Hell’s Kitchen: Um. What?

This week’s Hell’s Kitchen was a total shocker for me. Not only did full grown women not know how to cook pasta, but then the wrong person was prematurely sent home. Gordon Ramsay is obviously toying with my emotions!

Even this poor MILF is shocked!Have you ever noticed that at the beginning of each episode, the weird announcer says, “And now…the continuation…of Hell’s Kitchen.” Complete with dramatic pauses and everything? And, of course, he says “continuation” and “kitchen” with extra OOSH sounds. It’s every. Single. Episode. And it weirds me out.

Well, anyway, after elimination, our culinary warriors leave the kitchen and head back to destroy their tastebuds at the house. They sit around outside and discuss the large Matt-shaped hole that now exists in the show. Petrozza and the General agree that they miss him about as much as a big, juicy coldsore. They also all agree that Jen is on her last leg and will undo herself with her attitude. I find myself filled with absolutely certainty that this will be her last episode.

“No, man. I’m gonna keep hanging on your ass like a hemorrhoid!”

Jen tells us that she’s not here to make friends or be a part of a team. But she says that as far as culinary skills go, she’s got all of them faded. Faded! Then she sits down and eats a ham and cheese sandwich.

Christina and Corey have neatfun roomie bed time talk about how they need to take Jen down. So good that the blondies have found something to bond over. They look more and more like a slumber party every episode, don’t they? I hope they start wearing mud masks and having pillow fights in their underwear by the end of this series. Or, like I did with my friends, eat an entire box of Twinkies while sitting under the ping-pong table “fort.”

“After you fall asleep, I’m going to, like, totally put your bra in the freezer!”

The next day, Team Black meets G-Ram in the kitchen for the challenge. He says that they will have a new appetizer tonight, lobster spaghetti. Um, ew. I know that I need to get over my aversion to shellfish. Many of you have written me telling me so. And I’m not saying that you guys are wrong, but old habits die hard. And enough with the shellfish already!

Anyway, because these aren’t real chefs, Gordo has to show them how to prepare the new entree. Everyone watches each step carefully, and the General says that he loves watching him cook because he tells a story with his food. Verbatim, this is the story that Rams tells while cooking: “Lobster. Crack claws. Spaghetti. Touch. Touch. Did everybody watch that?” Wow, what riveting prose.

After the demonstration, Chef tells them that for the very first time in Hell’s Kitchen, they will be opening a cooking school. And can the contestants please attend it? Because I think they could use it…

According to Rammers, the essence of becoming a great chef is becoming a great teacher, so they will each have one student to teach. In a fun twist, the students are “domestic housewives.” But not just your ordinary housewives. These are low-cut neckline and high-cut hemline housewives. Housewives with blown-out hair and collagen injections. Since when did the term “housewife” get redefined to THIS?! Growing up, no one’s mom ever looked this way. Most moms I knew looked like they were about two steps away from a 12-step program. Totally exhausted and disshelved. Wiping jelly off their kids’ faces with a crumpled up kleenex from their pockets. Now it’s like everyone’s mom is a MILF. It is a total myth that ordinary housewives look this way. I blame Bravo and their “Real Housewives” series for this strange trend.

I hope all that plastic doesn’t melt in the kitchen.

Well, anyway, as you can imagine, our remaining male contestants could not be more excited. It seems that Petrozza has never seen a woman before. And the girls look a little miffed. One of the ladies has a little mini dog that is shamefully dressed in a jacket with blue boa. Gordo asks the lady if he can take her gerbil, which is aptly named Zeus. He asks Scott to watch after Zeus and maybe put him in the steamer. All the ladies giggle wildly! Omg! Gordon is, like, so hilarious! I like totally love when he jokes about eating my dog!

The chefs have 45 minutes to teach their students how to make the lobster spaghetti. Aaaaaaaand GO!

Jen says that she hopes her students’ boobies don’t get in the way because they are ridiculously huge and Jen has never seen anything like them, ever.

Um. Jen. Look down.

One of the housewives admits that she’s never made pasta in her life, although she “has heard about it.” Pasta, one of the great legendary folklore myths. It should join the ranks of Sasquatch, Abominable Snowman and Lock Ness Monster — things you’ve heard about but will never actually see.

They actually do have to make pasta from scratch though, which, I guess, isn’t as easy as just microwaving some Easy Mac. They also cut all the veggies and everything. So maybe I should give them a break. Christina’s student keeps trying to cut the veggies in her hand, and Xtina is terrified that she’s going to cut her hand off. I don’t think Christina should intervene. Seeing a trophy wife chop off her hand actually might be something that I’d kind of want to see. It’d give the show a little splash of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Preparing Matt’s Finger Pancetta Special

Petrozza hasn’t even started. He’s too busy finding any reason that he can to touch his student. He ties her apron around her and even pulls her hair back for her! I don’t know that I’d want that PigPen touching my hair. I’d probably find bacon bits in it later.

The General’s student is freaking out because she doesn’t want to kill her lobster. She tells him that she never kills anything — not even moths or spiders. Yeah, I get a little squeamish over the screaming boiled alive lobster too. I can sympathize. The General says that he’s not running a daycare and makes her do it. She gets so jumpy that she can barely calm down. I think it’d be funny if they then made her boil her own little dog after this. Hasta luego, Zeusy poo!

Corey’s student, Sandra (the only name I caught), is actually doing a pretty good job. She’s tossing the pasta in her pan and everything. Looks like a real pro. And Jen is cheating. When Ramsay isn’t looking, she cuts up the veggies for her student! Luckily, Ram catches her and tells her that if she doesn’t stop, then she’ll be disqualified. Jen sucks.

Time’s up, and the students have to bring their spaghetti out to the dining room. Chef asks them if they had fun and if they learned anything. The ladies said that they learned how to hold a knife for the first time. Who raised these people? I was wielding a machete and chopping away weeds by the time I could walk. Okay, maybe not. But I could at least use a butter knife to spread my PB by kindergarten. But the housewives think that their ignorance is hilarious and they giggle away.

First up is Petrozza. It’s seasoned perfectly and the lobster is well cooked. But the pasta is overcooked and too thin. Petrozza said that he was distracted because his student was so hot. Christina is next and everything is perfect — the seasoning, the lobster and the pasta. And it doesn’t contain a finger tip! Nicely done.

The General is next. For some reason, his is all chopped up into little bits and looks like dog food. And it tastes like dog food too. Grody.

A dish fit for a Zeus!

Corey’s dish is perfect too. So now we’re up to Jen. America’s favorite cheater. Not so good. Gordon says that he can tell from her dish that her student’s never cooked in her life. It’s bland; there’s no pasta sauce. And the pasta is congealed into one big brain-like mass. Jen definitely has a trend with forgetting the sauce. I wonder if that’s something that is in need of a diagnosis.

So it’s down to Christina and Corey for the win. But the best teacher is Christina. I agree with this decision. Corey’s student seemed a little more advanced than Christina’s finger-chopping dingbat, so Christina had a tougher person to teach.

Christina also wins the coveted “Rodent Lookalike Award.”

The losers will be spending all day inside cleaning Hell’s Kitchen. Emptying the friers, scrubbing the floors and cleaning the ovens. As the winner, Christina will have a really nice lunch with the Ram Jam. Two of L.A.’s premier restauranteurs will be joining them who will cook for them personally and show them some of their signature dishes. Yum!

As for the students, they will be receiving expensive, stainless steel cookware that they will probably never use except to collect dust in.

Before the losing chefs start cleaning, they go back to trash talk about Little Miss Perfect Christina. Jen says that she talks a whole lot but can’t cook. And the General says that she’s slow. She doesn’t necessarily seem slow to me. Maybe just easily flustered and slightly pompous.

Christina meets Mark Peel of Campanile and Ben Ford of Ford’s Filling Station. She pretends like she knows who they are and gets really excited.

“Omg! Have you ever gotten to work with Rachael Ray?”

As they clean, Corey tells us that Christina winning is not good for her ego because she keeps getting more and more cocky. And Corey doesn’t have an ego at all. But every man there probably wants her body. Hey, does anyone want to come sit in the hot tub with her so she can seduce you?

Party-crasher Jen comes in to “clean” the part of the kitchen where Christina is enjoying her winning prize and totally eavesdrops to learn a few things for herself. She’s such a freaky little weasel.

Meanwhile, Corey performs open-heart surgery on the dishwasher.

Christina and Gordon taste the chefs yummy food and then the General is called to clean off the plates. Now here’s the part that I had to rewind and watch again because I couldn’t believe my eyes: Jen actually PICKS SOME OF THE FOOD OUT OF THE GARBAGE AND EATS IT. Jen ate garbage, everybody! She says that she’s doing it to get ahead, but the General agrees with me and says it’s totally weird. Maybe by eating trash, it will improve her superior trash-talking abilities. I totally want to barf.

The chefs prep for the dinner service, and Christina already starts imparting her new found wisdom. “Mark Peel said this. Mark Peel said that. Blah blah blah I’m awesome!” Yeah that’s pretty annoying. She has a suggestion for every tiny thing that everyone is doing. I almost just want Corey to bitchslap her.

Gordon meets with the crew before dinner service begins and warns them that there will be a 12-top. So it’s going to be pretty busy. And with that, the restaurant is open. Things start off a little weird because Jen is so slow. Gordo tells her that she can be a little flatfooted sometimes, which is a good way of putting it. She is a total sloth in the kitchen.

And then. The. Funniest. THING EVER HAPPENS!!! Poor little Jean-Philippe completely walks into the glass door like a confused bird! Apparently the losers were a little too good at cleaning the glass! You know, I’ve totally done that before too. One time when I was little, I completely ran into the sliding glass door to the balcony of our hotel room. I almost broke my nose. Luckily, I have a really hard skull and survived unscathed. Gordon, completely dumbfounded, says “Would you mind not head-butting my door?”

Will the Jean-Philippe slapstick comedy hour never end?

Gordon asks for a sign to be put on the door to keep our JP safe in the future. He tells JP “to watch your eyes, you little Belgian bleep!” Okay, finally. JP is Belgian. Mystery solved. I never really knew what he was except for part cartoon and part cliche. Lucky for us, they replay the whole incident, and it is just as funny as it was the first time.

Christina is excited because she works the special station with the lobster spaghetti, and she messed up right off the bat and missed an entire order. Corey loves it. But Christina turns it around and gets her act together.

The General starts off rough by not cutting the meat correctly. He tells us that once he did that, he knew the Chef would be on him for the rest of the night. Then he incorrectly cuts the Wellington. He needs to wake up.

Jen criticizes the General, saying that he should know how to do all this stuff. And then she serves up raw fish. Nice. JP overhears that Jen can’t cook and tells the servers to push the meat and steer people away from ordering the John Dory. Now Jen overcooks the fish and turns it into rubber. Awesome.

The General overcooks the Wellington, and it looks so nasty. Wait, I mean, SO NASTY. So JP tells the servers to push the chicken. Gordon competely freaks out on the Gen. The kitchen stalls and the diners, munching on crackers and water, start getting antsy.

Ol’ Roy dogfood, straight from the can!

Petrozza delivers Jen’s fish to the window too early, and Chef yells at Jen. She tells us that she decides to hold her tongue. And then it cuts to her screaming, “I didn’t bring the John Dory up there! He brought it up with the garnish!”

Gordon tells her to stop whining and just do it. Then he scolds her for her attitude. He tells her that when he asks her to have energy, instead she clumps around and mopes. She claims that it’s not her attitude, and that it’s just all some magical kitchen mirage. But Gordon knows better. Petrozza says that she has a problem with authority and following directions.

The General tries to improve his game and tells us that it’s like a war. Luckily he’s a four-star general, right? So war, of course, comes naturally. Things start coming together in the kitchen, but now it’s time for the arrival of the 12-top. One look at these ladies, and I can tell the men are in for some major distraction. It is a herd of Hawaiian Tropics models.

JP goes over to greet them, and have you ever noticed the dopey music that plays every time he’s on? He’s obviously meant to be the comic relief, and it’s just so scripted and silly.

“Did I mention that I walked into a door earlier? Do you think that’s hot?”

The orders for the 12-top come in and Corey is ordered to help with the appetizers. Christina and Corey rock out the appetizers and get all twelve out to the table at the exact same time. Nicely done, ladies. Then, together, they move on to the desserts.

The General, Petrozza and Jen move on to the entrees for the 12-top. And Jen, again, serves up raw John Dory. Geez. This girl does not know how to cook. And she continues to slowly loaf around. Gordo gets so impatient with her slowness that he kicks her off and takes over her station. It’s looking more and more like Jen will be leaving tonight, right? I was totally crossing my fingers at this point.

And now it’s time for the Fire of the Week Award! This week’s fire was started by The General! We should start taking weekly bets on who’s going to start the fire. It just never fails to happen! And Ramsay’s had enough.

They all like to take the concept of “Hell’s Kitchen” a little too literally.

Jen starts to kick it into gear and actually works hard and attempts to communicate. It’s like she’s cramming for the final exam or something. Amazingly, the models get their food. Also amazing, models actually eat.

Dinner service is over, and it’s time to meet Gordon in the kitchen. Even though they completed the service, he is none too pleased. They didn’t unite as a team, and it shouldn’t be this painful this late in the season. He really expected more from the final five. He says that the only individual who stood out was Christina. Her lobster spaghetti was a big hit. She’ll be nominating two teammates for elimination.

Christina talks to Petrozza first, and he says that he wasn’t happy with his performance. She says that he’s dirty and focuses more on himself than the team. Christina tells Corey that the General deserves another chance, but he seems really mediocre. Corey agrees, saying that he’s been cooking for 15 years but has never really pushed himself. He’s just ridden safely his whole life.

Jen says that the General and Petrozza deserve to go, but she thinks she’ll be on the chopping block because Christina doesn’t like her. Yeah, and you’re is a sucky cook, Jen! Super slow and a complete asshole. We should start calling her Cleopatra: Queen of Denial because no one is further from reality than her. She never admits her mistakes or takes responsibility for her rubbery fish, peeing souffles or missing sauces!

Corey says that they’ve all admitted that Jen is good in the kitchen but she’s missing the team spirit. Corey is really making sense to me this week. Maybe I need a CAT scan or something. Anyway, both our blondies hope that Jen goes home.

It’s time for elimination. Christina’s first nominee is Jen because she shuts down when things don’t go her way and brings the whole team down with her. The second nominee is the General because of his poor performance that evening.

I’d like to see them have a good old fashioned gun duel.

Now, at this point, I’m thinking that we will surely be rid of Jen because Gen is fairly consistent despite his off week. And Jen seems to be consistent as well — consistent at sucking. Plus, her mopey attitude is just horrible and immature. And I can’t stand the sight of her glossy lips and flapping gums anymore.

Jen says that she should stay because she will keep giving it her all. Gordo says that she can’t take criticism, and he doesn’t know if he can work with that any longer. Gen says that he knows his performance wasn’t the best. And then he goes into some weird awkward P.R. spiel, saying that he didn’t look at Gordon as yelling at him. He viewed it as Gordon saving him. Um. What? I think he’s trying to win over the Gord with some flattery here, wouldn’t ya say? Gordon asks if he’s running for office. Haha. The General says that it was a rough day at the office, but he didn’t go postal. And that he is a better cook than Jen.

Gordon asks Christina who she thinks should go home, and she obviously says Jen. But the person leaving Hell’s Kitchen is –GASP — the General! Again: Um. What?!

We get to see a little montage of our Black Gordon Ramsay. Think, plan and execute! He says that he’s glad for the opportunity. He came with his joy, and he will leave with his joy.

A four-star exit. I’ll kinda miss the Big Boy.

Jen tells us that she was put up for elimination because she’s the strongest player and everyone views her as a threat. She is SO delusional. Gross.

Next week it looks like our final four will be cooking for celebrities. I wonder which ones! I’m hoping for Pat Sajak or Elizabeth Taylor!

So what did you guys think? I was SO ready to see Jen go home and was just shocked that she didn’t. She was and is totally the worst on the show right now. But I think I kind of agree what Corey said about the General. About how you could tell that he just sailed through, playing it safe all the time. I could see that.

Can you guys make it through one more week of Jen? And who do you think will start next week’s fire? My money is on Christina.

See ya Tuesday!
love, MandaMo
xoxo