It’s all about the team
The contestants have been crammed economically into two cars and are on their way through the city. They arrive at a farm where they are greeted by an adorable bleating goat. There are some other animals there too, and then there are more goats! Pettifleur makes a pun about it being Smells Kitchen due to the farmy odours.
The contestants have a bit of time to discuss how scary Marco is, including references to a school principal and Hannibal Lecter (calm down, guys). He arrives and acknowledges that in the previous episode most of the mis-en-place was done for them and he will be teaching them some basic skillz so that they can start to prepare more of the meal.
Marco demonstrates how to chop an onion without looking. He asks the contestants how they crush garlic but it is a trick question — apparently you crush garlic by chopping it. Then you add salt. There is some more chopping — of parsley and mushrooms.
Then Marco brings out a dead bird of some description — probably chicken but it could be anything really — and proceeds to prepare it. The contestants seem uncomfortable with this; Issa states that he did not sign up for this, as if Marco is forcing them to kill the chicken with their bare hands rather than merely perform a routine cooking procedure undertaken in many home kitchens. David notes that Marco has used four lengths of string to truss his chicken. I assume this will be relevant later in the episode.
So the first challenge is for the contestants, who are still in their blue and red teams from yesterday, to each take one of the five ingredients and prepare it Marco’s satisfaction. They each have five minutes and for some reason this is undertaken as a relay despite each contestant’s achievement having no bearing on the previous or successive contestant’s performance. Definitely could’ve saved a bit of time with everyone doing everything at once. But then we wouldn’t get to see one poor person trying to prepare something while four other people shout slightly patronising encouragement and criticism disguised as advice. Especially when Lincoln only uses two lengths of string to truss his chicken, instead of listening to David’s advice, and it keeps breaking. What’s with this weak-ass string anyway? Why isn’t it four times as thick? Does it have other kitchen uses that require a finer thread?
Candice gets to participate, despite having no incentive to do a good job given that she will be in the last chance cook off regardless.
Jess cuts her finger while trying to finely dice her onions and spends most of her five minutes waiting for the nurse.
Debra gets emotional trussing her chicken because it reminds her of her mum. First tears of the season; that was fast.
“Thrrrrrrrree minutes remaining!” Marco trills. Debra neatly wraps her chicken while Lincoln winds his string in an arbitrary fashion around the poor creature. He is still holding the string, one knot to go, when Marco calls time up, and he must reluctantly let go. He has clearly not watched MasterChef and is not prepared for the non-negotiable arbitrary time limits that I’m sure realistically reflect professional kitchen working conditions.
Each team brings forward the ingredients one at a time for Marco to compare. He decides which team has done the best job and gives them a point.
Candice has not done a good job with her mushrooms.
Marco tells Jess that he has found skin in her chopped onions and there is a sickening moment when we think it is her skin but actually it’s just onion skin so it’s okay, but not okay enough for Jess’ onions to win.
David and Gaz have managed to chop a minimal amount of garlic and Issa has badly chopped about two leaves of parsley so after four ingredients THE SCORES ARE TIED. What a surprise, it all comes down to the last ingredient.
What is not a surprise is that Debra has prepared her chicken better than Lincoln so the blue team win. A little popup appears in the bottom right corner of the screen with a social media engagement question: Should Lincoln have listened to David? #HellsKitchenAU. Given the result, I’m pretty sure the answer is yes with no further need for discussion.
The punishment for the team that prepared the food the worst is that they get to prepare all the food for both teams for the evening’s service. Umm… does anyone else see a problem with this?
Back at the kitchen, the red team are in their white chef outfits. Everyone is wearing a cute red accessory to reinforce their team and reflect their personality. David and Pettifleur are back on salmon duty and launch straight into the insults. Cool it guys, you need to start small otherwise you have nowhere to go.
The blue team are hanging out backstage in what looks like someone’s living room. There is a huge television so that they can observe the red team. This is obviously not entertaining enough as Candice begins to wonder why Marco picked her for the last chance cook off, and decides to confront him about it. Wow, episode two and they’re going off-book already.
Marco has a little office just off the kitchen where he can write little chef thoughts in his chef book. Candice walks in and asks him some very reasonable questions about what she did wrong and what she can do to improve. Marco tells her she is not a team player. I feel that this is not an adequate response. Candice returns to the rest of her team and relays her conversation with Marco. They also feel that it is an inadequate response. Candice confides in her team that she was thinking of her children, which made her want to cry, but she was proud of herself because she didn’t. Issa immediately asks her an emotional question about her children and we have the second tears of the season. Willie has disappeared from the room, either through a continuity error or because he is a wizard who can become invisible.
It’s service time and Willie is confident that his team will win tonight, because they can chop better and prepare chicken better. Correction Willie: your team can chop just as well as the other team and Debra can truss a chicken better than Lincoln. Anyway, all the prep is done isn’t it?
There are some changes to the menu: the egg tart thing is out and Caesar salad is in. What has not changed is that bourguignon is still spelt incorrectly on the graphics (as ‘bourgingnon’) and friendly voiceover guy is still refusing to pronounce the ‘s’ in ‘Niçoise’.
There are also some changes to team duties: on the blue team Candice and Willie are swapped. Willie is happy because now he is on fish, which he thinks looks easy (ooh, burn Candice). On the red team Jess and Lincoln are swapped. David malfunctions and says “Yes Marco!” for no reason.
“Your passport to survival is knowledge!” Says Marco; the teams will now have to talk to each other and pass on what they learnt last night. Perhaps Marco ain’t so crazy after all… then he says, “you can’t teach people how to cook”. Wait, no, I was wrong. Isn’t teaching people how to cook the whole reason why we’re here?
Service starts and there is a shot of Sam stroking the contents of a pot with an enormous whisk. It is mesmerising. Irony strikes and Willie has undercooked the fish, despite the cooking instructions being ‘put the fish in the big steamy metal cabinet for four minutes’.
Things are going along as well as a cart with three wonky wheels so Marco decides to try an experiment where he and the sous-chefs leave the contestants to do everything for themselves. The contestants go into meltdown without their security blanket, especially Issa who stops functioning almost entirely. His team step up to help him prepare the dishes, while poor Issa can only manage to wipe the edges of the plates in an almost obsessive fashion as they go out.
There is a voiceover of Pettifleur saying that all David is doing is standing around with his arms crossed. This is played over a shot of David standing with his hands on his hips. It is apparent that their disdain for each other now defies any logic.
At some point something is set on fire but it’s way less dramatic than last episode’s preview made it seem.
The blue team faff around trying to figure out how to cut up their chicken. They make various incisions before Marco makes his timely return. He prepares the chicken dish and it appears they could’ve just chopped it up any old way and it would’ve been fine.
Sam says she is proud that she ran the pass without Marco’s help but we all know that this means she’s made a colossal mistake and just hasn’t realised yet. Yep, one table hasn’t received their food yet. Sam finds their order, and the red team prepare the dishes, although this results in one of the affected diners writing ‘late’ on their feedback form, in capitals AND underlined, so you know it’s pretty serious.
Glenn comes to deliver the diners’ feedback. Overall the diners are fussier than the previous night, although at least the contestants are starting to have some control over the cooking part of the challenge. Issa is sitting backwards on his chair, which seems to defy his ‘super nerd’ persona but maybe he read a book on how to be cool (we’ll see if he’s wearing a backwards baseball cap like Gaz tomorrow).
Blue team has scored seven again (Marco doesn’t specifically say ‘seven out of ten’ but I assume that it’s still out of ten. Red team has scored six point five out of ten so they lose. There is a bit more discussion tonight about who the poorest performing team member is and why, just to rub it in Candice’s face. Marco asks Sam and Jess (she struggled with the beef or something) whether they think they should be in the last chance cook off and they both agree that they are contenders. Marco asks Pettifleur her opinion of who he should choose and she, surprise surprise, throws David under the bus. In the end Marco chooses Jess because she should’ve pulled and pushed or some rubbish.
The preview for next episode shows Marco not giving a rats about a diner’s bad feedback and an ambulance being called, which seems an insensitive way to capitalise on someone’s misfortune for the sake of continued viewership.
