Review: 'Hell's Kitchen'

I once interviewed famed concert promoter Bill Graham, and he told me this great story about Jimi Hendrix.

He loved Hendrix, and had hired him long before he was discovered by the general public and elevated to guitar god status.

Graham thought Hendrix might be the most talented guitarist ever, but he loathed all of the tricks and affectations Hendrix developed as his fame grew. Graham saw Hendrix's trademark guitar burning as cheap theatrics, tools that he would expect to see from a guitarist who didn't have the chops to pull it off otherwise.

Graham had booked Hendrix into a two-show set in NYC, and they continued their discussion about this backstage before the performances. Hendrix finally said to Graham, "Look, I'll show why I do it." He walked out on stage for his first set and delivered what Graham described as the perfect performance. No tricks, no pimping the crowd for a response. Just a dazzling display of raw guitar talent. Hendrix left the stage to a massive response, and Graham thought he had proved his point. "See," he told Hendirx. "You don't need the tricks to get the audience response."

Hendirx proceeded to do his second set, during which he did every trick Graham loathed. He played with his tongue, stroked the guitar, set it on fire, and left the stage to a response ten times more insane than he received from the first crowd of the night.

Hendrix's point was that he does the cheap tricks not because he has no other options. But because that is what the crowd expects to see.

I thought of this story while I was watching the season premiere of "Hell's Kitchen," the cooking competition show hosted by famed British chef Gordon Ramsay. The episode was more of the same theatrics audiences have come to expect from the show. And how you feel about that will determine whether or not you think this show is worth watching.

I'm a big fan of Ramsay. He's a talented chef, and a shrewd businessman. He's also made for television, with a sharp (sometimes cruel) wit and the ability to cut straight to the heart of a problem with no concerns about hurt feelings or bruised egos.

His passionate and often abrasive personality is a perfect fit for "Hell's Kitchen," which helps to explain why the idea has been a hit in both the U.K. and U.S. The show throws together a bunch of chefs into a battle to survive each week in hopes of winning a large cash prize and a plum cooking job. Ramsay pushes, prods, berates and guides the contestants through each week's challenge, which typically involves attempting to complete a full meal service to a restaurant full of diners.

I throughly enjoyed the first couple of seasons of the show, but by last season, had started to find myself bored with the often predictable nature of the series. And by the often obvious ways the episodes are manipulated by producers.

Frankly, I have a couple of problems with "Hell's Kitchen." Firstly, I understand the need to have contestants on the show who have a compelling TV persona. Having a dozen or fifteen chefs who are excellent technically but boring personally would make for a forgettable series. But "Hell's Kitchen" often seems to rely primarily on people who are terrible in the kitchen but memorable on camera. How can you have a competitive cooking show that includes people who can't cook pasta or properly prepare a salad? And yet, season after season, that's just what viewers see on "Hell's Kitchen."

I also find it annoying the so-called "customers" in the fictional "Hell's Kitchen" restaurant are so obviously managed by producers. In this season's first episode, the entire place clears out in mass at one point, as if a couple of hundred people all spontaneously decided they had suffered enough. The diners comments often seem scripted and planned, and it's difficult to get a feel on just honest a reaction any of the customers are giving at the end of the evening. This lack of transparency is a problem, since the fate of the contestants are often decided by the "reaction" of the restaurant's diners.

My final problem with "Hell's Kitchen" is Gordon Ramsay himself. There' always a fine line between being entertaining and simply a constantly repeating self-parody. Ramsay is edging towards the latter in this series, especially in the episode which airs tonight. So many of his comments seemed to repeat things I've heard in previous seasons, and all that deja-vu sapped my interest in who might be going home.

I could go through a rundown of some of the contestants, but other than the moment when one of them walks out of the kitchen during the prep work, there wasn't a moment that surprised or entertained me.

I'm over "Hell's Kitchen," and it really pains me to say that. I respect Ramsay, and I'm enjoying BBC America's airings of his "F-Word" series. But as for this show, color me gone.

The new season of "Hell's Kitchen" premieres on Thursday, January 28th, 2009.