghetti!
So I can forgive her if she didn’t really feel a lot of love for those women, and felt a bit upset that, after all of the complaint about her lack of qualifications, she was brought back to work for the nanny/personal chef *** who then proceeded, on top of everything else, to choose her last.***
I’m not arguing that she should have won or even have been a finalist; everyone is right, she’s green and culinary school will help her a lot. But I can understand why she was upset and why she said she was pulling for Rock over Bonnie.
I think it should also be remembered that episodes are not aired in real time. Although a couple of weeks had elapsed between the airing of the episode where Julia was eliminated and the finale, it had only been a couple of days between the tapings, so the emotions were still pretty raw.