I know what you “Hell’s Kitchen” fans are thinking: “What the hell…? Who’s this Will Harris guy, and why the hell is he writing the blog this week?” And although I do not claim to be Nostradamus, I will even go a step further and offer up what you’ll be thinking when you discover that, on most weeks, I don’t even watch “Hell’s Kitchen”: “What makes you think you can just step in from out of the blue and fill Mike Farley’s shoes?” It’s possible that some of you may have even tacked a “you son of a bitch” on the end, but maybe that’s just a bit of self-loathing on my part.

Well, here’s the situation: Mr. Farley found himself in the unenviable position of playing in a writer’s round last night, and with only one recorder available to him and two shows to blog (the other, of course, being “The Biggest Loser”). As such, he dropped me a line and asked me with all due politeness if I’d be willing to do him a favor and blog “Hell’s Kitchen” for him…and, thankfully, the specified bribe cleared my bank account just in time for me to do right by him. So I ask you to allow me a bit of latitude if I should be unaware of previous goings-on, and with that, let us move forward into the bloggery of last night’s two-hour extravaganza.

(Actually, it was just two one-hour episodes than ran back to back, but let’s not spoil it for Fox, because I think they wanted to pretend that they were really doing something special.)

Continue reading »