Hell’s Kitchen 6, Episode 12: It’s a Pile of Garbage

We start this week’s episode right after last week’s second episode. You can read my review of it right here.

As you recall, Ramsay booted Van for having two bad services in a row, despite having nine great services before that. I guess he assumed that Van finally ran out of steam.

I seriously can’t wait until Tennille goes home. Her constant crowing about how she is perfect and wonderful is really getting on my nerves. When she does well, she thinks she’s the best chef ever. She’s even claimed to be better than Chef Ramsay. When she screws up, she always has a laundry list of reasons why it was someone else’s fault because, you know, she’s perfect.

But I have been getting a sinking feeling for the last few weeks that she will make it to the finals just to fill the gender quota and the minority quota for the season. Even worse, the cycle of male-female winners indicates that a woman should win this season. And the combination of female and minority has not won any season yet. I feel it in my bones.

Anyway, the chefs retire to the dorms for the night. Dave is really angry at Tennille. Last week the whole group – including Tennille – agree that Ariel and Suzanne will be the nominees (we see footage of her saying exactly that). But when Ramsay asked her point blank who she wanted nominated, she said Van and Suzanne.

Now Dave asks her why she sold everyone out and made them look like fools. She says that she didn’t do that and she never agreed to that decision (I rewind the tape to the part where she actually says that she agrees). She is obviously lying through her teeth.

See? That’s the thing about lying on a reality show. The producers have it all on tape and they will show the audience – several times – that you are indeed a liar. It’s not like real life where you can just insist on your side of the story and the debate ends in a stalemate because no one can really prove who said what.

Dave and Tennille bicker back and forth for quite a while longer. There’s that sinking feeling again that the editors are setting up the audience for the big showdown on the final night between hero Dave and liar Tennille and that evil will triumph.

But soon enough, the next day dawns and they meet Ramsay down in the kitchen. He tells them that today they will have their first individual challenge. That’s, of course, not true since episode one contains the first individual challenge when they made their signature dishes.

Anyway he tells them that presentation is as important as the taste of a dish. To judge this challenge he brings in about ten editors from Bon Appétit magazine. He points out that they will be tougher critics than he ever has been.

They are to make any dish they want and then the editors will rank them all purely on presentation. The top two will then move forward to be tasted by Ramsay and the chief editor.

He sends them off to start cooking. They have forty-five minutes. Kevin makes sea bass, Suzanne makes calamari salad, Dave is cooking lamb, Ariel prepares prosciutto-wrapped John Dory, and Tennille is cooking Asian red snapper. Unfortunately, Tennille’s fish breaks at the last minute and she decides to bury it under vegetables. Buzzz! You’re out.

The time runs out and the dishes are presented. Each chef talks at length about their dish. Sadly, Dave get tongue-tied and can’t really describe the dish. It looks good, however.

Ramsay then reads out the results. In fifth place is Tennille and Suzanne holds down fourth place. Kevin’s dish was the best and I agree – it did look wonderful.

The final finalist is Ariel. Dave blew his verbal presentation.

Ramsay and the editor taste the two dishes. They have nothing but great things to say about them. But only one person can win and that person is … both of them. It is a tie because ties are very exciting.

Their prize is to go on a photo shoot with their dishes on the beach.

The rest of the chefs have to go out onto the streets and pick up trash. Of course, Tennille has to tell us how the winners didn’t deserve it and how she was so much better than them. She says that picking up trash is beneath her. Dave just grouses about how awful it will be to spend the afternoon with Tennille.

Amusingly, the losing chefs are given orange jumpsuits and herded onto a prison bus for the ride out to the trash site. When they get there I am shocked. The roadside is literally littered from one side to the other with trash. I really hope that the producers threw a bunch of trash out there and that this is not what California roads look like all the time.

Then again, the slobs in California invented smog, so maybe their polluting ways do extend to just throwing all of their trash out the car windows.

The photo shoot is very elegant and the winners enjoy their reward a lot. Ariel calls in the best reward ever.

The prisoners return and they are made to steam clean all the carpets. Tennille complains bitterly and constantly. Dave quietly does his work and at the end of it, he finds that he has probably re-cracked his wrist. It has swollen to the point where painful pressure is threatening to split the cast wide open.