By Arthur Perkins
 
This episode started with some minimal suspense. Anyone looking at the 3 video previews could easily determine which Red Team member ended up going to the blue Team. It was Jen who volunteered for the switch probably because she thought that her skills would be more useful and most obvious on the Blue Team.
 
The Challenge was based mostly on planning and communications skills and to a smaller extent on actual taste. There were 20 ingredients on a table. Each team had to divide them up so that each ingredient was used only once and each member of the team had to produce one dish for head-to-head competition. The Red Team leaped out to a superior start, with their planning done quickly and with cooking starting quickly. However, Matt sliced off the end of one of his fingers with a knife and left them one member short for much of the cooking. Ramsay asks "Where is the finger?" I can imagine that it was his third finger and was somewhere in finger heaven upright in a model of disrespect for Ramsay. The Men had had trouble communicating (same old problem) and it did not get any better with Jen on their team. They still had major problems and were way behind on starting cooking. The communications problems were highlighted by Scott showing the Blue team that multiple people were using the same ingredient and that the rules prohibit that. He strongly recommended that the Blue Team start working together and communicating. I can tell you that if I were in that kitchen I would pay attention to him before Ramsay (although I would pay attention to both).  The veal was taken by Bobby, who also had chicken, so what was he thinking? At about 10 minutes left, Bobby finally woke up and realized that the cooked veal he had in front of him did not go with the rest of his dish. A quick survey of what the others were doing gave Bobby the opinion that the only reasonable way out of this was for Louross to turn his pan-fried red snapper into a surf and turf. Jen totally agreed with this and they thought Louross understood. However, Louross wanted to be an a**hole and present his snapper without the veal because he wanted his snapper to be unmarred by other flavors. That of course is the same as giving up on the Challenge because Ramsay will not tolerate breaking the rules, particularly when they were designed to improve vital skills. With seconds left the veal was there on the table, a deliberate decision by Louross. You could tell on his face he knew what he had done to his team, but he apparently thought that there would be some miracle to save him. No such luck. I see the culprits in this as: Louross (for failing to take the simple solution), the entire Blue Team (for not planning up front and preventing something like this and the other incidents from happening), and Bobby (for taking veal and than waiting a long time before deciding he couldn't use it). There is plenty of blame to distribute. Dishes were:
 
Christina - fried snapper w/crabmeat and hollandaise sauce 5 ingredients
Matt - pan-roasted quail on top of arugula 6 ingredients
Corey - Colombian chicken w/ artichokes 3 ingredients
Rosann - pan-seared bone-in veal, roasted potatoes, watercress, onions 6 ingredients
TOTAL INGREDIENTS FOR THE RED TEAM = 20
 
Petrozza - warm crab salad and onion souffle 5 ingredients
Jen - pancetta w/ roasted quail 4 ingredients
Bobby - mozzarella chicken in a balsamic glaze 6 ingredients
Louross - red snapper in oyster mushroom sauce 4 ingredients
TOTAL INGREDIENTS FOR THE BLUE TEAM= 19???
 
Ramsay evaluated Christina vs. Petrozza and found both dishes really good; Blue 1 Red 1. He evaluated Matt vs. Jen and Matt had a bad flavor from liver that should have been cleaned out before cooking; Blue 2 Red 1. You just know he is going to evaluate the next 2 in a way that Red evens it up. That's precisely what happens as Corey takes on Bobby and wins; Blue 2 Red 2. Now it is Rosann vs Louross. She is asked about her dish and it is tasted. No problem. However, Louross cannot answer the "how many ingredients?" question without major pause followed by a confession. The proverbial sh** hits the pan as Ramsay asks "Where's the veal?" (a parody of the famous line "Where's the beef?"). Jen tells him Louross left it off his plate, which I am sure he already knew. Ramsay pitches a planned tirade and the Blue team loses without Louross' snapper even getting tasted. Now I know that Ramsay was aware of the situation before the judging, so he set up the pairings to maximize the suspense. However, a more logical and reasonable set of pairings would have been Christina (snapper) vs. Louross (snapper) and Rosann vs. whoever was left, which is Petrozza since the Matt/Jen and Corey/Bobby pairings followed my guidelines.
 
The implications of Blue are the usual - onerous and sometime odious tasks. Last night it was cleaning the tableclothes, dishclothes, and doing the other laundry as well, all using the old wringer type upright washer (not an electric machine; it is human powered). The Red Team gets to relax and visit the studio of In Touch magazine, where they got makeup and had head photos taken for its cover. Of course they had 4 photos in a strip down the left hand side of the cover. Guess who was the real focus of that cover? If you thought Scott or MaryAnn or Jean Philippe you guessed wrong. Let's see. Who does that leave?
 
Dinner service starts with Ramsay (the correct answer to the above question) stating that last night he was not making the decision on which team was better. He will leave it to 2 restaurant critics who are going to be incognito in the restaurant. Those critics (who the cameraman obviously knows) plan to order the same dishes from the Red Kitchen and the Blue Kitchen - risotto, scallops, beef Wellington, salmon. This will give them a head-head comparison of real value. Corey starts out with very good risotto. Louross, knowing that he will be eliminated in Blue loses, plated scallops that Ramsay likes. Matt ran into serious problem on an issue that had been covered weeks ago, the size of the beef fillets has to be approximately even. He had done a poor job either of either carving or of selecting. He had 3 in front of him and Ramsay pointed out that each was very different from the others. Matt later cooked some beef and it was done so poorly that Ramsay asked each member of the Red Team whether they would serve that to a critic, because any order could be from them. The next beef issue was with Petrozza, who cut beef 3 minutes ahead of when it was supposed to be cut. Ramsay pointed out the loss of juices that should be on the plate. Blue runs out of chicken, but Jen stepped up to help out and get over the crisis. Christina had dry salmon. She said it should require 7 minutes to do a new one. Both Ramsay and her teammates knew that she was fudging it. Ramsay kept a relentless pressure on her to get it done before the rest of the order was ruined. Rosann ran of out gnocchi, quickly followed by running out of carrot puree. She offered to do baby carrots as a substitute, but Ramsay wasn't buying it.
 
At this point, the critics had finished eating all the ordered dishes. They preferred the cooking of the Blue team down the line. Also, by looking around the restaurant they discovered that the Red dinners had no food. Ramsay delivered this message to the teams, calling Red an embarrassment. Petrozza's bottom line was that the Blue team had performed really well and that it should be renamed SuperBlue. Ramsay has had enough of Red team mistakes and orders them all out of the kitchen. He invited the blue team over to solve the mess, which they did. Ramsay then tells Corey that she was the sole good performer on Red, so she gets to nominate 2 teammates (the usual trick that he plays). It is obviously going to be Rosann and Matt, which is what she does. Ramsay then asks another person who had a bad service (not her first) to step forward as well, not naming Christina but you know he doesn't mean Corey. Christina steps forward. Ramsay correctly chooses Rosann to be eliminated. He tells Christina that "you have been warned" and Matt that "you are living on borrowed time." He cites 3 instances total for each one of bad dinner services. It's clear that he doesn't think any more of Matt than I do, which is not much talent there. I do think Christina has some culinary talent and I bet Ramsay does too.
 
The preview of next week indicates that someone who is sweating into the food could be in big trouble. That could be Matt or Bobby, but I am thinking that Petrozza is most likely to be the offender. Next to go in my book should be Matt, which would require the undermanned Red Team to lose next week.
 
 
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