Hell’s Kitchen Recap: Welcome to America

Royce pulls out some decent risotto, but Dana immediately ruins some pasta. She doesn’t let it break her stride, though, and it’s nothing compared to the idiocy in the dining room. Turns out, Don is doing Texas proud with his semi-literate tickets. After about eight tries, he properly spells “appetizers,” and Gordon congratulates him on passing sixth grade. That’s sweet, Gordon, but you should know that in the South they don’t start the four syllable vocabulary words until at least tenth grade.

How do you spell “we’re fucked?”

Other than that, the men haven’t had an issue, but leave it to Clamato to flake out and hold up the entrees. He does end up cooking the meat right, though, and Gordon warns him to keep up that pace. Meanwhile, Dana has gotten it together on the spaghetti station, but Barbie has clearly lost her touch with the scallops. What’s the deal with that? Didn’t she pretty much singlehandedly earn them the win on the scallop challenge? Is she just bunging them up on purpose, now?

In the Blue kitchen, Patrick is holding the team together, but his intervention isn’t enough to prevent Clemeza from undercooking the Wellington and having to start again. He then slices them too soon and everything starts to fall apart. Christina is taking over the Red kitchen, getting the scallop station back on track, but then Briana burns some fish, throwing Kimmie ‘s timing off, and tries to get away with serving a half portion of cod. At least she apologizes to Kimmie, and they start over with minimal drama.

“She did it.”

That’s okay, though, because there’s plenty in the Blue kitchen, where Clemenza has flat-out run out of Wellingtons. Sorry about that, table of Marines! Gordon announces that “Baby Rhino” has screwed the pooch, then makes him approach the Marines and tell them he fucked up their food. They’re nice about it and accept the steak substitute, and Clemeza is just happy he’s not getting a USMC beat down.

“No Wellingtons? Which way would you like to die?

There hasn’t been another peep from the floor, which I can only assume means Tiffany and Don haven’t completely lost their minds. So since everything was going smoothly, and lord knows we can’t have that, Roshni goes and literally forgets the garnish on the cod entrees. She has to hustle to catch up, and ends up dumping a load of cold, RAWR dumplings over the next batch of cod. This gets her yelled at, and will probably get her sent home, unless someone else fucks up. And that’s why we have Kimmie! She undercooks the Wellingtons, and the other entrees get ruined in various ways. Gordon kicks everyone out, causing them to break their solemn and serious vow to finish service. Then men actually finish the service, for once, and they all strut out of there like they just defeated the Iron Chef instead of barely completed a three hour kitchen shift.

Gordon praises Royce and Christina, but remarks that the women didn’t gel as a team and lost their focus, which makes them the losers of the evening. They’re sent to choose their nominees.

Briana volunteers to go up, and Dana makes a great Freudian slip when she asks if everyone agrees to send Barbie–oops, I mean Briana. Since they’re all good at nothing if not holding grudges, people can’t wait to bring Barbie into things, and Barbie jumps on Dana, probably to get back at her for the Freudian slip. I get that it sounded bad, Barbie, but they were gunning for you no matter what, so no need to blame Dana. The rest of them are so confused, probably because there are too many options to make this decision easy. No fighting, though, so why am I watching this?

The nominees end up being Briana and Barbie, but that’s not good enough for Gordon. He calls Roshni up based on her dismal failure, and tells her she’s way over her head. She defends herself, and Gordon goes through the motions of hearing everyone else out. He calls Barbie the appendix of her brigade that everyone wants out, but in the end he sends home Briana. Um, okay?

Isn’t this the first time she really screwed up, or am I confusing her with all the other monochromatic blondes on this show?