The second episode of Season 1 of Hell's Kitchen aired on Fox on June 6, 2005. In that episode, there was the first challenge, a fun reward, a sweaty punishment, and an unusual delivery and physical assault during dinner service.
Intro[]
After surviving elimination, Dewberry was seeking a moment for himself in the bathroom but did not know that Elsie was in the bathroom too. After staring at each other in the eyes through the bathroom's mirror, they hugged each other, with Dewberry acknowledging that it was hard for her to make her decision. Michael told Jeff that he lucked out for not being nominated, with the latter saying that he had one more day to prove himself, and Ralph asked Jeff what he was making for Elsie tomorrow for breakfast. While he knew Ramsay wanted him nominated and possibly eliminated, Jeff knew that Ramsay would be looking for improvements now.
Team challenge[]
At 5:55 AM, Sous Chefs Scott and Mary-Ann went in the dorms with cookware and banged them together to wake up everybody, with Dewberry originally thinking it was somebody with a gun. The contestants were told to get in the dining room immediately, but Chris was the only one who did not rush, taking his time to put a shirt on and brush his teeth, which Jeff knew was not a good feeling to see the blue team complete, while Ramsay was shaking his head at the incomplete red team. Chris came down seven minutes after everybody else, and Ramsay schooled him, calling him a "lazy fucker" and telling him that he had to be with his team all the time from that moment. After, Ramsay reminded both teams that none of them had a good performance last night but he wanted to put that aside and move forward before leading everybody into the kitchen. Elsie noticed silver trays on the counter with zucchini on a cutting board, but while she thought they would learn how to peel one, the trays revealed to contain squid in them. That made Dewberry's heart sank as he hated seafood. Due to Carolann's elimination, the red team was down a member, so Ramsay needed somebody from the blue team to sit out. Because Michael had experience prepping squid before, the latter was forced to sit out. For the Squid Cleaning Challenge, designed to test attention to detail, Ramsay demonstrated to the contestants how to correctly clean a squid.
Each contestant had 10 minutes to clean as many squids as possible, and Ramsay revealed that the team with the most squid properly prepped was having dinner with him that night, cooked by himself, which Michael called cool as it does not happen to everybody in the world. However, the losing team would be prepping all the squid for the following night's service while dinner was going on. As the challenge began, Elsie called it gross to put her hand inside the squid and pull out its guts but noticed that Dewberry had an excellent handle cleaning the squid. Even though he sat out, Michael was still allowed to give tips to his teammates. Eventually, time was up, and it came time for judging.
The red team was up first, and Jeff, Jimmy, and Elsie scored one each. Dewberry managed to score two and felt he got reenergized after being nominated last night. Despite cleaning four squids, Chris only managed to get one of them accepted, further disappointing Ramsay. For the blue team, Ralph scored two, and Jessica scored one, and when Wendy sent up her plate, she felt Ramsay would love her perfectionist. However, Wendy scored no points, and when she claimed that she could not remove the skin off of one of them on time, Ramsay accused her of blaming the squid. Mary Ellen scored two points, and Andrew felt confident in his chances to at least tie it up. However, Ramsay rejected it for having a massive hole in the bottom, and while the red team won 6-5, Andrew questioned Ramsay's judgment as he felt the squid was perfect and called it crap.
Scoring[]
| Red Team | Blue Team | ||||
| Chef | Score | Total | Chef | Score | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff | 1 | 1 | Ralph | 2 | 2 |
| Jimmy | 1 | 2 | Jessica | 1 | 3 |
| Elsie | 1 | 3 | Wendy | 0 | 3 |
| Dewberry | 2 | 5 | Mary Ellen | 2 | 5 |
| Chris | 1 | 6 | Andrew | 0 | 5 |
| Results | 6-5 | ||||
Training[]
At 11 AM, both teams came downstairs for a lesson from Ramsay. The lesson was cooking salmon to his standards.
Reward[]
The red team was rewarded with a dinner with and prepared by Ramsay. Later that day, after training, the red team went back to the dorms to change, and Chris called the win a morale booster as they needed it badly, before calling it unreal to be eating with Ramsay, with Dewberry calling Elsie J-Lo after looking at her outfit. During the dinner, Ramsay had Elsie sit next to him, and she knew the blue team would be looking at them salivating. Jeff asked Ramsay how he could manage all the restaurants he opened, with the latter explaining that he had a phenomenal team that he led for ten years. As Ramsay explained more about his experience and life, Dewberry called it amazing to get to know Ramsay personally.
Punishment[]
The blue team was punished by cleaning all the squids for the following night's dinner service. After losing, Ralph was not happy that the red team was getting face time with Ramsay while his team was cleaning squid, and while Andrew felt like he let his team down, Wendy reminded him that she did not score either. When Ralph asked Wendy what the Chinese translation of "we will never lose again" was, she said it out loud in the exact pronunciation, with Ralph wanting it to be the blue team's battle cry as his teammates repeated it as well.
During the punishment, Michael admitted how jealous he was that the red team was eating dinner with Ramsay while he was knees deep in crap. After Sous Chef Scott gave the blue team a short explanation of what the red team was doing, he dumped more squid onto the counter after Andrew asked if there was more.
Before service[]
After both the reward and punishment were over, everybody went back to the dorms and slept. Jeff was the only one not sleeping as he was suffering from a kidney stone and was lying in the hallway in pain. When Jessica approached him to ask if he was okay, she touched him on the back, and he fell further on the ground. She did not feel any sign of worry, as she felt he was a hypochondriac. The next day, Andrew, Mary Ellen, and Jessica met in the kitchen to discuss Jeff's condition, with the former talking about his moans of pain. Jeff revealed that he had a previous history with kidney stones and called it the worst timing, but Andrew wished him well.
During prep, Dewberry was about to send up a plate of spaghetti to Ramsay, but the latter told him to taste it before he handed it off. Despite that, Ramsay deemed it acceptable and told Dewberry he had to do all his dishes like that. In the blue kitchen, Wendy was lost when she was trying to get organized at her station. Before service began, Ramsay had both teams lined up, and after reminding them about their terrible opening night, he wanted that night to be better. Then, Ramsay told the blue team that as their second punishment, they would be working with no air conditioning, a situation he had to deal with in his first restaurant five minutes into service. Ramsay told the staff to take down the fans in the blue kitchen, and while Michael knew it was going to suck as it was going to get hot and stressful quickly, he wanted to pull through that.
Dinner service[]
As the blue team worked on their first order, Mary Ellen struggled to get the Caesar salads ready, much to Ramsay's dismay, but she managed to get them accepted. In the red kitchen, Dewberry got the same success for his team with his appetizers, which pleased the customers. When Wendy brought her first risotto to the hot plate, Ramsay told her the rice was undercooked, and she had to start over. With the help of Ralph, who wanted to get the job done, the refire was accepted, to Ramsay and customers' relief.
An hour and a half into service, the red kitchen has sent out all their appetizers and was beginning their main courses. But Jeff, who was suffering from a kidney stone the previous night, had trouble staying focused and failed to send the vegetables to the pass simultaneously as the fish and meat, forgetting the spinach needed for the entrées. So, Ramsay got in his way, trying to motivate him, but all Jeff did was lament about his abdominal pain. Then, Jeff sent up burnt spinach, Ramsay called him a donkey and ordered him to throw the garnish away. Then, Elsie admitted that she selfishly wanted Jeff to come through and did not have the time to feel sorry for him. In the blue kitchen, the blue team has caught up and served ten entrées compared to the red team's four, but the heat was starting to get to them. When Sous Chef Scott told the team that it was 140 degrees, Michael commented about how hot it was, and Ramsay told him he was not looking for a drama queen, and if he had won the challenge, his team would be fine as the red team. That led Michael to admit that he should not have said that as Ramsay was the monarch in the kitchen. In the red kitchen, Chris took the role of leader by explaining to Elsie how to properly cook salmon on the grill, showing for the first-time teamwork instead of contempt towards his teammates. In the blue kitchen, Andrew and Mary Ellen showed another type of teamwork. When she brought undercooked Wellingtons to the pass, he argued with her and tried to tell her what to do next time, but she was more annoyed by his attitude than anything else. In the red kitchen, Dewberry brought lamb and Wellingtons to the pass, but while the lamb was cooked perfectly, the Wellingtons were not, so he was asked to start again. After some encouragement from Chris and a fire started in a pan, Dewberry went to Ramsay to tell him that he was confused and did not know what he was doing as the only thing he master was spaghetti.
Two hours into service, the red team only served eight main courses to their customers. When a customer came to the kitchen to talk with Ramsay about the situation, Ramsay shut him down by calling him a "fucking dick" and an asshole. After that, Ramsay turned his attention to Dewberry, who told him that it would take 12 minutes for the following order of Wellingtons. When Ramsay questioned him, he said he had no idea of what was going on, and after been called "useless" by Ramsay, Dewberry started to walk out of the kitchen. But when he saw Elsie's face, he could not walk out and got back to his station, only for Ramsay to berate Dewberry for trying to desert his team. However, Dewberry understood what Ramsay was trying to do, understand his shortcomings, and be better than he was. Moments later, customers went to the kitchen again, and they were told to fuck off by Ramsay, and after, Ramsay went to Dewberry to explain to him the problem. In the blue kitchen, when Mary Ellen finally sent out good Wellingtons and half of the main courses, Andrew was trying to make himself look good in front of Sous Chef Scott by claiming he was trying to control the oven temperature. However, Sous Chef Scott did not buy that, and Mary Ellen got annoyed by that, sarcastically telling Andrew to keep talking down to her.
Three hours into dinner service, after tables started to walk out unfed, pizza was delivered to a table of cheering customers, and Jean-Philippe had to deal with a very arrogant customer. When that customer tried to make himself look good with his doctorate in music from the University of Southern California, he physically assaulted Jean-Philippe by hitting him in the chest with his index finger before being kicked out of the restaurant by a crew member. After witnessing that, Ramsay shut down both kitchens.
Post-mortem[]
When the teams lined up, Ramsay referred to the customer comment cards to pick a winning team. For the blue team, the salads were horrible, and even though they managed to get a few main courses out, they were not that good. For the red team, their customers enjoyed the appetizers, but half of them did not receive the main course. He also relayed the pizza incident to the red team. Eventually, Ramsay named the red team losers but praised Chris for his improvement over the last few days and his great teamwork during service. So, Ramsay named him "Best of the Worst", and Chris had to nominate two of his teammates for elimination.
Back in the dorms, Jeff told Chris that he was doing fine until his kidney stone problems got in the way of his performance, while Jimmy was disappointed in losing service for the second time in a row and pleaded his case to Chris. Dewberry regretted his decision in attempting to quit and knew he would have to work hard to earn back his team's respect if he would survive elimination. Meanwhile, Chris was struggling with deciding who to nominate but knew he had to cut the dead weight from the red team if they wanted to win services.
Elimination[]
Chris named Dewberry as his first nominee and Jeff as his second. Ramsay stated he agreed with that decision 110%. During their pleas, Dewberry argued that he had some decent work that night but knew that his near quit was unacceptable, while Jeff said he was a team player and that he had the heart and commitment, even though Ramsay called him a shit cook. Dewberry was eliminated for letting his team down and almost giving up after his mistakes. During his exit interview, Dewberry admitted that he deserved to be eliminated and knew that it was not justifiable to almost walk out on his team.
After Dewberry left, Ramsay reminded the contestants that he was looking for their desire if they wanted their own restaurant. While being dismissed, Jeff felt embarrassed that Ramsay called him a shit cook and hoped that he was never nominated again, while Andrew wanted the backstabbing to begin. Then, Chris said that there was no stopping him when he was comfortable in the kitchen.
Ramsay's comment: "I'm looking for someone who can weather the storm, inspire individuals, stand as a great leader. That, clearly, is not Dewberry."
Trivia[]
- The reference to Ramsay losing air conditioning in his first restaurant was seen in the first episode of Ramsay's Boiling Point, a Channel 4 mini-series that depicted Ramsay's first few months of running his flagship restaurant Ramsay.
- This marks the first time a team won the first two dinner services in a row and the first time a team lost the first two dinner services in a row.
- This marks the first time a Team Challenge was used. It also marks the first time a team won a Reward while a team did a Punishment.
- This marks the first time a male contestant was eliminated.
- This marks the first time a contestant was nominated two episodes in a row.
| Hell's Kitchen Season 1 Episodes |
|---|
| Day 1 • Day 2 • Day 3 • Day 4 • Day 5 • Day 6 • Day 7 • Day 8 • Day 9 • Day 10 |