It was a little harder to take the drama of "Hell's Kitchen" seriously last night, after recent accusations that chef Gordon Ramsay exaggerated the squalor of a restaurant for his soon-to-premiere new show, "Kitchen Nightmares."  I mean, everything that can go wrong on "HK" tends to, and it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine someone planting something like rancid crab, the serving of which cost Joanna her spot on the show last week, to make things more interesting.

At least Ramsay's yelling seemed real enough. (Really, it doesn't look too forced. And he does plenty of it.) The first challenge, a test of palates, allowed for more personal insults, always more entertaining than the skill-based ones doled out at dinner. Ramsay looked as if he were about to cry when Julia and Brad, blindfolded, couldn't identify the carrots they were being fed; he screamed when someone missed the egg yolk. The girls won the challenge and the boys ate organ meats and other sundries as punishment.

After prep work, a special lunch at one of those total darkness dining experiences for the girls, and a few minutes of dinner service, it was already pretty clear who would be nominated to leave: Vinnie was incompetent and weirdly shifty, sulking around the kitchen instead of, you know, cooking. Bonnie was a tearful (but endearing!) wreck. In what now seems like part of a routine, Chef Ramsay stopped dinner service before all the food had been served, citing general incompetence. Both teams had to nominate someone, and, when the team leaders didn't pick Bonnie and Vinnie, Ramsay did. Ramsay pronounced Vinny "a crap cook," which, though a weak insult by Ramsay's standards, meant Vinnie is the one to go.