Smallscreen Features

'Hell's Kitchen' Recap: Matt sacrifices a fingertip while Jen smolders

By April MacIntyre May 21, 2008, 3:13 GMT

Gordon Ramsay - - London, England © Photorazzi

Alright Donkeys. The show begins with a maneuvering of the red team to oust one and lighten their load to the blue team, which sees Jen take leave of the girls and join the men.  It seemed a good idea strategically.

Corey and Christina swell with joy and hope, the red team has lost their resident "bully." Jen tells the producers in B-roll her opinion of the "manipulative-ass bitch" Corey. Pithy.

Chef provides the improvisation challenge pre-dinner service, "use twenty specific ingredients only once," and four dishes per team.  Red team organizes and plots out their meals and the blue team already shows too many cooks in their kitchen, no one is talking.

The ingredients include meat, vegetables, crab, fish, lemon and nuts.  They have 45 minutes to complete their dishes.

The Red Team is cooking nicely, while the Blue Team seems mired in repeat usage of ingredients. Then cue the music: Matt slices off his fingertip! 

Where did it go? No one found it or speaks of it, and they sew the fallen soldier up and kick him back into the frying pan. 

I'll give it to Matt; I would have been screaming for Vicodin, Scotch on the rocks chasers, Holly Hunter's prosthetic metal finger Harvey Keitel made her in "The Piano" and some psych counseling as a safeguard.

The Blue Team unravels by the hand of Louross failing to plate veal on his dish.  He just wouldn't, and no one understands.  Cue Mount St. Jen's warning eruptions.

Christina and Petrozza both dazzle Ramsay and are awarded one point each. Next up is Jen and Matt.  Matty didn't de-liver his bird. Yucky; ever taste liver cooked inside chicken by mistake? Traumatic stuff. Corey and Bobby go up against each other. Ramsay deems Corey’s dish bland, but Bobby made a hideous black tar-like glaze so Corey wins the point.

Rosann and Louross are up.  Rosann's dish is “clumsy.” Ramsay really likes Louross’ dish, but then...he admits that he didn’t use the veal.

Mount St. Jen seethes as Ramsay fumes that they didn’t use all the 20 items.

Red team wins the challenge and gets a day with In Touch magazine for a photo shoot.

Blue Team has to spend all day doing laundry cranking by hand, scrubbing on a washboard, and suffer the growing threat of the irate Jen as she increasingly harps on Louross and his "stupidity."

Jen will get a disease unless she learns to let things go; she builds up like a pressure cooker.

Ramsay assembles his two teams and tells them about the surprise he has in store for tonight’s dinner service: Two important food critics are going to be there and their reviews are going to help Ramsay decide which team wins.

So we see the two critics ensconced and ordering the same dishes from both kitchens.

The Red Team’s risotto and scallop appetizers come out nicely first and the critics like them very much.  The same goes for those that come from The Blue Team.  A tie? The critics both order salmon. They’re dismissive of Christina’s salmon, but say that Louross’ has nice flavor.

Slowly the Red Team. begins to falter; the Blue Team quietly pulls it together and Jen bucks up to get all of their entrees out.

The Red Team is leaving their side of the restaurant starving heading to good ol' In-N-Out Burger on Lankershim. 

Rosann is flaming in the kitchen; she is badly organized and burning food. Now even the critics are noticing that the Red team is a disaster. Then, after Matt does something, Ramsay kicks them all out and closes down their side.

The Blue Team finishes up the service and St. Jen of the Humble Pie screams out, “That’s what you get, bitches!”

Ramsay deems Corey “best of the worst” and must pick two nominees for elimination.

She nominates Matt and Rosann, adding that she never wants to work with her during a service ever again.

Ramsay adds Christina to the elimination lineup as well.

Then we get the three doomed contestants to explain themselves, and Rosann is sent back, but it was a ruse; she was the one he cut after all.

Christina and Matt are saved again, and Jen promises to be more interesting next week based on the tease. 

See you donkeys next week.