HELLS KITCHEN. season opener tonight

[dempartisan23]

lets all watch tonight at 9pm on fox!!

[Webster Green]

1. I love that show!

One of my favorites!:hi:

[Fuzz]

15. Same

[DJ13]

2. Thanks for the reminder, my wife loves that show

:thumbsup:
:hi:

[Earth_First]

3. You watch primetime network TELEVISION? On FOX!?

Hope you brought your flamesuit!

[dempartisan23]

7. its entertainment!!

i love that show.

[TexasLady]

4. I hear it's supposed to kick butt tonight. for funnies

I'll watch it!

[tridim]

5. From what I can tell it's just American Idol in the kitchen

A man with rage and ego issues yells at everyone and tells them they're stupid.

Do I have that right? If so, no thanks.

[marions ghost]

9. well depends

if you believe people benefit from boot-camp like challenges.

Gordon Ramsey does give some positives with the negatives and those wanna-be chefs do learn to get their acts together or hang up the apron. That formal spiking of the "retired" jackets must hurt tho. Ouch. Samurai chef school.

It's no worse than academia.

[marions ghost]

6. beats Barack vs. Hillary at this point

.....

[dempartisan23]

8. yep

break time from politics!!

[eShirl]

10. thanks, but if I want to watch emotional abuse, I'll look out the window at the neighbors

For everyone who likes Hell's Kitchen, though, enjoy!

(only Fox shows I like are House and the Sunday Night Cartoons)

[marions ghost]

12. Let me ask

were you ever in the armed forces?
Did you ever go to grad school?
Did you ever take ballet lessons? Piano?
How about sports, martial arts?

There's a lot of this kind of "tough love" around. I'm not taking up for extreme forms of it, but just saying...it's everywhere.

If it doesn't cross a line into true abuse, I think it's OK to ask for excellence from students, and sometimes unless you are somewhat harsh and to the point, they never realize where that line really is.

[eShirl]

13. yes to one of those

based only on the ads I've seen for the show, if he was a parent acting like that to his kids they would be taken into foster care

[marions ghost]

16. Well these budding chefs

have high aspirations...they want to work in the best restaurants or have one of their own. Cooking at this level is an art and you have to push people hard to perform well at their art. It's not a matter of being just OK, you really do have to be better than the pack.

The yelling and pressure is part of working in a fast-paced restaurant--I've done it. It's a team sport. So in a way, if they can't put up with being pushed for a little while at this level, they may never get the hang of how to function in that environment and manage a kitchen staff.

If the abuse is too much they can always quit.

[tridim]

17. I was a kick-ass chef in my younger days and nobody ever had to yell at me.

Positive reinforcement works wonders.

[marions ghost]

20. if you were a kick-ass chef

then maybe you didn't need your ass kicked ;)

Seriously I'm a believer in + reinforcement in any kind of teaching. You can't give the negative without the positive...that is abusive. Seems to me that Gordon Ramsey does give positives (and of course we don't know what goes on behind the scenes). The similarity to Simon Cowell is obvious though--the positives are very hard won--getting chewed out by those picky rapidspeak English bastards is rough.

There are plenty of students for whom average will always be good enough. But there are others who aspire to the highest levels of their discipline or art and the teacher owes it to the student to put appropriate demands on them. Even students at high levels can be drifty and unfocused. They may benefit from a trial by fire to perfect their craft. As you well know, in a high-powered kitchen it's necessary to achieve that transcendent zen-like state in which you're just doing what you do well, and yet you are very focused. This is no place for dilettantes. If the student doesn't like such realistic trials, s/he's free to get another teacher. Students in general these days tend to be spoiled and lazy. But of course I'm not advocating abuse. If you have to abuse, then you really will never get the best out of your students...

I'm just saying that if you choose to compete with your peers at a high level in your artform, it's not gonna be like spending the day over at Martha Stewart's watching pots boil and doing a little craft project in styrofoam on the side.

[eShirl]

19. hey, if you enjoy watching a grown man throw a tantrum, be my guest

[marions ghost]

21. believe it or not

I don't like all the adversarial shows on TV. I don't like everything under the sun being made into a competition (esp things like beauty pageants and Who wants to marry a Millionaire--puke). I don't watch most of that kind of stuff.

But in all the legitimate arts, sports, dramatics, debating and performance arenas involving high pressure, there are some tough coaches. That's about all I see here in Hell's Kitchen, a show about a tough coach whipped up and made into high drama for TV. As for grown men throwing tantrums, all I have to do is imagine the sidelines of a basketball or football game...or maybe some of the fans of those sports in front of their TV sets ;)

[Bonobo]

11. Thank you!!

[dougkeenan]

14. "That's why it's called non-stiiicckkk!!"

Here's hoping he tops that masterpiece early on!

[Faux pas]

18. Can't wait! Thanks for the reminder.

:)

[dempartisan23]

22. cool

i hope they have some hot contestants this time. who cares if they can cook.

[michreject]

23. Pistons are on at 8

:)

[Hawaii Hiker]

24. I'll bet the restaurant that they'll be playing for is

the hotel that replaced the old Bel-Age in WH....It's going to be called the London West Hollywood, & it's going to have a Ramsey restaurant in it, so that's likely the hotel the winner will become the head chef in...