Meta chefs The ‘reality’ of Hell’s Kitchen BY CHRIS NELSON

At some point during the fourth episode of Hell’s Kitchen (Fox, Mondays at 9 pm), reality television went meta. The show’s contestants — novice chefs vying for the chance to be a head chef — were in the middle of a late-night round table outside their dorm when one of them saw it. As they’d toiled that day, a massive billboard had been erected directly in front of their building and was now peering into their backyard. On it was the face of their tormentor, a reminder that they were under constant surveillance, being watched by cameras, by him, and eventually by us. The man on the billboard was Gordon Ramsay.

Already a household name to connoisseurs of gourmet cuisine, Ramsay has expanded his British empire to Los Angeles, and the show’s mission is to find a chef for the eponymous restaurant. This isn’t his first foray into TV. The hit BBC program Kitchen Nightmares found a more charitable and forgiving Ramsay invading failing restaurants and trying to turn bad situations around. On HK, any time he’s on camera, he’s red-faced and hollering. When he can’t criticize a cook’s food, he’ll criticize his or her manners. On one episode, he berates a contestant because of his weight.

The premise of the show is similar to that of WGBH’s Cooking Under Fire, with contestants getting divided into teams to shop and cook. Here, though, they actually serve dinner in the restaurant, and at the end of the evening, one chef gets the boot in a group meeting as Ramsay says, "Give me your jacket." The abusive British judge draws on, of course, The Weakest Link and American Idol; in the opening montage, one hopeful calls Ramsay "the Simon Cowell of the kitchen" and another contends that "he’s way worse than Simon Cowell." But within its familiar constraints, HK has produced some watchable television that, like Cooking Under Fire, is more interesting for its people than its food. Having eliminated some of the more likable and attractive contestants early on (the roly-poly Dewberry and fresh-faced Mary Ellen), the show has had to lean on the more oddball characters. The tattoo’d Michael, who’d been touted as a team leader and an experienced cook, has been revealed as manipulative and somewhat crazy. After one particularly boring evening in the restaurant, Michael is shown strategizing aloud . . . to himself. At 3 am. Whispering "I will win this" while looking upon Ramsay’s massive billboard visage. Then there’s Andrew, a bratty youngster who can’t pass up any opportunity to argue with the master chef.

The rule on reality TV is that you stop at nothing to keep the audience guessing. But at this point on Hell’s Kitchen, one of the least compelling contestants — Elsie, a mother of four who has only "panic" and "cry" modes — appears a lock. Despite her relative inexperience and constant flailing about in the kitchen, Ramsay seems to have a soft spot for her. Then again, with the odds getting stacked so high against the now-depleted teams, you wonder whether outside factors (like the customers’ comment cards) won’t tilt the result. And though the producers must have been in a frenzy when not one but two contestants stormed off the set in the first few weeks, that raises another question: since reality shows are so loosely based in any sort of reality to begin with, why run the risk of turning them into unscripted soaps? It’ll be interesting to see how the contestants’ schemes play out, and Ramsay’s trademark "Move yer arse!" will always draw a laugh. But it seems ironic that a show about gourmet cooking should have to make do with leftovers.