Hell’s Kitchen Recap: Welcome to America

In the last episode, the unnatural focus on scallop-based foolishness persisted, and we bade a sudden adieu to Asshole Chris. I can’t shed too many tears for him, so I won’t even bother trying. It would be meaningless anyway, as I am but an inferior female and he is an irredeemable douche.

Anyway, last week also brought us a load of drama, mostly on the Red team. They’re all super pissed at Barbie for some reason, and have declared a very important and serious war. Robyn is a huge reactionary, and the fact that she has to look at Barbie through another dinner service has her on the verge of tears. It’s one of those situations where one person practically has an aneurysm while the other just sits there and smiles…which of course only escalates the hysteria. It’d be even funnier if I could figure out exactly what everyone’s problem is. Aside from rampant mental and emotional issues combined with subpar upbringings, I mean.

But that sort of goes without saying.

The next day, Barbie decides to further alienate the rest of the household by slamming around in the kitchen at 5 a.m., passive aggressively making the point that she shouldn’t be the only one up at that hour doing work. Okay, but who asked you to? If it was me, I’d clean up what I used and be perfectly happy to let other people’s dishes morph into chia pets. I’ll be damned if I’d clean up anyone’s mess to make a point; I’m far too lazy to even have that idea, much less put it into motion.

Anyway, Barbie doesn’t quite care about clean dishes as much as she cares about making a scene, and the stunt predictably brings all the sleep-deprived white trash hollering into the room. Tiffany threatens to choke her out, but before any hands can wrap around any throats, Gordon calls and tells everyone to get their asses downstairs. Kimmie doesn’t want the fighting to affect the team’s success, and she tells us that everyone needs to calm down and work together so they don’t end up losing to the boys. You know things are out of control in that place when Kimmie is the voice of reason.

Lord help us all.

Gordon makes everyone tiptoe respectfully into the kitchen, and they find a bunch of patriotic suits singing America the Beautiful and cheering. Turns out it’s a celebration for some folks who just became citizens, and what better way to welcome people to the U.S. than by serving up an All-American Meal, cooked by a bunch of assholes who can barely microwave a Lean Cuisine?

It’s a mean trick to play on hopeful new Americans, but that’s not going to stop Gordon. The first team to successfully serve their side of the dining room wins the challenge. The menu consists of Cobb salad and a choice of sliders, grilled cheese, or pizza (very American).

Things start out with the Blue team waiting on Royce to finish the salad, and Barbie firing the pizza before any salads are out. Because I guess she didn’t learn the lesson about cooking ahead of time in the last episode. Robyn steps up and tells everyone to leave off the entrees until the salads go out, which must have felt good since it contradicted Barbie’s actions and got a thumbs-up from Ramsay in one fell swoop.

Royce, meanwhile, is holding up everything, talking about himself in the third person and fucking up the salad ingredients. Clemenza is irate, and he and Guy have to step in and pull Royce’s head out of his own ass, a feat so monumental it should really have given them the challenge win right on the spot.

The Red team has its own brand of fuckery with which to contend, though, and Barbie is bringing it hard. For some reason she’s butting in on Kimmie ‘s pizza station, and it’s holding up the entree service. Then she fucks up the pizza garnish, and Gordon makes them eat it. Briana can’t tell if Barbie is trying to sabotage them or just really sucks that badly. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s likely a combination of the two, even though we can’t be exactly sure where one ends and the other begins.