Gosling

Damn right she does. Antonia set a series-wide high score even without the keep-all-the-money thing. After binge-watching the series, I can say that $22,000 is a new record for most money successfully defended. That's really the major factor that's going to determine if someone manages to pull off a flawless victory. That last sabotage at the end of the day when there's the huge cash disparity. The chef with all the money would have to resist the urge to even spend the $500 minimum to finish their opponent off, and that probably isn't going to happen for a long time.

Mainly that the sous chefs actively sabotage the kitchen to ensure things get messed up so Ramsay has something to yell at. Ji from Season 5 spilled the beans in an alumni sitdown. And any cook that calls them out on it fast finds themselves without a jacket.

You're going to hate me, but I'm going to be taking up this show after finding out terrible, terrible things about Hell's Kitchen. I want my slapstick food comedy and this one at least looks honest about the contestants getting screwed over.

NorthJersey.com got two current contestants (Anton and Jessica) and four alumni together recently. As they have it: *Ji (injury out, season 5): Territory manager for US Foods *Will (2nd place, season 9): Executive sous chef, Princeton Club of New York *Dana (3rd place, season 10): Culinary director and executive chef, Le Gourmet Factory, Englewood, NJ *Justin (2nd place, season 10): Chef de cuisine, Bin 14 and Anthony David’s, Hoboken, NJ You will also see them all agree 100% that if you're watching for the food, you're in the wrong place. In fact- and this is very interesting- Ji came right out and said that in her season, the sous chefs were actively sabotaging the cooks- lowering the heat on the ovens, hiding the prep food, not stocking enough pans and the kitchens would have to swipe them from each other, replacing sugar with salt (which essentially exonerates Colleen as far as that particular mistake of hers), etc. And the others agreed, though Dana didn't feel Andi was that bad. And you don't always get to prep the station you wind up at in dinner service, which means, for instance, Cook A prepped the Wellingtons and Cook B has to cook with them without entirely being aware of what Cook A did in prepping them. And so of course the Wellingtons get fucked up because Cook B has no clue whatsoever what's in that pastry until it's too late. And either you sucked it up and dealt with it, or you called them on it and quickly found yourself without a jacket. So... hoo boy, we've got something to answer for here. That said, they are also in agreement that Gordon is not hamming it up for the cameras one iota when he's yelling at you.

I'm sure there's a clock in there, watches are clearly fine, but it looks like that's all you're expected to need. Barbie got chucked out of the kitchen in Season 10 for trying to use a meat thermometer, as you're expected to not need one of those either.

I'm around pretty much because everyone sucks at cooking. It's a matter of approaching the show with the proper mindset. If I wanted to watch people cook well, there's no shortage of shows for that. I watch some of those too. I'm around because I know I'm going to see terrible, terrible, hilarious things done to food. It's not even really a cooking show to me. It's slapstick comedy. You don't watch a Three Stooges sketch and honestly expect them to go about their task properly. No, no. You go in expecting to see them fuck up, followed by Moe poking Larry in the eyes and Curly going woowoowoowoowoowoo nyuknyuknyuk. We wouldn't be in Season 12 if services went off without a hitch all the time. The only reason I think Fox even stocks each season with two or three halfway-decent chefs is so that Gordon isn't completely humiliating himself when he parades one of them around as the winner. They love putting the likes of Raj and Louie and Melissa and Dewberry out there, they just don't want to have to present them as The Next Big Thing at the end of the season because everybody else was even worse, so they toss him a Danny or a Dave out of mercy.

For funsies and giggles, I present Ramsay's evolution over the course of the show, as shown in season-by-season highlight reels. You can see his soul slowly getting crushed as pack after pack of lunatics gets paraded in front of him. *In season 1, Ramsay was a hell of a lot calmer than in any other season. *Season 2, in which Ramsay finds his volume, certainly TV-induced, though there's still some calmness mixed in. Cut to 6:00 or so to see Ramsay come to the full realization of what he's gotten himself into, courtesy of Tom cooking in a burnt pan. *Season 3, Ramsay's now realized his lot in life. His volume's largely stabilized; snark has made its way into a lot of his banter. *Season 4, Ramsay's gotten rather angry now, even telling JP to "get the fuckers out" when referring to dismissing the customers. The random one-off expletives mildly present in Season 3 have gotten much more prominent. *Season 5, maybe a touch off the Season 4 volume, but Ramsay's gotten more fond of making very detailed dress-downs. Really makes sure it hurts. *Season 6, Ramsay's just trying to comprehend the sheer depth of insanity he's been confronted with this particular outing. Exasperation is starting to take hold. *Season 7, there's really not a single decent video, so aside from noting that this was the Nilka season and he had to deal with that, on to... *Season 8, where I'm noticing Ramsay increasingly just not wanting to deal with people anymore. *Season 9, exasperation rising. *Season 10, no highlight video here either, so on to... *Season 11, where Ramsay has graduated to full-on tantrums and wants to punch things forever in between crying jags (see also: 13:15), so you can guess how Season 10 looked.

The previous winners usually don't even get the announced prize. The money, sure; the job, they're lucky if they even get to be a line cook in the restaurant, never mind the head position, and they never ever EVER get retained past the announced year. I think last season's winner flunked a drug test to get into the restaurant in the first place. It's like the cooking equivalent of The Running Man movie. I agree the menu needs a revamp. I think we've seen just about all the ways there are to fuck up scallops. Real restaurants change their menu too; there's no shame in it. You serve the same stuff all the time and sooner or later you're going to get stale.

"Stone cold"-- slightly undercooked "Fuck me"-- hey, production, can I start booting people out yet or do you need another screwup or two? "Stop"-- I guess I can go ahead with those boots now "Oh my God"-- dear sir or madam, please make yourself comfortable in the dorms, or better yet, don't "Pathetic"-- this was a particularly bad service even for us "Fuck off/piss off"-- you are dismissed for now "There's one more person I need to hear from"-- who I won't eliminate, I just want to chew them a new one

Tonight's episode got really choppy with the editing. I don't think they realize that one can easily tell in what order things happened and how much got cut from broadcast simply by looking at the big giant numbers on everyone's podium and noticing that they're jumping around and two people got points when only one person said something and all of a sudden one guy doesn't have points at all for a couple seconds. If you're going to score people for real and show their scores, you do have to actually account for those scores.

I'm an Aston Villa supporter, meaning I'm on the other end of things. The past few weeks have been increasingly antsy for me. I'll take the point we got against Southampton, and I like that Fulham lost and Cardiff also left some points on the table, but we lost another place in the table because Swansea passed us. 5 points clear is not clear enough for me.

The show at this point has a reputation such in the cooking community that no actual quality chef would be caught dead applying. They're applying for something better. They're content to just let Gordon take one for the team. Cooking competitions have sorted their talent pools out into five tiers: *Great cooks apply for Iron Chef or The Next Iron Chef, and serve as judges on lesser-tier shows. *Good cooks apply for Top Chef or Masterchef. *Decent cooks apply for Chopped or The Taste. *Bad cooks apply for Hell's Kitchen or Next Food Network Star. *Downright awful cooks apply for Kitchen Nightmares or Worst Cooks In America, though at this level a certain level of self-awareness of suckage is required. As for tonight... I don't know what exactly it's going to take to get Gordon to yank someone's jacket off mid-service these days if it's not going to get done when someone skips the pass entirely and serves raw food directly to the damn chef's table. That got a hell of a lot less of a tirade than I thought it was going to get.

Well, to be fair, the outdated review isn't by itself that heinous a crime. It's the same thing that causes Campbell's Soup to still to this day display a medallion on the label they got for winning a taste test at the Paris Exposition in 1900. It's just a matter of continuing to live up to that review and not letting it go to your head... which is likely to be the real problem here.

I can't help but notice that the usual talk of 'and X's dream of working at INSERT HIGH-CLASS RESTAURANT HERE went up in flames' has been converted to 'and X's dream of winning Hell's Kitchen...' It's like they've said 'Okay, come on, let's be honest with each other, none of these people have a prayer in an actual top-tier restaurant and we both know it given that this is Season 12, so let's just make with the carnage already.'