I watched episode 4 of Hell's Kitchen last night. It was a pretty entertaining episode, albeit not as eventful as episode three.
As I eluded to earlier, the black lady who chimped out on the previous episode served Gordon Ramsey a pepperoni pizza inspired skillet dip, which confused him. I was very entertained by her boldness mixed with insecurity as she prepared and presented her dish.
During dinner service, they had to make American comfort food. She had to make a pasta carbonara. Specifically, she had to mix the noodles with the pasta water and parmesan cheese/egg yolk/black pepper/pork bits mixture. There's supposed to be just enough "sauce" (if you want to call it that) to coat every noodle, but no more than that. It shouldn't be in a pool of liquid. Her carbonara, however, was in a deep pool of liquid.
The lady who isn't Gordon Ramsey but seems to be in charge of them (the lady who busted another black woman for lying during Confetti Gate the week before) approached her before her pasta carbonara went out, and asked her why there was so much liquid. The chimpout lady said she thought it was just some pasta water. The supervisor asked if she had put in a second ladle of the sauce. The chimpout lady said no. Then, the supervisor told her that she had seen her put in a second ladle, and she shouldn't lie.
I was shocked that the same person caught a black woman lying two weeks in a row. Why lie about food at all? The senses, touch, sight, taste and smell, give it all away.
This is when the chimpout lady began spiraling again, which expanded to the rest of her team, which is the women's team, the team with all the black women. Even though it's an edited show, you could get the sense they started to deflate as a group.
Meanwhile, a fat white Greek-American guy on the men's team was getting screamed at by Gordon. I still haven't seen Gordon yell at any black people, women or men. At one point, Gordon was so heated at this guy that he took the dish he had prepared, and smothered it against his chest, dirtying his chef shirt. If you can imagine someone putting a pie in someone's face, it was like that, but into his chest with some piping hot oily dish. I realized those chef shirts must be burn proof (or maybe they edited out the aftermath).
I saw that event as connected to another event that happened on the women's side. Gordon said something to their team and asked of everyone understood. Most people enthusiastically responded, "Yes, Chef!" The catfish grits lady (a black women who was born addicted to druuuugs), did not respond. Gordon kept pushing and said he needed her to communicate and respond. She then did, she said, "Yes, Chef!"
Then, Gordon turned to the Polish American lady who was scapegoated last week for not finishing the eggs 10 seconds sooner, and said she also wasn't responding, that she's in her own little world. She apologized and said it's loud in the kitchen and she's very focused, but Gordon erupted in anger and screamed at her further when he heard her excuse.
Looking at this made me think, "Wow...he yelled at her, but was seemingly nice to Catfish grits lady. He smothered a dish into that guy's chest, but hasn't laid into any black people (except for telling the black guy who used store-bought pasta on episode one that he was disapponted). I realized, even the women getting called out and punished for lying, those callouts were not from him either, it's from some random chef supervisor woman whose name I don't know.
The fact is, there's inflation of currencies, but there's also inflation of experiences. All of these people get to say, "I was a contestant on Hell's Kitchen, a super intense competition show, and I cooked directly under the supervision of Gordon Ramsey, the second toughest chef in the world behind Marco Pierre White. Chef Ramsey is a chef known for screaming at and terrorizing literally everyone who cooks in front of him." Hearing that, you'd assume the person telling you they were on Hell's Kitchen has been through that hell that Gordon Ramsey creates. They must have been cursed out by him multiple times, and proved themselves as someone who can take the heat and stay cool under extreme pressure.
However, that's not the case. These black ladies haven't experienced that at all.
I wonder how many other experiences black people are getting the kid-version of. If you're interviewing someone for a job, and they tell you they've worked in tech, you wouldn't be wrong to think that's a very competitive field and they must really be a self-starter if they were able to succeed for a few years in it. But a black person? Who knows if they got treated with kid gloves, like the way Gordon Ramsey treats them. Maybe their were part of a DEI initiative.
Same with college degrees. You'd assume it must mean certaint things about them, but now they're getting rid of grades, "math is racist," Harvard grades are A's 90 percent of the time, and so on.
The Greek-American guy with the burnt chest was eliminated.
I started episode five. It was right after dinner service. A white guy who the women's team find annoying told the chimpout lady that he thought she really dropped the ball tonight. She started to chimp out. He said her teammates agreed with him, and they had said as much, and he had heard them say it about her. She went from 100% rage to 110% rage, and marched away hollering like Ethan Ralph in a Xanax sleepwalking dream, demanding that her team come out of their sleeping quarters and tell this guy whether they actually said dat.
While she was getting them, the guy decided to leave the smoking lounge area and go to his sleeping quarters, to avoid the whole situation. I thought that was the right move.
To my surprise, as he was walking out, there was every member of the women's team, white women and all, some of them not even sure of what was going on, ready to clap like a seal for the chimpout lady. It was then that I had a realization that black women just may be capable of ordering American white women to do whatever they want, even when it's against the white women's best interests or sense of dignity. Seeing her summon all of them instantly and successfully, especially after being so mean to some of them, felt like witnessing a real life jedi mind trick.
I got a sense episode 5 was going to be pretty entertaining, so I decided to pause it there. I'll catch up more later when I can absorb it.