Gordon Ramsay is a terrible person. Hell’s Kitchen is a terrible show. Why is it so hard to stop watching?
I’ve watched Hell’s Kitchen on and off since high school, and I have always been baffled by why I keep subjecting myself to it. I think I hate the show (it is the television equivalent of eating deep-fried butter), but I almost always end up idly watching an episode or two each season despite my best intentions.
I concede there is something undeniably fascinating about the show.
Hell’s Kitchen is every totalitarian regime ever in miniature. Never, ever question the wisdom of dear leader chef Gordon Ramsay, lest you wish to get swiftly booted out of the kitchen by the angriest Brit on TV. What’s left is to scurry around the kitchen and curry favor with the esteemed tyrant. A little bit of kiss-ass goes a long way, but be warned: Ramsay is a vengeful god. He shall smite when he damn well feels like it — or when his producers need another bumper for an advert.
Personalities emerge among the beleaguered contestants: The egotist is smugly assured of his superiority in the kitchen while his comrades eagerly anticipate his downfall. The sycophant worships Ramsay and is liable to being utterly shattered when Ramsay makes bold comparisons between the cook and a barn full of fecal matter. The voice of reason merely appears to be reasonable relative to the rest of the nuthouse. He or she will go far but will probably still lose to someone less sane.
As in any piece worthy of North Korean propaganda, there’s much rigid regality and pageantry to behold. Every episode of Hell’s Kitchen follows the same structure, without fail: a punched-up recap, “And now, the continuation of Hell’s Kitchen,” bitching about being put up on the block and an extremely basic challenge tarted up by third-rate hack production trickery.
You just know the scores will tie up just before the commercial break, but by God does it still sting when those jumped-up editors start cutting to reaction shots before hitting a hackneyed title card and commercials.
If you peel back the food, the largesse and the cursing, Hell’s Kitchen is nothing more than a bag of four or five editing tricks. The same music cues get reused over and over again like a dish towel in a stingy restaurant. That cursed dinner service theme triggers an almost Pavlovian response: I know the carnage is about to unfold, and I’m drooling for it like a dog thinking of his bone.
The show is obviously an atrocity, and it brings out the worst in me, but there’s something that keeps on hooking me.
I’ve come to realize Hell’s Kitchen represents America in a microcosm. The cheftestants are a ragtag team of dreamers fighting tooth and nail for a goal that’s probably not worth it. They cover a broad array of people, from the competent to the delusional, from the beautiful to the unspeakably heinous.
We, and they, like to believe that Hell’s Kitchen is a meritocracy, that great success comes from just a little bit more elbow grease and that the creme always, infallibly, rises to the top.
But the lasting power of Hell’s Kitchen isn’t its surprisingly stark depiction of America’s demographics. We are also, at heart, a nation of haters. We hate everything: the left wing, the right wing, our weight, our failures, our weaknesses, our superiors, and most of all, ourselves, for not being all that we can be.
Hell’s Kitchen taps into that primal hatred. The show is plainly nonnutritious junk TV, yet it compels you to sit down and gape. The show suggests that maybe, maybe you aren’t any better than this. Maybe you deserve Hell’s Kitchen, to watch these terrible people do horrible things as penance for your sins.
The food is never actually appealing. Whereas a show like Top Chef actually makes the cuisine attractive, Hell’s Kitchen’s entrees are always hideous. It’s always a shock when Ramsay or a judge tells us the beef Wellington is gorgeous when it plainly looks like (to borrow a Ramsayism) donkey s—.
Unlike every other reality TV show, upbeat and uplifting story lines are never emphasized. Hell’s Kitchen lives and breathes schadenfreude, from every sardonic quip of the narrator to Ramsay’s customary dressing-downs. It doesn’t matter whether or not the cook deserves to be verbally spanked; the show will aestheticize and dramatize it so you will guffaw, even more so than you do at Jersey Shore.
The finales, then, are always understated affairs, ending just as the winner is announced; all that’s left is for him or her and the rest of the wannabe has-beens to disappear back to the darkness from which they came. You won’t ever see a Hell’s Kitchen reunion. I wouldn’t be too surprised if most ex-contestants are dead.
There is no place for positivity or happiness in Hell’s Kitchen. Every time a cheftestant laughs or smiles, it must be followed up by a shot of someone crying, dying or just plain suffering. Oscillations between the carrot and the stick are never-ending, with each turn becoming so rapid that they just blur together.
In terms of the carrot, who’s to say that going to a medieval fair with Ramsay actually counts as a reward? Weren’t the challenge rewards supposed to be rewarding?
No matter how terrible, how infantile the prize, the winning team always reacts as if it’s just been given the keys to the candy shop. It goes far beyond psyching the other team out. Without fail, one person will jump up and down, and one person will tell in the confessional a cliched variant of “Best. Reward. Ever.” Somehow, this makes everything seem a lot worse.
Hell’s Kitchen excels at creating this noxious environment, in which it’s OK to look down on and hate everything and everyone — and, by extension, yourself — because you know they’ll get their just desserts. Right after the commercial. At the end of the next episode. When the chefs get their black jackets. In the epic season finale. When they reach their goal and realize “head chef” is an empty, meaningless title.
Like any successful cult, Hell’s Kitchen has its methods of luring you into its trap and keeping you there. Let’s say you’ve had enough, and you want out. Well, if you ever watch anything on Hulu or Fox’s website, there will be huge ads for the show. You mustn’t click on the banner. You mustn’t click. You mustn’t. You mustn’t. You mustn’t.
Say you take it a step further and stop watching television altogether. Finally, you’re free at last. But then you lie awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling when you hear a faint trace of that insidiously generic rock theme, a ghost beckoning you back into the underworld.
I hate Gordon Ramsay with all my heart.
Hell’s Kitchen is an utter abomination.
I can’t keep wasting time watching this garbage.
Well, maybe one episode won’t hurt.
I love Big Brother.
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