TVSquad

(S04E07) "He must be on his period." - Jen, about Chef Ramsay

That's not Chef Ramsay singing "Stop, In The Name of Lunch" above, he's screaming an order to the teams in tonight's episode. He screams a lot in this episode (and that's saying a lot when you're talking about Gordon Ramsay). The thing that's different about tonight was, I'm not quite sure what he's yelling at half the time. So the teams screw up and send out undercooked food and are slow getting things done in the kitchen, OK, we get that every week. But this week it seems like something is different. That Ramsay is pissy as well as irritated by the lameness of the teams, and for the first time I don't think he quite gives them a chance. He's yelling at them while they should be cooking and working and fixing things.

Wow, maybe Jen's right.

(S04E06) "I don't want to mess with someone crazier than I am." - Matt

Welcome to week 6 of Hell's Kitchen, also known as Everybody Hates Matt. This was one episode where I didn't buy Chef Ramsay's decision at all. He had to choose between three people at the end, and the one who should have gone - clearly - didn't. The one who should have gone second? That person didn't go either. I really think this week was all about "how can we guarantee more reality show tension in the weeks to come?" and not a professional decision. And that's really disappointing to me.

(S04E05) "I'm not weak!" - Vanessa

I'm always intrigued when contestants get injured on reality competition shows. I can understand why some players opt to leave (I'm thinking of that guy who got burned on Survivor a couple of seasons ago and had to leave), but some players seem to take it as an excuse to leave because they want to leave anyway. A piece of advice: if you get injured on a reality show and it's not so bad that you can't stay, you should stay. Just think of the less work you'll have to do. And if you screw up in a challenge or something, they'll go easy on you because, hey, you're injured!

I thought of that after tonight's twist ending to Hell's Kitchen.

(S04E04) "It's not rocket scientist to make pasta." - Craig

One night in the mid-80s when I was working at a pizza restaurant, I grabbed an empty pizza pan so I can make room on the counter for another pizza and I realized it was red hot. I think my first clue was when it started to burn. It was so hot that as I tried to throw the pan down I couldn't, because it was stuck to my hand for a few seconds. I had to spend the entire night with my left hand in a bucket of ice and my right hand making drinks for the waitresses. Turns out the incident gave me an easy night of work but it hurt like hell.

I thought of that tonight when Vanessa got burned by the pan. Her injury was a lot worse than mine, considering she had skin falling off and had to go to the hospital. But the person in the most pain tonight was probably Chef Gordon Ramsay.

(S04E03) "I'm not going to put my head down like some bitch."

That's just one of the many classy quotes from Jason, Hell's Kitchen contestant and future President of NOW. I guess he would call Chef Ramsay a bitch too if he saw the picture above. Let's take a look at what happened on the show tonight, including more gems from Jason.

(S04E02) "I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done." - Petrozza

Here's a tip if you ever find yourself in the position of being a contestant on Hell's Kitchen. If you have to choose two people to go up for elimination, don't choose them for "strategic" or "personal" reasons, at least not this early in the game. And if for some reason you do choose them for those reasons, DON'T ANNOUNCE IT TO EVERYONE. But that's exactly what happened tonight, in one of the more stupid moments by a contestant in the short history of this show.

Remember, whoever you choose, Chef Ramsay has the final say on who goes home...

(S04E01) I'm tempted to say that Hell's Kitchen has jumped the shark, or whatever the culinary equivalent of jumping the shark would be (jumping the oven? burning the dinner?), but then I got to thinking: the prize for this show is pretty big. The winner not only gets $250,000, they also get to be the executive chef at one of Gordon Ramsay's own restaurants, the new London L.A. opening in Los Angeles later this year. So maybe all of the intense cooking action and swearing and degrading put downs uttered by Ramsay actually serve a purpose.

That doesn't, however, mean that the show isn't guilty of some severe reality show badness.

There's more reality being served up by NBC: a food-based competition show in which couples vie to open a restaurant. British chef Marco Pierre White will be the judge. NBC has greenlit The Chopping Block for next season, calling it a sort of Top Chef meets Hell's Kitchen. Actually, it sounds like a twin for BBC America's Last Restaurant Standing. That one has nine couples competing for one restaurant with Chef Raymond Blanc as the judge. The NBC incarnation will have eight couples, and unlike Chef Blanc who has earned two Michelin stars for his restaurants, Chef White has three.

Even though you can't tell from the FOX web site, which still has information about last season, a new season of Hell's Kitchen starts on April 1 at 9pm.

And this time the winner gets a job at one of Gordon Ramsay's own restaurants! The lucky contestant will become Executive Chef at the new The London West Hollywood, which is slated to open this summer.

That's not the only twist we'll see this season. We'll also see more contestants (15) and more dinner service than we've seen in the Hell's Kitchen restaurant in the previous three seasons. I sense that this means more arguing, more opportunities for controversy and screw-ups, and definitely more delightful swearing from Ramsay. After the jump, the list of this season's contestants.

Victoria Beckham, a.k.a. Posh Spice, would have to go a long way to be compared to the foul-mouthed, in-your-face TV chef Gordon Ramsay, but that's what Fox TV is hoping for if they want her proposed new show, Fashion Nightmares, to ape Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. The net is talking with the former Spice Girl and fashion "scion" with her dvb Style denim brand to do a show in the style of Kitchen Nightmares. In that US version of the BBC hit, the chef goes to troubled restaurants and diagnoses what's wrong and how they must fix it. Ramsay's way includes many expletives deleted and mucho histronics. Like the UK version, Fox's US variation has been a hit.

If you've ever watched the US version of Kitchen Nightmares, the show where chef Gordon Ramsay goes around to different failing restaurants and tries to fix them, you've probably wondered what happens 3 or 6 months or a year down the road. Do the restaurants stay on track and continue to be a success?

Well, not always.

Sebastian's, a Burbank, CA restaurant featured on the show, closed over the weekend, according to WhatWouldRamsayDo.com. In a message, the owners said that they are moving back to the Boston area for family reasons. LAist says that the owner hinted that a network was interested in him having his own food/reality show.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. It looks like a restaurant featured on the UK version of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has failed. However, not in the way that you think.

Your first thought would be that, after chef Gordon Ramsay, star of FOX's US version of Kitchen Nightmares as well as Hell's Kitchen, helped revamp Momma Cherri's diner three years ago, the owner, Charita Jones, just decided not to heed the chef's advice and failed on her own. Not quite. After moving into a bigger location and expanding her staff, at Ramsay's advice, Jones' restaurant did quite well. In fact, it led to a business award and a book deal for the 52-year-old mother of two.

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• That interview that Bill O'Reilly did with ALF the other night was incredibly lame.

I didn't know much about chef Gordon Ramsay and his TV work until I had the chance to watch the latest season of Hell's Kitchen over the summer. Even if I'm not the greatest cook around, I did enjoy the series and its colorful chef. Having been entertained by Ramsay's tantrums unique style of mentoring and coaching chefs to be, I was looking forward to this fall's Kitchen Nightmares. A few weeks after the premiere, I must admit that I'm hooked to Ramsay's latest reality serving.

What's happening on other blogs via the interweb.

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