Liveblogging Hell's Kitchen: Episode 12

Three words:  Better not suck.  I medicated myself up with horse tranquilizers to be able to do this.

LAST WEEK:  Fatty went home for fatness-related reasons. Everyone else sucked the fat one. Shiv sucked the worst but had immunity, but Ramsay couldn’t send anyone else home over her because of some kind of reality show honor system, so Martyr B is saved.

9:02: Martyr B, in case you didn’t know, is a fighter. A survivor, if you will.  He has the eye of the tiger.  He’s like the last lone survivor, stalking his prey in the night, watching us all…with the eye of the tiger.

Redneck: “If she doesn’t wake up tomorrow…she’s going home.”  Did he just threaten to kill her?

9:04: CHALLENGE:  Taste and create.  Fish stew.  Is it halibut?  Is it snapper?  Is it white wine?  Is it pernod?  Is it sambuca?  Is it fish stock?  Is it water?  Is it a waste of all of our time?

9:10:  Tasting time.  Everyone’s doing a good job. Exciting.  I don’t watch Hell’s Kitchen to watch people doing a passable job, I watch it because I’m a masochist.

Redneck’s snapper risk takes it.  Martyr hit it on the pernod.  Do you have to be classically trained to know that pernod goes with fish?  Dull Girl does well.

9:13: Shiv gets dinged for picking the wrong scallops, because who can’t tell the difference between a bay and sea scallop?  One is huge, one looks like a pencil eraser.

It’s down to Redneck and Dull Girl.

9:15: WINNER: Redneck.  Dull Girl’s water killed her.

Ramsay and Danny are embarking on an amazing adventure.  A magic carpet ride?

It’s something to do with flying.  So it could be a magic carpet ride. You know what’s great about a magic carpet ride?  You don’t know what we can find. Last night I held Aladdin’s lamp, and I wished that I could stay this stupid show would be over.

Everyone else has to stay home and clean with JP. Crack that whip you wonderful, terrible bitch of a man.

9:17:  Dammit, it’s a stupid biplane.  But Redneck seems to be excited.  It’s all a little too Snoopy and the Red Baron for me.

Okay, the part over the ocean looked really fucking cool.

9:20:  Flying.  People bitching.  More flying.  More people bitching.  Flying again.  Me bitching.

9:21:  Redneck: “I’m in no danger of going home.”  Let’s see!  These kinds of predictions always work out so well.  But he’s probably right.  And I?  Am okay with that.

9:26: There’s something to see back in the dorms, and he sends them running back, filled with excited fear.  What is it.  A dead body?  Velociraptors?  German snipers?  A roomful of snakes?

No, it’s just a fucking present.  Apparently, they deserve it.  Really?  REALLY?  No, I deserve it, for putting up with this bullshit.

9:27: Ramsay is “wiping the slate clean” for this service.  Redneck: “I liked my slate.”  Aww.

9:28: Marytr B just said “spaghettis.”  Spaghettis?  Again: Really?  I will hate him for eternity.

9:30: Amazing discovery!  People do better work when they’re not being shrieked at and treated like incompetent assholes.  It only took 12 episodes!  Still, Ramsay screams his compliments like he still secretly things you’re an incompetent asshole.  Because he probably does.

And the Martyr B starts to suck anyway.  Because maybe, maybe just maybe, he sucks no matter what.  But that couldn’t be it, could it.

9:33: Plain salad, Martyr B. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLAIN SALAD. THE VEGETARIAN DOES NOT WANT THE TUNA.  He’s like my nonna. “What, you don’t eat meat?  Here, have a pork chop instead.”  Except it would be in Italian and she would look at you with a mixture of confusion and derision, because why do you not eat meat?  Are you some kind of communist, or a sexual deviant?

9:34: Commercials: Do not go all “Hand That Rocks the Cradle” on Beyonce’s man, because she will fuck you up.

9:38: We’re back from commercial, and WE STILL DON’T HAVE SALAD.  Which is strange, because I was able to make a salad in the actual elapsed time of those commercials.

Martyr B reasonably surmises that Ramsay pushes him harder because he has the potential to be the champion. Interesting.  And my dogs claw the closet door open and chew on the toolbox because they want to fix the plumbing.

It’s called Occam’s Razor, Martyr. Think about it.

Some guy is going to propose to his girlfriend over dessert.  In Hell’s Kitchen.  That totally sounds like a good way to start a marriage.

9:40: Martyr B: “Shiv did a really good job tonight…but she still deserves to go home.”  I’m starting to think he’s actively delusional and not just an asshole.

Redneck thinks Martyr’s fuckups are hilarious, partly because they are and partly because he is, as always, stoned out of his mind.

9:41: Proposal.  A touching moment.  I wanted her to say no, because it would have been keeping with the tone of this show and because I’m a terrible person.

Martyr: “It’s like being in prison and then looking out and seeing a rainbow.”

9:43: Disappearing Wellington!  Totally the name of my new post-pop 9-piece ambient nerd band.

9:48: Ramsay is going to give it to us straight.  Because until now?  Totally holding back.

Everyone has to agree on who’s going to leave.

9:49: Martyr B picks Shiv because she’s inexperienced and hasn’t run a “kitchen brigade” like he has.  My kitchen platoon could totally kick your kitchen brigade’s ass.

9:51: Dull Girl comes alive!  She goes after Ben, rationally pointing out that he manages to fuck something up at his station every.  Fucking.  Week.

Ben is SHOCKED.

I might like Dull Girl.

9:54: The team, surprisingly, has not been able to come to a consensus.

Why should you stay?  After some pat answers, it’s time for the dueling montages of suckitude.

9:56: Shiv stays. Martyr B is finally consigned to the flames.  Ramsay: “You have an amazing amount of energy.  Keep that.”  Not said: “You are a good chef.”

Montage.  It’s supposed to be his high moments.  He still manages to look and sound like a dick in most of them.

9:58: I’m calling Dull Girl and Redneck at the end, with Redneck eking it out.

Wait, he just called himself a “culinary prodigy.”  So now I have to take that back.

NEXT WEEK:  There are VIPs.  There is panic. Everyone has to take a turn expediting.  Danny’s voice goes all pimply-faced-boy.  Scratchy voiced sous chef wants to fucking punch someone in the face, and I wish he would.