Musings on the various kitchen's of the afterlife

Hello undetermined number of reader(s),

While watching Hell's Kitchen last night, I started thinking about the name, and whether it was a reference to a proverb, or folksy saying or something like that. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that it was none of these, and it was just a name meant to say "Hey! This show's centered around a kitchen, and boy, that Gordon Ramsey sure is tough to work for!". But it also occurred to me that the restaurant's name would have a completely different context for the diners. Stripped down, they're really just paying a lot of money to eat dinner in a place with a horrible tense atmosphere and a screaming British man where their food may or may not ever arrive. Sure, I'd imagine the kitchen in Hell would be infinitely worse, you know the food wouldn't be any good, there'd be no lemon slice in your water, etc... but no one would call their restaurant Purgatory's Kitchen -just doesn't ring right. Neither does Kitchen for People Who Didn't Use Their Turn Signals But Otherwise Lived An Acceptable Life So They're Only Being Punished In Death With A Less Than Preferable Dinning Experience. So Hell's Kitchen is what we get. But enough with my musing about the level of service in kitchens of the various levels of the afterlife, I've got a show to talk about!

The big question of this weeks episode, the question on everyone's mind: "Hey, does this episode seem 500lbs lighter?" Too mean? Alright. How about "Hey! Where the hell's Ralphie (Robert)?!" So everyone wants to know where Robert (Ralphie) is and whether he's alive. Well, we're just going to have to wait. Other stuff happened first.

But before we get to the other stuff. There's something that's been bothering me. Van and Beanie-hat guy (don't know his name... he's Anthony today). What's the deal with Van and Anthony? Could both of these guys be highly functioning Autistic? Personally, I think Anthony's deal is that he's done way too much of some heavy drug, and it's left his body unable to produce emotions... like maybe he spent a summer on Ecstasy, or maybe he's a high functioning heroin addict... I don't know, but there's something wrong with this guy. Van! -Seriously, you could tell me anything violent/illegal/dangerous that Van has done, and I'd believe you; You:"Van beat up his grandmother" Me:"I'd believe it"... see? Anything!.


-Important note: you have to stick through this one to get what I'm saying... it's the last 30 seconds or so that are worthwhile.


Now that's out of the way. This weeks reward challenge was Vegas themed, you know because this season's based in Las Vegas. No? That's Top Chef, you say?. Oh, well then it must be because Whistler B.C. is a well known gambling location. It's Not? It's a ski resort? Oh. Well then they just like craps. Underrated line of the episode; upon revealing that the reward challenge would involve Craps, Amanda (really her name, I know!) said "Oh Crap!". So the deal is this, they each role the die? dice? I don't know, I think it was like 12-sided -who remembers Dungeons and Dragons?! Just me? OK then. So they role this die with letters it and whatever letter comes up, they have to name an ingredient that starts with that letter, then that ingredient will make up their dish. So the women go first, and it's boring... they do really well coming up with ingredients that will go well together. The guys go and end up with Haddock (it's a type of fish), fig, angel hair pasta, apple, and tomato. At first glance, this looks awful, and the guy that chose apple (Kevin, I think... bald guy) said that he chose it because everything was already screwed. I disagree. Take the apple out, you can make a nice tomato sauce with fig. Turns out that's exactly what they did. Chef Ramsey somehow missed the fact that there was no apple in their dish, and awarded them the win (strangely enough, no one else noticed they were missing an ingredient. I felt like I was taking crazy pills.) So the boys get to go to Vegas -that's why they did the craps!!!- and they have fun and bond and decide that they never want to see Ralphie (Robert) again. Oh, but guess who returns immediately upon their arrival home! Yup, good ol Robert (Ralphie). Robert tells his team that the doctors said his heart was too small for his body. I have to say, I loved the deadpan delivery by Ralphie (Robert) you could watch the realization that he was joking run through the room like 'the wave' at a baseball game (For the record -FTR- I hate the wave. Sit the hell down and watch the game!). So they had dinner service, and because Hell's Kitchen is way into things that haven't happened on Hell's Kitchen before -Next week they'll be serving dinner from low-earth orbit- they have two chef's tables. It appears the purpose of these tables are to distract the chefs and provide each kitchen with it's own Statler and Waldorf.



So the men's kitchen got off to a strong start, but kind of fell apart when the entrees started going out. Van kept leaving paper on the fish. I'll write that again. Van kept leaving paper on the fish. Also, Robert (Ralphie) tried to send out rabbit that was raw -Gord-o said it "Still had it's fur!" Needless to say, Chef Ramsey got super angry and shut down the kitchen. It looked like he was just shutting down the blue side, but they didn't show anything more about the women... so I don't know how that works.

Clearly the blue team lost, and Gord-o decided that Dave was the "best of the worst" so he was tasked with picking two of his team to go up for elimination. He put Ralphie (Robert) -Seriously, let's talk about commitment to a gag!- and Van up for elimination. But, just to remind us that he can, Gord-o also brought up Dull Chef Mopey Face (obviously I don't know his name). He put Van back in line pretty quickly, and left it to Robert and Dull Chef Mopey Face to argue their way out of elimination. And boy did they argue! Robert went on a tirade about how he was insulted to be standing up there with Dull Chef Mopey Face, and Dull Chef said something dull back to him... Finally, Gord-o decided to send home Robert. Robert left with some talk about how we'd all see him again (yeah, cus I totally keep track of professional chefs). So, here's the thing, I've got a theory. I think the producers and lawyers of the show realized last week that Robert actually had a decent risk of dying on their show and decided to get rid of him. Not to say that he didn't allow them to do it this week, but I think it was coming one way or the other.

So that's all I've got for today. I'm going to try to get a More to Love column in tonight or tomorrow morning, but no promises.I've already embedded a couple clips, so I'm leaving you with a link. The top picture is the English version of this add the bottom is the polish. We can't blame them, I guess, it's just the way they were raised.(also, check out the dude's hands... they forgot that part)

http://pokazywarka.pl/msmurzyn/