TV is the New Reading

‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is off to a strange, wild start

I normally don’t pay a lot of attention to reality shows because, well, they tend to call plenty of attention to themselves.

Case in point, the run-up to this week’s “Hell’s Kitchen” on FOX, one of the contestants, Joe, a former Marine, got all up in a bunch about British master chef and perfectionist Gordon Ramsay asking him to name the two men from his team chosen for elimination.

To back up a bit, “Hell’s Kitchen,” now in its sixth season, is a reality show where chefs compete for a chance to run one of Ramsay’s top-of-the-line restaurants. This season, the winner/survivor will take over as head chef at Araxi Restaurant in Whistler, British Columbia.

That’s a little weird in itself. It feels like it should be a competition among Canadian chefs so there’s no issues with citizenship and work visas, but no doubt Ramsay will take care of all of that himself. Besides, Whistler’s hardly inaccessible -- the distance from Seattle to Whistler is essentially the distance from Minot to Regina with traffic.

So last week there’s this dust-up with Joe, a former Marine who seemed to resent every aspect of the show. He resented having to prove himself against his fellow contestants, and he resented his winning team being taken out for a magnificent meal. He’s there to win, see, not to enjoy fine dining.

But the last straw for him was being asked to report what had been decided among his team, the Blue Team, in terms of nominating two men for elimination and why.
Chef Joe was visibly upset at having to make this report, and seemed incapable of following simple instructions. Ramsay wouldn’t let him off the hook -- it seems he’d identified a streak of insubordination and already had plenty of opportunities to witness Joe’s lack of teamwork.

Contretemps

Ramsay continued needling Joe about his ornery refusal to cooperate until this hothead whips off his chef’s jacket and gets all up in Chef Ramsay’s face and informs him that he ain’t nobody’s -- well, here you can insert the newspaper equivalent of a bleep.

The episode ended there. We all had a week to marvel at what was going to happen, “What’s Gordon gonna do?” “OMG this is so exciting,” etc.

The fight resumed at the top of this week’s episode, and it petered out into nothing, as so often happens in these shows. Gordon’s staff stepped forward to break anything up if it got physical, but it didn’t. Gordon didn’t back down or so much as blink -- certainly in his years running a restaurant and yelling at people he’s encountered at least one or two chefs who yell back -- and Joe threw his jacket and tripped on his way out, insisting all the while that he was a great chef and people would be lining up to hire him.

What, so that he can get all temperamental and shout-y if someone asks him to do something -- in a kitchen? With knives? Sounds like a bad bet for a team member. Certainly no one seemed to miss him too much.

Ramsay continued to pour on the verbal abuse as the episode continued, as they took all night to serve up garlic bread and raw meatballs to a group of firefighters. Two members of the Blue Team sustained injuries, one member of the Red Team couldn’t do math and another of her teammates took 40 minutes to bring her first customer’s order to the kitchen. Beyond that it seemed no one could cook a scallop to save their lives, but that’s just life in “Hell’s Kitchen,” televised on-the-job training by a mad impressario.

The concern I have is that one of these people is going to be serving as an executive chef someplace. Fortunately they’ll be doing so in a foreign country. Me, as always, I feel worse for the customers.

“Hell’s Kitchen” airs Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on FOX.