So we’re getting through it, anyway! Hell’s Kitchen season 15, episode 5 14 Chefs Compete  recap starts now! Spoilers ahoy!

Last week Meese the Mouse got sent home, Hassan got assigned to sort out the wimmen, and whaddaya think, is Jackie gonna be an even BIGGER pain in the ass after being nominated? All NOs, hands in the air. Add the six, carry the seven: that’s what I thought. Of course she is.

She’s already fighting, walking back from the kitchen, and Hassan figures this is a good time to step in. Blah blah stay positive blah let’s go. They do, for sure, but the momentum is with the other team and that can be tricky to overcome.

Reward / Punishment Challenge time! Chef Ramsay says that certain foods remind us all of certain occasions, especially holidays. He says “turkey”, they all say “Thanksgiving” and I say “Chris-anksgiving” because I forgot and am not American. In walks a bunch of people covered in stars and stripes and playing Yankee Doodle Dandy and it’s all very Murican.

Now it’s time for Cinco de Mayo! Lots of mariachis and dancers and La Cucharacha and oooooh!! I would choose Mexican food over “American” eats, let’s do THAT! He doesn’t talk about actual Mexican food, though, just chalupas, tacos and enchiladas, but I love Tex-Mex too so I am DOWN.

New Orleans is in the house! A marching band plays When The Saints Come Marching In; that means crawfish, jambalaya, and Jared storing every second of the dancing girls in his SpankBank for later.

Cinco de Mayo for Red Team will be done by:

and The Blue Team:

Jared figures he’s the natural lead now that Hassan has left; Alan calls him a nit-picking micro manager, so I don’t know how well that’s going.

The 4th of July Platter will be done by on the Red Team:

Going up against the Blue Team and:

The Mardi Gras Platter has been chosen on the Blue Team by:

And the Red Team:

Chad’s gotta monitor and check everything Kevin is doing; if anyone has benefitted by the Red Team’s incompetence lately, it is Kevin. Had they not given Chef Ramsay a massive scarlet target every week, he’d have been skidded weeks ago.

They only have five minutes left and Joe JUST put his steak on the grill. Wow. That’s gonna be super blue rare, hey? He’s still ahead of Jackie, who had exactly two minutes to throw together a cheeseburger. I know all y’all Americans love your burgers at varying degrees of doneness, but you’re all insane. Ground meat MUST be well done. Ick

The guest judge this week is Linda Fears, the Editor-in-Chief from Family Circle magazine (like it says right there! I can’t help it, when they give me onscreen captions I HAVE to capture them!) and wow, I did not know that magazine still existed. The winning platter will get a spread in that totally non-extinct magazine!

First up is the 4th of July Platter by Jackie and Kristin:

The hotdog is beer poached, with pickled red onion and apple. It looks exactly like any other sausage. The burger with apple-slaw in the middle is raw, so no points there, but they get a point for their gross looking grilled corn with garlic aioli. Me and Joe wanna know if they’re “fcuking kidding” us? Total: 1 / 3 points

Next up is Joe and Frank:

Theirs looks better, anyway. Let’s just say it looks as though Jackie & Kristin forgot the whole “elevate” part. Frank’s smoked bacon burger goes over very well, as does Joe’s jalapeno mac ‘n’ cheese. They both get points, but not Joe’s steak; it doesn’t “feel as celebratory” as the other two and me and Joe wanna know what the fcuk THAT means? Joe and I are becoming close.

Cinco de Mayo platter time! Hassan, Manda and Dannie ( love this shot: GIMME MORE OF THOSE, PLEASE!!)

Hassan’s take on a sope does well, but Manda’s mushy chorizo tacos don’t. Dannie gets a point for her grilled steak and cactus combo.

They didn’t give me motherhumping screenshots (I got too greedy, I guess) of Elmer’s, Jared’s  and Alan’s food, but everyone but Alan got points. Not Mexican enough from our Amish Asian.

Ariel’s and Ashley’s Mardi Gras Platter

Does okay, given that neither has cooked NOLA food before. Their muffaleta (hey! I do a muffaleta!) and their shrimp gets them points, but no love for the Po’Boy.

Chad and Kevin went fancy with their Mardi Gras platter, that either works really well or not at all.

Chad’s crustacean is dry, no point. The chicken is raw, no point. Will Kevin’s jambalaya save the team? It will not; it has undercooked rice. And the women take it! Ariel and Ashley’s platter will be in the magazine, yay!

The women will be going to the Santa Ynez valley to learn how to blend wine. They mean blend it in their mouths, right?

The men have to do prep for Family Night the following day, something with hard candies and caramels and they all look tahred already, so it will be fun!

The ladies show up at the winery, they will be blending three different types of wine to make their own signature flavour. Jackie SAYS she doesn’t like wine, but then chugs it all and starts dancing around like a moron while the winery manager looks flustered and confused. We all have that friend. Gets too drunk and obnoxious in the middle of the day in the middle of an activity because she can’t focus. Even if you THINK you don’t have a friend like that: you do. We’re totally friends, yo, you’re reading my shite and everything!

Jackie calls her wine Jersey Juice and awwwww, she got my four year old to draw the label!

Meanwhile, the men have to MAKE the candies and caramels, ohhhhhhhh. That’s not fun. Joe’s a fcuking moron, he turns on the mixer without the bowl on and lets it run for awhile. Me and Alan can’t believe this ahole. HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO USE A MIXER??

At the reward lunch and later, Undercover Dannie is being a going on and on about how she hated somebody else coming in to save them blah blah.

Guuurl. Your team sucked. You needed someone to step in and help. If you think that should have been you, then you should have done it. Fin. Again, Dannie gets into a fight with someone about how they talk to her, and she stops listening to them. You know that thing where you have more excuses about why you don’t succeed than strategies for succeeding? Meet Dannie. She’s your poster child. She’s denying that there was a problem in the first place and that Hassan, who has been specifically assigned to help lead the Red Team by Chef Ramsay himself, should take a back seat to the rest of the team. She’s not listening about the system he wants to implement for efficiency, he didn’t talk to her properly and that is LITERALLY all she can hear. She needs to get out of her own way.

It’s prep for service time, Hassan asks if everyone wants to practice communication; everyone but Dannie does. She just stands there, chewing on her lower lip, not even helping prep anything.

The Blue Team is all pouty and slow, Alan is offending people with the mildest sarcasm possible; I mean. Pull up your Pull-up, Jared, and get to work. Doors open for Family Night!!

Let’s see who’s famous! Ooooooh, the lead singer of Everclear!!

Which means that I getta post this, one of my all-time fave Everclear songs:

They’re adding Family-friendly menu items as well as the regular, including:

And a grilled cheese station! Lookit how cute this is!! This will be done tableside by various chefs for each team, I just didn’t care enough to check who.

First tickets for Blue! Kevin messes it up IMMEDIATELY, over to Red! Red is rolling smoothly, let’s see if the food is okay: we all hold our breath: food is awesome! Service please!

The Blue Team continues to suck arse. Why let Kevin on the Fish Station? This will go very poorly. It gets worse when Joe picks up a hot pan with his bare hand, dropping it and splashing it’s contents everywhere, causing a big fire on the flattop.

Ramsay is not impressed. The smoke filters into the restaurant, alarming the diners. Everyone but Millie, who is apparently an actress from England and a grilled cheese aficionado. There’s a cute little scene with Jackie and her comparing accents, I bet Jackie is great with kids. She’s a harmless goofball, really.

More scallops going back! Everyone gets to touch these before Chef Ramsay smushes them, and then he drags them all into the freezer, where he sends Kevin back to the dorms to pack. For reals. I TOLD you that guy was only there because everyone else on the Red Team seemed that much worse. Kevin doesn’t look as though he can believe he made it that far either.

I didn’t realise that they hadn’t served a SINGLE appetizer yet in 50 minutes on the Blue side, wow. Kevin packs. Marino is the maître de, and his family is there, Dannie immediately fcuks up their order by not talking. I think we may have found a brand new source of cancer in the Red Team. She only fired one tuna instead of two, which would have been caught had she called the order back LIKE SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO.

I may have just had an extended and passionate “talk” about this attitude of only playing for oneself on  a team and how useless it is to be the best player on a losing team. If you aren’t working to make everyone around you better, you are on the losing team. Full stop.

Alan is getting a class on making risottos from Chef Ramsay, Jared and I both wince when we see Alan throw a huge handful of parmesan cheese on top of one. It does not go over well with Chef.

Dannie is fcuking up tuna again, STILL not talking and pouting in the back. The other women are OVER it.

In Blue, Joe still thinks they have a shot, but his raw fish says otherwise.

Some more mashy-smashy, yelling and the Blue Team is kicked out. Gnight, boys

Dannie is trying the same tuna dish for the third time; this time Hassan fcuks up his steak. They’re all kicked out too. Wow. This was a very bad night for sure and Joe is the first one put up for elimination. Alan’s name is tossed around and sounds solid to everyone so up he goes, pouting.

On the Red Team, Dannie BETTER be up there but she doesn’t think she should, and Kristin throws Jackie’s name in. I don’t get that at ALL, and neither does Ashley, who defends Jackie’s growth. I’d more say she should be safe because she didn’t fcuk up today, but women can be crazy and the result is the same, so Imma shut up.

At Elimination, Joe and Alan are up for the Blue Team; blah blah bai Alan. Huh. I would have thought Joe with his lack of mixer experience would have been it, but there you have it. I wasn’t feeling Alan either, Gordon and I are on the same page tonight, yo.

Chef Ramsay says he’s not done either, and I was expecting that! I mean, they’ve lost Kevin, Alan, and there are still women to be culled from the herd! The nominees from the Red Team couldn’t be agreed upon, so Ramsay has to poll everyone. Wow. How can Dannie argue that the team isn’t divided?? Somehow Manda and Kristin end up in front and HOW did Dannie not up there? Manda, talking about leaving your children behind is bullshit. Everyone leaves something behind and NOBODY ELSE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR CHILDREN BUT YOU. Man that makes me mad when parents do that; oh I’ve left so and so behind so I DESERVE IT. You had kids, you don’t get a medal for choosing to do something other than take care of them! I have kids and if you ever hear me say I deserve something because I was lucky enough to get knocked up (cause that ain’t as easy as it sounds sometimes), you have my permission to knock me the fcuk out.

Oh wait! I have more! Kristin says she deserves to stay there because she’s humble! You know, five minutes after saying she’s the best chef there! Right after that! However, there isn’t anything wrong with her food, or her service tonight, so if Gordon doesn’t send her back in line and pull out Dannie, Imma be soooo mad….

He does send Kristin back in line, and tells Manda to take her jacket off…so she can go over to the Blue Team.

I’m really surprised at how poorly these teams are gelling; at this point a couple of front runners have typically emerged and services are starting to smoothe out. I don’t know that shaking up all the players is going to accomplish that exactly, however. I think Chef Ramsay’s original plan with Hassan was a good one, it just needed full buy in from the whole team. I’m sure Gordo knows better than me, and he knows where to find me if he wants my opinion

We oot, keep your knives sharp and your tongues sharper, cheffies!