TV Review: Hell's Kitchen - Donkeys and Gnat's Piss and Bovril, Oh My

Scrunched, red, and as wrinkled as a shar-pei's behind, Gordon Ramsay's is the face of someone whose every expression has left a mark. He has the laddered forehead of the born worrier, with every line etched and ready for springing back into action with the next frown. Even his somewhat rarer smiles have left their marks.

He's a weird mix. At just past forty, the famous British chef easily looks ten years older than his actual age, yet he also conveys an oddly boyish pugnacity and athleticism, as well. In other words, as finalist contestant Bonnie Muirhead put it in this season of Hell's Kitchen, "I'll have nightmares about Chef Ramsay yelling at me for the rest of my life, but he's still kind of hot."

Ramsay, especially in tyrant mode on Hell's Kitchen, is certainly something of an acquired taste. The first time I watched the show, I actually flinched when Ramsay launched into one of his famous tirades, screaming a blue streak of bleeped obscenities at the hapless contestants.

"What is that guy doing?" I asked my friend nervously. "Does he always scream at them like this?" 

I found myself both riveted and repulsed by Ramsay's over-the-top shouting, screaming, cursing, and shoving. He threw things at people. Threw. I couldn't believe it. This was what reality TV had come to. It was like I was watching the boss of my worst nightmares. Even Ramsay's hair seems perpetually enraged, standing up from his head in a mess of blond spikes.

And yet, I couldn't look away. I've kept watching. Something about the show, and Chef Ramsay, resonates with me. The guy is charismatic, for one thing, and he's obviously passionate about the business, as well as the art, of food. He cares how it is prepared, and dislikes having to suffer fools along the way (everyone can empathize with that one). Adding Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares to my Tivo list also helped to add dimension to the guy. He can be charming and effortlessly likeable on that show (while still showing the typical Ramsay blue streak), and often exhibits unexpected moments of kindness, as when he's encouraging a hapless restaurant owner, or complimenting a shy sous chef on a lovely dessert.

But I admit it, I've grown to love the yelling, the endless bleeps, the infinite variations on the F-word. The breadth and variety of his insults is superb, and when it comes to profanity, Ramsay is a king in his domain, an entertaining, colorful and endlessly inventive wordsmith. Watching Ramsay cuss out a contestant on one Hell's Kitchen episode last season, in which he used an iteration of the F-word more than 34 times, I was reminded of that line in Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story, when Ralphie talked about his father working in obscenity the way most men worked with clay. That's Chef Ramsay for you.

Article Author: Angela Mitchell

Angela is a writer and editor who worships and writes about TV, film, music, books, games and pop culture via her blog, Paranoid Pop. Her works have appeared in Writer's Digest, Markee, Me!dea, Computer Currents, and Women's Enterprise. …

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