Slow cooking in ‘Hell’s Kitchen’

Wow, they really had to pad this thing to manage a two-part season finale. All the recaps at the start, and again in the middle, plus the completely extraneous trip to New York. Can you imagine anything Christina and Petrozza wanted to do less in the middle of creating their restaurants than pick up and go to New York to hype Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant there? And I’m not sure what was up with Whoopi Goldberg’s appearance. I watch “The View” every day and can’t remember her ever mentioning watching “Hell’s Kitchen.” Or any reality show.

I was interested in the creation of the restaurants and would have liked to see more of that. Poor Christina; such a little control freak, and I really think the designer misunderstood her on the stripes. Wasn’t she talking about the banquette fabric? And she was right; the wall stripes were hideous. It was funny how much J-P seemed to enjoy Petrozza, who liked simply every suggestion.

Looking at all the other executive chefs, though, I still can’t imagine Petrozza fitting into that group. (Funny crack from Christina about him being old.) In fact, the way the episode skewed to him suggested to me even more strongly that Christina wins.