Hell’s Kitchen 6, Episode 13: Child’s Play

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

As you recall last week, Ramsay finally booted Suzanne. She wasn’t ever really a bad chef, although she was never really that good. But her problem all along was that she didn’t have the people skills to get along with her teammates, especially Tennille.

Then again, no one really gets along with Tennille for very long. Tennille spends all of her time trash talking anyone she doesn’t like. And generally she doesn’t like anyone who is within arm’s reach of her. And she especially doesn’t like anyone that talks back to her when she goes on her latest harangue.

The list of evicted players reads like a laundry list of players that she has tussled with. Suzanne has always been at the top of her list, however and Suzanne finally ran out of steam and bit the dust last week.

I cringe when I think of the crowing and cheering that Tennille is about to do. Let’s watch and try to get this over with.

Fortunately, the editors don’t show us too much of that. Instead they show us her crowing about how great she is and how many people she has beaten and how the remaining players had better watch their backs and so on. It’s kind of mind numbing to watch.

Anyway, that eviction leaves us with just four players; two boys and two girls. It’s a nice and tidy tie, just like Ramsay always likes.

The next morning dawns and the four remaining chefs gather in the kitchen. All eyes turn to Chef Ramsay’s office as they hear him from behind the glass chewing out some hapless peon.

The door opens and out walks a miniature Ramsay. It’s a kid dressed up to look like him. Ha, ha. Funny joke.

After the chefs all ooh and ahh over how cute the kid is, the kid starts right into a practiced speech criticizing them all about last night (which was pretty bad). But they can’t help giggle over how cute he is.

Ramsay finally does come out and sends the kid packing. He chuckles over his little joke.

But then he tells the chefs that life is going to get even harder. He laments about problem customers and calls out vegetarians as the biggest problem. Everyone nods.

He continues and says that any fine restaurant has to cater to such difficult patrons and they will have to as well. He tells them that they have one hour to create a tasty vegetarian dish for 80 finicky vegetarians who will arrive at that point. The winner will be the chef that gets the best ratings from the comment cards that the guests will fill out.

They all run off to start cooking. Kevin creates a mushroom crepe over beet Carpaccio. That sounds nasty to me. Tennille makes vegetable-stuffed eggplant. That sounds redundant to me.

Ariel will be making grilled eggplant lasagna and Dave will serve up a polenta tower with goat cheese and roasted peppers.

We see a quick montage of the chefs chopping and slicing and dicing. No one cuts any fingers off. But Dave does bang his cast on a stove and casually strolls off to the cooler to vent his pain. He doesn’t want the other player to see him and think that he is weak or needs help.

All too soon the chefs are done and the vegetarians arrive and line up for some chow. But oh no! We find out that these are 80 children (with mini-Ramsay in the lead) and Ramsay tells us that they actually don’t like vegetables at all! Ha, ha. The joke’s on them.

But this is pretty clever. He basically got them to cook vegetarian dishes that might appeal to non-vegetarians.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the lasagna wins. Kids would hate stuffed eggplant and roasted peppers and beets and mushrooms. But they will like tomatoey and cheesy lasagna even if it has some eggplant in it.

Humor ensues as we find that the chefs aren’t quite ready with all 80 portions and the children start chanting that they want food. It’s like a scene from Oliver Twist.

Somehow everyone gets served. We then see a montage of the kids tasting and spitting out most of the food. I have a feeling that after this segment was filmed, the pizza guy arrived with fifteen pizzas to actually feed the kids.

Before they are done, however, Ramsay brings out a prize bag for each kid and it is loaded with streamers and sticky candy and gum and anything else extremely messy. Guess what the losers are going to have to clean up?

Ramsay gathers the chefs around for the report card. He starts off by saying that 40% of the kids voted Kevin’s dish their least favorite. No duh. Who likes beets? Do any adults even like beets?

The he announces that Ariel was in third place and that the top two dishes were Dave’s and Tennille’s. And the top dish was Tennille’s. She crows and tells us how great she is and how she knew all along that she was better than everybody.

Her reward is to go out to lunch with Chef Ramsay for a day at the spa and then sushi. She crows about how this is the best reward ever and that she deserved it.

The rest of the chefs, predictably, have to clean up the mess.

We then get a montage of them cleaning up and Tennille enjoying her reward and acting better than everyone. She tells us many, many times how much fun she is having. She is better than everyone, you know.

Tennille returns and discovers that she is very behind in prepping the food for dinner service. Apparently there have been some small but important changes to the menu.

Time runs out and J.P flings open the doors to Hell’s Kitchen and the beautiful people of California arrive in their limos and kiddie cars and are quickly seated and handed menus.