Hell’s Kitchen 2008 So Far

I haven’t been posting about it regularly, as I might normally. That’s in part because it was on adjacent to American Idol, in part because of the kids going crazy when we dared try to watch 2 hours of TV, in part because I just haven’t been posting as zealously, and in part because this season… Yawn.

We are now down to six contestants.

There is no clear indication who will be the finalists or who we should start rooting for. I don’t know if that’s poor contestants, or great editing, perhaps influenced by the leak last year that Rock had won, and the fact that most of us reacted to that with “duh, it’s obvious nobody could beat him.”

It seems clear they cast the show with a small number of likely winners rounded out with people who have no chance, or who even fit specific roles, even if editing is required to mold that.

It seems clear that Bobby is a prospective winner, but they did shoot him down right at the beginning, if only to mislead us, he appeared incapable of being a team leader early on, and he would violate the unofficial rule of alternating specs of winners. He’s male. He’s black. So was Rock, just last season. Not right, and maybe they’re going off script because we expect it, but we expect him not to win based on Rock winning last year. In fact, we expect a woman to win.

I had a positive impression of the woman who left after being burned too severely to continue, and wondered if they were losing one of their prime prospects with her.

I was about to type “the last two women,” which tells you what I think of Jen, because I was thinkin g of the two other than her. I thought Jen might be one of the qualified contestants, but she seems just to be designated bitch and not as capable as she imagines herself. The other two women are coming to impress me enough to think it could be one of them in the final. Even both of them. And who knew, you can dislike each other but work well as a team! It should be interesting to see what happens after the switch back of Jen and Matt to their original teams.

I thought there might be something unexpected to Matt, and he’s shown sense a couple times, but I believe he’s there mainly for character. The previews made it appear his week to go will be the next one

, but they’re so misleading with previews, it could be Jen, or someone less expected.

Petrozza is really off the radar. He seemed to be in a class with Matt, yet now appears quietly competent and thoughtful. Could it really end up Petrozza versus one of the girls? Probably not, but he seems almost a wildcard.

At any rate, the show doesn’t seem so great this year, but apart from giving us contestants who are more seriously qualified and less cast to expected parts, I’m not quite sure what I’d do to help it.

1 Comment

  1. Matt Q

    I agree that this season has been sub-par compared to previous season’s. Last week, Petrozza started thinking about eliminating Bobby, which he feels is his toughest competition (and I agree). If all the contestants start thinking like this, it could lead to an interesting finish. My guess is that one of the two girls (not Jen) win.

    Thanks for the post, I’m glad to see that other people watch Hell’s Kitchen besides me.

    Reply

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