Season 1 of Hell’s Kitchen is often considered the strangest season of the show, not so much because it’s different structurally—it still follows largely the same format and most of what it established did carry over to future seasons—but because it’s tonally very quiet and lowkey. The music is very muted, the contestants aren’t depicted in an over-the-top manner, and Chef Ramsay comes across as much less cartoonish. This has the advantage of making him more menacing because his anger feels more genuine, but it also makes him a whole lot less memorable and meme-able. In general, the whole thing feels like a transition from the relaxed documentary style of Ramsay’s UK shows and the absurdly scored and edited American counterparts.
Having said that, there is still a lot of fun to be had from
watching these early episodes, and there are contestants that still get talked about in
the show’s sizable fandom. So, uh, let’s do more talking about them.
12. Carolann Valentino
For me, this contestant’s greatest role in the series is to
establish the unpredictability of Chef Ramsay’s eliminations. We are introduced
to Carolann through her signature dish, which along with Elsie’s was the only one
to receive good marks. Anyone watching this show live at the time it aired
probably figured Carolann was going to either win or make it several episodes
in. But nope, she completely fizzles out, being a non-presence during dinner service
and being the first elimination nominee in the show’s history, alongside Dewberry.
I still wonder about Carolann in terms of how much farther
she could have gotten if she had been given another chance. Yeah, we wouldn’t
have gotten the infamous moment with Dewberry, but maybe someone who already had
showed some promise during the signature dishes would have put in some work
upon getting more accustomed to working in a fine-dining kitchen.
Nadir: Being the very first person eliminated from the show,
not because she was bad at cooking, but because she… didn’t.
Mitigating factor: Has easily one of the most interesting
post-Hell’s Kitchen turns in life. Seriously, look into it.
11. Jeffery Dewberry
Though Carolann was the first to hand her jacket over,
Dewberry’s subsequent downfall was so infamous that it still, to this day, is
considered an iconic moment in the show, and demonstrates another hard rule in Ramsay’s
kitchen—don’t walk off the goddamn line. Don’t even ACT like you’re about to
walk off the line. Until Ramsay tells you to get out, you don’t go anywhere
until the service ends.
Dewberry was clearly not suited for this environment to
begin with—this was during the first season, where Ramsay absolutely hated fat
people and was not shy about expressing that. On top of that, the pressure on
the meat station got to Dewberry, and I mean Lacey-style. He could cook
spaghetti, and that’s about it. Soon as Ramsay put him over on proteins, man
folded like some damn laundry. A shame too, because he seemed like a very nice
guy, probably another reason why he wasn’t going to make it.
Nadir: Almost walking off the line, which resulted directly
in his elimination.
Mitigating factor: Uttered this amazing quote when he
returned for the final service: “I’d rather you be saying I was Brad Pitt’s
wife.” If you can crack up Chef Scott, you’re on to something special.
10. Jeff LaPoff
The biggest asshole in a season largely absent of them, Jeff
started off weak and just got weaker while a kidney stone shot his attitude
through the roof. Now, I can relate, I’ve had a couple kidney stones in my day
and they hurt like hell, but once he pissed out the thing, it seemed to make
him even worse. It was as if Jeff pissed all the niceness out of his body in
the form of a tiny rock, because he became perpetually butthurt for the remainder
of his short time on the show. Fought with his teammates over nothing, screamed
at his sous chef, called Ramsay an asshole and walked off in a huff,
unceremoniously ending the show’s first villain arc.
Now, is he wrong that Ramsay’s an asshole? No, he isn’t. But
that’s also the point, and that little fact fled Jeff’s head if it was ever there
to begin with. If he’d have just put his head down and kept trying, he might
have survived his last night on the show, especially because Hell’s Kitchen
never saw a villain they didn’t want to keep around for way too long. But
because this Napoleon-complex jerkoff couldn’t handle Ramsay’s brutal
honesty, he not only walked off the line and the show, he straight-up tried to
confront Ramsay after service and fell down, hurting his ankle, and limped away
with a $100,000 out of-court settlement.
…Huh. Well, shit, maybe he got the good end of the deal
after all. Even the winner of the damn show only gets a quarter million. I
wonder how much these producers would pay me to break my ankle?
Nadir: Getting owned by Chef Maryann moments before his
departure.
Mitigating factor: Somehow corkscrewing money out of FOX
because he fell down. Yeah, I know there was probably more to the situation and
a lot of the money would have been eaten up by legal fees, but he still got the
network to pay out.
9. Wendy Liu
Now that a couple of the more entertaining screw-ups have
left the building, we’re at the point of the season where the garden-variety
donkeys are being culled, starting with Wendy. Fans of the show might recognize
her as, “who?” Super fans of the show will recognize her as the lady who thought
cold water boiled faster than hot water. This coming from somebody who referred
to herself at least once as a “perfectionist.” Believing that cold boils faster
than hot is on the same level as believing that yelling at dirt until it leaves
your house is faster than vacuuming. It’s awe-inspiringly ridiculous.
We don’t really see her interact much with other contestants,
beyond being pleasant and congenial with everyone. She did teach Ralph and
other members of the blue team how to say “we won’t lose again” in Mandarin, another
thing she said that was incorrect because the blue team most certainly would
lose more challenges from this point.
Nadir: Not knowing what the hell “hot” and “cold” mean while
working in a kitchen.
Mitigating factor: Nice person. Jessica cried after she was
eliminated, but she did that after damn near every female elimination, so maybe
that’s not so special.
8. Mary-Ellen Daniels
Maybe the first elimination in the history of the show that
reeked of bullshit, Mary-Ellen was put up alongside Andrew who had been a
source of pain in Chef’s ass since all the way back in signature dishes.
Mary-Ellen barely made any mark on the season for the time she was present, the
only thing I can remember her for is calling out Andrew for telling Ramsay that
she had done something or showed her something incorrectly, I don’t even
remember and I already stopped caring halfway through this sentence. Maybe the
blandest chef in this entire season, she didn’t come back for the final service
and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have noticed if she had.
Nadir: Ugh. Whatever the hell she did during her last
service to get her thrown out.
Mitigating factor: Was one of the many, many people who shouted
at Andrew.
7. Chris North
A bullshit elimination owed entirely to the fact that Ramsay
couldn’t override nominations in Season 1, or if he could, he chose not to.
Chris made an immediate impression on Ramsay with his signature dish and his
title as Executive Chef. It was not a good impression—his salmon was raw, served
on a plank which just opened up an opportunity to insult them, then proceeded
to take a spanking every time he so much as breathed too loudly in Ramsay’s
presence. Michael, the season’s eventual winner and the man who broke the show,
took note of this and decided to nominate him and put him against Elsie, a chef
that Ramsay saw great potential in. It was truly a bastard move, made that much
more brilliant by the fact that it worked.
Was Chris ever going to win the season? Doubtful. Ramsay
hated him too much to let him survive over Michael or Ralph even IF he managed
to stay over Elsie. Much like Mary-Ellen, Chris would not return for the
finale, probably because Ramsay put a sign on the front of Hell’s Kitchen
reading “NO EXECUTIVE CHEFS ALLOWED” before anyone could even ask him, and he
will forevermore be known as the elimination that most likely spurred Ramsay
being able to veto nominations in future seasons.
Nadir: Submitting a bad dish in the first service and getting
the plate smashed into his chest.
Mitigating factor: Building up a good working relationship
with Elsie not long before they were nominated together.
6. Andrew Bonito
If you want an example of how chefs coming on this show have
improved in quality, try to remember the last time a chef came in 6th
place and wasn’t at least complimented a little bit on the way out the door. Season
13, maybe? Season 9? No clue. But I tell you what, you know a cast is made up
of amateurs when half of them are gone and Ramsay is still eliminating chefs that
he says straight-up “can’t cook.” If Andrew can’t cook, and he almost made it
into black jackets, what the hell was with the five who left before him? Did they
mean to get on Survivor and went to the wrong goddamn studio?
Andrew is an early example of a chef who consistently dealt
everyone some bullshit and slipped by week after week. I mentioned earlier that
Chris was a possible catalyst for Ramsay gaining the privilege of eliminating
anyone whenever he wants, but Andrew is also a contender, because I know it was
chapping Ramsay’s ass that Andrew was almost on the black team.
To put into perspective the thickness of this guy’s douche
fumes, he said in episode one during a confessional that if cooking doesn’t
work out, he’s going into politics. This guy’s sterling personality, I’m
stunned that wasn’t his first choice. Dewberry would have had more luck
becoming a yoga instructor. As for his cooking, all you need to know is that
this man served a risotto to a customer that made them puke. I’ve scoured the
ingredients of this dish, and I can’t find anything that would make somebody
vomit if added in overabundance. This guy is on some Squidward levels of
cooking ability.
Nadir: Deciding to not rat out Ralph for the steak-and-peaches
fiasco the one time when being a loudmouth might have helped him.
Mitigating factor: Put in an honorable effort during the
final service, working through an injury when chefs from other seasons would
have whined the entire time.
5. Jimmy Casey
Known by his nicknames “Dirty Bowl Jimmy” and “fat fuck,”
not to be confused with every other fat person ever on Hell’s Kitchen, Jimmy has
the inauspicious distinction of being the first black jacket chef eliminated
from the show. For those of you who don’t know what black jacket means, once
there are only five or six people left between both teams, the teams get combined.
By the time you get to roughly season 12 or 13, getting a black jacket is
treated with the same reverence as being promoted to Jesus at wherever you
work.
Which is why it’s so funny to see the kinds of people who make
black jackets early in the show, and Jimmy is one such example. From the very first
episode, this dude screwed up at least once or twice an episode, and Ramsay
himself stated he would never be a great chef because he was too fat and clumsy.
Granted, part of that is just because Ramsay treated fat people in early seasons
of Hell’s Kitchen worse than that one Black Mirror episode with the goddamn
treadmills, but Jimmy actually was a total clod, and it was by sheer luck of nominations
that he made it as far as he did.
Ramsay did tell Jimmy that he should be proud of how far he
came, and that he did well, but for me that just feels like a backhanded
compliment. Like, it sounds like he’s saying, “you should be proud that you
managed to make it as far as you did, given your debilitating fatness and
having only a thimbleful of talent.” Maybe I’m just projecting, though.
Nadir: Submitting a bad dish in the first service and getting
the plate smashed into his chest.
Mitigating factor: Winning the first individual challenge in
the history of Hell’s Kitchen and getting a bitchin’ helicopter ride for his
trouble.
4. Elsie Ramos
There are occasions in this show’s long and storied history
where Ramsay will take a liking to a particular contestant and take a gentler
tack with them than he might with another person making the same mistake. These
people typically don’t win the contest, but they win the chef’s heart and that
is a victory in itself, especially if Ramsay decides to, say, put them through
culinary school or offer them a chance to work in London for him.
Elsie didn’t get any kind of special recognition like that,
but she did win Ramsay over almost immediately by being humble and
demonstrating natural ability in a cast full of people who were either very
experienced coming in or totally incompetent. Her lack of fine-dining experience
would defeat her in black jackets, but she was a favorite of both the viewing
public and the Chef himself, putting up honest, simple dishes during challenges
and giving it her best effort during services. Notably, she was the first ever
contestant to be crowned Best of the Worst, she took an individual challenge out
from under the likes of Michael, Ralph and Jessica, and even though two of those
three would go on to let her sink in her final service, Ramsay clearly knew it
wasn’t all her fault even as he eliminated her for just not being ready yet.
So, yeah. Very little negative to say about this chef. I
think her very presence gave Ramsay a chance to show, even in the season where
he arguably was at his most intimidating and ruthless, he had a heart, and that
humanized him enough for people in America that they’ve let Hell’s Kitchen
stick around for two decades now.
Nadir: If the edit we were shown in the first episode is
accurate, and who knows if it is, then her nominating Dewberry in episode 1 after
assuring him he wasn’t going home that night is pretty shady. But Dewberry did
forgive her, and it was probably the right thing to do since he nearly quit the
very next service.
Mitigating factor: Being noble and not throwing the final
three under the bus when Ramsay asked if she had the support of her team. Some
might call that a dumb move, and I do get that because this is a competition,
but calling out the other three also would have made her look like she was
blaming everyone else for her own very lacking experience. I think she went
home on the right night for her.
3. Jessica Cabo
Jessica is one of those classic examples of a contestant who
starts off pretty strong but gets to the black jackets and just deteriorates. Not
only that, but she gets into a couple of loud confrontations with Chef Ramsay,
which depending on how strong you are might make you “a passionate chef” or “a
disrespectful ass,” it varies from contestant to contestant. The one where she
tells Chef she only has two beef left is a distinctly memorable one, with the
way he mocks the hell out of her during that entire exchange, between her hand
gestures and her general whininess.
That’s really Jessica’s most noteworthy trait for me, honestly,
and I’m glad she didn’t make it to the finals. She was just not really likable—a
good example of this is early in the season when she notices Jeff curled up on
the ground as he’s suffering from a kidney stone and when he’s in too much pain
to immediately tell her what’s wrong with him, she just goes “whatever” and
walks off. Now, that “whatever” sounds really spliced-in, so I may be off-base,
but even if nobody liked Jeff, the dude was in the fetal position for fuck’s
sake, it’s worth at least asking him a couple more times before just walking
off.
Nadir: Backstabbing Elsie after the final four challenge,
after being best buds with her for the entire competition beforehand.
Mitigating factor: The punk rock spiked hair-do looks good
on her.
2. Ralph Pagano
Maybe my favorite person from this season, even if he was a
bit slimy for helping Elsie’s downfall. And, I guess, for letting Andrew take the
hit on that grilled peaches fiasco, but I don’t think Andrew ever had a chance
of surviving past Ralph in any case. But yeah, Ralph’s the most charismatic
chef of the season by a considerable margin, he’s funny but he knows when it’s
time to lay the hammer down, and even if he did let some bad shit go by him at
the pass thanks to Michael’s sabotage, I still think he was a better leader. He
just had a bigger voice.
I think Ramsay ultimately passed him up for winner because
Michael was younger and, let’s be honest, pretty damn smart. That, and Ralph
kind of boned himself over by letting Michael pick Jimmy and Elsie so he could
instead work with Andrew, who was a wild card given how the two clashed, and
Wendy, who doesn’t fucking know what “hot” means. Andrew wound up working out
much better than anyone could’ve expected, Wendy seemed to do okay as well, but
Ralph unfortunately had last pick and so was given Dewberry, who did his best
but had to leave the kitchen for a large portion of service due to exhaustion.
Still, Ralph went on to have much more success in culinary
than his opponent, so you can’t feel bad about him losing.
Nadir: Biffing the blind taste test challenge by
destroying his palate earlier that day with coffee, cigarettes and cold drops. You
know, the three C’s.
1. Michael Wray
There will never be another winner of Hell’s Kitchen like
Michael Wray. Some have come a little close, like Ariel M. or Michelle (some
would argue), but Michael was unique in how cunning and ruthless he was. This man
came in like Akagi from Kaiji, analyzing the weaknesses of the show’s format
and exploiting them to his advantage. Going back over my comments on the other
contestants, several of them fell victim to Michael’s cutthroat tactics. He didn’t
assist in letting Elsie sink, to his credit, but he did put Chris up with her
against Ramsay for elimination, knowing Ramsay wouldn’t be willing to part ways
with a chef as promising as Elsie. And you can thank Michael for many bad pass
runs in future seasons, because he was the one who came up with sending deliberately
screwed dishes to the pass to test chefs’ quality control.
As I’m sure many of you are aware, Michael had a spotty run
at life since his time on Hell’s Kitchen, so I suppose if you were angry enough
at him for his mild shenanigans, it didn’t work out swimmingly for him. Still,
he was by no means a villain in his season, just someone who knew the game and
how to play it. Never caused any drama, never fought with other contestants,
and never technically broke the rules so much as stress-tested them, the
results of which can be found next season where pass-sabotages are built-in and
Ramsay pretty much decides when, where and who to eliminate regardless of who
gets nominated.
Nadir: His signature dish wasn’t cleaned, he had roe in his
salmon. Honestly, this just proves how irrelevant the signature dishes are
until they become a challenge. Carolann got a glowing review only to fail to
make it to episode 2, Michael improperly preps his protein and dominates the
season.
Mitigating factor: Became pretty good buds with Jimmy by the
end of the season.
CONCLUSION:
And that wraps up Season 1. A strange beast of a season, but
I think it’s a worthy one. If you aren’t married to the current format of Hell’s
Kitchen and want something quieter and more understated than the drama
explosions and goofy confessionals of today’s Hell’s Kitchen, this might be
your vibe.
Up next, we’re going to be discussing Season 2, featuring
the first battle of the sexes that just happens to coincide with one of the
shittiest blue teams of the entire show to this very day.
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