Hell's Kitchen, under chef Gordon Ramsay, just launched its ninth season, which is admittedly at least four or five more than I ever thought it would celebrate. The show is an unabashed ripoff of Bravo's Top Chef, but produced, unsurprisingly, with FOX standards. Whereas Top Chef focuses primarily on the chefs, and actually attracts good talent, Hell's Kitchen is a mismatch of how-have-you-not-been-run-over-by-a-bus-type contestants and about five or six promising, up-and-coming cooks.
Being in its ninth go-round, the show is on the verge of becoming formulaic, if not there already. Punishments, rewards, and tendencies are completely transparent by this point, and I'm not only talking about "losers clean the kitchen." There's the standard episode where losers have to unload the truck of deliveries and inevitably don't read the invoice, consequently accepting incorrect or damaged product, enraging chef Ramsay even more than usual. The challenges have been repeated so many times by now that I can tell who's going to win or lose and why before chef Ramsey even utters his popular criticisms and lashings. There's always one moment per season that is billed as "the biggest twist in Hell's Kitchen history," but turns out to be an a former punishment with the addition of not getting lunch. I could go on.
But then again, Hell's Kitchen has never really been about showcasing talent...at least until the final two or three episodes. It's more about seeing the meltdowns and failures of the also-formulaic contestants, and then watching chef Ramsay belittle those individuals by calling them any name out of a variety of favorites, including "wanker," the classic "bitch," "big boy," or my personal favorite, "donkey."
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| Another one bites the dust. |
The intital episodes always showcase the worst, so as not to let the most talented chefs be spotted so early in the season. There's the stereotypical fat guy who either can't handle the stress of the kitchen, or can't cut it medically. (Incidentally, it's 28 minutes into the season 9 premier and "Jason" from Chicago has already been taken to the hospital for chest pain and shortness of breath. Seriously? You didn't even cook anything yet!) There's the standard overconfident contestant on each team -- the overbearing, usually crazy Alpha-female who rivals the worst Bridezilla imaginable, and the cocky male who boasts "I don't care what chef Ramsay says, I know my cooking is great." And possibly my favorite, the middle-aged guy who always knows what he's doing is perfect until Ramsay has the unfortunate task of telling him that he completely sucks at what he's been doing his entire life. FOX has the casting for the show down to a science, really.
That's not to say that the show, towards the end of each season, doesn't actually showcase some surprising talent. But let's be serious here...in no way does this "talent" ever equal, or even rival in a distant way, the talent on Top Chef.
If Top Chef is the over-achieving, perfect-featured, well-dressed cousin who attends an Ivy League college, Hell's Kitchen is, without a doubt, the adopted, guitar-playing-in-the-garage, chain-smoking, long-haired, acne-riddled high school drop-out. That's not to say it's no fun watching the trainwreck, though.
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