Hell's kitchen focuses on incompetence and injuries.
Every season of every reality show has a few people on it whom you know can't possibly win. From the moment you first see them, it's clear that they have no shot whatsoever. Hell's Kitchen is no different. Colleen, Lacey, and Seth (and perhaps one or two others whom the show hasn't yet focused on) appear more likely to have come from central casting than a restaurant kitchen.
Colleen's foolishness showed almost immediately during tonight's challenge. It appeared as though we were going to be treated to the "pick through your garbage from last night" challenge, the bags were all lined up, color coded and ready. But, the producers pulled another fast one on us, it wasn't the garbage challenge, instead the chefs all had to grab scallops out of crates and bring them inside. In a bit of awesome, Colleen (our cooking instructor without any proper instruction of her own) fell into the crate. I'll admit it, I laughed, but I do know that if I had ever paid her for lessons I would have been crying. Of course, grabbing scallops isn't so much of a challenge for anyone but Colleen, so the teams were next forced to shuck the scallops to Ramsay's exacting standards. Colleen did do better shucking than grabbing, and the women did pretty well with 35. It may have been Giovanni who did the best though, putting up 13 good ones for the men.
The men looked like they were going to win, they only needed three to tie the women after five of their seven chefs had gone. I don't want to say that FOX purposely set it up so that the men's least competent folks would go last (in this case Seth, and J), but, Seth managed to get three good ones to tie the women and then Ramsay tossed out the first five of J's six attempts before the show went to commercial. Would the last one be good enough? Of course it would, can you imagine what the team would have done to J if he hadn't managed to put up one good scallop? They would have shucked him right then and there.
In another bit of awesome, Ramsay challenged Lacey about her commitment in front of everyone, and she went to bed crying rather than helping her teammates shuck shellfish as a their penalty. How was this woman possibly viewed as qualified? Or, do you think that she wasn't viewed as qualified, that she was in fact put there because she wasn't qualified, because the producers figured that having her there would foment dissension amongst the teams?
Lacey actually showed up the following morning (the day of the next dinner service), and was apparently ready to work. That day, it was Ji who had the problems. She had this incredibly minor looking slip in the kitchen during prep which apparently hurt her ankle. Unlike Lacey, Ji proved herself to be a gamer, trying to get through service despite her injury. Can you imagine what Lacey would have done in the same position? She probably would have been on the phone to mommy and a team of doctors, complaining about life being unfair.
Service tonight featured a swell looking raw bar which was being manned by Paula for the woman and Robert for the men. Poor Robert. The men had all gone to Catalina on choppers the day before, but Robert was forced to take the ferry due to his size. By the time he got there everyone was turning around to go home… on the same ferry he had just ridden in on. Jean-Philippe was a little worried about Robert sweating over everything at the raw bar, but the clientele seemed impressed by him. Perhaps the salt helped the taste.
Things in the kitchen itself weren't going nearly as well. Ramsay was substituting people in to fix problems in both kitchens. But, even two chefs, Seth and Charlie, blew it on the lobster of spaghetti. They forgot the lobster. Their incompetence paled in comparison though to Colleen. Colleen, from what we saw tonight, can't cook anything. Shuck, maybe, but cook, no. She managed to both burn the salmon and leave it raw at the same time. Ramsay was livid and Colleen founded herself booted from the kitchen and sent to the raw bar. Things seemed to get better in the red kitchen after that.
Somehow, someway, both kitchens completed service tonight. That's right, you heard me (or read me), they both completed service. This was unquestionably the earliest in the season that teams have finished a dinner service over the course of this series. Maybe these guys are better than they appear, save Colleen and Lacey, I can't imagine a world in which they're remotely as good as they appear.
It was the men finished their service first, so the women found themselves on the chopping block tonight. Ji elevated her leg and tossed some ice on it as soon as service was over, which guaranteed that the women would be kind enough to not nominate her tonight.
Sure enough, she wasn't nominated, instead the women nominated Lacey and Colleen. I was instantly pulling for a Trump-style double elimination. And then, Ji stepped in, volunteering to be eliminated due to her injury. Ramsay allowed both Lacey and Colleen to stay, and sent Ji home in their stead. Ji got to keep her jacket, but she won't be running the restaurant at the Borgata. Maybe we'll get our double elimination next week.
Here's what I want to know this week – if you had the choice to eliminate Colleen, Lacey, or Ji tonight, who would you have sent home. The other contestants argued that half a Ji was better than Colleen and Lacey combined. I'm thinking they may have been right. What do you say?
http://blog.zap2it.com/ithappenedlastnight/2009/02/hells-kitchen-focuses-on-incompetence-and-injuries.html 
